Cornish Crosses  

By Andrew Langdon

 For the Federation of  Old Cornwall Societies

Micro chipping

Granite wayside crosses are a distinctive and numerous feature of the Cornish landscape.  The majority were set up as medieval signposts marking the route to the parish church, or as boundary stones marking the boundary of the glebe or parish.

Today, these monuments not only represent an aspect of Cornwall’s rich heritage but are also often seen as symbols of Cornish Identify.    This has lead to a growing interest in them, as well as an increasing number of replica and modern crosses being set up over the past decade by both community groups and individuals.   It is this renewed interest in Cornish crosses and general interest in granite artefacts that has perhaps fuelled the need by a very small minority to steal their own ancient cross.   

During the past twenty years there have been numerous attempts to steal stone crosses from rural locations in Cornwall.   These are usually small and medium sized monuments, located beside country roads and tracks, although on at least one occasion a cross located within a field marking a church path has been removed.

In 1987, the Halvana Cross within the parish of Altarnun was removed from a remote location on Bodmin Moor and has never been retrieved.  On visiting the site of the cross in October 1987, it was clear that the monument had been pulled from the ground by mechanical means.  In January 1990, the Trevorry or Sandyway Cross at Lanlivery was stolen and re- discovered by the police a few months later in a back garden in a neighbouring parish, and its theft was the subject of a successful prosecution.   

During 1993, several attempts to steal a wayside crosses were made across Cornwall by an organised gang equipped with a flat bed lorry and hydraulic winch; all attempts were unsuccessful partly due to the vigilance of locals who challenged this action.  One cross at St Buryan was left leaning at an acute angle while another at Lanivet was pulled off the hedge and abandoned in the middle of the road.

In response to this, the Cornwall County Council’s Historic Environment Service (HES) decided to follow the lead taken by the Dartmoor National Park Authority (DPNA), who microchipped a number of their crosses in 2004.   As a result, the HES piloted a similar project in Cornwall in the summer of 2006.

The project involved:

• Identifying one hundred medieval stone crosses that stand beside the roadside that are vulnerable to theft.  

• Securely and discretely fixing a microchip on each monument, having first obtained permission from the landowner.  The microchip is just a little bigger than a grain of rice

• Making a simple record with photographs of each cross showing the location of the microchip.

•   Compilation of a database of the microchipped crosses to be deposited with the Historic Environment Service, English Heritage, and possibly the police.