The Great Merestone medieval boundary marker on Finlow Hill, 245m east of Mottram House

Listed on the National Heritage List for England. Search over 400,000 listed places

Overview

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1020194
Date first listed:: 19-Jul-2001

The Missing Pieces Project

Share your view of unique places.

Add your contribution

Location

Location of this list entry and nearby places that are also listed. Use our map search to find more listed places.

This map is for quick reference purposes only and may not be to scale.

What is the National Heritage List for England?

The National Heritage List for England is a unique register of our country's most significant historic buildings and sites. The places on the list are protected by law and most are not open to the public.

The list includes:

🏠 Buildings
🏰 Scheduled monuments
🌳 Parks and gardens
⚔️ Battlefields
⚓ Shipwrecks

Find out more about listing

Historic England Archive

Search over 1 million photographs and drawings from the 1850s to the present day using our images archive.

Find Photos

Official list entry

Heritage Category:: Scheduled Monument
List Entry Number:: 1020194
Date first listed:: 19-Jul-2001

Location

The building or site itself may lie within the boundary of more than one authority.

District:: Cheshire East (Unitary Authority)
Parish:: Over Alderley
National Grid Reference:: SJ 86135 76774

Reasons for Designation

The Great Merestone medieval boundary marker on Finlow Hill, 245m east of Mottram House, appears on a description of the parish and estate boundaries of the area of Alderley Edge dated 1598. The stone is known locally as the `Great Merestone' and has attracted much attention as a semi-sacred object. Together with two other markers on the Edge they constitute an uncommon survival of medieval boundaries and provide important evidence of the extent of the medieval parochial and estate landholdings. Although the site is not open to the public, the stone is visible from the road from Finlow Hill Lane to Bradford Lodge, and so the monument provides an educational resource for the numerous visitors to this area.

Details

The monument includes a large boulder, half buried in a field on Finlow Hill. It lies on the former medieval boundary between the parishes of Nether Alderley and Over Alderley, but later agricultural work has removed the bank on which it must have stood. This stone is referred to locally as the `Great Merestone' and is one of a number mentioned in a description of a perambulation of the parish and estate boundaries of May 1598. The stone is a roughly squared boulder about 1.30m in diameter and made of a fine-grained sandstone, possibly a glacial erratic. It stands 0.40m above the present ground level. On the top surface is a damaged carved cross with the arms about 0.30m across.

MAP EXTRACT The site of the monument is shown on the attached map extract. It includes a 2 metre boundary around the archaeological features, considered to be essential for the monument's support and preservation.

Legacy

The contents of this record have been generated from a legacy data system.

Legacy System number:: 33862
Legacy System:: RSM

Sources

Other
Manchester Museum and National Trust Survey, (1998)
Norbury, Mrs , 2000,

Legal

This monument is scheduled under the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Areas Act 1979 as amended as it appears to the Secretary of State to be of national importance. This entry is a copy, the original is held by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.