| Parish/District | Louth/East Lindsey |
| Location | Cross fragments found in Louth vicarage garden in 2015 – cross originally in the market place |
| Category | Lost cross (Market cross) |
| National Grid Ref | TF 32869 87345 (estimate) |
| Designation | None |
| Stone Type | Limestone (Lincoln Jurassic) |
| Refs | Everson, P and Stocker, D,2017, ‘The Cros in the Markitte Stede’. The Louth Cross, its Monastery and its Town, Medieval Archaeology, 61:2, pp. 330-371 |
| Visits | DS/DAS: 2015 |
The Louth cross is a pre-Conquest decorated example that falls into the category of a ‘high cross’ and as such would normally be described in the Lincolnshire Corpus. However, the corpus was published in 1999 and the discovery of the Louth cross fragments was not made until 2015, so a brief description has been included here. The link to the full publication in Medieval Archaeology in 2017, is given above. Reports of repairs to the cross can be found in Hodgkinson, B., (ed.) 2025, The Louth St James Churchwarden’s accounts, 1527-1570, LRS vol.113, p.124.
Louth was, and to some extent still is, an important market town in Lindsey. The Bishop of Lincoln held a market charter in the town from 1086, but Louth’s religious, political and economic status go back to the establishment of a monastery here in the 8th century.
Louth must have possessed several crosses, but none survive today. However, there are surviving reports of repairs to the market cross in the churchwarden’s accounts of St James’s church in Louth – in 1537/8 we hear of ‘a bushel of lime to John Larmouth occupied at the Marketstead cross [and] … to Nicholas Upton for his labour there [6d. + 12d.]’.
The Louth architect Thomas Espin made a series of drawings showing the cross incorporated within a later Market Hall building, all of which was demolished in 1815. Everson and Stocker have reconstructed the earlier phases of development of the Louth market cross showing it as a standing cross mounted on seven steps up until 1521, when it was enclosed in a covered market building with the cross head projecting through the roof in the style of the Cheddar cross.
In 1573, we read that 2s. 8d. was spent on ‘taking down the “cross in the Marketstede”’ but this reference probably only refers to the removal of the idolatrous cross head’. The rest of the structure seems to have survived until c.1580 when it was demolished and replaced by a more fashionable market hall – this included an upper assembly room with a vaulted market hall below – but it still included the steps and shaft of the original market cross. (see Espin’s drawings below).
In 2015, two fragments from a decorated pre-Conquest cross were discovered in a rockery in Louth vicarage garden. Everson and Stocker’s analysis of these stones leads to the suggestion that they are part of a mid-tenth century cross erected to mark the bishop of Lindsey’s promotion of Louth and Louth market and which became Louth’s market cross.
Everson and Stocker present a reconstruction of the cross and offer a suggested sequence for its development, from an open, standing market cross through two phases of enclosing market buildings, up to its demolition c.1815.
