If you’re coming up to Oxenhope from Keighley, up the A6033 road, when you reach the school on the right-hand side of the road, a one-way street (Cross Lane) is where you need to walk down, for 200 yards, and keep your eyes peeled in the walling just before Cross Farm Court. Alternatively, via Haworth, go along Marsh Lane for a few hundred yards until your reach Moorhouse Lane on your left. Go down here for ⅓-mile (0.5km) and then go up Cross Lane on your right. About 120 yards up, in the walling just past the entrance into Cross Farm Court is where you’ll find it.
Archaeology & History
Very little seems to be known about the remains of this cross, embedded into the old walling. When it was described by Brigg & Villy (1914), they could find no information about it, and surmised that it marked the original track or road to Oxenhope from both Haworth and Halifax, “on the line of the old road by Withens.” Ostensibly it would seem to have been a wayside cross, marking old trackways (ley hunters take note!).
Visitors looking at it today can see that it’s barely noticeable. It looked no different even in Brigg & Villy’s days. It simply consists of only part of the original head of the cross, “the shaft having been broken off flush with the horizontal limb.” Some of the other stones that make up the bottom of this very poor-looking excuse of a cross were probably not part of the original, but were assembled into the wall to at least leave of memory of what it used to look like. It’s in a sorry state to be honest. A historic plaque should be placed here.
References:
Brigg, J.J. & Villy, F., “Three Ancient Crosses near Keighley,” in Bradford Antiquary, New Series 6, 1921.
Cross (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 2546 3537
Archaeology & History
Location of the old cross
In medieval times an old stone cross was erected at the edge of Bramley where two old tracks once met, and which today is the junction where Broad Lane meets with Outgang Lane. The cross is long gone – and even the stone cross base on which it stood no longer existed when the Ordnance Survey lads came here in the 1840s. All that remained when they came here were the place-names which have forever kept a memory of its former existence: Stump Cross Stile and Stump Cottage. It was mentioned, albeit briefly, in Wardell’s (1890) survey of Kirkstall Abbey where he told simply that a
“stone cross formerly stood some distance south of the Abbey by the side of the Old Road to Bradford, at the junction of the lane leading to Bramley, called the Outgang, but no remains of it are left; the site, however, is still known by the name of ‘Stump Cross Stile.’ Whether this cross marked the extent of some boundary, or was erected by the monks or others for the purposes of devotion for wayfarers, I am unable to ascertain.”
References:
Wardell, James, An Historical Account of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, Samuel Moxon: Leeds 1890.
Acknowledgements:Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Cross (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SE 3071 3463
Archaeology & History
In James Wardell’s (1890) work on Kirkstall Abbey he describes several of the long lost stone crosses that used to exist in the area. This one,
“formerly stood by the road side at the south end of Sheepscar Bridge, in Leeds.”
The cross had already been destroyed by the time the Ordnance Survey lads explored the area in the 1840s, as there’s no showing of it on any of their maps. Wardell further stated that it was,
“called Killingbeck Cross, from being erected by either the Abbot of Kirkstall or the Vicar of Leeds, of that name.”
References:
Wardell, James, An Historical Account of Kirkstall Abbey, Yorkshire, S. Moxon: Leeds 1890.
Pretty easy to find: from Whitby town centre, head uphill to the great ruins of Whitby Abbey. You go past Caedmon’s Cross and past the more recent church and graveyard to the car-park at the top, outside the abbey. At the edge of the car-park on the grass, you’ll see this tall hard upright, nice and erect!
Archaeology & History
Cross shown on 1894 map
Highlighted on the earliest OS-maps and not to be confused with the nearby and more modern Caedmon’s Cross, this tall large monolith stands upon a stepped plinth comprising of six steps (originally five), about 18 feet high. The top of the cross was knocked off a century or two ago, when it was reported to have been twenty feet! Initially it stood about fifty yards closer to the Abbey, but was removed to its present position following the Dissolution.
The brief history regarding its origin was described in George Young’s (1817) major work, in which he told that in 1474, on John Nightingale, rector of Sneaton parish, in his will “appointed his burial to be on the north side (of the Abbey), before the cross,” which was already standing at that time. Young wrote:
“By this it would appear that the ancient cross, now standing in the abbey plain was then within the cemetery of the abbey.”
Abbey Cross, c.1900Young’s 1817 sketch
This has subsequently been taken as the standard regarding its origin. Tradition also told that it was an old market cross, but this was treated with considerable scepticism by George Young, who believed that the monks here simply wouldn’t have allowed such a thing at the edge the abbey and burial ground. He found evidence to indicate that it “was at the port or harbour of Whitby that corn was bought or sold, that here were kept the standard bushels for measuring corn, and that here the market-clerk had his station.” In spite of this, T.H. Woodwark (1934) reported that fairs had been held at the cross early in the 20th century. In a thoroughly profane way, electrical wiring was wrapped around the bottom of the cross and led to a generator, along with washing-lines running from it to a caravan! Mr Young would have been apoplectic!
