The Cross in Ritual, Architecture and Art

by Geo. S. Tyack

Wayside and Boundary Crosses.

We have seen how the cross was erected in the busy market and beneath the shadow of the great Cathedral, where crowds hurried to and fro, day by day, for business or devotion. It was not alone in such populous places, however, that the sign of salvation reared itself to cheer the weary traveller through life’s ways by a message of faith, of hope, of divine love. In the village street, the lonely trackless moor, the meadow pathway and the king’s high-road, at every turn and in every place in mediæval England one met the same sacred memorial. Nay, even the hillside itself has been scored with it, as in the case of Whiteleaf in Buckinghamshire, where a cross, nearly one hundred feet long by fifty feet broad, was cut at some unknown but remote period in the chalk hill, by means of a huge trench over two feet in depth, after the fashion of the more familiar White Horse in Berkshire.

These numerous examples are not easily classified. If only the full history of their raising could be known, many doubtless would fall into classes that have already been considered. Some would prove to be memorials which have failed to preserve the memory of their founders; others may have marked spots, round which the villagers gathered to hear sermons from the travelling friars, to listen to some proclamation issued by the lord of the manor, or by the king, or to discuss those topics of local politics or of public interest which might from time to time come uppermost; others again marked the boundaries of estates, and especially of Church lands. They were in fact public crosses for no one special purpose, but for every public requirement of rural life.

In the west of England, in Devon and Cornwall, roadside crosses were, and even now are, remarkably common. Those of the former county seem to have generally served one of two purposes, either to mark the boundaries of lands, or to act as guide posts on the other wise almost trackless moorlands of Dartmoor and the neighbourhood.

For example, not far from Princetown stands one of the largest of the Dartmoor Crosses, known as Siward’s or Nun’s Cross, over seven feet in height. On the western face of this is carved, in two lines, the word ‘Boc-lond,’ marking it as a boundary stone of the lands of Buckland Abbey, although in this case it was adapted to that purpose, not erected expressly for it, the foundation of the abbey being not so ancient as the cross. The abbey dates from 1278. Bennet’s Cross, again, is one of the boundaries of Headland Warren, and of the parish of Bovey Tracey; it bears on its face the letters W. B., standing for “Warren Bounds;” the letters, but not the boundary line, are modern.

An ancient track across the moor, called the Abbot’s Way, which formed the most direct method of communication between the abbeys of Buckland and Tavistock on the one side, and that of Buckfast on the other, was marked out with a series of crosses, many of which yet remain. The fords of the Avon, on this pathway, were indicated by this means; Huntingdon Cross still stands at one ford as of old, but Buckland Ford Cross has gone. Some of these weather-beaten stones have carved on their several faces the initial letters of the towns towards which those faces turn, as a guide to the traveller. Sandowl Cross, now a rough stone rising scarcely a yard from the earth, has cut upon it the letters B., T., R., and M., pointing to Brent, Totnes, Kingsbridge, and Modbury respectively. Similarly Hookmoor Cross indicates the direction to be taken to reach Modbury, Brent, Totnes, and Plymouth.

These Dartmoor Crosses are interesting as ancient landmarks and boundaries, and as indications of the almost instinctive way in which our forefathers employed the Cross for every purpose of more than usual importance; they are moreover not devoid of a certain picturesque effect from the harmony of their rugged forms with their moorland surroundings. They are not, however, in the ordinary sense of the word, beautiful. They are mostly plain Latin crosses, occasionally mounted on one or two steps, with no attempt at carving or decoration. Nor are they specially impressive in height or size; Merchant’s Cross, near Lynch Hill, is the largest and stands but eight feet two inches high, and some are much less than this. Some few of them have an incised cross cut within the head, or even running the whole length, but those on the Moor proper are of the simplest kind. On the borders we find a few cut by some slightly more ambitious hand. At Hele is a Maltese Cross, the section of each of its limbs being an octagon, and a Latin one of the same section is at Holne.

REMAINS OF RUNIC CROSS, WEST KIRBY, CHESHIRE.