73 



Notes on the High Crosses of Bristol and Gloucester. 

 By Charles Pooley, Esq. of Weston-super-Mare, 



BRISTOL HIGH CROSS. 



A quaint old drawing, by Robert Ricart, (a lay brother of the 

 Fraternity of Calendars, afterwards Town-clerk in the reign of 

 Edward IV.) which was designed to represent the town towards the 

 conclusion of the Saxon era, favours the notion that " Axinciente 

 Bristowe" was originally laid out in accordance with a plan embodying 

 in its varied details some high truth of the Christian religion. Thus, 

 it is said, the four principal streets, which reached from gate to gate 

 of the city, formed a St. Andrew's Cross ; the clusters of houses in 

 each division a Maltese Cross ; while in the centre, between four 

 churches, and on the highest and most central part of the city, rose the 

 ^Ita Crui, the first object of the citizens' view, as that which it 

 represented should have been of their hopes.* Whether old Bricstow, 

 the city of the Gap, was ever planned upon this idea of Christian 

 Symbolism is a question at least doubtful ; nevertheless, as a pretty 

 poetical conceit, and one which, besides having the advantage of being 

 eminently adapted to confirm the traditionally Christian character of 

 the city, carries back the chronology of the Cross a thousand years, 

 completing a historical unity, which few such structures in England 

 can boast of, we avail ourselves of it as a befitting introduction to 

 our paper. 



The High Cross subsequently stood on the same site as the old 

 Saxon Cross. The year 1373, memorable in the annals of Biistol, 

 as an era from which many of its greatest improvements may be 

 dated, is assigned as the period of its erection. Edward III. says 

 Barrett,-j- having separated Bristol from the county of Gloucester, 

 and constituted it a county within itself, and fixed its boundaries by 



• The Calendars of All-Hallowen, Brystowe. By Revd. Heury Rogers, M.A. 

 t Barrett's History of Bristol. 



F 



