The Eleanor crosses were a series of twelve, lavishly decorated, spire-type stone monuments topped with crosses which were erected in a line down the east of England from Lincoln to London. King Edward I had them built between 1291 and about 1295 in memory of his beloved wife Eleanor of Castile. The King and Queen had been married for thirty-six years and she stayed by the King’s side through his many travels. While on a royal progress, she died at Harby, in the East Midlands, in November 1290. The crosses, erected in her memory, marked the nightly resting-places along the route taken when her body was transported to Westminster Abbey near London.

From Lincoln to London – The twelve stops
of the funeral cortege of Eleanor of Castile

The crosses stood at Lincoln, Grantham and Stamford, all in Lincolnshire; Geddington and Hardingstone in Northamptonshire; Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire; Woburn and Dunstable in Bedfordshire; St Albans and Waltham (now Waltham Cross) in Hertfordshire; Cheapside in London; and Charing (now Charing Cross) in Westminster.

Puritans destroying Cheapside Cross in 1643

Three of the medieval monuments – those at Geddington, Hardingstone and Waltham Cross – survive (if heavily restored); but the other nine, other than a few fragments, are lost. The largest and most ornate of the twelve was the Charing Cross. Several memorials and elaborated reproductions of the crosses have been erected, including the Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross at Charing Cross Station (built 1865).

The Lincolnshire Eleanor Crosses

What can we say of the Lincolnshire crosses?

LINCOLN

GRANTHAM

STAMFORD