The Market Cross at Nether Stowey, Somersetshire, was erected about
1750 on the site of an earlier cross, of which nothing but a few
fragments of stone from the base had survived. The eighteenth-century
structure was octagonal on plan, eight cylindrical columns supporting
the eight-canted pyramidal roof, from the top of which rose a square
turret, with a clock in the lower part, and a bell in the open
bell-cote at the top (Fig. 184). Having been allowed to fall into
dilapidation, the whole cross was swept away by the lord of the manor
about 1860.
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.
Later restoration, however, has substituted a quasi-Gothic pinnacle.
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. From the centre
of the roof rises a lofty weathercock with a wrought-iron frame.
The Malt Cross at Nottingham stood opposite the lower end of Sheep
Lane, and is said to have been erected in 1714, although the old
vane at the summit bore the date 1686. The structure, hexagonal on
plan, and roofed with a cupola supported on Doric columns, was raised
upon a three-foot high platform of four steps (Fig. 186). The boss
surmounting the cupola had a sundial on each of its six sides. The
Malt Cross was taken down, and the materials were sold by public
auction in October 1804.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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