The Cross in Stoughton Churchyard

The 14th Century Cross in Stoughton Churchyard

Those who seek the church will first encounter the 14th century cross in the shade of the limes of the churchyard. It has been called the most beautiful of all the county’s crosses, and there is something in its fluted slenderness, and the elegant simplicity of the shaft with its sculptured capital, to justify such praise. It stands like a warden over the simple memorials of simple folk, surrounding it.

Churchyard crosses appear in the medieval period. According to one author, these later crosses were ‘intended to both sanctify the churchyard and to provide a corporate memorial to the anonymous dead of the parish’, at a time when individual gravestones were not the norm.

The most common form/shape for the top of these crosses was a tabernacle, but there were also cross heads and wheel heads and needless to say, many surviving examples are now without their uppermost parts.

There is another good example in Scraptoft churchyard.

The Stone Cross amongst the gravestones