Back Eleanor-Kreuz German Cruces de Leonor Spanish Eleonooran risti Finnish Croix d'Éléonore French צלבי אלינור HE Croci di Eleonora Italian Eleanorkors NB Krzyże Eleonory Polish Cruzes de Leonor Portuguese Eleanorkors Swedish
The Eleanor crosses were a series of twelve tall and lavishly decorated stone monuments topped with crosses erected in a line down part of the east of England. King Edward I had them built between 1291 and about 1295 in memory of his wife Eleanor of Castile. The King and Queen had been married for 36 years and she stayed by the King's side through his many travels. While on a royal progress, she died 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.
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.
Three of the medieval monuments – those at Geddington, Hardingstone and Waltham Cross – survive more or less intact; but the other nine, other than a few fragments, are lost. Some were destroyed during the Reformation and Civil War, due to their Catholic associations. 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), 200 metres (220 yd) northeast – along the Strand roadway – of the original site of the Charing Cross.
Edward I's use of architecture is known for containing an element of propaganda. In her lifetime, Eleanor had been unpopular with the public, particularly for her acquisitiveness regarding land holdings, which had been associated with the abuse of Jewish loans, attracting strong criticism from the church. The series of Crosses played a role in rehabilitating Eleanor's image as an idealised Queen and woman, as well as projecting royal and spiritual power. The Lincoln tomb of a child falsely claimed to be martyred by Jews is widely assumed to form part of the series, positioning Eleanor and Edward as defenders against the recently expelled Jews. The series has architectural parallels, most notably the 1271 montjoies marking the funeral route of King Louis IX of France, which were designed as part of an attempt to promote his canonisation as a saint.