Aymer Vallance

“ Tradition says that a favourite sport of the place used to be squirrel-baiting. A sufficient number of wild squirrels having been caught for the purpose, would be turned loose in the village, where the crowds, surrounding them in a ring, with shouts and all manner of hideous noises, proceeded to hunt and beat their helpless victims to death. Sometimes the terrified little creatures would vainly seek refuge by running up the cross and trying to hide behind the pinnacles and tabernacle work. ”

“ Of Banbury Cross, Oxfordshire, immortalised in nursery rhyme, it is much to be regretted that no vestige remains. John Leland, between about 1535 and 1545, writes in his Itinerary: "At the west part of the street," which runs east and west through the town, "is a large area, having a goodly cross with many degrees (steps) about it. In this area is kept every Thursday a very celebrate market."
As the churchyard or village cross was the centre of the life of the smaller community, so also the market cross became the centre of the municipal life of towns and boroughs. ”

“ On the knop, below the kneeling figure, is a shield with an unidentified charge, a square object entirely composed of vertical flutings, above an oak leaf. The top surface of the head is almost flat, and appears to have borne a capstone, the dowel holes for attaching which yet remain. The shaft is let into a plain square socket. The cross, though weathered, is in wonderful preservation, and is now protected by an iron railing. It is not known ever to have stood on any other than the present site. ”

“ In the churchyard of Newmarket, Flintshire (Figs. 90, 91) , stands a remarkable cross, with octagonal socket and shaft, both having diamond-pointed stops. The shaft is 6 ft. 5 in. high, and surmounted with a massive capital or knop. The head is tabernacled on all four faces, but its end niches are empty. The niches of the obverse and reverse have each a crucifixion, the one unaccompanied, the other between Mary and John. This curious anomaly of a double yet divergent representation in one and the same cross-head occurs also at Mitton, Yorkshire. The cross-head at Newmarket measures 3 ft. ”

“ It would seem that, at first, there was no difference of form between the market or village cross and the normal churchyard cross of shaft-on-steps type. But as the need developed of providing for the greater comfort and convenience of folk gathered round the cross for market business, the demand was met by erecting a penthouse roof about the lower part of the already existing cross. Such a transformation is known to have taken place at Norwich, and obviously also must have been effected at Castle Combe in Wiltshire, Bingley in Yorkshire, and at Axbridge and Cheddar in Somersetshire. ”

“ There was ample room to walk round upon the lead-covered roof between the lantern and the embattled parapet. The latter was ornamented at every angle of the octagon with a standard, or post, surmounted by a little ape holding a rod with a vane attached. "The whole was set out and beautified with branches of lead, and, upon all squares (faces) little panels of lead like coats of arms gilt, and a great ornament to the place." The cross, unfortunately, perished in the general conflagration at Northampton, on 20th September 1675. ”

“ The Butter Cross, at Winchester (Fig. 145) , stands on the pavement alongside the High Street, at the point whence a narrow lane leads to the north-west angle of the cathedral churchyard. The cross is remarkable for its lightness and the gracefulness of its proportions. It is mounted on five octagonal steps; it is square on plan, and is enhanced by pinnacles and two tiers of flying buttresses. The open arches of the lowest stage are four-centred, and surround a central shaft. The next stage above forms an open tabernacle for statues, of which, however, by 1741, only one original figure, 5 ft. ”

“ At first sight the cross looks much like a variety of monolith, but the cross-head is in fact worked in a separate block of stone. The shortness of the arms, as compared with the height of the upper limb, is striking. Another feature is a small niche or hollow sunk in the face of the cross at the point of intersection. For the rest, the socket does not differ at all from many examples occurring in the shaft-on-steps group. ”

“ The fully developed cross of this sort consists of steps or calvary, socket, shaft or stem, capital or knop, and head. The latter, it should be remarked, is that part of the cross which, no doubt on account of the sacred or legendary significance of the figures sculptured upon it, is now most commonly absent. The remaining elements consisting of such simple units, it is truly wonderful how great variety of treatment is to be observed in crosses of the kind. The resources of their design may almost be said to be unlimited. ”

“ At Lymm, Cheshire, though no market is now held there, the old Market Cross remains, a quaint and unusual structure, standing on the top of a boulder, with steps partly hewn out of the natural rock (Fig. 183) . The cross is built of stone, and consists of a massive central pier, square on plan, between four smaller piers, likewise square, supporting the roof at the corners. The roof, cross-ridged, has pediments facing four ways, and surmounted each by a substantial hip-knob. On the faces of the pediments are sundials. ”

