Ring-headed iron cross of type A11 with shaft and head outlined in a continuous bevelled moulding.

A (broad): Undecorated but with a raised inscription towards the base reading: IRS / 1862. On the modern base below is a memorial plaque, dating to 1970, which refers to the re-erection of 'this 19th century iron replica of Greasby's ancient hiring cross'.

B and D (narrow): No decoration

C (broad): The head carries bosses both at the centre and in the block of each arm.

Appendix C item (lost stones for which no illustration has survived)

The following discussion is indebted to the paper on Greasby's early sculptures by O'Neil (2000).

The iron cross was erected by John Ralph Nicholson, who became the owner of the Greasby estate in December 1829 and took the name of Shaw on coming to maturity in 1837. Both the 1970 memorial inscription and the original positioning of the cross point to an association with an earlier stone cross which stood in the village at SJ 25358721. Though Brownbill claimed that the stone monument was cleared away in c. 1860, its base was still in that position when it was photographed in 1914 (Brownbill 1928, 292; O'Neill 2000, 58, fig. 35).

Two issues arise from this history. The first concerns the possible survival of fragments from the original stone cross. O'Neill (2000) argued that stones now forming part of the northern boundary wall of Greasby Old Hall were once part of the stone monument, but these appear to be fragments of later medieval grave-slabs and can be ignored in the present context. The second issue centres on the validity of the claim made on the 1970 plaque that the iron cross is a 'replica' of the stone cross which still existed in the early nineteenth century. I have been unable, so far, to find contemporary evidence for this assertion in sources dating to the 1860s.

If, for the moment, we assume that this 'replica' claim could be justified, then it is clear that the stone original had both a form and a type of decoration which are more familiar in Ireland than they are among English sculptures. The discussion of the Winwick cross-head (see below, p. 256) shows that heads with block-ended arms, as tall as they are wide, combined with small circular armpits and a narrow connecting ring set close to the armpit, are well known in Ireland but cannot be readily paralleled in England. Similarly the discussion of Cheadle 1 above (see p. 61) identified the head bosses as a motif which again is more frequent in Ireland than it is in England. If, therefore, this iron cross genuinely echoes what was there before, then it is evidence for a strong Irish impact on the art of this part of the Wirral peninsula.

Pending discovery of some 1862 confirmation that this is a replica, however, it is worth registering the fact that erection of an 'Irish' or 'Celtic' cross would be perfectly consonant with mid nineteenth-century artistic tastes. The London 'Great Exhibition' of 1851 had featured 'Celtic' art, including images of sculpture, whilst the later 1853 Dublin exhibition contained displays of originals or casts of crosses from Tuam, Kells, Ahenny, Kilkieran and Monasterboice (Harbison 1992, i, 4–5). The Dublin exhibition inspired Henry O'Neil to produce his Illustrations of the Most Interesting of the Sculptured Crosses of Ancient Ireland in 1857 and also contributed to a widening awareness, not only within a Nationalist community, of the richness of Ireland's Celtic heritage. But, even granted the growing Irish element in nineteenth-century Merseyside, would this 'Celtic re-awakening' affect an English landowner in protestant Wirral? The question must be left open.