The Old Market Cross, Greenlaw

The cross originally stood in the centre of the Market Green at Greenlaw, and is said to have been erected in 1609. The record hedges that date rather than asserting it, so the year should be read as reported tradition rather than as documented fact, and nothing on the stone itself is offered in support of it. A cross of this kind carried a burgh's trading privilege and doubled as the fixed point for announcement, delivered to whoever was in earshot. Standing in the middle of the green put it at the centre of both functions, in the open ground where the market itself was held and where a crowd could gather round it.

The cross is now set up on the west side of the church, so it no longer occupies the ground that gave it its purpose. Moving a cross off its market place is common enough across Scotland, usually when the square was rebuilt or the old position became awkward, but it does turn a working piece of burgh equipment into a relic. It is recorded in J. W. Small's Scottish Market Crosses, where it appears at plate 87. That plate is the principal published notice of the cross, and the listing record itself is brief enough that Small's illustration carries much of what is known about its form.