Set in a commanding position on a mound of glacial sand and gravel, near the township boundary of Wincle and Sutton Downes, above the crossroads at SJ 953674 and now hidden in a plantation.

The monument is first clearly recorded in its present position on a seventeenth-century map (Sidebottom 1994, 240), though the name 'Clulow cross' is recorded in a will of 1538 as the location of a debtor ((—) 1934; Dodgson 1970a, 165–6).

Very weathered

Complete cross-shaft of type h with cylindrical lower sections and rectangular upperworks. On the west and east faces the shaft broadens into the expanded lower arm of the (now lost) head. On all four faces the single panel on the rectangular section of shaft is flanked laterally by a roll moulding which splits to form a swag above a double moulding encircling the top of the cylindrical section. On the south face there are traces of a horizontal moulding dividing the shaft from the head. No other decoration is visible.

Round-shaft (see Chapter V, p. 33). This shaft appears to be in its original position and is thus a typical example of the manner in which such crosses in Cheshire are characteristically found in a non-ecclesiastical setting. The fan-shaped expansion of the lower arm is a type used elsewhere within the group (see Disley Lyme Hall 1, 2 and Cheadle 1: Ills. 71, 73, 131, 137, 139–41), though it is uncertain whether the head carried a ring. Unlike those examples, however, there is no penetration of the shaft panel into the lower part of the head; the horizontal moulding defining the top of the shaft resembles that on the Sutton Ridge Hall shafts (Ills. 327–8, 331–2). In its combination of double moulding and non-decorated swag-formed panel it is paralleled at Adlington 2, Macclesfield St Michael 3, Wincle Grange 1, and both Fernilee Hall and Whitfield in Derbyshire (Ills. 2–8, 185–8, 366–71; Sharpe 2002, 95, 98).

Late tenth or early eleventh century

Ormerod 1819, III, 282; Finney 1871, 40; Ormerod 1875–82, III, 540, 769; Renaud 1876, 73, fig. facing 71; Earwaker 1877–80, II, 435, 486, fig. on 435; Allen and Browne 1885, 355; Browne 1887b, 150; Allen 1894, 4, 8, 10, pl. V; Allen 1895, 135, 144, 146, pl. facing 156; Crofton 1903, 47; Cox, J. 1904, 57; Andrew 1905, 203–5, 212, 213; (—) 1912a, 236; (—) 1914, 265; Phelps 1919, 99; (—) 1921b, 160; Kendrick 1941b, 12–13, pl. V; Green, C. 1941–2, 119; Pape 1945–6, 38, pl. V; Kendrick 1949, 71, pl. XLVI (3); Sylvester and Nulty 1958, 14; Bu'lock 1960b, 51; Rix 1960, 79; Dodgson 1970a, 165–6; Pevsner and Hubbard 1971, 387; Plunkett 1984, I, 146, II, 285, 294; Thacker 1987, 281, 291, fig. 41; Kenyon 1991, 102; Lang 1991, 204; Gelling 1992, 189; Sidebottom 1994, 119, 149, 240, and pls.; Austin 1999, 82; Sharpe 2002, 100, fig. on 100; Blair 2005, 479; Edwards, N. 2009, 154–5, fig. 8

[1] The following is an unpublished manuscript reference to Wincle Cleulow 1: BL Add. MS 37547, item 738 (Romilly Allen collection).