Crossing

Four miles from this house, up on White Edge Moor, stand the remains of an ancient stone cross. It is known as Lady's Cross. I have plodded past it three or four times before but yesterday it was my main target. I planned to linger there and take several photographs of it, hoping for optimal lighting as sunshine peeped through ephemeral gaps in the clouds.

What is Lady's Cross and why is it there? Some say that it marked the southern boundary of the Beauchief Abbey estate which was founded in the twelfth century by French monks.  The remains of their abbey can still be found in Sheffield's southern suburbs. It operated for four hundred years until the middle of the  reign of King Henry VIII.

Others say that the cross marked the meeting point of three local parishes while yet others think it was just a guidepost, assisting moorland travellers centuries before paved roads for motor vehicles were developed.

The first known written reference to Lady's Cross occurred in a land deed from 1263 but it is probably much older than that and may have had different iterations through time. There is a significant amount of dressed stone in the area that surrounds the cross today. Its presence there hints at earlier structures. Also the cross we see today is no doubt much shorter than it would have been eight hundred years ago.

I rambled onward for a further half mile and from the western edge of White Edge Moor, I  looked towards The Hope Valley.  Before backtracking to Lady's Cross, I  captured this image:-

The gloomy bulk of The Kinder Plateau broods in the background but closer to my viewpoint, I could easily make out Lose Hill to the left and Win Hill to the right.