Tag: Flint

Atis Cross, Flint, Flintshire

megalithix

Cross (destroyed):  OS Grid Reference – SJ 2534 7208

Archaeology & History

Actual location of the cross

This long-gone site, described in the Domesday Record of 1086 as Atiscros Hund, (or “hundred”, which is the word given to an administrative division of land which, at that time, was on the western edge of Cheshire bordering Wales), gained its title from an old English personal name, Æti.  The fact that it stood on an ancient boundary and was included in Domesday, means it would have been a stone cross.  Its location was shown on the 1871 Ordnance Survey map (and several subsequent ones), based on traditional accounts about its position.  The site is still preserved in local street-names.

Referring to the monument itself, Thomas Pennant (1796) said that it still existed in his day, telling that,

“A cross stood there, the pedestal of which I remember to have seen standing. There is a tradition that, in very old times, there stood a large town at this place; and, it is said, the foundations of buildings have been frequently turned up by the plough.”

References:

  1. Dodgson, J.M., The Place-Names of Cheshire – volume 4, Cambridge University Press 1972.
  2. Pennant, Thomas, The History of the Parishes of Whiteford and Holywell, B. & J. White: London 1796.
  3. Taylor, Henry, Historic Notices, with Topographical and other Gleanings Descriptive of the Borough and County-Town of Flint, Elliot Stock: London 1883.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian

Fairy Oak, Whitford, Flintshire

megalithix

Sacred Tree:  OS Grid Reference – SJ 1577 7889

Folklore

Highlighted on the earliest Ordnance Survey map of the region in 1878 and described much earlier by Thomas Pennant (1796)—almost as legendary as the fairies themselves in some parts—this ancient tree was obviously a place of great repute in the mythic history of the people in previous centuries.  Animistic relationships with the landscape were still deeply embedded in the daily lives of our peasant communities all across the country when Pennant wrote about this place.  In his antiquarian history of the area he described the great mansion of Downing Hall and in its grounds the ruins of Molandina Abbey.  “Above this,” he wrote,

Fairy Oak on the 1878 map
Pennant’s 1796 drawing

“is a spreading oak of great antiquity, size, and extent of branches: it has got the name of the Fairy Oak.  In this very century a poor cottager, who lived near the spot, had a child who grew uncommonly peevish; the parents attributed this to the fairy, and imagined that it was a changeling.  They took the child, put it in a cradle, and left it all night beneath the tree, in hopes that the tylwydd têg, or fairy family, or the fairy folk, would restore their own before morning.  When morning came they found the child perfectly quiet, so went away with it, quite confirmed in their belief.”

Nearby, and in the same grounds of the mansion, Pennant told there to be an even older and greater oak tree that “has in it furrows so deep, and of aspect so uncommonly venerable, as to render its shade as worthy of the solemn rites of the Druids.”

References:

  1. Pennant, Thomas, The History of the Parishes of Whiteford and Holywell, B. & J. White: London 1796.

© Paul Bennett, The Northern Antiquarian