This sculpted Reigate stone portrays a female face with a head-dress called a filet and a chin-draped barbette. It measures about 105 x 175mm. The delicately crafted eyes have raised, hollowed-out discs, while the nose and mouth seem damaged – possibly due to deliberate iconoclasm.

The stone block, housing the head, is intricately designed as a decorative label-stop. This is most likely to be associated with an arcade, window or door arch in an ecclesiastical or other high-status building. Reigate stone was widely used in over 180 medieval English buildings, especially ecclesiastical structures. The King’s Exchequer Remembrancer building accounts show that although high-status buildings such as Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London were purchasing the stone throughout the 13th century, it was not until the 14th century that there was an increased demand to use the stone in a greater range of buildings, mostly ecclesiastical.

After the dissolution of the abbey in 1538, the sculpted head and its stone block were reused in a 16th-century mansion. Lack of weathering suggests that the stone originates from inside the medieval abbey and was never an exterior feature.

Stylistically, the head can be dated to the early 14th century and classed as part of a Decorated Gothic building campaign at what was then a Cluniac priory. The subject could be a cloistered nun, prioress, abbess, or a high-status secular woman. Some sculptures of religious women featured a cross as part of the barbette, but not always; this cross might have broken off at the same time as the damage to the nose and mouth occurred.

Its incorporation into the cellar steps of the 16th-century mansion after the dissolution of the abbey may have been when the damage to the nose and mouth occurred. Equally, this damage may have been administered by iconoclasts at the dissolution, before the stone was used for a non-religious and practical purpose.