‘It was on a Friday morning…’:

A Penzance landmark, lost and found (with apologies to Flanders and Swann)

The Penzance Market Cross, now safe and secure outside Penlee House Gallery and Museum, has led an interesting life.

Image 1

Where it originally came from, and how, we do not know – although many ingenious theories have been suggested, most recently by academic and antiquarian Charles Thomas, at the turn of the millennium. Over the past 1500 years it has been carved with letters and symbols, damaged, and perhaps deliberately defaced – and moved more times than we know. It came to Penlee Park from the Morrab Gardens, where it spent the first half of the 20th century. Before that, it was lodged in a niche on the square façade that formed the front of the Market House, before the building was shortened and remodelled by Lloyd’s Bank in the 1920s. Earlier still, it stood inconspicuously at the bottom of Causewayhead, near to what is now the side door to HSBC. This is where it was photographed in 1861.

Images 2 and 3

In fact, it had been there since 1829 – the date that the photograph shows carved above the adjacent water shute. Before then, it had been situated in Market Place – but for how long? And where was it before that? Nobody really knows.

Market Place in the early 1900s was not the through road it has become today, but a social space with a water pump, street en.;tertainment, and bacon on the hoof:

‘In passing thro’ the market, my ears were assailed by a shrill vehement and nasal sound, which drowned all the noise of hawkers, butchers, Camborne ballad-singers, and blind fiddlers… a shocking chorus of pigs; of pigs of all ages and sizes; of pigs in great numbers; of pigs in great pain; and each of them tied by his leg to this debased granite cross.’

In those days, nobody seems to have paid the old cross much attention. It was just a handy post… and it was in the way.

Image 4

Because of this (and probably to discourage pig-tethering in the heart of an increasingly smart, prosperous and self-aware town), this ‘debased granite cross’ was moved round the corner to Causewayhead.

When the cross was moved in 1829, some people knew that the exact position it had occupied in Market Place was important. That spot was supposed to be the central point of the town, from which the borough boundary was said to have been measured – half a mile away in every direction – back in the 1600s. And so, for the benefit of posterity, a cross-shaped marker stone was set in the ground, marking exactly where the cross had stood before being moved out of the way, r

Reeeeeeeeeeeeee34 zxound the corner into Causewayhead.

This marker stone was noted by commissioners investigating how boroughs conducted themselves, who visited the town in 1835 (incidentally, giving Penzance a pretty good write-up). It appears on a map dated 1841, which clearly shows the circular boundary, supposedly half a mile from the cross in any direction.

Image 5

But – apart from a possible sighting in 1861 - that was that, for nearly 190 years. The marker does not appear on the town plan published in 1876. No reference was made to it during acrimonious disputes about the exact position of the boundary between Madron and Penzance, during the 1860s. The contention put forward by the Penzance officials was that the half mile extent of the borough should be measured not from Market Place at all, but from a point further to the east, thus placing more of the prime development land between the railway station and Chyandour within the town boundary. The marker stone was unhelpful to their argument, and it seems likely that by the time the lawyers started arguing, it had already been covered in roadstone, horse dung and general detritus.

Over the next 150 years or so, Market Place was dug through, resurfaced several times, and became the main road through the town. Imposing new buildings were erected on either side.

And then… ‘It was on a Friday morning, that the gasmen came to call’.
During the autumn of 2025, Wales and West Utilities undertook extensive excavation in Market Place as part of a programme to replace gas mains. Those of us who enjoyed a mis-spent youth in archaeology tend to glance down into trenches as we pass, just in case anything of interest has been revealed. And on the morning of Friday 31st October, such diligence was rewarded. Protruding into the south section of a trench outside HSBC bank, at a depth of only 10 cm or so, was a large granite slab.

Image 6

The weather was autumnal, with heavy showers. Half an hour later, some of the gravelly dust between the present-day road surface and the stone had been washed away, revealing another stone edge, perpendicular to the trench and at a right angle to the first. It was now evident that this was neither a random piece of flat granite, nor an old kerbstone: the marker deliberately installed in 1829, to record the exact site of the market cross, had been revealed once more.

Image 7

Within days, the archaeologist who had allegedly concluded from a desk-based assessment of the site that there would be ‘nothing there’ had arrived. More of the stone had been revealed, and it had been brushed clean. The tarmac was peeled further back to reveal the whole stone. A GPS reading pinpointed the exact site – which is now marked by a tiny stud in the road surface.

Images 8 and 9

There was a certain amount of Facebook outrage when, a week or so later, the cross-shaped stone itself was covered up. But leaving archaeological remains where they are (in this case, within what is left of the surface of Market Place in the 1820s) is generally the best thing to do. Undecorated, and in itself unremarkable, the historic value of this artefact – and the excitement of its discovery - lies in its position and context. And so it remains, safe underground, fulfilling the role for which it was intended nearly 200 years ago: pinpointing a site once revered as the historic centre of the borough of Penzance.

Linda Camidge, October 2026

Image credits:
2 and 3 (detail): Gibson, “Early Green Market and Market House, Penzance,” Morrab Library Photographic Archive, accessed October 20, 2026, https://photoarchive.morrablibrary.org.uk/items/show/3812
4: Prout, “Etching by Prout of Market House and Cross Penzance,” Morrab Library Photographic Archive, accessed October 20, 2026, https://photoarchive.morrablibrary.org.uk/items/show/5115
5: collection of The Morrab Library
Present-day photos: Kevin Camidge – free to use with a credit. Please contact tolverpress@yahoo.com if you would like higher res. copies.

This Penwith Paper is based on the PDF ‘companion text’ to chapter 5 of Camidge, Linda (2025) Histories of Penzance Book One: Landmarks and Legends, Tolver Press, Penzance. This, like the ‘companion texts’ to the other chapters in the book, is available free of charge from tolverpress@yahoo.com Although they are not illustrated and lack the design features of the published book, the companion texts offer much greater detail, fuller referencing and updated content