Mercat cross

For example, in 1682 a town guild in Stirling was accorded the privilege of making a proclamation, to be "intimat at the Mercat Croce that no person pretend ignorance.

"[4] To this day, royal proclamations are still ceremonially read in public at the Mercat Cross in Edinburgh, including the calling of a general election and succession of a new monarch.

A variety of decorative designs are employed, including foliage, emblems like thistles and roses, armorial shields, and mouldings of the egg-and-dart type.

Five crosses: at Edinburgh, Dundee, Perth, Aberdeen and Preston (modern Prestonpans) were supported by a drum-shaped understructure, known as a cross-house, with a platform reached by internal steps or ladder.

A plainer understructure faintly echoing the design was adopted for Glasgow's cross when a replacement was erected on or near the site of the original in 1921; and simpler versions exist elsewhere, as at Elgin and Selkirk.

Some mercat crosses of today are replicas from the Victorian period, as at Dunfermline and Scone, though they often incorporate one or more original elements, particularly the shaft or a section thereof.

Taken for granted as a normal part of the street scene, crosses have in the main been poorly documented in the past regarding their dates of erection, relocation and remodelling, and they often suffer from neglect in the present.

[9] Scottish emigrants to countries such as Canada and especially Australia took the idea of the mercat cross with them, and several cities in the New World have or once had them in the town centre.