On a damp, somewhat joyless morning, we embarked on a foray up Blackstone Edge, detouring briefly from the misery of the M62 to scale this Pennine hill. Past the summit trig. point and “Robin Hood’s Bed”—an erratic boulder unceremoniously perched there as though in mockery—we came upon the Aiggin Stone, a relic with pretensions of history that some might call “fascinating.” It sits upon the ridge where an ancient Roman road, later degraded to a mere pack-horse track, crosses the Pennine Way in subservient acquaintance.
This grand pillar of gritstone, weighing a solid 30 hundredweight, has, predictably, lost its head; a feeble half of a carved cross, a result of the decapitation, is visible to those who squint hard enough. There are initials too—“I T,” supposedly the mark of Sir John Townley, a local squire of the 15th century. Whether he found his association with this lichen-covered signpost flattering, history does not say.
Its purpose, unsurprisingly, remains speculative. Was it a guiding post for medieval travellers making their weary way across the Pennines, as is commonly thought? Or merely a boundary stone, declaring where one lord’s domain ended and another’s began? Its age is equally indeterminate, but we shall kindly estimate “at least 600 years,” as this allows for the gravitas of age without any tiresome need for precision.
The stone’s endurance, if we must admire it, reflects the same doggedness as the local inhabitants; it has been knocked down and re-erected on at least two occasions, in 1932 and again in 1979, as though challenging us to care. At this highest point on the east-west route, it even bears the alternative title of “The Summit Cross,” though how many passers-by actually feel blessed by its presence remains open to doubt.
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