A discussion centred on the Glastonbury Cross, an object claimed by the 12th-century monks of Glastonbury Abbey to have been excavated from above a Dark Age grave in their cemetery and inscribed with the name Arturius or Arthur. The text is substantially that of an article written for Pendragon, the Journal of the Pendragon Society, in late 1997.
Cross purposes
On April Fool’s Day, 1982, an extraordinary story broke nationally in the UK. Back in November 1981 Derek Mahoney, while searching through mud excavated from an Essex lake, found a small lead cross. At the British Museum the Keeper of Medieval and Later antiquities noted that the cross was within an eighth of an inch of the size of the cross alleged to have been found above King Arthur’s grave at Glastonbury in 1191. But, following on from his family’s dispute with solicitors over a house sale, Mahoney said he had subsequently buried the cross in a “completely waterproof” container “well down in the ground” because possession of the cross gave him “power and authority”.
Where exactly had he got this cross? Dredging operations at the lake at Forty Hall, Enfield in Essex had revealed, he said, some old Elizabethan bricks in a wall, and later a knife — and the cross. These were all photographed. When the foreman involved in the pond-clearing apparently raised no objections,¹ Derek Mahoney took the objects home. Enfield Council, after hearing of the cross from a report in The Enfield Advertiser, successfully prosecuted him for retaining an object discovered on their land. He was jailed for contempt of court.
After nine months, Mahoney was brought before a High Court judge to reconsider. He refused. With remission his sentence would have ended in July 1983. But then, on March 21st 1983 , he was released. The judge said there was “no point” in his serving any more of his sentence as he was prepared to stay in prison “until doomsday” rather than give up the cross. A curious legal decision!
Suspicions were aroused, however, when it emerged that Mahoney was once employed by Lesney Toys as a mould maker. Geoffrey Ashe considered the whole affair to be “a false alarm”. And yet there were attenuating circumstances.
Continue reading “Arthur’s cross?”
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