See Lincoln (2) for the obelisk on High Bridge
Lincoln was a major medieval religious and economic centre. It must have possessed an abundance of standing crosses of every description and yet, with the exception of the small masonry fragment said to derive from Lincoln’s Eleanor Cross (now at Lincoln Castle), very few traces remain in relic or name.
Of its many markets, only two crosses are recorded: Davies notes: ‘In the Lincoln Corporation Manuscripts (HMC 1895) a Butter Cross is mentioned in the year 1550, and on Dec. 9th, 1572, it is ordered that the stones of the crosses appertaining to the city which were lately cast down, viz., Butter Cross and the Cross in the late parish of St. Cuthbert shall be gathered up and laid in some certain place to the use of the Common Chamber. The second of these crosses was the Corn Market Cross, the market being held at the bottom of Steep Hill, nearly opposite the Jew’s House.‘
See also the report in Hill, p.153: ‘. . . at the junction of the Steep Hill and the Strait, the roadway widens again. Here was the corn market, and the church of St Cuthbert … stood on the east side of it. In 1572 the common council ordered that the stones of the cross in the late parish of St Cuthbert, then lately taken down, should be gathered up. This was probably the corn-market cross’.
Stocker (p.299) mentions five boundary crosses for Lincoln and gives their approximate locations:
- Cross on Cross o’ Cliff Hill
- Broken Cross at Westcastle
- Mile Cross on Nettleham Road
- Humber Cross on Ermine Street
- Stub Cross on Greetwellgate
It is said (see Davies) that the cross on Cross o’ Cliff hill was ‘removed by some evil-disposed persons‘ and was replaced, in 1618, with a bounder stone to mark the boundary between Bracebridge and the City – but nothing survives today.
Stub Cross is also mentioned by Davies. He notes that in1455 an agreement was made between the abbot and Convent of St Mary at York and the Mayor and citizens of Lincoln about lands claimed by the former as belonging to their church of St Mary Magdalen (the existing Monks Abbey). Among the boundaries mentioned is “a stone cross near Gretewellegate called Stubcross“.
References:
- Historical Manuscripts Commission X1V Report, Appendix part viii, 1895.
- Davies, D S, 1915, Lincolnshire Notes and Queries, Vol XIII No.6 pp.163-166
- Hill, J W F, 1948, Medieval Lincoln, pp 153-4
- Jones, M., Stocker, D. and Vince, A., 2003, The City by the Pool, p.299
