page_title: Eleanor cross
section_title: Hardingstone, Northampton
hierarchical_section_title: Eleanor cross / Locations / Hardingstone, Northampton
caption_attribution_description: English: The en:Northampton Queen Eleanor Cross; picture taken (c) by R Neil Marshman 28 October 2005This is a photo of listed building number 1039797.
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: (52°13′02″N 00°53′50″W)
  
  Eleanor's bier spent the night of 8 December 1290, and perhaps also that of 7 December, at Hardingstone, on the outskirts of Northampton. The cross here was constructed between 1291 and 1292 by John of Battle, at a total recorded cost of over £100. William of Ireland and Ralph of Chichester carved the statues. A causeway leading from the town to the cross was constructed by Robert son of Henry. The cross is still standing, close to Delapré Abbey, on the side of the A508 leading out of Northampton, and just north of the junction with the A45. The King stayed nearby at Northampton Castle.
  The monument is octagonal in shape and set on steps; the present steps are replacements. It is built in three tiers, and originally had a crowning terminal, presumably a cross. The terminal appears to have gone by 1460: there is mention of a "headless cross" at the site from which Thomas Bourchier, Archbishop of Canterbury, watched Margaret of Anjou's flight following the Battle of Northampton. The monument was restored in 1713, to mark the Peace of Utrecht and the end of the War of the Spanish Succession, and this work included the fitting of a new terminal in the form of a Maltese cross. Further repairs were undertaken in 1762. At a later restoration in 1840, under the direction of Edward Blore, the Maltese cross was replaced by the picturesque broken shaft which is seen today. Later, less intrusive restorations were undertaken in 1877 and 1986. Further restoration work was completed in 2019.
  The bottom tier of the monument features open books. These probably included painted inscriptions of Eleanor's biography and of prayers for her soul to be said by viewers, now lost.
  John Leland, in the early 1540s, recorded it as "a right goodly crosse, caullid, as I remembre, the Quenes Crosse", although he seems to have associated it with the 1460 Battle of Northampton. It is also referred to by Daniel Defoe in his Tour thro' the Whole Island of Great Britain, in reporting the Great Fire of Northampton in 1675: "... a townsman being at Queen's Cross upon a hill on the south side of the town, about two miles (3.2 km) off, saw the fire at one end of the town then newly begun, and that before he could get to the town it was burning at the remotest end, opposite where he first saw it."
  Celia Fiennes in 1697 describes it as "a Cross, a mile off the town call'd High-Cross – it stands just in the middle of England – its all stone 12 stepps which runs round it, above that is the stone carv'd finely and there are 4 large Nitches about the middle, in each is the statue of some queen at length which encompasses it with other carvings as garnish, and so it rises less and less to the top like a tower or Piramidy."
  An engraving of the Hardingstone cross (drawn by Jacob Schnebbelie and engraved by James Basire) was published by the Society of Antiquaries in its Vetusta Monumenta series in 1791.
caption: The Hardingstone cross
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