' AMNEY HOLY-ROOD, -Under a heap of rubbish deposited in a small recess on the south side of the church of Amney Crucis, the doorwav of an ancient Rood staircase. I was fortunate enough to find the head of the old Cross, whose base and shaft stand in the adjoining churchyard.

The name of this parish is properly Amney of the Holy-Rood. It is commonly called Amney Crucis. The title first occurs in a grant of William II., which recites that the Benedictine Abbey of Tewkesbury was seized of court-leets, waifs, and felons' goods in Amney Holy-Rood. In Domesday Book the three parishes of Amney Holy-Rood. Amney S. Mary, and Amney S. Peter, which arc all contiguous to each other, are included under the general appellation of Omenie. or Omenel, more frequently the former, so that historians have found no little difficulty in assigning the different manors and dependencies of each parish to their proper place in the survey,

Rudder is of opinion that the parish is called Holy-Rood - on account of a large Cross' erected there ; and because our Saxon ancestors called the Cross pahj nobe. And Sir Robert Atkyns says it is derived from the Holy-Rood in the church, and to distinguish it from other parishes. Most of the Roods were pulled down in the churches before Elizabeth's accession to the throne, so that none probably remained in the church at Amney when Sir Robert Atkyns wrote - a hundred and fifty years afterwards. Rudder's reason for the parish being called Holy-Rood is founded on the supposition that the Cross and the Holy-Rood are synonymous. The latter, however, is such a particular and recognised form of the ordinary representation of the Crucifix, that it may be said to constitute a distinction between them. For example, the complete Rood was always accompanied by the figures of S. John and the Virgin placed one on each side of the Cross, in allusion to the 26th verse of the ipth chapter of S. John, 'When Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciple standing by, whom he loved,' &c. In the Articles of Visitation for the diocese of Canterbury, set forth by Cardinal Pole, in 1567, it is asked ' Whether they have a Rood in their church of a decent stature with Mary and John.' In the 'Ancient Rites of Durham,' p. 57, the following passage occurs, in allusion to the Rood : ' Also, above the height of all upon the wall stood the goodliest and most famous Rood that was in all this land, with the picture of Mary on one side of our Saviour, and that of S. John on the other.' A church was built here before the time of the Conquest, but the Cross is of some centuries' later date. It consists of two steps measuring respectively 7 ft. 6 in. and 5 ft. square, a handsome octagonal socket, hewn out of a solid block of stone, having its upper face worked into a deep drip moulding.... '