Historic carved crosses ignored and vanishing
ISTOOD before one of the largest antique crosses this country boasts, not many miles from here, marvelling at the intricate patterns of the ancient stonemasons.
This one is near the northern end of Offa’s Dyke and is said to be a weeping cross, or cross of lamentation, where pilgrims came to beat their breasts and offer expiation. Unaccountably I was weeping as I approached it, but perhaps hay fever or sun lotion getting in my eyes may have been to blame.
Once there were many such carved crosses in and around Stockport, but they are now sadly depleted. A fragment of a so-called Anglian cross found in a field languishes in Cheadle Church. Stockport town map of 1680 shows an old cross in the centre of the Market Place, now lost.
Carved crossheads dug up near Disley are in the chapel at Lyme Hall. One was broken recently and soon little will be left, as they are regarded with disinterest.
Probably they were the victims of zealous puritans who went about casting down these emblems of ‘idolatry’ in the 16th and 17th centuries. In more traditional places (like Wales) they survived, either buried and hidden, or in full view.
There are fine examples in the Market Place at Sandbach in Cheshire, painstakingly reassembled, and Bakewell Church, in the Peak District, has a good fragmentary collection.
Casters-down frequently made use of the stone for gateposts, walls, door and window lintels, as a final act of iconoclasm. Locally, there are headless stone shafts at Robin Hood’s Picking Rods Ludworth Moor, the Bowstones above Disley, and a cross base on Mellor Moor.
Maen Achwyfaen stands 15 feet tall and entire in a field not far from an old chapel called Gelli (beautiful view) where monks of Basingwerk Abbey received alms from pilgrims. These enterprising monks also had a couple of crosses on Monk’s Road between Mellor and Glossop, manors their abbey owned, but only the bases remain.
The Welsh cross shows Scandinavian and Celtic influences dating back to the 10th century. Fretwork patterns and interlacing triquera embrace two naked figures of a man armed with a spear and an axe. Of its meaning we can only guess. Vikings settled nearby. It will have little to do with modern Christianity and more to do with the mythology of those dim departed ages when life was short and very rough. »»More stories in Stockport and district Heritage Magazine from newsagents, bookshops with back copies, subscriptions, and books online www.stockport heritagemagazine.co.uk.