Cleulow Cross, Wincle, Cheshire.
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A stone column about three metres high,
with a carved top,
sitting in a socket on a stone base.
It is believed to be a Saxon cross.
The base incorporates a small hollow which may have been made in the 17th century to facilitate the use of the cross as a plague stone. The cross is well preserved, perhaps due to its remote location. Three similar, but shorter and less well preserved, crosses are now located in a children's playground in West Park, Macclesfield. Perhaps Robin Hood's Picking Rods near Charlesworth, were made from fragments of a similar cross. Some sources spell the name Clulow, however, I will stick with Cleulow, the spelling used on Ordnance Survey maps. |
| The mound on which the cross stands is eight metres high and eighty metres in diameter. It is though to be a Bronze Age Round Barrow, and is a short distance from the junction of two ancient long distance trails. A canopy of beech trees now covers the mound, although that may not always have been the case. The mound is not the highest point around, but is visible from a distance. For example it stands out clearly from Woodford, ten miles to the north. |
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A view from Cleulow Cross at dawn on a November morning,
looking over fields frozen by overnight frost.
The misty valley of the river Dane
graphically outlines the boundary between the counties of Cheshire and Staffordshire (upper right).
The silhouette in the centre of the photo is Sandyway Farm. My mother-in-law, Phylis Trueman, was born there in 1903. She told of the cold, hard working life not so very long ago, with early morning trips to the stream to fetch water and, once a week, the long walk down to Macclesfield to sell produce and buy supplies. |