<< Our Photo Pages >> Beckermet Ancient Crosses (St Bridget's) - Ancient Cross in England in Cumbria
Submitted by astronomer on Friday, 13 October 2006 Page Views: 8903
Early Medieval (Dark Age)Site Name: Beckermet Ancient Crosses (St Bridget's)Country: England
NOTE: This site is 1.1 km away from the location you searched for.
County: Cumbria Type: Ancient Cross
Nearest Town: Whitehaven Nearest Village: Beckermet
Map Ref: NY015061
Latitude: 54.440728N Longitude: 3.520289W
Condition:
5 | Perfect |
4 | Almost Perfect |
3 | Reasonable but with some damage |
2 | Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site |
1 | Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks |
0 | No data. |
-1 | Completely destroyed |
5 | Superb |
4 | Good |
3 | Ordinary |
2 | Not Good |
1 | Awful |
0 | No data. |
5 | Can be driven to, probably with disabled access |
4 | Short walk on a footpath |
3 | Requiring a bit more of a walk |
2 | A long walk |
1 | In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find |
0 | No data. |
5 | co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates |
4 | co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map |
3 | co-ordinates scaled from a bad map |
2 | co-ordinates of the nearest village |
1 | co-ordinates of the nearest town |
0 | no data |
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Anne T visited on 24th Oct 2014 - their rating: Cond: 3 Amb: 4 Access: 5 Ancient crosses, St. Bridget’s Church, Beckermet: Despite having been given directions by the vicar of St. John’s, Beckermet, we had several attempts at finding St. Bridget’s, but got there in the end. We need to take a left hand turn off the main road through Beckermet opposite Crofhouse Farm into a small housing estate, then taking the right hand turn marked ‘St. Bridget’s Church’ a few hundred yards down this lane and following this narrow lane down to the church. By this time, the wind had got up and whilst it wasn’t particularly cold, it wasn’t a day to linger.
There was some parking outside the church, which looked virtually derelict, although there were some recent burials in the churchyard, with fresh flowers and containers of water by the church door. The door to the church was open, shut only by a wooden latch which pivoted on a central nail.
Both cross shafts were to the south of the church, looking onto open countryside, with the towers of Seascale/Sellafield in the near distance.
The taller of the two cross shafts, Beckermet St. Bridget 02, dates from the tenth to eleventh century, and is made of St. Bees sandstone. According to the ASCorpus notes, the three encircling mouldings around the cylinder are rare.
I found the shorter of the two cross shafts fascinating, with the remnants of an inscription on its western face.
Apparently, there was a third fragment, part of a cross-head, which is now under plaster in the east wall of the chancel.
The two Saxon, Viking crosses at Beckermet are in the ancient churchyard of St Bridget's, Beckermet, Cumbria. The church is thought to occupy a Christian site dating to the 7th C.
The slightly taller Viking cross is typical of others in the area.
The squat, Saxon cross is curiously similar to Eliseg's Pillar at Llangollen, 150 miles away in NE Wales. It is also stylistically similar to crosses in the Staffordshire Moorlands and as far away as Stapleford in Nottinghamshire with a roughly cylindrical lower portion of the shaft giving way to a rectangular upper part, the two separated by a horizontal moulding. The upper part bears 'swags' , mouldings on its four sides, very similar to the 'Mercian' crosses in the Staffordshire Moorlands.
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