A (broad): The very narrow edge mouldings are broken. The face is divided longitudinally by a plain tapering strip. Flanking it are simple plant-scrolls, disposed in mirror image fashion. One-and-a-half volutes of each survive. The stems are median-incised.

On the left-hand side, the complete volute contains a bird with wings outstretched and biting a shoot. Minor off-shoots curl about the bird, only rarely crossing its body. Two nodding blossoms fill the space above one wing whilst two buds lie above the other. Below the volute is a ridged node with a double, concave rim, from which the median-incised main stem of the plant issues, along with a spray of shoots terminated in a variety of leaves and flower forms, some cupped and another pointed with flanking sepals. The same variety is found on a spray of shoots in the spandrel between the two medallions, where pointed and bulbous leaves terminate the fan of foliage occupying the triangle. In the lower volute the head and long neck of an animal seen in profile survive, loosely entangled in a looping offshoot.

The treatment of the right-hand scroll is very similar to its opposite number, with median-incised stem and ridged nodes. The offshoots hook more noticeably here. The upper volute contains a bird, its wings folded and its head turned back to feed on a berry. The shoots by its legs are profuse. In the lower volute the upper half of an animal seen in profile survives, a shoot curling about its neck. It has no ears but a long pointed leaf lies close to its crown.

The cutting is in fine low relief, the edges being lightly modelled. Many of the leaves have gouged centres.

B (narrow): A narrow edge moulding flanks a tightly-woven interlace using broad, flat strands. It is a ten-strand plain plait with included U-bend breaks, the lower one on the left-hand side being unanswered on the right. The horizontal grid-lines for the layout of the pattern survive as very fine incisions.

C (broad): This face is either unfinished or served as a trial piece for face A. At one side a plain moulding remains, but the rest of the face has been dressed with diagonal tooling. In the centre are two short vertical lines corresponding to the central moulding of face A. In the upper right-hand corner are light incisions in the form of a calligraphic, interlacing terminal with a pointed leaf and, possibly, the upper part of a bird with turned head and raised wing. In the lower left corner are parts of a circular medallion containing a sketch for an animal's neck. All the cutting is extremely controlled geometrically, but very lightly etched.

D (narrow): Broken away.

This is by far the most accomplished pre-Conquest carving from the Minster. It may, to judge from the trials of face C, be an unfinished piece. The extremely fine state of preservation of the cutting and layout lines, especially of face B, suggests that it was never exposed to the elements. It may have stood with its back to a wall, or conceivably may have been a vertical element of a tapering box shrine. The most acceptable interpretation seems to be a shaft, as the ornamental sequence and the taper seem to testify. The only shrine parallel would be that from Jedburgh, Roxburghshire (Collingwood 1927, 45, fig. 57), with its more plastic inhabited scroll. Slim varieties of shaft do occur in Northumbria at this period, notably at Croft, North Riding, where a comparable inhabited scroll is also found (Collingwood 1907, 306).

It is unusual for an inhabited scroll to be disposed in two adjacent but distinct panels. To judge from the surviving fragment, the central moulding is free from the plant and probably is not its stem, though it is just possible that at the base of the fragment the nodes may have joined the central stem immediately below the present fracture. Certainly the stem is severely vertical, giving no impression of organic growth, in the Croft manner. The volutes and their inhabitants are balanced symmetrically but these are minor differences which prevent their becoming mere mirror images. The birds of the upper register, for example, are addorsed but one spreads its wings whilst the other folds them. A similar naturalism appears in the organic growth of the plant-scrolls. At Croft, the closest parallel, there is less naturalism with the 'Anglian lock' reducing the creatures to interlacing, star-shaped motifs, unlike the perching and feeding fauna of this piece. Here the analogues are Otley, West Yorkshire, Ruthwell, Dumfriesshire and Jedburgh (Cramp 1970, pl. 41, B, pl. 42, 2, pl. 43, 4; Wilson 1984, pls. 71, 78) but only in the naturalism, for the cutting is unusually shallow and delicate by comparison. There is a hint of the Croft style in the small scale of the design as well as in the habit of the slender shoots interlocking with the wings (Wilson 1984, pl. 79). The plant-scroll of the shaft from Easby, North Riding (Longhurst 1931, pls. 25–8) is comparable in the treatment of nodes, seed-pods and general disposition, especially of the loose sprays outside the medallions. Their treatment has none of the acanthus model (Kitzinger 1936, pl. VIB) but, like Easby, seems to derive from the line of the plant stem and shoots rather than seed pods and great leaves. This conveys a lightness, reflected in the cutting levels, which is unique to this piece. The entanglement of the creatures by the plant is more noticeable here than on analogous inhabited scrolls.

1. All the pieces from the Minster were discovered as a result of the excavations of 1966-71 by H. Ramm and D. Phillips. They are to be published as a handlist, together with a critical essay, in the forthcoming Royal Commission volume on the excavations. That publication will provide the finer detail of their archaeological contexts, both in a table, and in a description of the excavation of the south transept cemetery.
The following are general references to the stones: Wilson 1978, 142; Hall 1980b, 7, 21; Lang 1988b, 8, 12; Lang 1989, 5.