AMBLESIDE MARKET CROSS
| Ambleside was granted a market and two fairs in 1650, when it can be assumed that the leading family of the area, the Braithwaites, whose head was Gaven Braithwaite of Ambleside Hall, gave an appropriate cross to the town. The earliest pictorial evidence of the cross, a watercolour drawing by G. Seaton, ‘Ambleside Fair 1806’, shows a headless sandstone cross-shaft, octagonal and tapering, standing by the Cross House, as do drawings of the same period by William Green. Owing to the building of the Mechanics Institute, the cross-shaft was moved to its present position on the other side of the hill in 1885. |
Ambleside in Wordsworth's Day |
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At Calgarth Park, Windermere, is an old sundial on a block of sandstone on which is inscribed the Braithwaite coat of arms upon a shield, the initials G.B. , the date 1651 and the Braithwaite motto, VITA UT HERBA, an anagram of the family name and invented by Richard Braithwaite. At the end of the 17th century the antiquary Machel had seen and copied this inscription, noting he had found it “upon the dial post on the cross in Ambleside.” From this, as the size and type of stone are appropriate, it appears that the dial was removed from the shaft and taken to Calgarth sometime after being seen by Machel. When and why the dial was taken away remains a mystery, but Bishop Watson began to build Calgarth Park in 1789 and the removal may have been at his bidding. There is, though, definite evidence that in the late seventeenth century it was seen in Ambleside marketplace, and that in 1807 it was not there. |
