Stamford’s Eleanor Cross

The site of Stamford’s Eleanor Cross is known from the work of antiquarian William Stukeley in 1745. Recent architectural finds have prompted new interest and there is an updated and detailed report on the Stamford Local History Society website  HERE  A summary of its content is given below:

The Stamford Eleanor Cross

Stamford’s Eleanor Cross seems not to have been near the centre of the town – Reports from Captain Richard Symonds of the Royalist army, who passed by in August 1645, and from Richard Butcher, Stamford’s town clerk in 1646, place the cross about two thirds of a mile out on the Casterton Road (a.k.a. Ermine Street) to the north west of the town. The cross seems to have been demolished some time in the 1650s by Parliamentarian activists and to have passed out of memory.

William Stukeley moved to Stamford in 1729 and, among his many antiquarian interests, he mounted a search for the site of Stamford’s Eleanor cross. He eventually located it in 1745, buried beneath a mound/tumulus: ‘near half a mile in the London road north from Scoegate (Scotgate)’ . At first he thought this to be of ‘some of the Saxon kings that lived in our castle‘, but later stated that it was ‘really the foundation of Q. Eleanor’s cross.‘

During the digging of a stone quarry for the turnpike road in 1745, Stukeley discovered the complete polygonal (probably hexagonal) Barnack stone base, with 13ft. (4m) sides and a diameter of 30ft. (9m), plus part of a second tier of steps. He also found fragments of what he described as ‘niche work’ and a carved piece in ‘Sussex marble‘ with roses, which he variously described as ‘the top of the pyramidal stone, set on the upper part of the cross’ or ‘pinnacle-work at top’. This last piece he took away to his garden in Barn Hill where it was deposited ‘among the antique stones of my hermitage’.

Stukeley made a sketch in his diary of the fragment he acquired which bears the note: ‘I went with Mr Wyng to see the foundation of the queens cross now discovered on anemone hill. A piece of pinnacle I brought home with me adornd with roses thus . . . tis of Sussex marble’

Around 1976 a small fragment of marble was dug up in Stukeley’s garden (now the garden of 9 Barn Hill, Stamford) which had a carved double rose on its surface. In June 1993 its existence came to the attention of Stamford historian John Smith, and the similarity to Stukeley’s drawing of 1745 was recognised. The fragment has four smooth slightly hollowed faces, probably originally polished, with rounded arrises, and broken edges top and bottom. It is of Purbeck marble and has a carved double rose on one face and the trace of another on the opposite face.

The find-spot and the correspondence with Stukeley’s written description alone suggest very strongly that the find was a part of the actual piece that Stukeley found, but the diary sketch (only recently discovered in the Bodleian Library) confirmed it beyond doubt. The fragment is thought to be part of the cross shaft, but no other similar medieval elements still exist on the surviving Eleanor crosses for comparison. This fragment is now displayed in the Discover Stamford area at the town’s library (but currently closed for repairs).

The recognition of the cross fragment in the 1990s reawakened Stamford’s interest in its Eleanor Cross and a modern standing cross, a homage to the original, was designed by Wolfgang Buttress and installed in the Sheep Market in Stamford in 2009. It is a remarkable, pointed, stone and bronze spire covered with symbolic roses – Edward I’s personal emblem.

A paper giving the full details of the history of Stamford’s Eleanor Cross and the recent discovery of the marble rose was published in: Smith, John, F. H., 1994, ‘A Fragment of the Stamford Eleanor Cross’, The Antiquaries Journal, Vol 74, pp. 301-311.