Ackworth, West Yorkshire

The area around Ackworth may have been settled about 500–600 by settlers from modern-day Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands after the departure of the Romans from Britain. In terms of Christianity, the first church may have appeared in Ackworth between 750 and 800, a well-established tradition being that the monks of Lindisfarne, escaping the Norse invasion, stopped there about 875, bringing with them the body of Saint Cuthbert.

One reason given for erecting the cross was as a memorial to plague victims, possibly of the Black Death of 1349, which would have killed many. Standing at the junction of Sandy Gate Lane on the road into Pontefract, the stone too is a Grade II listed monument. Plague stones were "receptacles for sterilising coins in vinegar, normally at or close to parish boundaries." This suggests that the current location of the plague stone was the outer rim of the parish. The plague in 1645 was said to have killed 153, the bodies being buried in a "burial field... crossed by the footpath from Ackworth to Hundhill." and a further 245 were thought to have died "in and around the Wakefield area". One…