192 
Notes on Ancient Stone Crosses of Somerset. By E. J. APPLEBY. 
(Read January 14th, 1903.) 
To Mr. Pooley, and his book on the Somerset Stone Crosses, 
published in 1878, I am indebted for much information, and 
especially for guidance as to their positions in the county. And the 
condition of the crosses in the past year I shall have the pleasure 
of showing by a few selected photographs. I say a few, because 
in the short time a paper before this Society is expected to occupy 
there will be barely time to give very many illustrations. Mr. 
Pooley discovered about 200 remnants or crosses in fair condition, 
but of these some have in the 25 years’ interval quite dis- 
appeared, others are mere fragments of stones which are hardly 
worth photographing, while some have been preserved in safe places 
or restored, which should be the aim of such Societies as these to 
encourage. Iam glad to learn from enthusiastic collectors who 
have sent me specimens for a general collection I am making, 
that many Antiquarian Societies are taking up the matter of 
Archeological Survey, and that Stone Crosses will receive more 
consideration in the future than in the past. 
Somerset is particularly rich in these stones, which Pre- 
bendary Earle, in a paper read before this Society in 1887, 
claimed to be the earliest churches of the people ; Church 
being but the English for Crucem, the Cross. This was true as 
far as Churchyard and some wayside Crosses were concerned, but 
Crosses were erected and used for other purposes. There were 
Wayside Crosses, used for praying and depositing alms for 
necessitous pilgrims ; Weeping Crosses ; Boundary Crosses, par- 
ticularly to mark the limits of religious property ; Direction Crosses 
to church and other ways, as in Devon on Dartmoor ; a Sailors 
Cross, near mouth of River Avon ; Market Crosses, to shelter 
market people assembled for sa/es, and to pay dues to religious 
houses ; and even a Dancing Cross, now disappeared, at Maper- 
ton, in Somerset. Again Somerset is given the credit of having been 
a 
