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Malcolm's Cross, Alnwick, Northumberland



Malcolm's Cross is a commemorative cross standing in a woodland clearing a few yards to the E of the B6341 as it approaches the hilltop N of Alnwick. Carved in grey sandstone in the Gothick style, it comprises an open-centred bracelet cross head with curved foliate ends, standing on a tapering square shaft with festoons and grotesque heads at the top and hollow chamfered corners ornamented with dog-tooth. The cross shaft stands on a carved square pedestal, bedded onto on a stepped stone base and has a considerable amount of historic graffiti, some dated 1799. The pedestal is panelled, with a crowned thistle on the N side and the arms of Scotland bordered by thistles on the S. The E and W sides have inscriptions commemorating the death of Malcolm III of Scotland in the Battle of Alnwick on 13 November 1093 ( though it has been suggested that he actually died by St Leonard's Hospital) and recording the restoration of the cross by Elizabeth Seymour, First Duchess of Northumberland in 1774, as a symbol of the continuing family line, which counted Malcolm as an ancestor. To the W is a square base or socket stone with a fragment of a previous medieval cross fixed into it.