page_title: Eleanor cross
section_title: St Albans
hierarchical_section_title: Eleanor cross / Locations / St Albans
caption_attribution_description: English: Plaque erected at The Clock Tower High Street St Albans Hertfordshire AL3 4EL by the St Albans and Hertfordshire Architectural and Archaeological Society
context_page_description: The Eleanor crosses were a series of twelve tall and lavishly decorated stone monuments topped with crosses in a line down part of the east of England. King Edward I had them erected between 1291 and about 1295 in memory of his beloved wife Eleanor of Castile, who died in November 1290, marking the nightly resting-places along the route taken when her body was transported to 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 in Hertfordshire; Cheapside in London; and Charing in Westminster. Three – those at Geddington, Hardingstone and Waltham Cross – survive more or less intact; but the other nine, other than a few fragments, are lost. The largest and most ornate of the twelve was Charing Cross.
context_section_description: (51°45′04″N 00°20′26″W)
  Eleanor's bier spent the night of 12 December 1290 at St Albans, Hertfordshire. The cross here was built between 1291 and 1293 by John of Battle at a total recorded cost of over £100, with some of the sculpture supplied by Ralph of Chichester. It was erected at the south end of the Market Place, and for many years stood in front of the fifteenth-century Clock Tower in the High Street, opposite the Waxhouse Gateway entrance to the Abbey.
  In 1596, it was described as "verie stately". However, having fallen into decay, and having probably been further damaged during the Civil War, it was eventually demolished in 1701–02, to be replaced by a market cross. This was demolished in turn in 1810, although the town pump it contained survived a little longer. A drinking fountain was erected on the site by philanthropist Isabella Worley in 1874: this was relocated to Victoria Square nearby in the late 20th century.
  A late 19th-century ceramic plaque on the Clock Tower commemorates the Eleanor cross.
caption: Plaque on the Clock Tower, St Albans
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