Volume 9: Cheshire and Lancashire

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Current Display: Macclesfield 3, Cheshire Forward button Back button
Overview
National Grid Reference of Place of Discovery
SJ 918737
Present Location
As Macclesfield 1
Evidence for Discovery
Not known, though Aston recorded the discovery of 'remains of an Anglo-Saxon cross' during church alterations in 1882 (Aston 1904, 169).
Church Dedication
St Michael; formerly All Hallows
Present Condition
Part of the cylinder has been cut away vertically.
Description

The surviving fragment represents part of a shaft of type g/h with cylindrical and rectangular sections. Around the cylinder are two horizontal mouldings. Above, on the rectangular section, is a common border moulding between the two fragmentary surviving faces; this splits on both faces to form a swag base to the panels. No decoration is visible within these panels.

Discussion

Round-shaft (see Chapter V, p. 33). Along with Astbury 1 (p. 47) and Macclesfield 4 below this is the only such carving in the Cheshire group to have a clear ecclesiastical provenance. Its combination of undecorated panels and double encircling mouldings is repeated at Adlington 2, Wincle Cleulow 1 and Wincle Grange 1, and at both Whitfield and Fernilee Hall in Derbyshire (Ills. 2–8, 362–5, 366–71; Sharpe 2002, 95, 98).

Date
Tenth or early eleventh century
References
(See Macclesfield 1 above); ?Aston 1904, 169; Sidebottom 1994, 153
Endnotes
[1] The following are general references to the Macclesfield stones: Sylvester and Nulty 1958, 14; Higham, N. 1993b, 172.

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