Another instance of an ornamented shaft is that of Mitchel Troy (Fig. 57). There the stem, a monolith of reddish sandstone, about 1 ft. by 8 in. on plan at the foot, tapers to about half the above dimensions at the point where it is broken off, at a height of about 11 ft. The angles are chamfered, and the chamfers are ornamented with ball-flowers alternating with shields, sixteen ball-flowers on each chamfer. The date of this cross is the fourteenth century. Two Northamptonshire crosses, those of Higham Ferrers (_c._ 1320) and Irthlingborough (_c._ 1280) respectively (Figs. 55 and 56), are ornamented with sculptured decorations throughout the whole height of the shaft. At Ashton-under-Hill, Gloucestershire, the face of the shaft of the cross, about a third of the distance up from the bottom, is ornamented with a scutcheon. A certain number of Somersetshire crosses has a figure under a niche on one side of the shaft. In cases where, as at Burton St David, Broadway, Holford, Montacute, and Wiveliscombe, the niche and figure are sunk into the body of the monolith itself, there can scarcely be any objection to the device. But where, on the contrary, the statue, set on a bracket, stands prominently forward beyond the face of the shaft, the effect is anything but happy. For then the shaft looks so weighted down in one direction as almost to overbalance. The crosses at Bishop's Lydeard (Fig. 20) and Crowcombe (Fig. 118) are particularly exaggerated instances in point; others only less marked being the crosses at Drayton (Fig. 54), Fitzhead, Heathfield, Hinton St George, and Horsington (Fig. 53). But this peculiarity is not confined to Somersetshire. Thus, at Stalbridge, Dorsetshire (Fig. 58), a conspicuous statue and niche occur on one side of the shaft, while at Bradford Abbas, in the same county, the churchyard cross, though much decayed, affords unmistakable traces of having had a statue sculptured on each of the four sides of the shaft. A similar arrangement is to be found in Langley Abbey cross, Norfolk. [Illustration: 46. ROTHERSTHORP, NORTHAMPTONSHIRE HEAD OF CROSS]