Tottenham High Cross was erected in Tottenham sometime between 1600 - 1609 by Owen Wood, Dean of Armagh, on the site of a wooden wayside cross first mentioned in 1409, and marks what was the centre of Tottenham Village. There is some speculation that the first structure on the site was a Roman beacon or marker, situated on a low summit on Ermine Street, which became the Tottenham High Road, as it is now known.
The high cross was constructed of plain brick, in an octagonal, four level design, which was later stuccoed and ornamented in the Gothic style in 1809.
Tottenham High Cross is often mistakenly thought to be an Eleanor cross, possibly because it is only a few miles south of one of the true Eleanor crosses at Waltham Cross.
Famous quotes containing the words high and/or cross:
“From low to high doth dissolution climb,
And sink from high to low, along a scale
Of awful notes, whose concord shall not fail;”
—William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“It is an agreeable change to cross a lake, after you have been shut up in the woods, not only on account of the greater expanse of water, but also of sky. It is one of the surprises which Nature has in store for the traveler in the forest. To look down, in this case, over eighteen miles of water, was liberating and civilizing even.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)