Overton Churchyard Cross

Medieval Crosses

The Overton Churchyard Cross

‘Near the western gate of the churchyard is the much-weathered shaft of the original cross.’

RCAHM, An Inventory of the Ancient Monuments in Wales, Flint, (1912) p.112

How the mighty fall. There was a time, undoubtedly, when churchyard crosses were ubiquitous - their sheer number making them unworthy of mention in sources contemporary to their raising and at the highest water mark of their relevance and splendour. There seems little doubt that every parish would have been furnished with a cross or more likely, crosses. But the Reformation of the 16th century onwards took a heavy iconoclastic mallet to many of these stately wonders - the crossheads and tabernacles not to be borne, to be rendered to rubble and scree. Now, if crosses survive at all, it is often only the base and shaft - likely with an innocuous sundial and gnomon. There are some survivors, certainly, and Clwyd has a fair few wonders - at Derwen, Trelawnyd and Tremeirchion. But the sad fact remains, that for every Derwen there are a dozen Overtons - the worn nub of a pillar hidden away somewhere, within a bush or, in Overton’s case, beneath a yew tree in the churchyard of St Mary’s - obviously.

The sheer bloody-mindedness of this stubborn worn nub of a churchyard cross is a wonder.

So worn and weathered is Overton’s churchyard cross that there have been, and still are in fact, doubts that it was ever a cross at all. Such thinking is entirely understandable - in truth it looks more like the last consumptive wheeze of a worn down prehistoric standing stone, than the once great centrepiece of what is a quite glorious churchyard. So very denuded is the stump that claims that it was in fact a whipping post are naggingly persistent - perhaps with the Passion of Elizabeth Orton of Overton in mind.

It may be the remains of a churchyard cross. Perhaps not. So, on my visits to the churchyard of St Mary’s, why have I found myself so enraptured by this stump? Well, I’ll tell you since you ask. I think it's a churchyard cross - and I am all grin at the sheer bloody-mindedness of its stubborn presence. It’s still here, a shadow of its former glory, but as a shadow must have a bright source to create the shade, the Overton Churchyard Cross still reminds one as to its past, its resplendent past. When I look on this rough stump of a thing, I see its lost greatness and so its greatness isn’t as lost as it was. In the eye of my mind, it is reconstructed and magnificent. There are no certainties here, and so it is quite the most wonderful of artefacts - a mutable thing, able to accommodate all manner of thought formed possibility.