Step back in time with our ‘Then and Now’ feature, where vintage postcards meet modern-day reality. Explore the past and present on the same page, and see the evolution of familiar local places.
Leigh was a chapelry of the adjoining village of Yetminster until 1847, when a separate parish was created. The Grade II listed cross was erected in its present position – on a triangular island in the centre of the village, at the junction of the roads to Chetnole and Yetminster – in the mid 19th century, possibly to commemorate the creation of the new parish. The previous location of the base and the shaft remain unknown; the shaft was already very worn in 1905 and the base had wear by possible foot traffic on one face. The stones were probably discovered as rubble, perhaps during the renovation of the church or churchyard in the 1850s and re-purposed as a village cross.