References:
Atkinson, J.C., Memorials of Old Whitby, MacMillan: London 1894.
Holt, Robert B., Whitby, Past and Present, Copas: London 1890.
Woodwark. T.H., The Crosses on the North York Moors, Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society 1934.
Young, George, A History of Whitby and Streonshalh Abbey (2 volumes), Clark & Medd: Whitby 1817.
Acknowledgements:Massive thanks to Lindsay (wherefore art thou…?) Mitchell for getting us up here… Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Sitting quietly “on the village green, where the fair is still held,” wrote Wigram (1885), “stands the base of the old market-cross, reduced to a shapeless stump, but still bearing traces of leaden setting.” Thought to be mediaeval in age, it was described as a sundial on some of the early Ordnance Survey maps which, perhaps, it may have been used as for a short period (although records are silent on the matter). Standing just three-feet tall, this old stone pillar still lives on its ancient spot, as quiet as always, keeping itself to itself…
References:
Wigram, S.R., Chronicles of the Abbey of Elstow, Parker & Co.: Oxford 1885.
Holy Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SP 9848 0822
Also Known as:
St. James’ Well
Archaeology & History
Site shown on 1897 map
Shown on the early Ordnance Survey maps of the town, Berkhamsted’s holy well was a place of some renown in bygone centuries. Today it is barely remembered. It was initially dedicated to St. James, as it was associated with a chapel dedicated to that saint close by, but it had a change of name when the legendary Brotherhood of St. John the Baptist became the new caretakers, so to speak. As a result of this, its history can be a little confusing to some folk!
In the late 12th century, pagan worship at this site came to the attention of Hugh of Grenoble, the Bishop of Lincoln, who visited the place to stop local folk performing their animistic practices (although the exact nature of such rites were not described, sadly). It didn’t work, obviously; as once the bonkers bishop had gone, local folk would have continued in their old ways, no doubt wondering who the hell the odd incomer had been who was telling them to stop doing what they had always done here at the cost of no one. And so the waters continued to be used under the mythic cover of old St James—for the time being at least.
The well later became a centre of pilgrimage and and a hospital was been built close by dedicated to St James, where leprosy was treated and the curative waters from this well were used. St James’ Day was July 25 and an annual fair was held in Berkhamsted thanks to a Royal Charter of James I in 1619. Hertfordshire traditions relating to St James Day are described in Miss Jones-Baker’s (1974) fine survey on the customs of the county. But change was a-coming when a local monk had a dream that the waters of this “pagan spring” needed to be blessed and dedicated to the virtues of St. John the Evangelist and a shrine built where pilgrims could worship and be healed. And as Jones-Baker (1977) told us,
“The water of St John’s Well were thought to cure a variety of diseases; among these leprosy and scrofula (the King’s Evil) as well as sore eyes. There was also a persistent belief that clothing washed in its waters would impart good health to the wearers.”
In the period when the Protestant Reformation occurred, the well and its immediate surrounds apparently became derelict and overgrown. The Old Ways returned and local folk began to visit the waters again at night and the animistic rituals that would have been taken to other secret places returned to St. John’s Well. In this period a local physician, a Dr. Woodhouse, used the sacred waters as part of magickal rites to exorcise evil spirits!
In spite of the local authorities declaring in 1865 that the water was “unfit for drinking”, local folk later told otherwise. Its waters were still being used in the 20th century and its traditions no doubt retained. As the local writer Dora Fry (1954) told us:
“The families dwelling in the cottages at the Bulbourne end of the lane, just below St John’s Spring, were all remarkably healthy… Some time after the town got its first waterworks (and) the local authorities declared that the well’s water was to be used only for the gardens… but I remember as a child drinking the water from the main spring and its coolness and freshness were delectable on a hot summer afternoon.”
The well was still visible up until the 1930s, when its waters ran down a shallow channel along St John Well’s Lane, but then a shop was built above the site and the well has been lost forever.
References:
Bord, Janet & Colin, Sacred Waters, Granada: London 1985.
Acknowledgements:Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Nice ‘n easy: get into the village and walk through the church gates and there, on your left on the grass verge, a plinth and the cross-head sits before thee!
Archaeology & History
When the great Arthur Langdon (1896) wrote about Crowan’s cross-head, he was puzzled. At the time it was in the garden of a local surveyor in the nearby village of Praze-an-Beeble, but its origins seemed mysterious. The surveyor in question, a Mr William Carah, wrote to Langdon and said,
“It seems a mystery where the cross we have originally came from. A friend of mine, living abroad at present, saw it, I think, at a farm-place, being used as a bottom for a beehive. He asked the people for it, intending to fix it somewhere. At any rate, when he left England he had not done so, and at my request they gave the cross to me.”
