England’s answer to the Taj Mahal
Politics, pageantry help to set romantic memorial in stone
It’s easy to miss England’s Taj Mahal. You could mistake it for a very tall, worn war memorial as you stroll out of the nearby Star Inn in Geddington, Northamptonshire.
Look a bit closer, though, and you’ll see its sides are carved with rosettes, not names, and the three stone figures in canopied niches above your head are not soldiers but an elegantly draped and veiled woman, carved in triplicate to be visible from all sides.
This is the finest preserved of three remaining Eleanor Crosses, built in memory of Queen Eleanor of Castile by her grieving husband, King Edward I, in November 1290.
Edward was a tough nut, deservedly loathed by the Scots and Welsh, but he loved his wife and she loved him. They married aged 15 and 13 and were crowned together in Westminster Abbey. When she died at Harby, Nottinghamshire, Edward commissioned spire crosses at every place her cortège stopped on its 12-day progress back to London.
“A cortège of this scale was unusual, but not unprecedented,” says Dr Jeremy Ashbee, Head Properties Curator for English Heritage, who maintain the cross, “In France, when Louis IX’s body went to Saint Denis for burial, they put up crosses along the route. And keeping up with the Capetians was something the Plantagenets were always up for.”
Eleanor had a rare triple burial — her heart at Blackfriars Monastery in London (now under the station), her viscera in Lincoln Cathedral (where her tomb has been rebuilt) and her body at Westminster Abbey, where it still lies near Edward’s tomb. “This was partly for visibility,” he explained, “the royal person having a presence in several places.”
The crosses were a team effort. The king probably signed off drawings and master-masons were appointed, using the best local stone and labour. Michael of Canterbury, known for his work at Westminster, did the Westcheap Cross, one of three in London.
Each cross would have been painted and gilded, bright with armorial shields, rather loud by our standards (“certainly not Farrow & Ball”) and dazzling for people at the time.
So they marked her sad progress home, via Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Hardingstone, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St Albans, Waltham, Westcheap (Cheapside) and Charing. Geddington only got a look in because it was near a royal hunting lodge where Edward could stay the night — but it’s outstripped all the others.
There are surviving spire crosses at Hardingstone, Northamptonshire and Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire, and although 42ft-tall Geddington Cross is best-preserved, none have retained their magnificent, crowning crosses. A restored Victorian replica outside Charing Cross railway station in London gives an idea of their sheer scale — and the real Eleanor statues from Waltham are not far away in the V&A at South Kensington.
So, were the crosses really a big, soppy, uxorious gesture from an otherwise brutish monarch? “In the minds of the people who planned it,” said Dr Ashbee unromantically, ‘It was hard politics plus pageantry as well as — possibly — a romantic gesture.’
Don’t believe a word of it. Edward heart Eleanor. It’s all set in stone.