Both pieces now reset symmetrically in the south wall (exterior) of the classroom north of the lawn behind 62 High Street. This house, built in 1851 by the architect Charles Kirk (senior), is now the Headmistress' offices of Sleaford Girls' High School.

None. They are first reported by Davies (1926, 18). He notes that, before the house was occupied by the Girls' High School, it was the home of Charles Kirk the noted local architect and church restorer, who had an interest in early sculpture and who (according to Davies) collected stones in his garden. Presumably these two stones remain from this collection, but without further information it cannot be guessed from which of Kirk's many church restoration jobs they may have come.

Not available

Good, both slightly weathered

A (top): Stone 1a. The visible face is a panel of interlace in low relief from the lid of a grave-cover of mid-Kesteven type. This panel has a double cable border on one side (originally that which adjoined the main panel of the lid), a single cable moulding on the two short sides and a zig-zag moulding along the edge. Within this panel there is an interlace unit in a motif similar to type xii (Fig. 10), with two free strands instead of asymmetrical loops at one end. The interlace had an incised medial line.

B (long): Stone 1b. Part of a panel from the central portion of a mid-Kesteven cover. The visible face is the flank, which is decorated with interlace in low relief. The upper parts of the stone surface are damaged but the panel was clearly divided, as is frequently the case, into two long horizontal registers by a cable moulding. The upper register contains a run of three-strand plait which develops from a 'bull's head' (Fig. 11), of which only the lower part of the nose survives in one corner of the stone, where it is surrounded by the cable-moulded border as it intrudes into the lower panel. The nose has a transverse band in relief, of rectangular section but otherwise undecorated. The lower panel has a run of four-strand plait incorporating a unit of simple pattern F, which reduces to a three-strand plait as it passes under the bull's nose. The free end is tucked neatly away. The interlace in this panel has an incised medial line and is bounded on the lower side by a wide plinth of rectangular section.

These two stones probably come from a single original grave-cover of mid-Kesteven type (Chapter V). They are of a very similar scale and stone type, and when cut up for reuse, they were shaped into blocks of almost exactly the same size. The cover represented by these two stones (and reconstructed in Fig. 9) seems to be very typical of the group and should be dated to between the mid tenth and the early eleventh century.

Mid tenth to early eleventh century

Davies 1926, 18; Pevsner and Harris 1964, 638; Pevsner et al. 1989, 655