The Corpus: Stretford 1

Volume 9: Cheshire and Lancashire

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Current Display: Stretford 1, Lancashire

Overview

Object type: Double socket-stone

Measurements:

H. 81 cm (32 in); L. 158 cm (62 in); W. 41 cm (16 in)

Sockets: north 32 x 24 cm (12.5 x 9.5 in), 22 cm (8.5 in) deep; south 36 x 24 cm (14 x 9.5 in), 18 cm (7 in) deep

Stone type: Yellowish grey (5Y 7/2), bedded, medium-grained, clast-supported, quartz sandstone, with a few scattered feldspar clasts (one up to 2.5 mm). Grain size ranges from 0.3 to 2.5 mm, but most grains are in the range 0.5 to 1.0 mm; a few scattered pebbles up to 8 mm. ?Helsby Sandstone Formation, Sherwood Sandstone Group, Triassic

Plate numbers in printed volume: Ills. 649-50

Corpus volume reference: Vol 9 p. 239

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Present Location

Outside main gates to Gorse Hill Park, opposite the war memorial (SJ 804956), on south-east side of Chester Road (A56)

Evidence for Discovery

Formerly at SJ 805957 (Edwards, B. 1978a, 71). Phillips (1937, 298) records that it was originally 'on the south side of the Roman road from Manchester to Chester ... on the north-east side of Gorse Hill' and that it was then moved in 1925 to a garden plot at the entrance to the new Gorse Park. Esdaile (1887, 293–4) argued, on the basis of the heights of the adjacent excavated roads, that it was not its original position even when alongside the Roman road. The earliest record appears to be that of Everett (1834, 28), who described it as a 'plague stone' — a description also used of the double socket on Whaley Moor in Derbyshire (Sharpe 2002, 106).

Church Dedication

Present Condition

One end of the stone has been worn down, possibly by later use as a mounting block.

Description

The roughly-squared stone carries two rectangular sockets, now set at slightly different levels. The higher socket has a raised rim around it.

Discussion

Double socket-stones have a limited distribution across the borderlands of Cheshire, Lancashire, Derbyshire and Yorkshire (see Chapter V, pp. 37–8). Like the double sockets at Haslingden 1 and Whalley 14 this stone was designed for rectangular shafts (Ills. 506–7, 706–7). As with several such sockets it does not appear to have been originally associated with a church site. Indeed a nineteenth-century tradition suggests that it had a territorial function, threatening that the Trafford family would lose their estates if this stone were moved (Crofton 1903, 45).
Crofton (ibid., 46) adds that in 1873 old persons remembered a similar base at both Cheetham Hill and Rochdale (Harland and Wilkinson 1873, 54).

Date

Tenth or eleventh century

References

Baines 1831–6, II, 257; Everett 1834, 28; Hardwick 1872, 213; (—) 1886b, 321; Esdaile 1887, 293–4; Crofton 1903, 44–9, pls. facing 44; Taylor, H. 1904, 109–11; Taylor, H. 1906, 439–41; Farrer and Brownbill 1911a, 330; (—) 1914, 266; Phillips 1937, 294, 298, pl. IV; Green, C. 1941–2, 114–15; Edwards, B. 1976, 32; Edwards, B. 1978a, 71; Newell 1997, 87; Noble 2005, 30, fig. 20

Endnotes