The Market Cross, or Butter Cross, at Witney, Oxfordshire (Fig. [14]), was built, according to Joseph Skelton, by William Blake, of Coggs, in 1683. Lavish renovation has now robbed it of much of its proper charm, but the planning of the roof, with its gables facing four ways, constitutes an entirely delightful composition.
At Milverton, Somersetshire, the Market Cross, commonly called Fair Cross, was standing, and is referred to in an indenture dated March 1715 (Fig. [185]). The vane bore the date 1706. Eight cylindrical columns of stone, surrounding the base and shaft of a medieval cross, sustained the shelter, above which was an upper chamber, used for storage only, access thereto being obtained by means of a ladder through the window opening in one of the sides. The chamber was covered with a slate-healed pyramid of eight cants. The cross, which, strangely enough, was in private ownership, was demolished by the proprietor himself in or about 1850.
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.
As the seventeenth century advanced the market cross exhibited more and more marked divergence from the original architectural forms, including the abandonment of the cross on the summit, and the adoption, in many instances, of a sundial in place of the cross. This tendency only increased in the eighteenth century. Instances of it are afforded by the market crosses—rectangular on plan—at Woodstock (Fig. [189]) and Wakefield (Fig. [190]). Other eighteenth-century market crosses, e.g., those of Bungay (1789) (Fig. [187]) and Swaffham (1783) (Fig. [188]), might almost be mistaken in appearance for bandstands, but from the fact that, aloft upon their lead-covered domes, the allegorical figure of Justice, emphasising the duty of fair dealing, continues to proclaim their purpose of open-air shelters for the transaction of business.