[2] The Market Cross is constructed of Caen stone, one of the most favoured building materials of the age.

Above each tablet is a dial, exhibiting the hour to each of the three principal streets; the fourth being excluded from this advantage by standing at an angle.

The central column appears to continue through the roof, and is supported without by eight flying buttresses, which rest on the several corners of the building.

[3] Until the start of the nineteenth century the Cross was used as a market-place; but the increased population of the city requiring a more extensive area for that purpose, a large and convenient market-house was, about the year 1807, erected in the North-street; on the completion of which, it was proposed to take down this Cross, then considered as a nuisance.

This was prevented from taking place when some of the members of the corporation purchased several houses on the north side of the Cross in order to widen that part of the street by their demolition.