There are contradictory accounts in the antiquarian literature. Stapleton — writing about the alleged baluster at East Bridgford (East Bridgford 2, p. 109) — says 'a much finer example of this type of column, found amongst the old palace ruins, is now to be seen in Southwell cathedral' (Stapleton 1911, 119). Hill says rather that it was found in the choir foundations (Hill 1916a, 198). Most recently and with the authority derived from his distinguished service as cathedral archaeologist, Professor Philip Dixon has reported that, though its provenance is unclear, it was probably one of the eleven 'carved stones of late Saxon design' found before 1853 during the repairs of the piers of the central tower and the south wall of the nave, reused in the Norman rubble of the early twelfth-century Minster (Dixon 2001, 256 citing Summers 1988, 30; Dixon and Coates n.d., 4: see Southwell 5–14 in Appendix C, p. 216).

The assertion by the Southwell and Nottingham Church History Project's website that 'four baluster shafts are now preserved in the ...Minster Centre' appears to be an error (https://southwellchurches.nottingham.ac.uk/southwell-minster/hintro.php) [consulted October 2012].

An almost complete baluster shaft, with a distinctively 'bellied' profile (Fig. 30). It lacks about the final 23 cm (9 in) from one end, which presumably — since such shafts tend to be approximately symmetrical — exhibited a plain roll moulding and outward splay matching the surviving end. The overall original height would then have been 124 cm (49 in).

This is definitely a carved, or hand-cut, architectural feature, rather than a turned shaft. There is no sign of either the square socket hole or the circular pivot point that would betray the process of lathe turning in the one surviving end surface. Additionally, there are many marks of the scappling hammer or point bearing witness to this hand-cutting.

Its decoration consists of a plain rounded moulding, 7 cm (2.75 in) wide, near the end (presumably matched by the same on the missing end), beyond which the stone splays out again in a simple form of capital. There is also a broad, flat central moulding, 8 cm (3.25 in) wide, and flanking it lightly incised lines, neither of which forms a complete circuit. The body of the shaft is slightly but clearly bulbous between the mouldings.

There is important evidence of the pre-preparation of the stone for this decoration in the form of elongated areas of surface removal in four zones around the middle. This is clearly the effect of converting an original square shaft into one of sub-circular section by shaving off its corners.

Abutting the broken end F is the scar where a spall of stone has been smashed off.

E (top): Original dressed surface

F (bottom): Broken surface

The carved, or hand-cut, rather than lathe-turned, technique of this baluster places it in the category of such objects whose function seems exclusively architectural, in contrast to use as parts of internal church furnishing that has been suggested for at least some of the more finely finished, turned examples (Tweddle et al. 1995, 25). They have been catalogued in this form and function in many parts of the country, both in situ and ex situ. Occurring in south-east England in situ at Oxford St Michael and North Leigh, and ex situ in major collections at Dover St Mary-in-Castro, St Albans and Winchester Old Minster, and also at Canterbury St Augustine's and Jevington, they are almost always associated with belfry openings and are routinely a phenomenon of the later pre-Conquest period, after 950 and mostly of eleventh-century date (Tweddle et al. 1995, 72 and ad loc.; Everson and Stocker forthcoming). A similar date and context occurs across the Midlands: ex situ in Gloucester (Bryant with Hare 2012, 57, 107, 220) and most notably in situ at Earls Barton, Northamptonshire, and at Barton-upon-Humber, Lincolnshire (Taylor and Taylor 1965, i, 52–7, 222–6; Everson and Stocker 1999, 102–4; and see now Rodwell with Atkins 2011, 286–7). Rodwell also cites comparanda in East Anglia — excavated at Bury St Edmunds and in situ in towers at Beechamwell, Norfolk, and St Benet's at Cambridge — for the eleventh-century suite at Barton (Rodwell with Atkins 2011, 336–7).

The overall height of the Southwell baluster is very much in line with these examples, and its profile (Fig. 30) is a simple, rather crudely produced, variation of the moulded forms they exhibit. Though the details vary even within sets of balusters, they typically have some form of moulding towards either end, beyond which there is a transition to the adjacent impost or base block, plus a zone of mouldings around the middle, together with some symmetrical shaping of the spaces between. The simplicity of Southwell 2 perhaps most resembles some of those still in situ at Barton-upon-Humber, which are also fashioned from Millstone Grit through a process whose labour-intensity Rodwell has emphasized (Rodwell with Atkins 2011, 336–7), and at Earls Barton, rather than the complex profiles encountered in the greater churches of the south east of the country. All this body of comparison places Southwell 2 in an architectural context towards the very end of the pre-Conquest period, and strongly suggests that it came from the highest, belfry stage of a tower.

The proposition embraced by Dixon that this baluster is the sole survivor of the lost stones here catalogued as Southwell 5–14 (p. 216) perhaps has the implication that the main collegiate church of Southwell and predecessor of the Minster had a bell-stage atop its crossing tower, with elaborate openings. A building of the form implied by the footprint Dixon projects would be on a par, for example, with the likes of St Mary-in-Castro at Dover or St Mary at Stow in Lincolnshire; and it is presumably a church of this form, size and appearance that both Norman Summers and Philip Dixon have in mind for the minster at Southwell that was superseded in the early twelfth century (Summers 1988, 30; Dixon 2001, esp. fig. 13.3; Dixon 2013, 36–7; Dixon and Coates n.d., 4–5). Furthermore, it is tempting to associate the gift of bells to Southwell by Archbishop Cynesige of York (1050–1060) with the construction or enhancement of this collegiate church (Raine 1886, ii, 344; Summers 1988, 30; Everson and Stocker forthcoming).

