Reference has already been made to the destruction of crosses in 1577 in and about Chester. In that year Sheriff Mutton seems to have distinguished himself in this work, as we read that he pulled down certain crosses by a commission from the Archbishop’s visitors. Some probably had disappeared at an earlier date, for in 1543 the city mason was paid two days’ wages “for shiftyinge the cross” at St. Mary’s-on-the-Hill. No doubt at this period many of the churchyard crosses in the county, as well as in the city, were demolished. This was often done by shortening the shaft, thus taking away the cross itself, and using the portion that was left as the basis for a sun-dial. This was sometimes a flat one, as at St. Mary’s-on-the-Hill, Chester, and sometimes a four-sided one, as at Acton, where a very elaborate one of the latter description may be seen. In this latter case the base, out of which the octagonal shaft rises, rests upon a pedestal of three steps, and the square stone, with its dial-face on each side, is surmounted by a round knob. On the top of the cube there was this inscription: on the north, “Tempus fugit: mors venit”; and on the south, “Ut hora: sic vita.” Originally this cross must have been very fine in its proportions, and a conspicuous object, whether it occupied its present position (at the west of the church) or not. In the churchyard of St. John the Baptist, Chester, is a sun-dial, which probably stands where the _Churchyard Cross_ stood, as marked in an old plan of the end of the fifteenth century preserved in the British Museum. In the old chapter-house of this church are preserved some fragments of crosses of a remarkable character. They are of beautiful design, and are fully described by the Bishop of Bristol in vol. xlix. of the _British Archæological Journal_. He assigns them to the pre-Norman period, and designates them as British, and prior to 903, when the Bréts were driven out of this part of England. In his opinion the fragments of two beautiful sculptured shafts are as fine in their work as any of the pre-Norman monuments left in England. Fragments of crosses of a similar character, and probably of a similar date, are to be found at Neston, Bromborough, and West Kirby, and a portion of one from Hilbre Island is now in the Grosvenor Museum at Chester. Most of these have circular wheel heads with three projections, a type of cross which (according to Mr. Romilly Allen) is common to North Wales and Cornwall, but does not appear to be known elsewhere. Some of the crosses here mentioned, besides others elsewhere, as at Disley (now at Lyme Hall) and at Cheadle, have no doubt been sepulchral, either as headstones or flat ones. Some, however, have been _Churchyard_ or _Preaching Crosses_, and a notable instance of this is to be found in the fragments now preserved at Bromborough. The late Mr. E. W. Cox gave a very accurate and careful description of these, and a design