Galavanting in Gawsworth

GC1Y8ZD - The Dark Lady's Cache by Dillon the Dog

What a glorious day to go galavanting. After picking up a few of the local caches we ended up in Gawsworth, Cheshire to complete a multi cache that had recently been published. I have to admit that I have never been to Gawsworth before and didn't know what to expect but was really pleased when I arrived. We pulled up by the first stage, the Lych Gate by St James' Church and within minutes another car pulled up...cachers I wondered but no they weren't. Obviously just a very pleasant place to pull up for a natter.

Lych Gate

Our mission was to find the gravestones and gather information to find the final cache. The Church yard was pretty big with 100's of headstones and we just wandered around reading everything. We even found a couple of headstones with my surname and wonder if we are related in anyway at all. Actually this stage took us ages as we were so interested in some of the headstones and one of the kids piped up that we had been looking for 35 minutes. Now even they were interested in it all and were quite happy trying to help us. One of the interesting ones that we had to find was Tatiana who was the daughter of a Count and Countess and when we found it we were pleasantly surprised that she had been born in St Petersburg and the top part of the headstone was in Russian.

We eventually found all of the information and calculated the final which turned out to be only about 500ft away. The cache was a fairly easy find although I found myself monkeying around again. I sometimes wish I was taller so that I could reach the caches a bit more easily but then that wouldn't be half as much fun would it.

Whilst we were at the church we found a cut bench mark located to the right of the front entrance so as I'm also interested in waymarking I decided to mark the co-ordinates so that I could research this when I got home and maybe post a waymark.

Cut Bench Mark

When I got around to researching the church it was amazing how much it was steeped in History. There was once a Norman Church built in the 13th Century located on the site of the newer church. The church is Medieval and the oldest part of the church dates from 1430. It is also a Grade 1 listed building. Apparantly it is also haunted and the ghost of Mary often wanders around the road ways near to the church. She was one of the daughters of of Sir Edward Fitton, 1st baronet, and his wife Anne who died in 1619 and 1644 respectively whose tomb is situated in the Church. It is said that Mary, a maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth I and was a candidate for the "Dark Lady" of Shakespeare's sonnets.

                                     

St James' Church, Gawsworth

I also found out that the cross in the grounds of the church is also listed and dates to the same age as the original church. The Cross has carvings of animals which represents the expulsion of evil spirits. Unfortunately I didn't take a photo of this for which I'm kicking myself for so I feel another trip coming on to the church. The Gate posts in the photo above date from the 18th Century and are Grade 2 listed. The posts have engravings of Skull and Cross Bones on them.

We decided to complete another cache within the area so hopped back in the car and drove to the parking spot. Whilst passing through the centre of the village I saw a triangular lawn with a cross and memorial on it. So as usual when I see unusual things, I stopped the car and got out for a closer look. I was really interested to see a World War I Monument on the green, also behind this was some sort of stone plinth and across from it was an old water pump. I didn't pay much attention to either the stone plinth of the water pump but did take some pictures as I was more interested in the monument. However when I went to research this momument, the one thing that did take me by surprise was the history behind the plinth. I found out that it was a Medieval Preaching Cross and is not only listed as a scheduled monument, its also a National Monument with English Heritage.

Medieval Preaching Cross

Standing Crosses are usually of stone and date from the medieval period, mid 10th to mid 16th centuries AD. They served a variety of purposes from places of prayer and pilgrimage to places of public proclamation. At one time, there were over 12,000 of these crosses throughout Britain but many were destroyed during the reformation. There are now less than 2000 crosses remaining, many incomplete.

World War I Monument

So for me today has not only been about grabbing those caches. Its also been a day of research and learning about the local history. It's funny, when I was at school, I hated everything about History and its only now that I'm really beginning to appreciate what came before. I honestly wish I had payed more attention as actually it really is interesting.