The British Museum photograph (Ill. 50) shows that the two main fragments preserved a roll-moulding border to the left with a narrow inner border alongside it. At the bottom of the larger fragment is a run of indistinct and only partially surviving plait, set horizontally across the stone. Above is a horizontal moulding defining a second panel of which the elaborate lower left corner border survived; this consists of three/four lines of mouldings within the double border of the stone. To the right, heavily worn, are traces of the other border and double framing; the latter appearing to be 'bound' across in the upper right of the stone. The decoration within these frames was drawn by Cox (Allen 1895, 172) as a series of vertical mouldings with angular terminations or offshoots. A close-up photograph in the British Museum of one fragment (Ill. 51) suggests, rather, that the decoration consisted of irregular strands.

Like Bromborough 5 this slab carried multiple border mouldings. The irregular decoration, whilst having much in common with the ornament on Prestbury 1 and 2 (Ills. 231–2, 234–5), seems to be one of the variant vermiculated types which give an impressionistic rendering of complex knotwork without working through the detail; a shaft from Burton in Kendal in Westmorland offers a good parallel (Bailey and Cramp 1988, 83, ill. 189).

[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).