East end of the south aisle, inside

Found 'at the site of St. Faith's church, 1½ miles up the road (not the site of the present church)' (Collingwood 1911a, 260). (The present church is nineteenth-century.) Find spot perhaps confused with that of a fifteenth-century cross-head, said to have come either from same site or from White Cross, at road junction south of village. In rectory garden in 1911 (ibid.); in church by 1972 (Pevsner 1972, 304).

Holy Trinity

Broken but crisp; face C broken away

The shaft is edged by a broad, plain, flat-band moulding.

A (broad): The single panel is filled with an irregular interlace, apparently a bungled version of encircled pattern C, the topmost register disintegrating at one side into a three-strand twist in an attempt to accommodate the taper of the shaft. The strand is plain and slightly modelled.

B (narrow): The panel is filled with a run of double dropped loops, described by Collingwood (1911a, 260) as 'knitting stitch'. The strand has a flat surface and is median-incised.

C (broad): This face has been heavily scabbled, leaving only a loop of interlace and what may have been a bifurcating strand at the top of the stone. The strand is plain and modelled in section.

D (narrow): The left-hand edge moulding has been broken away. The panel contains a run of interlace: apparently five registers of half pattern A with an outside strand, the lower terminals being cross-joined. The strands are median-incised.

The ornament is confined to ambitious interlace patterns which sometimes defeat the sculptor's capacity to control the symmetry of the designs. There are irregularities in the encircled pattern of face A and the alignment of strands on face D is sometimes out of true. Nevertheless, the cutting is confident with some deep drilling to convey relief, and the scheme of confining median-incised strands to the narrow sides adds variety. The dropped loops of face B are found on the shaft St Leonard's Place 2 at York (Ill. 370), though the interlace patterns of the Leven stone are much more closely knit, heralding the taste of the next century. There is no attempt to divide the faces into smaller panels, a feature which not only occurs on the St Leonard's shaft but also influences the later carvings of York and Ryedale. There are no grounds for Collingwood's recognition of proto Jellinge-style elements in any of the designs. It is worth comparing the Cumbrian shaft, Beckermet St Bridget 2C (Bailey and Cramp 1988, 56, ill. 49) for an impressionistic version of such ornament.

Ninth century

Collingwood 1911a, 260, figs. a–d on 261; Collingwood 1912a, 131; Collingwood 1927, 131, 134; Mee 1941b, 191; Pevsner 1972, 304