This shaft is recorded in the British Museum photographs. The photograph shows one (?broad) face only, with, to the left, a roll-moulding border and inner border together with possible traces of a lower border. A three-strand plait runs up the left-hand side of the stone; the right-hand side appears to be uncarved.

It is possible that this stone can be identified with the 'portion of a shaft' described by Cox (Allen 1894, 28; id. 1895, 165) which he interpreted as part of the same monument as Bromborough 1 above. His measurements for this piece (27 in long and 9 in thick) might argue in favour of this identity. But his description only acknowledges the survival of ornament on the 'edge', which is his term for a narrow face, and this is how he draws the piece in his reconstructions (Allen 1894, pl. XIII; id. 1895, fig. on 164). By contrast, the one face visible on the British Museum photograph shows plait as only occupying the left-hand side of one face of the stone. For Cox's drawing and description to record the same piece as appears in the British Museum photograph would imply that Cox had failed to see the carving depicted on the broad face visible in the photograph, or had falsified the record to produce a narrow face ornament. On balance it seems best to assume that Cox and the Museum photograph are recording two separate stones.
The implication of this conclusion is that the photograph shows yet another fragment of Bromborough 1 or a second monument closely resembling Bromborough 1. In either case what survives is probably a broad face, which was originally intended to carry two parallel runs of three-strand plait within a double border (similar to that on the broad face of Bromborough 1) whose second run was not completed.

[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).