Sheffield Cross

It is the shaft of a stone high cross that was rediscovered hollowed out and in use as a quenching trough in a cutler's workshop in the Park district of Sheffield.

John Walter Staniforth removed the cross and kept it in his garden,[citation needed] before it was later donated to the British Museum in 1924, where it is now kept.

[1] The shaft is carved with a vine motif, a figure with a bow and arrow placed amidst the tendrils; similar figures are found on the Ruthwell Cross and an ivory in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and their significance has been much discussed.

It resembles crosses from Bakewell and Eyam, and David Hey uses the similarity of the vine scrolls in the Eyam and Sheffield crosses to hypothesise a single craftsperson.

[1] A cross outside the church is recorded to have been demolished in 1570 during the English Reformation.