A (top): The Ross manuscript drawing (Ill. 353) shows the decorated upper surface of what appears to be a section from the centre of a grave-cover of no great depth. The stone has plain borders along two opposed edges: the ends are irregularly broken. The decorated area is divided equally in two by a central rib of double-cabled form, and the two narrow fields are filled with four-strand plait.

Among the traditions of Lincolnshire grave-covers, that of sub-dividing the decorative field by a large cross and infilling the fields with runs of simple plait has its strongest analogies in the south of the county and the Barnack products of the Cambridge region (cf. Chapter V). The use of a cabled median ridge is nevertheless found distinctively in Lindsey in the 'Lindsey cover' variants, Broughton 1 and Cumberworth 1, in both cases as a single cabled ridge (Ills. 69, 151). A cabled rib is also found occasionally among the mid-Kesteven covers dividing the asymmetrical runs of interlace on the flanks, as at Lincoln St Mary-le-Wigford 2 (Ill. 271), as well as the ubiquitous rather flat double cables or chevrons dividing the panels (Fig. 9). A large cover at Peterborough Cathedral employs particularly elaborate double cabling to define and divide panels filled with interlace (Fox 1920–1, pl. III), while some of the earliest (i.e. later eleventh- or early twelfth-century) fonts in Lindsey, for example at Cabourne, Holton le Clay and Holton le Moor, deploy boldly moulded double cables. Taken together this may indicate a later rather than earlier date for this fragment.

This stone's decoration clearly provided the inspiration for the gable cross on St Mary's north transept, that dates from Atkinson's restorations.