Eleanor crosses
Eleanor crosses were monuments erected by Edward I at Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Northampton (at Hardingstone), Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St Albans, Waltham, West Cheap in the city of London, and the royal mews at Charing between 1291 and 1294 to commemorate the progress of the funeral cortège of his queen Eleanor of Castile from Harby where she died to her burial place in Westminster abbey. Those at Waltham, Geddington, and Hardingstone still survive. They represent a personal statement by Edward of grief and loss of a queen of whom ‘living we dearly cherished, and whom dead we cannot cease to love’. They are almost certainly modelled on the ‘montjoies’, crosses erected to mark the progress of Louis IX of France's body from Aigues Mortes to Paris in 1270. The cross outside Charing Cross station in London is a replica erected in 1863.
Lynda Rollason
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Eleanor crosses
