4 
about, and was removed to make room for Dr. Todd’s great 
Georgian church in 1721 or 1722. 
The original form of the cross has been a Greek cross and 
circle, i.e, the emblem of the Redemption surrounded by a 
nimbus or glory, familiarly styled a “four-holed cross.” The 
holes, however, are too large and shapeless to come within any 
proper geometrical delineation, and, in my opinion, have been 
tampered with by widening out in an irregular manner. 
I have heard a tradition that may possibly account for this. 
The late Mr. William Grisenthwaite, of this town, who had quite a 
store of local traditions, told me that the Giant’s Thumb was at 
one time used as a pillory—the universal medizval corrective of 
all social delinquencies ;—and as if stamping the tradition as an 
historical fact, he said the last time it was so used, the unfortunate 
offender was a young woman, who died of a broken heart in 
consequence of her shameful exposure. 
If this alleged tradition has a foundation in fact, it may account 
for the holes having been enlarged to accommodate the culprit’s 
wrists. 
The cross consists of one stone seven feet six inches long ; the 
stem or shaft is twenty inches by nine inches at bottom, tapering 
upwards to the head. 
The remains of sculptured ornament to be seen upon the shaft 
of the cross indicates that a running scroll or spiral pattern has 
been used ; it occurs frequently on Anglo-Saxon crosses, and may 
be seen on the famous Bewcastle cross, and more plainly still on 
the Irton cross. 
Mr. Owen Jones, in his Grammar of Ornament, gives examples 
of this class of ornament; under the head of Celtic Ornament he 
refers to some forms of the scroll in the Manx and Cumberland 
crosses of that period, and suggests that they were copied from 
the tesselated pavements left by the Romans in Britain; and he 
also further shows that the Romans in their turn had adopted them 
from ancient Greek art. 
The running scroll form of decoration, which has secured 
admiration from the earliest times to the present, has been adopted 
