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Queen Eleanor of Castile, the beloved wife of Edward I, died in Harby, Nottinghamshire on November 28th 1290. Edward desired that she be buried in Westminster Abbey, so having buried her viscera (internal organs) in Lincoln Cathedral the funeral cortege headed south. The progress took 12 days, passing through Grantham, Stamford, Geddington. Hardingstone, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, Waltham (now known as Waltham Cross). Cheapside London and Charing Cross.
Edward ordered that a cross should be erected in Eleanor’s memory everywhere the cortege had rested en route. She rested in Woburn on the night of December 10th but nothing remains of the cross. It was probably destroyed during the Civil War in the 17th century but there is no record of where it stood. Her body probably lay in the chapel of rest on the site of Old St Mary’s (now the Heritage Centre Museum) and an old map shows a structure that could have been the cross on the cobbles outside the old town hall, now Zoohause furniture shop. But we cannot be sure.
Very few of the crosses remain. Waltham Cross and Charing Cross both have Victorian replicas but the only original cross still in good condition is at Geddington, Northamptonshire. |
