Lost Crosses

Parish/DistrictStamford/South Kesteven
LocationPossible market cross sites on Broad Street and St Mary’s Place
CategoryLost Crosses (Market crosses)
National Grid Refestimates: TF 03004 07265 (Broad Street)
TF 03057 07043 (St Mary’s Place)
Designation
Stone Type
RefsSmith, M., 1992, Stamford Then & Now, pp. 28, 90; Hartley, J.S. and Rogers, A.. 1974. The Religious Foundations of Medieval Stamford, p 33
Visits

Stamford is an important town and market centre developing from the late ninth century onwards, and the medieval town will have had a plethora of standing crosses – including an Eleanor Cross – but no trace of any medieval crosses remain today.

Of Stamford’s many lost crosses, just two of the market crosses have left some documentary evidence for their location: the location of one is shown on John Speed’s map of Stamford of c.1611 – It is in an area named variously as the Beast Market, Claymont Hill, or Friday Market – now known as Broad Street. Martin Smith comments that: [In Broad Street] … opposite Ironmonger Street stood a medieval market cross which consisted of a stone column 25 feet high topped with a gilt ball. At its base was a square roofed structure supported on four small columns. The cross was taken down in c.1796.

There is a plaque on Broad Street which reads: ‘Here formerly stood the Market Cross to which some prisoners were brought from gaol on Market days and whipped round it. It is mentioned in 1550 and was taken down in 1696’

Smith mentions a second Stamford market cross in St Mary’s Place, close by the church of St Mary on the Bridge: ‘In the sixteenth century it was called  Monday Market, after a market granted in 1481, and it had a market cross which was removed shortly after 1683‘.

Other sources also mention a cross at St Mary’s which may be the market cross  mentioned above – in Hartley and Rogers, p 33 we find: ‘A cross stood in the south part of the churchyard in 1545’. . . . perhaps market cross and churchyard cross are one and the same in this case?

Saxton’s map of Stamford (1611) shows the market cross (arrowed) – The market on St Mary’s Place is marked with a cross

Newspaper report in the Stamford Mercury of 13 May 1983, describing the market cross

Stamford

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