“ In the centre is a solid stone pier, encircled by seats for the market women. The interior construction of the roof is a fine example of carpentry (Fig. 179) .
At Oundle, Northamptonshire, stood a market cross, very like the last-named, octagonal on plan, with an eight-sided pyramidal roof, covered with Colly Weston slates, and supported by eight wooden posts (Fig. 168) . The interior comprised a central shaft, with a square socket, bearing the date 1591, and mounted on two octagonal steps of stone, having overhanging drips. The cross, not mentioned by Bridges, has long since been demolished. ”

“ In the English market crosses, on the contrary, the shaft, rising from the floor and passing right up through the roof, sustains the lantern from directly underneath.
Salisbury Poultry Cross (Figs. 159, 160) must originally have been constructed in the same way, but, some time before May 1789 (see illustration in Archæologia, Vol. IX., p. 373) the whole of the original superstructure above the roof had perished. The pinnacles, flying buttresses, and lantern, which now crown the roof, are only a modern restoration, albeit a very excellent one. The plan of the Poultry Cross is hexagonal. ”

“ A certain peculiarity, occasionally to be found in churchyard crosses, is the scooping out of a cavity or cavities in the base or steps—cavities resembling nothing so much as the hollows in the beheading block at the Tower of London. An instance of this feature, believed to have been designed as a receptacle for offerings, occurs in the churchyard cross at Bishop's Lydeard (Fig. 20) in the second step from the lowest one. ”

“ The shaft is square on plan, changing, by means of stops, into an octagon. The stops, however, instead of terminating in diamond-points, or otherwise dying away into the chamfer, are crowned with engaged pinnacles, extending some way up the canted sides, a most unusual and charming device. It is a misfortune that the effect of this fine cross is spoilt by the faulty, modern treatment of the upper portion of the stem, which, being made too short, is obliged to contract much too abruptly to the junction with the head. ”

“ In the fully matured market cross the whole structure is one organism, planned as such from the outset; but there are, on the other hand, some obvious instances of adaptation, where the encircling umbrella is, as it were, an after-thought, having been built up to and about a previously existing cross of the shaft-on-steps type. ”

“ The cross-head at Mitton, Yorkshire (Figs. 194, 195) , is peculiar inasmuch as the crucifixion is sculptured on both faces, but in totally different fashions. That on the west face has the arms stretched horizontally, within a sexfoil [162] frame, and might well be of the thirteenth century. Whereas the sculpture on the east face, though much more weatherworn, is of a style that could not have been designed before the late-fourteenth, or perhaps even the fifteenth century. The arms of the Christ in this instance are drawn upwards in an unusually oblique direction. ”

“ At Ashton-under-Hill, Gloucestershire, the face of the shaft of the cross, about a third of the distance up from the bottom, is ornamented with a scutcheon. A certain number of Somersetshire crosses has a figure under a niche on one side of the shaft. In cases where, as at Burton St David, Broadway, Holford, Montacute, and Wiveliscombe, the niche and figure are sunk into the body of the monolith itself, there can scarcely be any objection to the device. ”

“ PLAN OF MARKET CROSS
At Malmesbury, Wiltshire, there stands, some 200 ft. directly south of the south end of the old transept of the Abbey Church, and about 50 ft. east of the south-east angle of St Paul's Parish Church, a handsome market cross (Figs. 156, 157, 158) of the same type as those of Cheddar, Chichester, and Salisbury. The following is Leland's account of the cross: "There is a right fair and costly piece of work in the market place, made all of stone, and curiously vaulted, for poor market folks to stand dry when rain cometh. ”

“ At Castle Combe, Wiltshire, the Market Cross is apparently another instance where the shelter was built up over an already existing stone cross (Figs. 173, 176) . The latter has a bold, square socket, sculptured with late-Gothic tracery ornament. The shelter seems to be sixteenth-century work. Its pyramidal roof, supported on four stone piers, had lost the original summit of the cross-shaft before Buckler made his drawing of the north-west view of the cross. It was then surmounted by a sundial of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. ”

“ Nay, its claims are, if anything, more insistent than ever, for, the vital necessity of concentrating our energies on the attainment of victory having passed away, the nation is now at leisure "to pour out its mourning heart in memorials that will tell the generations to come how it realised the bitterness and glory of the years of the Great War." ”

“ In the seventeenth century, apparently, the cross was surrounded by sixteen pillars, i.e., eight large and eight intermediate pillars of slenderer size, to support a flat leaded roof for the shelter of the market people—an addition which totally altered the aspect of the original spire-shaped cross. Meanwhile, in the first year of Edward VI., the crucifixes which had adorned the cross were taken down by order of the King's visitors. The standard weights and measures of the city used to be kept in the market cross. ”