Looking at the  etching to the right, the Stalbridge Cross was erected when there was much more space around it with many fewer buildings and houses. In the past, on Feast-days, Market-days, Fair-days and other special occasions the market square would be crowded with a conglomeration of people and their goods.
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Its age is uncertain but,  for more than five centuries the residents of Stalbridge must have known of its presence. Here long ago,  farmers would congregate. On these steps would change hands the butter,  the cheese,  the eggs.
But the cross meant far more than a source of provisions for here they would gather,  eager for news of events taking place beyond the parish boundaries.
The earliest of modern news media was the newspaper. Even if they reached the village,  few would be able to afford them. So the cross would be a meeting place - sometimes a babble of sound - at other times,  a rapt audience listening to the news of itinerant travellers.

"Though we have no written record, we realise that the Market Place was the centre of all town life and the Market Cross the centre of the market place. At its base the bailiff of the lord of the manor would collect the tolls for the live and dead stock, butter, eggs, blue veined cheese and poultry sold at the weekly Tuesday-market granted to the town by the Abbot of Sherborne in the 12th century.
When a few years ago the pavement opposite the old market inn next to the Cross was under repair, the lead sockets in which the railings keeping tJie beasts from straying on to the footpath were unearthed, the widened roadway there obviously having formed the beast market." - Dorset Year Book 1957-58 | Howard Fletcher

Stalbridge Market was still going in the late 19th century, as you can see from this extract in the Western Gazette from March 7th 1890, stating: "At a public meeting convened in the Public Room, Stalbridge, on Monday, 3rd March, it was unanimously resolved that STALBRIDGE MARKET should in future be held every ALTERNATE THURSDAY, instead of MONDAY. The FIRST MARKET under the NEW REGULATIONS to be held on THURSDAY 20th MARCH. - G. ALLEN, Chairman of the Meeting.

OUR SOURCES INCLUDE: STALBRIDGE ARCHIVE SOCIETY, STALBRIDGE HISTORY SOCIETY, RESEARCHERS FROM THE STALBRIDGE HISTORY TRAIL TEAM AND EXTRACTS FROM ARTICLES AND PUBLICATIONS BY ANN MOORE, BARBARA JAYES, ARTHUR MEE, ALFRED POPE, FREDERIC TREVES, HOWARD FLETCHER, JOHN HUTCHINS, SOMERSET & DORSET NOTES AND QUERIES, THE DORSET YEAR BOOK, THE ARCHIVES OF CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE CAMBRIDGE, LITERARY ANECDOTES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, THE ANCIENT CROSSES OF DORSET, WWW.ARCHIVE.ORG.