The condition of the cross-head wasn’t too good and Langdon suggested it had “received some very rough treatment” – no doubt when it was hacked from its shaft. With his usual precision he gave the dimensions of the cross-head as follows:
“Height, 1 ft. 6 in.; width, 1 ft. 8 in.; thickness: at the bottom 6½ in., at the top 5½ in.
Front. — Part of a small conventional figure of Christ, extending to the knees, at which point the fracture occurred which separated the head from the shaft.
Back. — The remains of a mutilated Latin cross in relief.”
The stone shaft or menhir that once supported this carved head has, it would seem, long since been destroyed.
References:
Blight, J.T., Ancient Crosses and other Antiquities in the West of Cornwall, Simpkin Marshall: London 1858.
Courtney, R.A., The Evolution of the Wheel Cross, Beare & Sons: Penzance 1914.
Doble, Gilbert H., A History of the Parish of Crowan, King Stone Press: Shipston-on-Stour 1939.
Langdon, Andrew, Stone Crosses in West Cornwall, Federation of Old Cornwall Societies 1999.
Langdon, Arthur G., Old Cornish Crosses, Joseph Pollard: Truro 1896.
Holy Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – NT 2611 7600
Also Known as:
Bonnington Mineral Well
Archaeology & History
Site shown on 1862 map
If we’d have lived 200 years ago and walked several miles downstream from St Bernard’s Well on the Water of Leith, we would have eventually come across this little-known sacred site, sadly destroyed in the 19th century. It was shown on the earliest OS-map on the south-side of the river, enclosed in a small square building with what looks like two entrances, and what appears to be a covering of the spring on the southeast side. Marked as a chalybeate, or iron-bearing well, this would have obviously have had repute amongst local people and would have worked as a tonic or pick-me-up, aswell as fortifying the blood and a having a host of other benefits.
The Ordnance Survey lads wrote short notes about St. Cuthbert’s Well in the Name Book of 1852-53, where they told:
“A Well Situated at Bonnington. Supposed to have been dedicated to St Cuthbert; about 34 years ago the proprietor repaired the well and at the same time erected a house over it, and fitted it up for Visitors who are charged one penny for a drink. The Water of the well has been analysed by Professor Jameson and Doctor Turner and it was found to Contain Salts of Iron; Soda, magnesia and Lime, also Iodine under the form of Hydrisdate of Potash.”
About the same time as Jameson & Turner’s analysis of St. Cuthbert’s waters, one Dr Edward Schweitzer (1845) wrote one of the most detailed chemical essays on wells, ever!—using Bonnington’s holy well as his primary focus. A near-thirty-page essay found that, along with an excess of iron, the medicinal aspects of the waters were due to the following compounds found, per grains, in each pint of water:
Sulphate of Potassa — 2.46554 gr
Sulphate of Soda — 1.51227 gr
Sulphate of Lime — 6.28816 gr
Iodide of Sodium — 0.00728 gr
Bromide of Sodium — 0.07886 gr
Chloride of Ammonium — 9.49939 gr
Chloride of Sodium — 3.82963 gr
Chloride of Magnesium — 3.12017 gr
Nitrate of Soda — 2.02154 gr
Carbonate of Magnesia — 1.70443 gr
Proto-Carbonate of Iron — 0.05807 gr
Proto-Carbonate of Manganese — 0.01535 gr
Ammonia (united to organic matter) — 0.42285 gr
Alumina — 0.02245 gr
Silica — 0.18651 gr
In 1837, a Mr Robert Fergusson was known to be “the keeper of the Mineral Well, Bonnington,” but much of its traditions and history have fallen outside of memory. The site was soon to become another mid-Victorian ‘Spa Well’, where local people would have to pay for water they had always used as Nature intended. In truth, the waters and its well-house were to become a place where the rich Industrialists could heal their infirm mind-bodies, hoping that the destitution they lacked emotionally and spiritually would be washed away in the sacred waters. But it didn’t last long! What little is known about it historically was best described in John Russel’s (1933) essay on Bonnington in the Old Edinburgh Club journal. He wrote:
“Just where the Bonnington mill lade joins the Water of Leith once flowed St. Cuthbert’s Well, an ancient spring named after the patron saint of the once extensive parish of St. Cuthbert’s, and like the now forgotten mineral well of St. Leonard’s near Powderhall, a relic of a superstitious age. As to when this well was so designated history is silent but it was probably before 1606, when the Leith portions of Bonnington, Pilrig and Warriston were, by the Scots Parliament, included in the Parish of North Leith…
“In May, 1750 St. Cuthbert’s Well was found to be possessed of medicinal properties. The Scots Magazine of that year refers to many persons frequenting it. The Well formed part of a building which included a pump room and a reading room. From advertisements in the periodicals of 1819 we learn that it was open from 6 o’clock in the morning and that newspapers were to be found on the table all day. The tenant also issued handbills headed “St. Cuthbert’s Mineral Well, Bonnington”, giving a chemical analysis of the water and a list of the ailments for which it had been found beneficial. The Well disappeared with the re-construction of Haig’s Distillery in 1857. It now lies beneath the buildings immediately west of the chimney stack of Messrs John Inglis and Sons.”
