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Sites Anne T has logged on trip number: 147 (View all trips)
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Crag House Cross Base
Trip No.147 Entry No.1 Date Added: 4th Sep 2019
Site Type: Ancient Cross
Country: England (Northumberland)
Visited: Yes on 3rd Sep 2019. My rating: Condition 3 Ambience 4 Access 5
Crag House Cross Base submitted by Anne T on 4th Sep 2019. Close up of the cross base, showing its slightly inclined top surface, but the socket hole is cut vertically. Pastscape says this indicates the cross base may have been cut in situ.
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Log Text: Crag House Cross Base, north of Acomb: There have been many times I’ve done a search for sites to visit in this area, but found nothing. Now, having recently done a search for holy wells near Hexham, this cross base appeared on the list. Not only was it on Pastscape, but it was also scheduled on HE.
As I was photographing the small stone by the gatepost, a four-by-four pulled up and wound the window down. “Are you looking at the monument?” the lady in the car asked us. “We’ve come to photograph the cross base”, I replied. “Yes, that’s what we call The Monument. We’ve never seen anyone visit it before”.
It turned out they live in Crag House, and are turning the adjacent land into a nature reserve to be handed over to a Wildlife Conservation Trust. The gentleman said he’d never been able to find out what the small stone was for, but we all thought it was some sort of boundary marker.
The lady said she keeps a blog of the work they are doing to their nature reserve, so she was going to say she’d met us photographing the monument.
In Acomb, the name of the cross is heavily reflected in road names leading up to the cross: Cross Bank, etc. The cross base sits at the top of the hill, not far south of the Military Road (B6318), with St. Oswald’s Church at Heavenfield just across the road (within 500m of the cross base). It has amazing views over Hexham.
Eastern Sanctuary Cross (Hexham)
Trip No.147 Entry No.2 Date Added: 6th Sep 2019
Site Type: Ancient Cross
Country: England (Northumberland)
Visited: Yes on 3rd Sep 2019. My rating: Condition 2 Ambience 2 Access 5
Eastern Sanctuary Cross (Hexham) submitted by Anne T on 5th Sep 2019. Cross base or top of a gate post (with a carved stone head inserted into the socket hole)? Really strange. Hodges, writing in 1897, appeared to confirm this was indeed the base of the eastern sanctuary cross of Hexham Priory.
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Log Text: Eastern Sanctuary Cross of Hexham Priory (or just the top of a gate post??): We stopped to photograph the scheduled Glover's Pant before making our way to the eastern side of Hexham. We were incredibly surprised to find this cross base, which we’ve looked for before, but at the old grid reference. On this visit, I spotted it straight away, and took its current grid location with our GPS. It is now sited at the eastern entrance to the car park. Andrew walked right past it, and I might have too, had I not remembered about the carved stone head being in the socket hole! I almost got myself run over trying to take photographs from various angles.
I also found Hodges’ 1897 paper listed in the Pastcape reference (copied in the text below). He reports that the locations of all four of Hexham Priory Sanctuary Crosses were now known. He reports the location of the northern one is at Cross Bank. I’m wondering if this is the one at Crag House, north of Acomb, although this is some 5km from the location of this cross base.
Seal Well (Hexham)
Trip No.147 Entry No.3 Date Added: 6th Sep 2019
Site Type: Holy Well or Sacred Spring
Country: England (Northumberland)
Visited: Yes on 3rd Sep 2019. My rating: Condition 2 Ambience 3 Access 4
Seal Well (Hexham) submitted by Anne T on 5th Sep 2019. There was a vague path through the weeds to the well (we tried to reach it by a path a few metres to the west of the well, but it was far too overgrown to walk down), so I carefully made my way through the nettles and brambles to take a closer look.
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Log Text: The Seal/Sele Well, Hexham: Walking into a part of Hexham we’d never been to before, we came across the Cock Shaw Burn which runs SW-NE along the western side of the Sele. We passed a gloriously ornate drinking fountain (now dry) next to the southern side of the school, right next to the footpath. At the western side of the Sele, a footpath turned to our right, downhill. At the bottom, a footbridge crosses the Cock Shaw Burn. We turned left along the footpath running along its southern side, and about 30m along, spotted a stone and cast iron structure behind the nettles.
We managed to trample down the nettles to get a closer look. I unhooked some of the ivy from the ring in the indentation in the middle of the well to get a closer look at the underlying well structure. No-one has seen this well in some time, but it was very nice to find it.
This is a really old part of Hexham, and one we’d never explored before. Nearby, a second burn (presumably the Cowgarth Burn) runs along a cobbled road through Tanner’s Yard.
We went onto find, and photograph, Wine's Well (to the west of Hexham) and the Park Well (to the east). These are recorded as just 'wells' on Pastscape, and have no holy or healing characteristics that I'm aware of.