No 21 - Nailsea and District Local History Society

The crosses come in many different shapes and sizes. Square and octagonalplans seem to be favoured, but the basic plan is of stone steps, with a socketstone supporting a tall shaft, at the top of which is placed a carved ‘head’usually with a depiction of the crucifixion or other religious scene. Some crossesstand in churchyards, some in market places, some on boundaries, and a few atprominent road junctions.The meanings and uses of the crosses for medieval villagers are even less clear.Pooley’s Victorian imaginings are tinted by a very sentimental view of medievalreligion, but there are clues in documents and in the structures themselves. Theclass of crosses on steps in churchyards are obvious centres for ritual, bothformal and informal.In modern times the formal use could be likened to the Remembrance DayService where symbols of remembrance (the wreaths) are deposited. Were themendicant friars (beggars) really heard to preach from the cross steps; did thechildren of the village gather to play on the steps, as they do now?Their religious significance, indicated time and time again by the subject of thecarvings on their heads, and occasionally on shafts and sockets, cannot bedoubted, but whether this was the case with village crosses is not so clear.Despite the description of a carved top to Shepton Mallet market cross in theeighteenth century, and the frustrating survival of part of the medieval head, atCheddar, we have no definite surviving example of a cross-head from such across unless that on Crowcombe village cross is old..What is almost certain is that all classes of cross have proved magnets asmeeting places for gossip and small business ever since they were built and, to acertain extent, they still do. It is very likely, however, that the churchyard crossesrepresented a kind of common memorial to all those buried in the churchyard,when many had no or little other memorial.Perhaps the crosses serve as centres to focus the social activities and otheractions of the community, both living and dead.. Whether the proximity ofsettlements to crosses is significant is unclear: in most cases the settlements willhave existed long before the cross arrived. Whether roads focused on centres ofactivity, later marked by crosses, or whether that activity grew up around thepoints where roads met is a complicated issue.