contribution #406

contents

{
  "description": "A small piece of the wood of the Holy Rood, set in a modest mounting, originally in the knop in the foot of the cup of Dame Margery FitzHardy given to S. Helene in Wenlock in 1402. Pried from the knop by Sir John FitzHardye with a small clamp and a chisel on a Friday in the fourth week of Lent 1538, before the silver of the cup went into the kitchen-fire; wrapped in a piece of clean linen. Found, still wrapped, in a hollow under the threshold-stone of the oratory at Astley by the antiquarian Mr. Quintin Allardyce, the night of 7 October 1819. Returned to its hollow the morning after. The oratory was wainscotted over a fortnight later; the wainscot was removed in 1937; the threshold is now beneath the hardwood floor of an assembly room."
}