Details

This monument includes a wayside cross on a junction between Park Road and
Victoria Road on the outskirts of Hatherleigh, on the road to Monkokehampton.
It is a Latin cross with truncated arms, hewn roughly from a single piece of
granite, and probably of late medieval date. It does not appear to have a
socket stone. There is an Ordnance Survey bench mark at the foot of the
eastern face. The cross, which is leaning slightly, measures 0.32m wide at the
base, 0.5m wide at the arms and 0.3m wide at the head. The shaft is 0.19m
thick, the head is 0.16m high and the overall height of the cross is 1.57m.
The cross is Listed Grade II.
Excluded from the scheduling are the metalled road surface and field boundary
bank where they fall within the cross's protective margin, although the ground
below both is included.

MAP EXTRACT
The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract.
It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features,
considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Source: Historic England

Reasons for Scheduling

Wayside crosses are one of several types of Christian cross erected during the
medieval period, mostly from the 9th to 15th centuries AD. In addition to
serving the function of reiterating and reinforcing the Christian faith
amongst those who passed the cross and of reassuring the traveller, wayside
crosses often fulfilled a role as waymarkers, especially in difficult and
otherwise unmarked terrain. The crosses might be on regularly used routes
linking ordinary settlements or on routes having a more specifically religious
function, including those providing access to religious sites for parishioners
and funeral processions, or marking long-distance routes frequented on
pilgrimages.
Over 350 wayside crosses are known nationally, concentrated in south west
England throughout Cornwall and on Dartmoor where they form the commonest type
of stone cross. A small group also occurs on the North York Moors. Relatively
few examples have been recorded elsewhere and these are generally confined to
remote moorland locations.
Outside Cornwall almost all wayside crosses take the form of a `Latin' cross,
in which the cross-head itself is shaped within the projecting arms of an
unenclosed cross. In Cornwall wayside crosses vary considerably in form and
decoration. The commonest type includes a round, or `wheel', head on the faces
of which various forms of cross or related designs were carved in relief or
incised, the spaces between the cross arms possibly pierced. The design was
sometimes supplemented with a relief figure of Christ and the shaft might bear
decorative panels and motifs. Less common forms in Cornwall include the
`Latin' cross and, much rarer, the simple slab with a low relief cross on both
faces. Rare examples of wheel-head and slab-form crosses also occur within the
North York Moors group. Most wayside crosses have either a simple socketed
base or show no evidence for a separate base at all.
Wayside crosses contribute significantly to our understanding of medieval
religious customs and sculptural traditions and to our knowledge of medieval
routeways and settlement patterns. All wayside crosses which survive as earth-
fast monuments, except those which are extremely damaged and removed from
their original locations, are considered worthy of protection.

The wayside cross at a junction between Victoria Road and Park Road east of
Hatherleigh is a good example of its class and is likely to be in its original
position.

Source: Historic England

Sources

Books and journals
Masson Phillips, E, 'Devonshire Association Transactions' in The Ancient Stone Crosses of Devon : Part 1, , Vol. 69, (1936-37), 332
Other
Devon County Sites and Monuments Register, SS50SW-004, (1988)
MPP fieldwork by H. Gerrard, (1994)

Source: Historic England