It marks the site of a 12th-century stone wayside cross, originally placed for the use of travellers, for prayer and as a guide post.

[2] The Lancashire Evening Post suggested that, "The cross itself was believed to have been broken by drunken quarrymen generations before [the base stone was destroyed]".

[6] What little is known of the history of the Pilgrims' Cross is inscribed on the stone monument itself which was erected on 24 May 1902 after the original socket was destroyed "by vandals" in 1901.

[5] The stone was a block of sandstone, weighing perhaps a ton, and showing the cavity squared for the shaft almost as well cut as when it left the mason's hands 700 years ago.

[5]On 30 August 1901, the Heywood Advertiser added more about the destruction, saying that the Pilgrims' Cross foundation stone had been "broken into fragments and pieces thrown into a boghole and covered with whinberry roots".

[10] The Manchester City News said:[11] Its demolition is an act of pure vandalism, for which one can find no excuse, and for which it is difficult even to suggest a motive.

The destruction was evidently committed on the site, and the broken fragments were afterwards carried to the wet boghole, twenty yards distant, in which they were found.

[2]A local newspaper reported that "The stone [is] of huge proportions, and required the strength of fourteen horses to drag it up the hill" on Empire Day, Saturday 24 May 1902.

Henry Dowsett, who ordered the inscription on the stone, confirmed the cross pre-dated the abbey, minutes after dedicating the memorial monument in 1902.

It would have been in existence probably 150 to two hundred years previously, at a time when Holcombe Moor was a forest and when people could hear the bark of the wolf and the scream of the falcon.

[20]In 1909 and 1910, the moorland which included the Pilgrims' Cross was at risk of enclosure, when the Territorial Army attempted to requisition it for a rifle range, and possibly "artillery work", in anticipation of imminent war in Europe.

[26] On 6 February 1914, the body of cotton worker Reginald Geldard of Holcombe, aged around 36, was found lying in a pool of water 200 yards (180 m) from the Pilgrims' Cross, with a bullet wound in his head and a pistol in his hand.

[31] In 1993 there was a Pilgrims' Cross Fell Race for sixty competitors on a figure-of-eight route via Helmshore, Holcombe Moor and the monument.