Historic photograph (c.1905) showing the Towngate cross – the people have formed a bucket chain in order to put out a fire in the nearby building (c) Peterborough Images Archive
Parish/DistrictMarket Deeping/South Kesteven
Locationon the west side of the crossroads at Towngate on the northern edge of Market Deeping
CategoryVillage cross (boundary cross?)
National Grid RefTF 13298 10797
DesignationScheduled / Listed II
Stone TypeLimestone and sandstone
RefsAP Survey 6 Jan 1994; Davies, D S,1915, Lincs N & Q, vol XIII No.6, p.143
VisitsAP 6 Jan 1994 | DS/HH: 5 Dec 2011

Davies says that the Towngate Cross is located where the Toll Bar once stood. It was quite possibly a boundary cross marking the northern limit of Market Deeping.

When it was scheduled (1994), Alison comments that the cross ‘is set in a modern concrete platform approximately 1.63m square’, but when Hilary and I photographed it in 2011 it was set in a rectangular gravelled area on a grass verge – possibly following a recent road scheme?

The socket stone is of limestone, c.0.84m square in section at the base rising through chamfered corners to a top of octagonal section. It has a chamfered top edge and is worn and damaged with rounded corners. There is presently about 0.24m of it above ground.

The socket measures c.0.38 x 0.35m but has a ‘replacement’ (probably sandstone) piece of shaft set into it which measures 0.22 x 0,26m by 0.77m high. There is a deep vertical groove in the upper part of each face. It no longer has the pyramidal top depicted in the 1905 photograph.

The socket-stone is thought medieval in date while the shaft fragment is considered to be a later replacement; A report in the Stamford Mercury in March 1957 suggests that the cross may have been restored around that time. This report mentions an inscription on the cross: Here stands the cross in the King’s Street, between the middle of Towngate and Harefleet Highway, but this inscription was not noted by Davies in 1915, nor at the time of our survey in 2011.

Market Deeping Towngate cross in its current setting
A report in the Stamford Mercury of 22 March 1957 proposing restoration of Towngate cross.
Market Deeping (2) Towngate Cross

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