The two surviving fragments are now in the churchyard where they were incorporated with Bromborough 3 into a single monument in 1958 (see information on accompanying plaque). Cox's reconstruction drawing shows a (now lost) third fragment set below those now existing (Allen 1894, pl. XIII; id. 1895, fig. on 164).

Found in 1863 in demolition of church (British Museum records; Thacker 1987, 286)

St Barnabas

Heavily weathered; faces B and C have been chiselled away on the surviving fragments, and had also been cut away on face A of the lost fragment.

A (broad): Two vertical rows of three-strand plait within a double roll-moulding border

B (narrow) and C (broad): Lost

D (narrow): Three-strand plait flanked by a roll-moulding border

The taste for parallel strips of vertical ornament is one which, whilst not totally exclusive to the region, characterises the eastern coast of the Irish Sea in the Viking period. Meliden in Flintshire, Eccles 1 and Halton St Wilfrid 1 and 5 provide other examples from this area (Ills. 452, 466, 490, 742). Further north it occurs on the Cumbrian coastal plain and in south-western Scotland at Fardenreoch in Ayrshire, and Jordanhill, near Govan (Bailey and Cramp 1988, 56; Anderson 1926, 268, fig. 3; Bailey 1994, 117, ill. 22).

Cox, in reconstruction drawings prepared for Allen's papers, suggested that these pieces belonged to the same monument as the circle-head Bromborough 3, but there can be no certainty about this. Its tall, narrow proportions are certainly unlike the shafts surviving on circle-heads elsewhere in the Wirral at Chester and Neston, but they are matched across the river Dee on a circle-head at Diserth which also offers analogies for the ornament on the cross-head (Nash-Williams 1950, no. 185, pl. XXXIII).

Tenth or early eleventh century

Sulley 1889, 207–8; Allen 1894, 28, pl. XIII; Allen 1895, 135, 163–6, 174, fig. on 164; Cox, E. 1895, 242–3; Bu'lock 1959, 5, 11; Pevsner and Hubbard 1971, 116; Chitty 1978, 8; Randall 1984, 23, pl. 4; Thacker 1987, 286, fig. 38.3; Edwards, B. 1992, 59; Higham, N. 1993b, 132; Bailey 1994, 117; Bailey 1996b, 30; Austin 1999, 81; Harding 2002, 137, pl. on 136; Bailey 2003, 223

[1] Most of the pre-Norman sculpture from this site has been lost. Its original discovery and subsequent history are recorded in a letter dated 13 May 1936, to the editor of the Bebington News, from Mrs A. Anderson, a copy of which is preserved in the files of the former Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities (now Prehistory and Europe) in the British Museum. This states that the stones were found in 1863 when the church — itself built in 1828 — was demolished; they had apparently been used in its foundations. The carvings were then placed in a pile on the lawn of the Rectory garden. This assemblage, of which photographs survive in the British Museum departmental files (Ills. 43–57), was dispersed in 1909. The transom fragment (Bromborough 3) along with two shaft fragments (no. 1) were then placed on the windowsill in the south porch of the church; a fragment of an 'upright grave cros' was set on the windowsill of the north porch, and the rest were distributed around the walls and rockeries of the Rectory. In May 1933 there was a proposal to develop the Rectory site and the Bromborough Society tried to intervene to save the stones. The Society was rebuffed and the builder who took over the property subsequently claimed not to have recognised any carvings. It was at this stage that most of the sculpture seems to have been destroyed. The later treatment of the surviving stones is described below.

[2] The following are general references to the Bromborough stones: Ormerod 1875–82, III, 899; (–) 1890, 250; Cox, E. 1895, 242–3; Anderson, A. 1934; Sylvester and Nulty 1958, 14; Higham, N. 1993b, 132. The following is an unpublished manuscript reference: BL Add. MS 37547, item 653 (Romilly Allen collection).