The fragment consists of parts of two adjacent sides of a shaft separated by a bold decorated roll moulding; there is a narrow vertical moulding border flanking face A. The prominent roll moulding is ornamented with a series of three stiff foliate stems, each group set one above the other, which spring at an angle from the left side of the composition. These triple stems are bound together by three mouldings, two narrow and one broad. The central stem of the three terminates in a plain oval leaf, the two flanking stems ending in forms which curl outwards.

A (to the left of the moulding): This is decorated with a broad two-strand plait with open ground; one strand is median-incised.

B (to the right of the moulding): No decoration survives to the right of the arris.

The stone is clearly related to Astbury 3 below (Ills. 16–18), though the decoration on the two roll-mouldings differs to the extent that they are unlikely to be parts of the same architectural shaft. The ornament is essentially that of a fleshy acanthus palmette, for which the friezes from eleventh-century Sompting, Sussex, provide the best sculptural parallel (Tweddle et al. 1995, ills. 162–71). Analogous forms are common among the decorated borders of manuscripts ornamented in the Winchester style, the late tenth-century Salisbury Psalter offering a particularly close comparison (Backhouse et al. 1984, no. 29). The scroll trail with its angular bud would not be out of place in such a late tenth- or eleventh-century context. Routh's parallel for the Astbury foliage at Ingleby, Derbyshire, does not seem particularly convincing (Routh 1937, 32).

This fragment of architectural sculpture, along with Astbury 3, indicate that the 'mother church' (so Higham, N. 1993b, 169), with its extensive parish, was represented by an ambitious stone structure in the period immediately before the Norman Conquest. Both stones, along with Chester Unknown Provenance 1 and 2 (Ills. 117–27), show the penetration of southern tastes into the region.