Cox's description should be quoted in full: 'It is surrounded by a border of four unevenly-wrought lines, and the centre bears a cross, the longer limb of which is horned or crescent-shaped, and on each side of the upright limb is placed an ornament, resembling the Greek scroll or wave moulding, which on one side curves downwards, and on the right upwards, four waves below and three above the cross (if the crescent forms, as possibly it does, the base)' (Allen 1895, 165).

Whilst this description must be given weight since it was based upon examination of the stone, the British Museum photographs (Ills. 47–9) suggest an alternative reading. In this variant account the central area is flanked by multiple border mouldings, with part of the inner lower moulding surviving on the larger of the two fragments. Within this frame is the vertical stem of a shaft, which sprouts a series of incised lines at right-angles to that shaft. In the smaller, upper, fragment are traces of the transverse arms of the cross-head whose upper arm broadens to encompass a circular shape (?head).

Multiple border mouldings are found again at Bromborough on a second slab (Bromborough 6). If correctly interpreted the human-headed (perhaps haloed) cross forms part of a distinctive 'face cross' Crucifixion iconography, with east Mediterranean origins, found in western Britain at Colonsay in Scotland, Clogher in Ireland and Brigham in Cumbria (Thomas 1971, 128–31; Fisher 2001, 17, 140; Roe 1960; Bailey and Cramp 1988, ills. 144–7).

[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).