Swineshead (2) Stump Cross

Parish/District	Swineshead/Boston Borough
Location	on the north west side of the road junction between South Street and Stump Cross Lane
Category	Wayside cross (?)
National Grid Ref	TF 23935 39717
Designation	Scheduled / Listed II
Stone Type	Limestone
Refs	AP Survey 20 Dec 1993; Davies, D S, 1915, Lincs N & Q, Vol XIII No.6, p.219
Visits	AP: 20 Dec 1993 | DS/HH: Not visited | DS 23 Aug 2024

There is a second cross in Swineshead on the corner of South Street and the road to Bicker – known as Stump Cross Lane. Nattes drew the cross c.1800 (Remains of a Cross near Swineshead) showing it, intriguingly adjacent to a milestone with VII inscribed on it. This is probably the distance to Boston.

Thomas Allen (1830) and Davies (1915) comment that this could be a market cross, but it is some way out of the village centre and could equally be a boundary or wayside cross. It comprises a socket stone, embedded in a modern concrete setting, and has a portion of repaired shaft in situ, with modern (19C?) repairs.

Alison’s full description is worthy of reproduction: The socket-stone is roughly 0.85m square in section and stands up to 0.35m above the surrounding platform. It has moulded corners, and on the north and east sides are the remains of carved decoration, possibly representing figural scenes comparable to those on the village cross at Silk Willoughby. The other two sides, and the upper surface of the stone, have been heavily eroded or broken away.

Set into the centre of the socket-stone, at a depth of about 0.25m from the outer edge, is the shaft, c.0.33m square in section at the base. At a height of about 0.3m above the socket-stone the corners are chamfered, and the shaft rises in tapering octagonal section to a height of about 1.6m. The lower, unchamfered part of the shaft is roughly tooled and appears to have originally lain inside the socket-stone. It is now pinned into the socket-stone with iron clamps which are probably 19th-century in date; there is another clamp at the flat top of the shaft to repair a break in the stone. The lower part of the south side of the shaft has been partly cut away. The full height of the cross is about 2m.

The cross is believed to stand near its original position. In 1830 this cross, described as ‘The Stone Cross [which] stands in the road leading to Bicker, a little way from the church’, is identified with the site of a former market (Allen).  South Street runs from Swineshead in the north to Bicker in the south; between these two settlements in medieval times flowed the Bicker Haven, which was navigable at least as far as Bicker. Stump Cross Lane is probably based on a medieval way from Swineshead to landfalls or salt-making sites on the estuary, and the cross may have served as a landmark or route-marker. It may also have had some connection with the Cistercian Abbey of St. Mary at Swineshead, located nearly 1.5km to the north-east, perhaps as a boundary-marker of the abbey’s holdings in this area. The presence of carved decoration on the base of the cross is consistent with such a connection.

In 1904 and 1915 the cross appears to have stood in approximately its present position on the north-west side of the road junction, although it may have been moved slightly between 1956 and 1965 to facilitate road-widening. It is not known to have been moved since that time, although its setting has varied greatly over the years.