Malmesbury, Wiltshire

A costly piece of work

Many English market towns have a cross to act as a marker of the market place, and sometimes this cross is an elaborate structure offering shelter too. Cities such as Salisbury and Chichester have big crosses like this, and so does the Wiltshire market town of Malmesbury. Malmesbury’s market cross is a really fancy octagonal stone structure, encrusted with carving, and the Tudor writer John Leland described it as ‘a right costly piece of work’. For me it’s certainly the most outstanding structure in the town apart from the terrific Norman abbey.

Although the cross is a popular shelter and meeting place for local people, probably most visitors to the town, hot-footing it to the abbey or the shops, only give the structure a rapid glance. That’s a pity because the carving repays a closer look. As well as the truly top-notch Gothic detailing – pinnacles, crockets, and that dazzling structure at the top – there are some marvellous grotesques. These are small versions of the grotesques (often referred to as gargoyles) on medieval churches, and make up a small rogues’ gallery of medieval humour. The spitting image of the Middle Ages.

Old Gaol, Buckingham

Nowadays we tend to prefer our prisons out of sight and out of mind. But in the Middle Ages and for centuries afterwards, it was common to put the town gaol on the market place – conveniently near the Town Hall, the court, and the likely centres of criminal activity. At Buckingham, the Town Hall is at one end of the market place, the old gaol at the other, two images of authority framing the commercial and social activity going on in between.

The gaol was built in 1748, and in the fashion of the time it took the form of a four-square castle keep – stone-walled, minimally-windowed, and crenellated, an embodiment of security and power. It was paid for by Lord Cobham of nearby Stowe, a man who, having laid out one of the great landscape gardens and filled it with eye-catching buildings, knew a lot about the symbolic power of architecture.

In 1839 the building was extended with the addition of the rounded front portion, which served as the gaoler’s house. This extension was designed by George Gilbert Scott, a young local man who was to become one of the most prominent Victorian architects. Its friendlier Gothic details evoke a less sombre mood, but Cobham’s castellated pile still lurks solidly behind.