It is difficult for us to conceive how constantly these sculptured shafts and sheltering arches met the gaze of our forefathers at every turn in the older cities of England. Beside the splendid cross, for instance, just described, Coventry had at one time its Swine's Cross (taken down about 1763), a second of the same name in another part of the town, Sponne Cross, Hill Cross, Jesus Cross, the Maiden's Cross, and the New, or Queen's Cross, as well as others close at hand at Radford and at Whitley. A similar case meets us in Doncaster, which once could boast of a Butcher's Cross (destroyed in 1725), a Butter Cross (removed to make room for the Market House in 1846), the Northern Cross, the Wheat, or Market Cross, the Crosses of S. James, S. Sepulchre, and Maudlin (Magdalen), Snorel Cross, and one in the churchyard. Not one of all this list remains, Doncaster's only example being the Hall Cross, which will be referred to among the memorial crosses.
During the Commonwealth, with its temporary establishment of civil marriages, this rite was "solemnized," if one may use the term in such a connection, in Doncaster at the Wheat Cross.
The ancient city of Lincoln is another example of a place once rich in these memorials. Only a well-cross exists there to-day, although its first Bishop, Remigius, built a town-cross, his successor, Hugh de Grenoble, added others, and yet others were erected by Hugh de Wells, all of which, as also an ancient High Cross, have gone.
Amongst the Market Crosses still left to us, a foremost place, if not the first, must be given to that of Chichester. This beautiful structure was reared by Edward Story, bishop of the diocese from 1478 to 1504, who also left an estate, valued at £25 per annum, to keep it in repair, and to provide wine at the Cross annually on S. George's Day. It is an octagon in plan, and covers a space of some four hundred square feet. Crosses of this type, of which Malmesbury and Salisbury provide other excellent examples, are not only more beautiful, but more useful, than the solid decorated towers or spires, such as the crosses of Coventry and Abingdon, for the wide arches afford both shade and shelter to the market folk in summer heat or wintry rain and snow. A cross which is almost a combination of the solid high-cross and the large covered type is found at Shepton Mallet, having been erected by Walter Buckland and his wife in 1505. Other examples of the covered cross exist at Chipping Campden, in Gloucestershire, and at Cheddar. Even in the narrower scope of the high cross, an attempt was sometimes made to provide at least so much shelter as was possible under the circumstances, as we see in the open lower story of the Butter Cross, at Winchester, and of the curious pentagonal cross at Leighton-Buzzard.