It was a wayside or weeping cross. There pilgrims knelt to implore
divine aid for their journey and protection from outlaws and robbers,
from accidents and sudden death. At holy wells the cross was set in
order to remind the frequenters of the sacredness of the springs and
to wean them from all superstitious thoughts and pagan customs. Sir
Walter Scott alludes to this connexion of the cross and well in
_Marmion_, when he tells of "a little fountain cell" bearing the
legend:--
Drink, weary pilgrim, drink and pray
For the kind soul of Sybil Grey,
Who built this cross and well.
"In the corner of a field on the Billington Hall Farm, just
outside the parish of Haughton, there lies the base, with a
portion of the shaft, of a fourteenth-century wayside cross. It
stands within ten feet of an old disused lane leading from
Billington to Bradley. Common report pronounced it to be an old
font. Report states that it was said to be a stone dropped out of
a cart as the stones from Billington Chapel were being conveyed to
Bradley to be used in building its churchyard wall. A
superstitious veneration has always attached to it. A former owner
of the property wrote as follows: 'The late Mr. Jackson, who was a
very superstitious man, once told me that a former tenant of the
farm, whilst ploughing the field, pulled up the stone, and the
same day his team of wagon-horses was all drowned.
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