Appendix B item (stones wrongly associated with pre-Conquest period)

A socketed cross-base known as the Wroth Stone, set on a mound on Knightlow Hill, just to the north of the hedge that borders the north side of the present A45. The socket is square in plan and rather rounded at the bottom. On the north face of the stone a small equal-armed incised cross shows clearly in a photograph published in 1910 (Simpson 1910, 4), but is now obscured by lichen. One side has been slightly damaged but otherwise the faces are plain.

The earliest reference to a cross on this site seems to be in the following entry from Dugdale: 'There is also a certain rent due unto the Lord of this hundred [Knightlow], called wrath money, or Warth money, or Swarffpeny, probably the same with Ward penny ... The rent must be paid every Martinmas day in the morning at Knightlowe Cross, before the sun riseth; the party paying it must go thrice about the cross, and say The Wrath money, and then lay it in the hole of the said cross before good witness, for if it not be duly performed, the forfeiture is thirty shillings and a white bull' (Dugdale 1730, i, 4). Salzman later noted that 'among the issues of [Knightlow] hundred in 1236–7 was warth-penny' and that the payment, made at dawn on St Martin's Day, 'has continued to the present time' (Salzman 1951, 1–2). However, although the payment itself may date back to the thirteenth century, it is unclear when it became associated with this stone. The mound on which the stone stands was the centre point and meeting place of the ship-soke of Knightlow, comprising the three Domesday hundreds of Brinklow (Bomelau), Marton and Stoneleigh (Pantos 2001, ii, 442). However, the socketed base has no dateable features, and, despite a flourishing local tradition, there is nothing to indicate that the cross that once stood here was early medieval or Anglo-Saxon in date.