St. Cuthbert’s feast day was March 20 (Spring Equinox) and September 4.
A half-mile southwest of here could once be seen the waters of St. Leonard’s Well, which Ruth & Frank Morris (1982) erroneously thought to have been this Well of St. Cuthbert.
Holy Well (destroyed): OS Grid Reference – SP 4506 4055
Archaeology & History
Well highlighted, in 1730
The holy well of Banbury seems to have been destroyed sometime in the second-half of the 19th century, when the industrialists built over the area. When the historian Alfred Beesley (1841) wrote about it, the waters were still running. He told it to be, “a chalybeate spring, well-known and still often visited, situated on the west side of the town, a little north of the footway leading to North Newington.”
The footpath is obviously long gone—as is the well. It’s iron-bearing (chalybeate) properties would have given the waters good fortifying properties, perhaps of some renown to local people yet, according to Mr Beesley, it was a slow-flowing spring. In his brief history of the site, he also gave us the results of a chemical examination of its healing waters, telling us:
“This is called St. Stephen’s Well in a plan of Sir John Cope’s property at Banbury made in 1764. It also appears prominently as “A Well ” in an unfinished view of Banbury made in 1730 (illustrated above)….
The water of this spring is perfectly clear and colourless, having a brisk and slightly chalybeate taste. The stone channel is coated with a light red deposit, and a scum of the same colour appears on the water in parts where stagnant. The spring discharges from half a gallon to one gallon in a minute. In 32 oz. of the water at 60° are,
Carbonic Acid gas, 5 cubic inches
Hydrochlorate Magnesia, 0.21 grains.
Chloride Sodium or common Salt, 0.54
Sulphate Lime, 1.5
Carbonate Lime, 3.8
Protoxide Iron, 0.024
Silica a trace
Total weight of solid contents – 6.074″
Folklore
St. Stephen is an odd character. His annual celebration or feast day in Britain is December 26. (in eastern countries it’s a day later) Rites connected to this character are decidedly heathen in nature. From the 10th century, in England, St Stephen’s Day has been inexorably intertwined with horses, bleeding them on his feast days, apparently for their own health. Water blessed by priests on this day would be kept for the year and used as a medicine for horses during that time. Also on this day, young lads would “hunt the wren” and, once caught, impale it on top of a long pole and take it from house to house. Despite this curious motif being a puzzle to folklore students, Mircea Eliade (1964) explained how this symbolism is extremely archaic and “the bird perched on a stick is a frequent symbol in shamanic circles.”
Eliade, Mircea, Shamanism – Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy, Princeton University Press 1964.
Harte, Jeremy, English Holy Wells – volume 2, Heart of Albion press: Wymeswold 2008.
Johnson, William P., The History of Banbury, G. Walford: Banbury 1860.
Acknowledgements:Huge thanks for use of the Ordnance Survey map in this site profile, reproduced with the kind permission of the National Library of Scotland.
Nice ‘n easy: from Huddersfield central, take the A641 road north to Brighouse, but barely a half-mile out of town turn left up the Halifax Old Road. Go on here for nearly a mile, then keep your eyes peeled for the aptly-named South Cross Road on your right. Go up here all the way to the end where it meets with Cowcliffe Hill Road. Here, at the junction, right by the roadside at the edge of the wall, is the remains of the old cross-base, all but covered in vegetation. You’ll see it.
Archaeology & History
The little-known remains of a post-medieval cross base can still be seen, albeit very overgrown, right by the roadside. The upstanding stone cross that once stood upon it has long since gone (perhaps broken up and built into the wall). It may have been one of two such crosses relatively close to each other: as this one is found at South Cross Road, there may have been another one at the nearby North Cross Road, but history seems to be silent on the matter.
Top of the cross-base
The cross-base itself has several holes cut into it where the standing stone cross was fixed upright. Very little seems to be known about this monument. George Redmonds (2008) told simply that, “the base of a cross survives on Cowcliffe Hill Road, no doubt marking the ancient crossroads. It explains the names North and South Cross Roads.” He added that, “The base of the cross survives, partly hidden in the undergrowth, and it is the only visible evidence we have of several similar crosses in the township.”
References:
Redmonds, George, Place-Names of Huddersfield, GR Books: Huddersfield 2008.
Acknowledgements: Huge thanks to Liz Sykes for helping out big-time to uncover the base from beneath the mass of herbage.
