ON the trail of the mystery roadside cross....

A convincing explanation has been put forward for the existence of the granite cross, which stands alongside the A64 between Sherburn and Potter Brompton.

It would also appear to reconcile the two opposing views that, on the one hand, it is a memorial to a gamekeeper and, on the other, that it is a monument to a huntsman.

Peter Mattinson, from Sherburn, got in touch with the Gazette & Herald after speaking to local historian John Clark. He told us that the existing cross is actually a memorial to a huntsman called Fife, who had an accident while hunting there in 1874. He was taken on a gate to Ganton Hall, which is where he actually lived.

A gamekeeper called Atkinson was shot and killed nearby, Mr Mattinson tells us, but this happened in 1904. A memorial stone did exist for the gamekeeper, who Mr Mattinson says was one of his relations, but over the years, it has disappeared.

However, we have also been contacted by Pickering man Edgar Stead, who says that the stone is a memorial to his mother's uncle, whose name, he thinks, was George Postel. Mr Stead said the incident happened nearly 90 years ago and he got the story from his mother.

Mr Postel was one of three gamekeepers on an estate - he believes it was the Ganton estate. On the fatal day, there were three suspected poachers on the estate and as Mr Postel approached them, one of the men opened fire, fatally wounding Mr Postel.

The granite cross was erected in his memory. The three poachers, Mr Stead says, were a father and two sons. They were tried and convicted; all were sent to prison where one of them died.

The Gazette & Herald has also received a letter from Richard Clive that sheds light on the stone. It was his great-grandfather who died as a result of a hunting accident. William Henry Fife, who had married Miss Caroline Legard in 1865 was 55 at the time of his death. He had been fatally injured on February 23, 1874, and died the following day.

Mr Clive says it would have been the Legard family that erected the cross in memory of Mr Fife.

The couple had two children, one of whom was Mr Clive's grandfather, Col Ronald Fife, who married Mr Clive's grandmother, Margaret Rutson, who lived in and inherited Nunnington Hall. Their daughter Susan, was Mr Clive's mother.

Updated: 10:02 Thursday, March 21, 2002