So, once again, I am forced to apologise for the lack of activity here of late – I expressly didn’t want the blog to be like the diary you start on New Year’s Day, full of good intentions, only for the next entry to be Auntie Mabel’s birthday sometime in July. The same can be said for those of you who I have not yet replied to their emails. So by way of an apology to you all, have a series of posts, starting with this one on the Guide Stoop.
Following on from the revelation here that one of the destinations on the stoop is probably Hayfield, I came across another example of a triangular guide stoop – this one is in the care of Saddleworth Museum and is kept in their outside/garden area.
It originally stood where the Standedge Road meets the A62 Huddersfield Road, and shows 6 destinations, two on each face, including Oldham, Manchester, and Huddersfield. Here’s how it would have originally looked:
So this is similar to how the Glossop guide stoop would have looked… which got me thinking! If its original location was the top of Whitfield Cross, I wonder if the stoop would once have stood on top of the cross shaft. I find it unlikely that the guide stoop makers and installers would have made a new shaft if there was one standing in the right place already. Especially, as we must remember, by this time (early 18th Century) it had already lost its cross head, and due to puritan and Methodist views of the local people, would have lost all of its symbolism as a ‘Christian’ thing. In fact, so much so had it fallen from grace, that less than 100 years later it would be nicked and moved as a prank. So why not bung it on top of this convenient shaft?
Now, there is no evidence for this, and certainly there is no indication that anything was fixed to the remaining portion of the shaft as it is now, but we don’t know what was removed, or has worn away in its intervening 200 years standing as a stile. Just a thought.
The Glossop Cabinet of Curiosities 