Derbyshire (England) -- Antiquities; Derbyshire (England) -- History
The Edale Head Cross is the best known of those in the Peak district,
for it stands by the old British trackway or pass from Hayfield over
Kinder into the Edale Valley. It stands at the highest point (1,750
feet) of this once much used pack-horse route. This cross, which now
stands fifty-seven inches out of the ground, has now no base, and seems
to have been moved more than once. The head is a Latin cross, and
incised within it, on the side towards the track, are lines forming
another cross, and within this, “I G 1610.” This refers to a survey of
parts of the Peak Forest begun in 1610, but never completed; John Gell
was one of the commissioners. This particular cross, which is of far
older date than the time of James I., can claim to be a forest as well
as a parochial boundary, for near this spot the three forest wards of
Longdendale, of Ashop and Edale, and of the Campana or Champion, met.
This cross is still sometimes known as the Champion Cross, and those
who have not known that Champion was only an old variant for the
Champagne or open grazing district of the Peak, have been silly enough
to invent would-be knightly legends and ballads in comparatively modern
days to account for the title.
Lack of space altogether prohibits any complete following up of the
considerable number of crosses on these seventeenth century plans, the
sites of which have been already investigated. It is hoped that in the
course of a few years it may be possible to produce an archæological
map of the whole district, upon which the remains of crosses may be
exactly defined, and then will be the time for coming to more mature
conclusions as to their general object and date. Two others, however,
may be now named. At a point on the verge of Abney Moor, 1,200 feet
above the sea level, about a mile to the south-east of Bradwell, where
the townships of Abney, Hazelbadge, and Bradwell converge, the maps
mark a cross styled Robin’s or Robin Hood’s Cross. After some search
we found the early rough base stone, showing half of a squared socket,
protruding from the bottom of a well-built stone wall, close to a stile
leading into an old roadway.
“The Martine Syde Crosse” appears on more than one of the old plans,
not far from a large farmstead or hall still known as Martin Side,
at an elevation of 1,100 feet above the valley of Chapel-en-le-Frith
(17). About a quarter of a mile beyond the hall on the roadside towards
Dove Holes, we noted the stump of a cross. The height of this stump
or squared base was 20 in., and it measured at the top 28 in. by 26½
in. In the centre was an empty shaft socket 11 in. by 9 in., and 8 in.
deep. From the rough character of this base stone, and from the shape
of the socket, it may fairly be assumed that it is of pre-Norman date.
A small channel cut from the edge of the socket to an angle of the base
stone seemed to be original, and may possibly have served as a pointer
to the next boundary stone.
[Illustration: No. 17.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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