A (broad): A fragment whose only visible face has three broken edges and a short arc of original curved edge that is part of the inner edge of a ring. Its decoration is in curving bands concentric with that arc. From the inside they comprise a broad plain flat border, a run of tightly interlaced three-strand plait with double medial incised lines, a plain flat border, a run of chevron, and a scrap of a further element, perhaps a plain outer border.

Though the suggestion is far from a certainty, it would be possible to reconstruct this fragment as a highly decorated ring from a wheel-headed cross of very large dimensions. In respect of size, the pre-Viking cross-head at Lastingham, Yorkshire NR (Lang 1991, 168–9) or the Viking-period cross at Rolleston, Staffordshire, originally from Tatenhill, with a diameter of 96.5cm (38 in) (Auden 1908), show that the suggestion is possible. The latter, while it employs narrow bands of chevron and interlace on the outer faces of its cross-arms, is not formally a wheel-head though commonly described so.

There is no direct evidence from the stone itself whether this fragment might have been part of a ring-head rather than a circle-head of the Cumbrian type (Bailey 1980b, 177–82; Bailey and Cramp 1988, 31–2). The latter typically are decorated with continuous tight plait often similar to that on Marton 1, as at Bromfield 3 or Dearham 1, or the rather smaller example of Muncaster 1 (Bailey and Cramp 1988, ills. 177–9, 252–5, 471); and although more than a single band of decoration of the circle is evidently unusual, a fragmentary cross-head from West Kirkby, Cheshire, with a double row of chevron or tight plait shows that it is not unknown, even on what in that case is a small monument (Allen 1895, 168). These analogies point to the Norse west of the tenth and early eleventh-century period, like those cited above in relation to the grave-cover Lincoln St Mark 5, for example: and, more tenuously, the cabled rib of the Lindsey cover hybrid group (c) (see Chapter V and especially Broughton 1, Ill. 69) would point to a continuing influence from that source in Lindsey.

If, on the other hand, this fragment could be thought of as a decorated ring section of a ring-headed cross, its analogies would lie nearer to hand, east of the Pennines. Those analogies lie in York and east Yorkshire in the products of the Ryedale and York workshops (Lang 1991, 29–31, 39–42). These are all of smaller size than Marton 1 would have been, and in the case of the York examples and the piece at North Frodingham in particular (ibid., 187–9, ills. 695–8), are distinguished by their small-scale, tight-ringed form and stylish decoration. The Lincoln stone type of Marton 1 and its identity with other local Lincoln products at Marton make it implausible that it was actually an exported York product, as the cross-head at North Frodingham in Millstone Grit plausibly is. Nevertheless if Marton 1 is a decorated ring section it must have a relevance within Lang's well-developed thesis about the spread of early tenth-century Scandinavian colonial art under the political umbrella afforded by the short-lived Viking kingdom of York, as exemplified precisely by ring-heads such as that from North Frodingham (Lang 1989). This specifically focused context would presumably imply a narrow chronological bracket for Marton 1 of c. 920 to c. 950. Marton's location on the Trent and at a long-established crossing point might lend weight to this, suggesting the same water-borne and coastal link seen in the locations of the Crowle shaft and the cover at Holton le Clay, and in the trading importance of Torksey (Chapter VIII and Fig. 22).

Either way, such a cross-head is clearly of Anglo-Scandinavian type and likely to date like the other examples of wheel-headed crosses in the county to the latter part of the pre-Conquest period. Like the earliest examples of the type east of the Pennines, the east Yorkshire ring-headed crosses, it should not date before c. 920 (Lang 1991, 30–1).

Marton 1's decoration of alternating broad plain borders, and runs of interlace and chevron is similar in conception to the grave-cover, Marton 3a–f (Ills. 294–9). The close identity of stone type of Marton 1, 2 and 3, and their survival and secondary use in a group (Ill. 289), raises the possibility of their having formed a composite funerary monument together, as has been suggested for decoratively linked markers or crosses and covers at Cranwell and Lincoln St Mark, for example (see Chapter V). Because of the relationship of Marton 3 with its chest-like form to the innovative mid-Kesteven cover group, an original composite monument seems less likely on the narrow early dating of Marton 1, though perhaps not impossible.

Because of the uncertainty of interpretation as part of a cross-head, alternatives have to be contemplated. One might be that the stone is part of a decorated font rim. This might carry some conviction in the case of a simple cable moulding, as discussed but rejected for a stone fragment from the castle bailey at Norwich (Ayers 1985, 41–4). Nevertheless, any greater elaboration is such a rarity, with exceptions such as the inscribed and decorated example at Patrishow, Breconshire, that it seems improbable (Bond 1908). Part of a single-splay window head is more plausible: parallel concentric runs of decoration find analogies at Great Hale (no. 2, Ill. 185), Heysham, Seaham and Somerford Keynes, for example, and include chevron or 'wheat-ear' motif (Taylor and Taylor 1965, 276–8, 312–14, 534–6, 556–8; id. 1966; Cramp 1984, 135). The chronological context for this would presumably be that of the other early architectural detailing of the church (cf. Marton 8–11, p. 313), that is late eleventh century. A further architectural alternative might be a large roundel comparable with the example at Abingdon, Berkshire (Tweddle et al. 1995, 249), presumably from a similar context.