Three Legged Cross
| Three Legged Cross | |
| Dorset | |
|---|---|
 Ringwood Road, Three Legged Cross | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SU079057 |
| Location: | 50°51’4"N, 1°53’17"W |
| Data | |
| Population: | 1,500 |
| Post town: | Verwood |
| Postcode: | BH21 |
| Dialling code: | 01202 |
| Local Government | |
| Council: | Dorset |
| Parliamentary constituency: |
Christchurch |
Three Legged Cross is an extended village in Dorset, at the county's eastern border with Hampshire, which is marked by the Moors River just to the east.
Three Legged Cross is, as the name suggests, at a crossroads, a little to the south of the small town of Verwood and to the north of West Moors. Its population in 2014 was estimated at 2,740.
Origins
Various explanations have been put forward for the etymology of 'Three Legged Cross', which is recorded as a name from the sixteenth century onwards. One theory is that a type of gibbet known as a 'three-legged mare' once stood here;[1] another theory is that there may once have been a boundary stone in the area marking the convergence of three great estates: Lord Shaftesbury's to the west, Lord Normanton's to the north and east, and the nineteenth-century banking family, the Rolles-Fryer's, to the south.[2] The simpler explanation is that the name signifies the zigzagging configuration of the B3072 through this district, whereby the road is effectively divided into three separate stretches, or 'legs'.[3]
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Legged Cross Three Legged Cross) |