English Villages by P. H. (Peter Hampson) Ditchfield
page 88 of 269 (32%)
page 88 of 269 (32%)
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came, and although the cross still appears on the flat stone, the design
on the shaft of the cross merely represents a hunting scene; and a Saxon bowman is shown shooting at some animals. The religious conceptions of an earlier and purer time have disappeared. The moustache of the sportsman also shows that the stone belonged to a period very near the Norman Conquest, when that fashion of wearing the hair was in vogue. England is remarkable for these specimens of ancient art. On the Continent there are very few of these elaborately carved crosses; but it is noteworthy that wherever the English or Irish missionaries went, they erected these memorials of their faith. In Switzerland, where they founded some monasteries, there are some very similar to those in England. There are several other kinds of crosses besides those in churchyards. There are market crosses, called "cheeping" crosses after the Anglo-Saxon _cheap_, to buy, from which Cheapside, in London, Chippenham and Chipping Norton derive their names. Some crosses are "pilgrim" crosses, and were erected along the roads leading to shrines where pilgrimages were wont to be made, such as the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury, Glastonbury, Our Lady of Walsingham. Sometimes they were erected at the places where the corpse rested on its way to burial, as the Eleanor crosses at Waltham and Charing, in order that people might pray for the soul of the deceased. Monks also erected crosses to mark the boundaries of the property of their monastery. [Illustration: AN OLD MARKET CROSS] Time has dealt hardly with the old crosses of England. Many of them were destroyed by the Puritans, who by the Parliamentary decree of |
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