IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Hurst Cross, ASHTON-UNDER-LYNE, OL6 9EQ

https://www.bench-marks.org.uk/bm91192

Viewed from the top deck of a bus on Kings Road.

Hurst Cross stands at the junction of Kings Road with Queens Road and Lees Road, Ashton under Lyne.

According to the Public Monuments and Sculpture Association (link no loner available) Hurst Cross was erected in 1868 on what was assumed to be the site of a former cross. In the 1860s older local inhabitants remembered a heap of stones placed in a circular form by the junction although these had been gradually removed. A committee of local businessmen and members of the Hurst Local Board, under the chairmanship of Handel Wallwork, arranged for the collection of subscriptions, the release of the necessary land from the Earl of Stamford, and the design of the cross. The foundation stone was laid by Oldham Whittaker on Easter Monday, 1868 in a colourful ceremony which concluded with a dinner for 170 gentlemen at the Hurst Mechanics' Institute. Whittaker, with his brother John, was the largest employer in Hurst. Besides commemorating the earlier cross, it was suggested that the new cross might be associated with the recent extension of parliamentary democracy following the passing of the Reform Act. The cross itself was erected within four months though it was not to be until October 1869 that the Hurst Memorial Cross Committee finally handed it over it to the Hurst Local Board. The finished memorial was surrounded by railings and included a lamp.

The Royal Oak at Hurst Cross. Dating back to 1868 it has been a John Smith's house since 1939. Image

The cross was provided by public subscription in the Victorian era, but it has since been moved a little from its original site. It still gives its name to the locality.

(If only we could Photoshop out those lampposts!) Hurst Cross is the name of a small area of Ashton-Under-Lyne. In the first half of the nineteenth century, Hurst Cross was a very small hamlet composed of a single street, commencing at where the cemetery is now and ending where Image] is now (see https://web.archive.org/web/20060620100649/http://www.certificates.fsnet.co.uk/OLDHURST.htm for Aaron Miller's recollections of Hurst and Hurst brook from 1832). This substantial stone cross was built in 1868 - presumably the road from Ashton to Lees had been made by then. It is at the junction of King's Road with Queen's Road and Lees Road. It is interesting to compare the view now, with http://www.c5d.co.uk/hurstpages.php , a photograph taken ca1900