Otto De Tilli

The Hall Cross, as it is now called, bore this inscription ;
ickst : est : lacruich : ote : n : tilli : a : ki :
ALME : DEU : EN : face : MERCI : AM :

There can be little doubt that this Otto de Tilli is the same person whose name appears as a witness to several grants about the middle of the twelfth century, and who was Seneschal to the Earl of Conisborough. It stood uninjured
till the Great Rebellion, when the Earl of Manchester’s army, on their way from the South to the siege of York in the year 1644, chose to do the Lord service by defacing it. ” And the said Earl of Manchester’s men, endeavouring to pull the whole shank down, got a smith’s forge-hammer and broke off the four corner crosses ; and then fastened ropes to the middle cross which was stronger and higher, thinking by that to pull the whole shank down. But a stone breaking off, and falling upon one of the men’s legs, which was nearest it, and breaking his leg, they troubled themselves no more about it.”

The pillar was composed of five columns, a large one in the middle, and four smaller ones around it, answering pretty nearly to the cardinal points: each column was surmounted by a cross, that in the middle being the highest and proportionally large. There were numeral figures on the south face, near the top, which seem to have been intended for a dial; the circumference of the pillar was eleven feet seven, the height eighteen feet.

William Paterson, in the year of his mayoralty 1678, beautified it with four dials, ball and fane :” in 1 792, when Henry Heaton was Mayor, it was taken down, because of its decayed state, and a new one of the same form was erected by the roadside, a furlong to the south of its former site, on Hop-cross hill. This was better than destroying the cross; and as either renovation or demolition had become necessary, the Corporation are to be commended for what they did. But it is no longer the same cross, nor on the same site which had once been consecrated, and where many a passing prayer had been breathed in simplicity and sincerity of heart.

Source: Robert Southey (12 August 1774 – 21 March 1843) ‘The Doctor’

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