One the primary images in English parish churches, if not the primary devotional image, on the cusp of the Reformation, was the great Rood, a Crucifix with accompanying figures of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St John. The Rood, its name derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for tree, was invariably placed on a beam under the arch that formed the threshold between two spaces in the church building, the nave, where the people gathered for worship and the chancel that contained the high altar, at which the Mass was celebrated.
The ragged remnant – the surviving medieval rood crosses from pre-Reformation Britain – YouTube