page_title: Charing Cross
section_title: Official use as central point
hierarchical_section_title: Charing Cross / Official use as central point
caption_attribution_description: Mileages from London @Trafalgar Square (south side), London, England - 'On the site now occupied by the statue of King Charles I was erected the original Queen Eleanor's Cross, a replica of which stands in front of Charing Cross Station. Mileages from London are measured from the site of the original cross.'
context_page_description: Charing Cross is a junction in London, England, where six routes meet. Clockwise from north these are: the east side of Trafalgar Square leading to St Martin's Place and then Charing Cross Road; the Strand; Northumberland Avenue; Whitehall; The Mall leading to Admiralty Arch and Buckingham Palace; and two short roads leading to Pall Mall.
  A bronze equestrian statue of Charles I by French sculptor Hubert Le Sueur has stood there since 1675.
  The original Charing Cross was one of the medieval Eleanor crosses that stood in the heart of the hamlet of Charing, Westminster, from the 1290s until its destruction on the orders of Parliament in 1647. The cross gave its name to the immediate locality, and to landmarks including Charing Cross railway station, on the forecourt of which stands the ornate Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross of 1864–1865.
  Until 1931, "Charing Cross" also referred to the part of Whitehall between Great Scotland Yard and Trafalgar Square. Drummonds Bank, on the corner with The Mall, retains the address 49 Charing Cross.
  Since the early 19th century, Charing Cross has been the notional "centre of London" and is now the point from which distances from London are measured.
context_section_description: By the late 18th century, the Charing Cross district was increasingly coming to be perceived as the "centre" of the metropolis (supplanting the traditional heartland of the City to the east). From the early 19th century, legislation applicable only to the London metropolis used Charing Cross as a central point to define its geographical scope. Its later use in legislation waned in favour of providing a schedule of local government areas and became mostly obsolete with the creation of Greater London in 1965.
  Road distances from London continue to be measured from Charing Cross. Prior to its selection as a commonly agreed central datum point, various points were used for this purpose. John Ogilby's Britannia of 1675, of which editions and derivations continued to be published throughout the 18th century, used the "Standard" (a former conduit head) in Cornhill; while John Cary's New Itinerary of 1798 used the General Post Office in Lombard Street. The milestones on the principal turnpike roads were generally measured from the terminus of the individual road, mostly on the perimeter of the metropolitan area: these points included Hyde Park Corner, Whitechapel Church, the southern end of London Bridge, the southern end of Westminster Bridge, Shoreditch Church, Tyburn Turnpike, Holborn Bars, St Giles's Pound, Hicks Hall (the terminus of the Great North Road), and the Stones' End in The Borough. Some roads into Surrey and Sussex were measured from St Mary-le-Bow church. Some of these structures had been moved or destroyed, but their former locations continued to be used for distances. The result was that "all the Books of Roads ... published, differ in the Situation of Mile Stones, and instead of being a Guide to the Traveller, serve only to confound him".
  William Camden speculated in 1586 that Roman roads in Britain had been measured from London Stone, a claim that was subsequently widely repeated, but that is unsupported by archaeological or other evidence.
caption: Plaque by the statue of Charles I, stating that "Mileages from London are measured from the site of the original Cross"
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