To the Editor of the Leominster News.
Sir,—I write on behalf of my friend, Mr. Alfred Watkins, of Hereford, whose interesting and original researches on Early British Trackways are known to many of your readers.
We have upon our lawn a boulder of mountain limestone, which, judging from its striation, has evidently been brought to our town by ice. It was unearthed, my wife remembers, when a trench was being made for the sewer in Broad Street: her father had it for many years in his fernery in Etnam Street, and we brought it to this house in 1908.
Mr. Watkins’ hope is that some of your readers who remember the laying of the sewer may be able to recall, and be kindly willing to tell us, the exact spot at which the boulder was found and even the depth at which it lay. He seeks these data to help him to determine whether the boulder might not have been used as a ‘mark-stone,’ that is, “the original stone which settled the position of the market.” “I have,” he says, “two examples of this, one at Pembridge and the other at Grosmont.” The word ‘mark’ in ‘mark-stone,’ of course, is from the Teutonic, and signifies ‘boundary’; it has nothing to do with ‘market’ which is allied with the word ‘merchant’ and is borrowed from the French.
It is to be remembered that the building, built in 1633 and removed to the Grange by Mr. John Arkwright in 1857, took the place of a much earlier market-hall, the Crosse House, then derelict. In 1554 the Borough Records say: “Item. For vj dayes werke to Willm Caldwall, for tyling upon the Corne Market Howse, and ye pyllary Howse, the Crosse Howse, the Forbury Gate Howse, and ye Court Howse, … vs.”
Your kind insertion of the above will much oblige Mr. Watkins, and also yours, etc.
THEODORE NEILD.
Leominster,
August 12th, 1924.
Source info: Letter is dated “August 12th, 1924”.