Pre-Norman Stone Crosses in the British Isles

In the centre of Sandbach is a cobbled market place with a number of attractive old buildings around its edge. At one end of the market place are the reconstructed remains of two Anglian Crosses. They are both impressive in scale and sculpture, and the height is accentuated by the fact that they have been displayed on a raised platform.

These are certainly the tallest monuments of this kind in this part of England. The carvings on both crosses are a mixture of pictorial representations and scrollwork, and there is a panel near the top of the smaller cross which seems to have been scraped away and re-carved in 17th-century style with a coat of arms, but this is now too worn to be identifiable.

The red sandstone from which the crosses are carved has in general withstood the ravages of time well, so that some of the panels still contain fine details, as can be seen from the picture of the crucifixion scene above. The carving on this part of the cross -particularly of the angel in the scene above - is very reminiscent of other Anglian work at Eyam and Wirksworth, both in Derbyshire.

The plaque which describes the crosses speaks of them having been destroyed by iconoclasts and then rebuilt. As a result of this, it is not clear where the crosses originally stood, nor can we be certain, since not all the pieces were recovered, of what they originally looked like. Clearly, the taller cross was originally several feet taller than it is now, because it would have been capped by a cross-head.

Iconoclasm has often featured in the history of Christianity, sometimes when right-minded Christians speak up against idolatrous practices, but more often when wrong-minded Christians make their determination to smash relics into its own form of idolatry. In my view, the fact that someone expresses his or her love for God through the medium of making a piece of art is worthy of encouragement. Only when the art object itself acquires more importance than God in the eye of the beholder is there something amiss.

The two crosses in Sandbach are in the market place in the centre of town.
A small alleyway leads off the square towards St. Mary's Church.

Grave-lids (see also Hogbacks)

Kirkdale

Hickling, Kirkdale, Nevern/Nanhyfer, Sandbach, Wirksworth

Some distinguished folk were buried in very ornately-carved stone coffins. The lids of these coffins were sometimes decorated with the same kind of interlace carvings found on the stone crosses, and on other occasions, they were adorned with images relevant to the person buried underneath them.

The grave lid at Wirksworth is of exceptional quality, and is arguably the finest artefact to have survived to our day from the earliest period of the Christian mission to the Saxon kingdom of Mercia.

In Viking areas, the graves were constructed differently, and the lids have a distinctive shape, known as a hogback.

* The Ordnance Survey National Grid Reference (and corresponding Latitude/Longitude) given at the top of the pages describing individual sites usually refer to the location of the closest or most prominent entrance to the site where the monument is to be found - e.g. a gate into a churchyard. For monuments located in open country, or at a significant distance from the site entrance as just defined, the co-ordinates usually refer to the exact location of the monument.
Please allow for a small error in the co-ordinates of up to a couple of dozen metres.

Thanks to the people at streetmap.co.uk, if you click on the Grid References in the magenta boxes on the site pages,
you'll see an extract from the relevant Ordnance Survey 1:50000 Landranger map!

As the official mapping agency of the United Kingdom Government, the Ordnance Survey produces the definitive maps of the country. They contain a wealth of information.
For more details, visit www,ordnancesurvey.co.uk/leisure

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