Waltham Cross

Introduction

The photograph on this page of Waltham Cross by Richard Croft as part of the Geograph project.

The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.

There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk

Waltham Cross

Image: © Richard Croft Taken: 19 Aug 2008

One of the three remaining of the original 12 Eleanor crosses erected by King Edward I to mark the overnight resting places of the funeral cortege of Queen Eleanor, following her death in Harby on November 28th 1290. Architecturally, it follows the same design as the cross at Northampton and the lost crosses of Cheapside and Charing in London, though more Decorated in style. Hexagonal in plan, it rises through diminishing stages of blind tracery with heraldic motifs, through a second tier of six elaborate pinnacled canopies. These house three statues of Eleanor in traditional pose by master mason Alexander of Abingdon, to a third hexagonal tier of blind tracery surmounted by a cross. Waltham Cross has somehow miraculously survived more than 700 years of adversity including Civil War, encroachment by adjacent buildings, road schemes for turnpikes, the misguided intentions of Victorian restorations and bombs dropped during the Second World War. It now stands much restored and rather ignominiously as the centrepiece of a modern pedestrian shopping area.

Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0

Image Location

coordinates on a map icon
Latitude
51.685696
Longitude
-0.032911