THE MARKET CROSS was a feature of most towns and villages in times past, a place to meet and gossip and around which traders gathered on market days to hawk their wares, eggs, butter, cheese and milk, fruit and vegetables, poultry, meat and fish, cloth and basket work, food and goods that were produced in and around the home or farm and brought in for sale to supplement the family income.

Hence the name butter cross and many survive as a marker for the old market squares that have virtually been taken over by modern traffic, usually in the form of spires, obelisks or crosses, although sometimes as fountains, but usually with steps.

Bourne too had its own market cross, situated in the market place where two main roads intersect and now known as the town centre. It was first referred to in 1586 by the historian William Camden (1551-1623) who visited the town while writing Britannia, his survey of the British Isles, in which he described it as being ten feet high on an octagonal base with three steps, and although it seems certain that it was simply a market cross, he suggested that it had been erected to commemorate a battle and added: "It was a place of sanctuary, and around it worship was wont to be held."

A more detailed description survives from John Moore, one of our earliest historians, who published an account of the town in February 1809 at the instigation of his patron, Mrs Eleanor Pochin, tenant of the Abbey House (now demolished) and widow of George Pochin who had been Lord of the Manor of Bourne Abbots for 37 years until his death in 1798. Moore did not think much of the town because he wrote: “Bourne in its present state is low and meanly built and though the town is large and well situated, the market is but indifferently attended.”

He then went on to describe the market cross: “On the west side of the market place formerly stood the cross, the shaft of which was octangular and elegantly formed, and stood upon a deep basement, ascended by three steps. The shaft was ten feet in height, out of which grew an ash tree, but both the shaft and tree are now removed.”

Moore also quotes Camden in greater detail, telling us that the cross appears to be “the same cross as was commonly worshiped by ye parishioners at other towns in Kesteven” and added: “These crosses, many of which still remain in various parts of the kingdom, were erected, some of them for boundaries of property, parishes and sanctuary, and others commemorated battles, murders and other fatal occurrences. But they were principally intended for devotional purposes and are commonly seen near churches, or in the crossways leading thereto, where they were undoubtedly regarded with idolatrous adoration. The cross lately destroyed in Bourne was built with the ruins of the basement of a nearby building and placed on the market place but of this there now only remains a heap of loose stones and earth.”

The market cross provided a central point for the community, a place where villagers gathered to meet and to talk and to discuss the momentous events at both local and national level that affected their lives because they realised, as we do today, that there is a security in being with your neighbours in times of crisis and an unspoken fellowship when there is cause for celebration. The annual May statute fairs for the hiring of servants were also held there and proclamations of important local and national events were made from this spot.

Visiting monks and priests preached the word of God, and John Wesley, the evangelist and founder of the Methodist movement, is supposed to have visited Bourne in 1782 when he addressed townspeople from the steps of the market cross after the parish clergy had closed their pulpits to him. This incident is recounted in great detail by prominent local farmer Henry Andrews Sneath (1860-1931), political and religious stalwart and author of the book Methodist Memories, although it has since been claimed that the story is apocryphal.

The market cross in Bourne is known to have survived until 1803 although its fate after that is unknown. A much later feature of the market place was the Ostler memorial fountain, erected in 1860 in memory of a local benefactor John Lely Ostler (1811-59) and which acted as a market cross for the next hundred years because this was the centrepiece of many local celebrations such as Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897, the Relief of Mafeking in 1900 and the ending of the Boer War two years later, peace proclamations for the Great War in 1918 and the Second World War in 1945.

But that too was overtaken by progress and in 1960, Bourne Urban District Council which then controlled local affairs decided that because of increasing vehicle flows it was causing a traffic hazard and so it was dismantled and moved stone by stone to the town cemetery in South Road where it was re-erected and now awaits restoration after being protected with a Grade II listing last year.

But we have to look a little further afield to find examples of market crosses that have survived such as that which originally existed in Bourne and the nearest example can be found at Swinstead, five miles west of the town, standing on high steps in the main street. An earlier edifice can be found at Corby Glen, erected during the reign of Edward III (1312-77), a more elaborate design but then the village once had the status of a small market town.

The market cross that once stood in the middle of Edenham, three miles to the north west, also survives but not in its original position in the centre of the village, having been removed to the churchyard after the stonework was endangered by passing lorries and now rests underneath one of the cedar trees near the main entrance to the church of St Michael’s and All Angels.