When Celia Fiennes passed through Bristol on her way to Cornwall in 1698 one of the city's architectural curiosities which she remarked upon in her account of the journey was the ancient High Cross,

"a very high and magnificent Cross built all of the stone or sort of marble of the country, its in the manner of Coventry Cross a piramedy form running up of a great height with severall divisions in niches where is King John's Effigy - and severall other Kings round and adorned with armes and figures of beasts and birds and flowers, great part of it gilt and painted, and soe terminates in a spire on the top; the lower part is white like marble"