Colour and grey tattoo of a winged cross with a red rose and an In Loving Memory banner on the outer thigh, in traditional style.

Winged cross with red rose on thigh

Traditional · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A grey shaded cross with feathered angel wings spreads behind a red rose at its centre. A ribbon banner across the lower cross reads In Loving Memory, and a second banner below shows 1-7-10. The wings and cross use fine black linework with grey shading, while the rose is rendered in red and green with more detail, and the tattoo is centred on the skin.

Traditional Lettering Thigh Cross Wing Rose Banner Script Number Leaves

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Snow had sealed the Fell road by noon, and Ada Pell counted the candles twice while the lodgers argued over the last of the mutton. At dusk a carrier named Tobias Rook came stamping in from the yard, a flat box under one arm, and he would not set it down until he had taken off his gloves and warmed his fingers at the hearth.

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Inside the box, wrapped in oilcloth, lay a cross of old sycamore. Its arms were carved into shallow wings, and at its centre someone had painted a rose, the red gone soft with years. Beneath the rose ran a strip of paper, folded and refolded, with a date written in ink that had faded to the colour of weak tea. Ada knew the date before she read it. It was the morning her father had walked out past the stable with a lantern, and the snow had come down behind him all day.

Tobias said the cross had hung over the door of the Hollin Gate before the inn had a sign, and that the last landlord had taken it down to sell and then could not bring himself to part with it. He had asked the carrier to bring it up the pass before the thaw, because he had heard Ada kept the old rooms open. Ada turned the cross over in her hands. The wood was cold, but the rose still held a little colour where the varnish had been kept dry.

She hung it above the hearth that night, the wings spread wide over the settle. When the lodgers had gone up and the fire had sunk to a dull glow, the rose caught the last of the light, and for a moment it looked as though it had been painted that morning.