Cross & Hand Stone Stone, Dorset

The lonely Cross and Hand stone stands on the Wessex Ridgeway. It is near the crossing of the Ridgeway and the road over the hill, with a commanding view to the north at the path takes a gentle down grade. It does not have the characteristic of a prehistoric stone, but is more likelay a mark stone or perhaps a relic of a former cross - in medieval times abbeys often erected crosses as way markers, and this is near the former Benedictine abbey of Cerne Abbas.

The stone immortalised by Hardy in Tess of the D'Urbervilles, and he took an alternative view in The Lost Pyx