North Kyme Village
 

The Market Cross

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The market cross is certainly the oldest structure in North Kyme.  Standing in the centre of the village the cross has featured in nearly all the old photographs of the village. The monument consists of two base steps with a socket stone, surviving to what is thought to be its full original height.  The cross was renovated in 1821 (denoted with the inscription "IT 1821" and again in the early 1950s.  Before the renovation was complete the children of North Kyme school buried a time capsule under the cross.  Articles included: A fizzy pop bottle, the coins that were in circulation at the time, a news paper along with notes about the school.  This was all carried out under the watchful eye of the then headmaster Mr Henry King.

This is an excerpt taken from the Lincolnshire heritage site. If you know of (and I know you do) any specific history of our cross then please e-mail us and tell us about it.

Because a standing cross is a holy place they became used as locations to validate deals or transactions and thus the market cross was born.

 
The destruction of crosses
Most of the standing crosses you can see today are either the broken remains of a cross or a 19th or 20th century restoration. Very few have survived intact. Why have these holy monuments been so systematically destroyed? ... well, during the reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries they were considered to be papist symbols and the tops of them were smashed off. The only one I know of in the county that has survived is the cross in Somersby Churchyard - here a 15 foot, tapering octagonal shaft topped with a simple gabled cross head still stands. At North Kyme, most (about 10 foot) of the shaft is still there, although the cross head itself is lost.

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