The Plague Stone

The Plague Stone, also known as Greenaway Cross, is located above Macclesfield Forest in the Parish of Sutton to the south east of Macclesfield. It is basically a rough, unhewn, flat stone with a cross carved on both sides and although it has been used as a wayside cross in more recent years, it may date originally from a much earlier period, perhaps even being of prehistoric origin.

According to Frank Renaud, when Macclesfield was visited by the plague in 1603 and 1646, the stone was used as a “plague cross”, ‘to which country people came to sell their provisions to dwellers in the town. The practice was for sellers to place their goods near the cross and then retire, after which the townspeople came and paid the price marked, letting the money fall into a basin or socket filled with water, by which process all infections were supposed to be destroyed’. This is further confirmed by the presence of an ‘infections hospital’ shown nearby on old OS maps.