THE stone seen in Stonecross Road at Kendal by George Denton (Letters, July 21), will be the stone cross that later named the road.

Most likely, it is the town end boundary mark, periodically visited by the boundary walks of the Corporation and Burghers of Kendal under the terms of their charter from the 16th century onwards (see Roger Bingham, Kendal (1995), pages 257-8).

It was there by 1591. Its earliest written reference known to Professor A.H. Smith, The Place-Names of Westmorland (1967), who states that in 1717 it was known as the Cold Stone or Cold Cross, and by 1857 the Call Stone. This means the Cauld Stone (from the market cross, removed in 1765) was not the only one so-named in Kendal.

Jeremy Godwin

Penrith