It can be objected, however, that this baluster is neither illustrated nor even mentioned in the several, quite full, accounts published about the group of decorated stones discovered in repairs to the crossing piers and south aisle in the 1850s (see Southwell 5–14, p. 216). Dimock, a key player in this saga, is also quite clear that this group of stones was — scandalously in his view — simply disposed of en bloc, before 1869 (ibid.). Contrariwise, the first and only clear notice of the baluster's discovery was Stapleton's in 1911, saying that it came to light in the ruins of the old bishop's palace (above). Hill's alternative in 1916 presumably merely reflects the object's careful retention within the chancel of the Minster, where it remained until quite recently. There had indeed been works on the site of the old bishop's palace in the period up to and including the first decade of the twentieth century that might have brought this stone to light. First, around 1883–4 and in connexion with the proposal to raise Southwell to the status of bishopric, the antiquarian bishop of Nottingham, Edward Trollope, paid for a careful restoration of the medieval state chamber, placing the work in the hands of G. F. Bodley (Beckett 2003b, 142–5). Had such a relic as the baluster come to light in these works it would undoubtedly have been recognized by Trollope and cared for (Chapter I above). Then, a new bishop's residence was finally built in 1906–7, for the second bishop of Southwell, Edwyn Hoskyns, on the ancient site but carefully incorporating the earlier remains and the footprint of its quadrangular layout as a walled garden. It is said that the architect W. D. Caröe carried this through 'in such a manner that almost every stone of historic significance will be reverently incorporated in the new edifice' (Beckett 2003b, 153–4). Either of these building campaigns, or a combination of both, might plausibly have identified and preserved the baluster, and led to its honoured retention in the Minster; and the latter coincides neatly with the first notice of this piece.

This provenance in the medieval palace of the archbishops of York at Southwell is an important consideration, since it opens up the possibility that the baluster belonged to an early palace chapel. There had been an archiepiscopal residence here at least since 1051, when the death of Archbishop Ælfric Puttoc in his garden at Southwell is recorded (Raine 1886, ii, 343), and probably earlier. A significant aspect of those Midland locations where balusters survive in situ — Barton and Earls Barton — is that they were deployed in buildings of the tower-nave type and that these buildings originated as churches/chapels within lordly enclosures (Rodwell with Atkins 2011, 351–2; Shapland 2012). A relevant analogy can be drawn, too, with St Mary Bishophill Junior in York. In its early form a tower-nave structure whose mid-wall shafts at belfry level were not balusters but tall shafts of Millstone Grit, it was the chapel within an archiepiscopal enclosure that was adjacent to but quite separated from the great collegiate church that was predecessor to Holy Trinity Priory (Wenham et al. 1987; Stocker 1987a, 1987b; Shapland 2010). As Rodwell has emphasized in discussing Barton, this tower-nave form combined a high visual and aural impact with a modest footprint, whose functional space precludes congregational worship, and points — as does their characteristic locational context — to a status as a proprietorial chapel.

Against this background, it seems a lively, but previously unconsidered, possibility that the Southwell baluster came from just such a tower-nave chapel within the early archiepiscopal complex here (Chapter VI, p. 68).

But, if the baluster was just slightly later in date, it can neatly be seen as belonging to the bell tower that formed one component — with common refectories and dormitories, and 'rules and regulations' — in the new ecclesiastical institution promoted by the archbishops of York at Southwell and at their other main sub-cathedral churches in the thirty years before the Conquest (Everson and Stocker forthcoming). We know most about the bell towers erected at these re-invented ecclesiastical institutions from documentary references to that at Beverley, and we can suggest that they took a centrally-planned form because of the survival of the church from Stow in Lincolnshire (ibid.). Probably, given the fact that this was a programme of works carried through by successive archbishops in selected locations, the bells given to Southwell in the 1050s by Archbishop Cynesige were destined for this collegiate bell tower and marked its completion. More probably than being a survival of an earlier episcopal private chapel, therefore, we suggest that this baluster represents an element within an innovative ecclesiastical institution of the mid eleventh century and signals Southwell's participation in a widespread trend, which was almost immediately superseded by the churchmanship and forms of church building brought in by the Norman Conquest.

Finally, it is important to consider Southwell 2 as a re-cycled piece of Millstone Grit, which in its previous use was a shaft of square section. Clear evidence of this is provided by the fact that the cutting and scappling that re-worked it to a sub-circular section pre-dates the cutting that effected the central moulding. The baluster's stone type strongly suggests that this earlier use was Roman. It might easily have been re-cycled from the massive 'villa' that lay nearby to the east of the Minster (Daniels 1966; and see Chapter III, p. 21); and there seems a strong presumption that the Church and its senior prelates had a prime claim to substantial Roman ruins and the Romanitas inherent in such spolia. But considerable quantities of Millstone Grit found their way into northern Lincolnshire in the tenth and eleventh century, presumably by water from the major buildings of Roman York (Everson and Stocker 1999, 12, 28, 69, 81; Stocker and Everson 2006, 18; Rodwell with Atkins 2011, 320–7, favouring, however, more local sources than York). Southwell has access via the Trent to stone from the same source. It is perhaps a worthwhile speculation that the stones for the belfry baluster shafts at Southwell might also have been a gift from York by Archbishop Cynesige, like the bells that they enclosed but allowed to sound out. If so, not only the sonority of the bells when they were rung would be an aural reminder of Southwell's affiliation with York, but also the belfry on high would be a visual and emblematic reminder of the link when they were not.