153. NORWICH
MARKET CROSS, WITH PLAN AND DETAIL
154. LICHFIELD
MARKET CROSS
155. TAUNTON, SOMERSETSHIRE
MARKET CROSS
At Shepton Mallet a market cross (Fig. [152]) was erected in 1500 by private benefaction, as recorded on the original engraved brass, or latten plate, attached to the structure. The text of the inscription (see Fig. [151]) (in modernised spelling) is as follows: "Of your charity pray for the souls of Walter Buckland, and Agnes his wife, with whose goods this cross was made in the year of our Lord God, 1500, whose obit shall be kept for ever in this parish church of Shepton Mallet, the 28th day of November, whose souls Jesu pardon." "There are certain lands, apparently a part of the Bucklands' bequest, the revenues of which are devoted to keeping the cross in repair, any surplus being distributed among the poor. This 'Cross Charity,'" as it is called, "was formerly administered by trustees, but has recently"—the passage was written in 1907—"been transferred to the Urban Council. The title-deeds have long been lost; and some years ago the Charity Commissioners were inclined to" alienate "the property from the cross." The trustees, however, tenaciously fulfilled their obligations, "and from 1841 onwards, if not before, kept the cross in thorough repair." (Dr F. J. Allen.) The character of the cross has been so much changed from time to time by reconstruction and misrestoration, that it has now become impossible to determine what the ancient design really was; but it seems to have consisted of a shelter very like that formerly at Axbridge, with a central spire like that formerly at Taunton (Fig. [155]). From the presence of pinnacles at the angles there can be deduced but one logical conclusion, viz., that the piers must have been, and should yet be, buttressed. The buttresses, however, have completely disappeared. The frequent traffic of heavy vehicles—for the market was once much busier than it has become since the introduction of the railway—would probably have damaged the projecting buttresses; and their omission, therefore, curtailing the extent of the area occupied by the cross, may have been designed to lessen the liability of the latter to collisions with market carts. It is supposed that the top of the central spire fell in the eighteenth century, damaging the substructure. Anyhow, at some time in the seventeenth, or in the early part of the eighteenth century, the hexagonal shelter was taken down from around the central pier (which still remains intact), and was then rebuilt in its present form, portions only of the old Gothic parapet, and the pinnacles, being re-used. This rebuilding has escaped record, but that it did take place the internal evidence of the structure itself makes sufficiently obvious. The absence, already mentioned, of buttresses; the clumsy, square blocks which do duty for the bases of the piers; the classic imposts of the latter, and the depressed arches (unconstructional, because they are not turned with voussoirs, but formed each of one huge pair of stones, cambered to simulate an arch in outline), and the exaggeratedly prominent keystones, could never have been perpetrated at the early date of 1500, but at some subsequent rebuilding, of which the sum of them affords cumulative and convincing proof. Charles Pooley (Old Stone Crosses of Somerset, 1877) states that the cross was rebuilt from the ground in 1841: but he was clearly mistaken. Dr F. J. Allen, of Cambridge, is positive on this point. His grandfather, as one of the trustees of the Shepton Mallet cross, was largely responsible for the rebuilding in question; and his own mother and uncle, living as children in their father's house, facing the cross, were eye-witnesses of the progress of the work, and could distinctly remember that only the spire above the roof was reconstructed. Minor repairs may have been done at the same time to the rest of the building, but it was certainly not taken down bodily. The architect employed was G. B. Manners, of Bath; and it is claimed that his design for the modern spire is a careful reproduction of the original one. To what extent this is the case may perhaps be judged by comparing the spire actually standing with an illustration, which appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine, 1781, from a drawing made in 1747. The latter may be faulty, but, such as it is, its value as a record can scarcely be overrated, since it furnishes the earliest extant version of Shepton Mallet cross. The accompanying letterpress says: "On the top of the cross, on the east side, are figures in niches, and, above all, a modern weathercock." The engraving, it is true, shows figures on more sides of the head than one; but the discrepancy need not be material, if one may conjecture that all the figures, other than those on the east side, had perished in the interval between 1747 and 1781. In any event the massive, carved stone cylinder, depicted as capping the spire in 1747, cannot have been the original cross-head of 1500, which, according to Pooley, was "a heavy, lantern-shaped stone, bearing figures of our Saviour on the cross between two malefactors, besides the images of several saints." This cross-head was probably removed at the time of the rebuilding of the shelter; and the cross-head which succeeded it is most likely the same one which fell, as already mentioned, in the eighteenth century. Pooley concludes his notice of Shepton Mallet cross thus: "Some of the fragments of the old cross I saw lying in a builder's yard at Darshill," a hamlet in Shepton Mallet parish. "A grandson of that builder," writes Dr F. J. Allen, in September 1919, "now living at Shepton, states that he can well remember his grandfather selling a selection of those fragments to Lord Portman, who removed them to his house at Blandford."