March 1990
The Bristol High Cross at Stourhead was built in 1373 and originally stood, as its name suggests, in the city of Bristol, at one end of the High Street with the junction of Broad Street, Wine Street and Corn Street. It was erected to commemorate the granting of a charter by Edward III, making Bristol the first provincial borough to be a county in its own right.
The lower niches feature statues of King John, Henry III and Edward III, who were benefactors of the city; and a statue of Edward IV was later added in 1461. The Cross was made higher in 1663 and the statues of four other monarchs added: Henry VI, Elizabeth I, James I, and Charles I, all of whom renewed and confirmed the city’s charters. The whole Cross was repainted and gilded in 1697.
A year later, Celia Fiennes, passing through Bristol on her way to Cornwall, remarked of it: “A very high and magnificent Cross built all of the stone or sort of marble of the country, it’s in the manner of Coventry Cross a piramedy form running up of a great height with severall [sic] divisions in niches where is King John’s Effigy and severall [sic] other Kings round and adorned with armes and figures of beasts and birds and flowers, great part of it gilt and painted and soe [sic] terminates in a spire on the top; the lower part is white like marble.”
The Cross was removed in 1733, following a petition made by the residents of the neighbourhood. On the 21st July that year, a meeting of the City Council had to consider a request for the demolition of the Cross. “It hath been insinuated by some that this Cross, on Account of its antiquity ought to be lookt [sic] upon as something sacred; But we consider that we are protestants, and that popery ought effectually to be guarded against in this Nation, we make this our request to you to consider. If the opening of a passage to four of the principal streets in this City ought not to outweigh anything than can be said for the keeping up of a ruinous and superstitious Relick [sic], which is at present a public nuisance ….
Safety was apparently given as another reason for its removal. One man who strongly objected to the Cross was a Mr John Vaughan, “a silversmith who lived fronting it, out of enmity to this structure so esteemed by others, offered to swear before the magistrates, that every high wind his house and life were endangered by the Cross shaking and threatening to fall (though it was not generally then believed) and so requested its removal. On this pretence and of its obstructing the road by filling up the street, it was taken down and thrown by in the Guildhall as a thing of no value, though its removal was much regretted by most of the citizens.”
The stones of the dismantled Cross remained in the municipal cellars until 1736 when Alderman Price and “a few gentlemen residing near the College Green” collected the subscriptions for the re-erection of it on the centre of the Green near the Cathedral. This was done with the consent of the Dean and Chapter. In 1757, a Mr Wallis, who was making well the footpaths on College Green, made a proposal to remove the Cross but this was not immediately granted. However, in 1762, it was taken down while footpaths were reinstated and it seemed likely that it would be re-erected on a spot 30 yards away on the Lower Green but this was not to be.
Barrett, in his History And Antiquities Of The City Of Bristol, wrote “One Mr Champion, a great projector, interested himself much in its removal, and solicited subscriptions of money to be laid out in removing the Cross, and widening and rendering more commodious the walks in College-Green. The Dean and Chapter, on whose ground it was erected, gave leave for its removal. But many people who had subscribed for widening and improving the walks, subscribed also for re-building the Cross in any unexceptional place, but no such place could be found in Bristol – all the money subscribed for the Cross was spent solely in laying out the walks, the Cross itself rudely torn down and much injured by the workmen employed, was thrown by in a corner of the Cathedral, where it lay for a long while neglected ….
There it rested until the Reverend Cutts Barton was appointed Dean and he mentioned the fate of the Cross to his very great friend Henry Hoare of Stourhead. Consequently, in 1764, the Cross was presented to Hoare, who sent two wagons to convey it to Stourhead, where it was erected in 1765 in a picturesque corner of the gardens near Stourton Parish Church.