Above the village on Batcombe Hill, an area of outstanding natural beauty offering views over Somerset clear to the Bristol Channel, there stands an upright stone pillar a little under four feet in height.
This pillar, which is a monolith of hard oolithic stone, with fragments of fossils appearing on its surface, stems from a rectangular base, chamfered at the four angles, measuring about 7 inches by 8 inches, the longest sides facing to the east and west. It is difficult to make out but above this base runs a semi-circular moulding. Rising from this moulding is the major part of the pillar; its statistics measured by circumference being 34 inches at the lower part, 33 inches in the middle and 28 inches at the top of the shaft. The overall height is just 46 inches. These measurements were taken on the 16th of July 1889. Round the top of the shaft runs another semi-circular moulding similar to that at the base and it is topped off by a spherical capital.
This stone known as the Cross-in-Hand has been described as mystic, it has been suggested it could be the site of a harrowing murder or perhaps a miracle; on the other hand it may just be a mislaid boundary marker. It has been stated that a devotional cross once stood here and the pillar or stump is all that remains. No recognised authority has said what its purpose is or what it represents.
Nevertheless over the years it has attracted much interest. In his novel ‘Tess’ Thomas Hardy’s character Alex D’Uberville claims that the pillar is a “Holy Cross” but turn a few pages and a passing shepherd suggests to Tess “…’Tis a thing of ill-omen miss…”
In 1889 the Revd. C.R. Baskett related a legend, which he credited to a Mrs Cockeram “whose whole life was spent near Batcombe Hill, and whose memory was stored with Dorset legends.”
The legend has it that back in the middle ages, one dark and stormy winter’s night the Batcombe priest was called out to administer holy communion to a man close to death. Taking pyx and his service book the priest set off travelling through the storm across Batcombe Down to the sick man’s house. On arriving he found that he had dropped the pyx on the way and so he ventured forth back into the storm faced with the hopeless task of finding it.
Back on Batcombe Down he saw a pillar of fire reaching from heaven to earth and shining in the night. He could make out cattle kneeling in a circle around the pyx and the steady beam of light. According to Mrs Cockeram the stone is all that remains of a cross that was set up here. Hardy’s poem ‘The Lost Pyx’ is based on this legend.
