Market Cross, Malmesbury

The Market Cross stands at the top of the High Street in Malmesbury, just below the abbey. It is a stone shelter rather than a cross: an eight-sided vaulted building with an open arch in every side, put up in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century for the town's market. Historic England calls it an extremely fine example of its kind and lists it Grade I.

History

The cross was built as somewhere to trade out of the weather. The Victoria County History dates it to the fifteenth century and places it within the abbey's precinct, opposite the north end of the High Street, perhaps in the New Market, where the Saturday market was to be held from 1223. The best evidence of why it was built comes from John Leland, who wrote in about 1544 that it had been put up within living memory so that poor market folk could stand dry when rain came.

The abbey was dissolved, but the market went on, confirmed by the borough charter of 1635. For much of the nineteenth century the Saturday market was held in Abbey Row, around the cross or west of the abbey church, until it ended around 1890.

The cross itself has been looked after more than once. Historic England's listing records a renovation in about 1800 by the Earl of Suffolk and repairs in 1909 to 1912 and again in 1949 to 1950.

What to see

Walk round the outside first. The eight sides are open arches, with buttresses between them rising to crocketed pinnacles and a crenellated parapet. Above the parapet, flying buttresses lean in to hold up a large central lantern, set with niches holding figures of saints and the Crucifixion, under an elaborate ogee-shaped cap.

Then step inside. A central shaft with attached columns stands in the middle, with a low stone bench round its base, and from it springs a lierne vault, a web of ribs with carved bosses at the crossings.

Visiting

The cross is open at all times and free. Blue Badge parking is in the lower High Street and by the abbey. Free public toilets are at the back of the Town Hall, at the corner of Oxford Street and Cross Hayes, and there are cafés round the cross.

Getting there

The cross is a minute's walk from Cross Hayes, where there is short-stay parking by the Town Hall (SN16 9BZ). The long-stay car park at Station Yard is free for two hours, but the way up into the town from it has steep steps. Coachstyle's bus 99 runs about hourly, Monday to Saturday, between Chippenham, Malmesbury, Royal Wootton Bassett and Swindon, with no Sunday service.

The Malmesbury and the River Avon walk passes the cross within a few minutes of leaving Cross Hayes.

Nearby

The abbey is a few steps north, and St Paul's Bell Tower stands on the edge of the churchyard beside you. The Athelstan Museum in the Town Hall is free and tells the town's story. For food and a bed, The Kings Arms is on the High Street, The Old Bell is beside the abbey and The Three Cups Inn is in Westport, on the way to the River Avon.