If you've ever seen a sign reading "London - 87 miles", you've probably wondered which part of London that means. London's a big place (659 square miles, fact fans), so where, exactly, is the centre?
It's commonly held to be either Trafalgar Square, or Charing Cross. Well, in fact, it's both.
A memorial to Queen Eleanor
The original Charing Cross was a memorial. In 1290, Edward I (1272-1307, also known as Edward Longshanks) was in Scotland and his wife, Eleanor of Castile, journeyed north to join him. She was taken ill with a fever (which may have been tuberculosis) and died at a manor house near Lincoln. She was 49 years old.
Although the marriage had been political (to settle disputes over the rights to Gascony in south-west France), Edward was deeply attached to the woman who had borne him fourteen children (some accounts put the figure at sixteen). He had her body embalmed and transported to London (although the embalming process required the queen to be eviscerated, and her internal organs were buried in Lincoln Cathedral, except her heart, which was buried at Blackfriars Priory).The funeral procession took twelve days to make the journey to Westminster Abbey.
Edward subsequently commissioned twelve crosses to mark the nightly resting places of the queen's body, and these were erected between 1291 and 1294 at Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Geddington, Hardingstone (Northampton), Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Waltham (now Waltham Cross), Westcheap (now Cheapside) and Charing (now Charing Cross).The cross at Charing was the most ornate, built of marble, and stood at the top of Whitehall, on the south side of what is now Trafalgar Square, in the Royal Mews.
Only three of these crosses are still intact (at Waltham Cross, Northampton and Geddington). The crosses become a potent symbol of conflict during the English Civil War, as the Puritans viewed them as "idolatrous objects". More than half of them were destroyed during the war and the subsequent Commonwealth, including those on Cheapside, at Stony Stratford and at Charing Cross.
In 1675, a statue of Charles I was erected on the site of Eleanor's cross. Behind it is a plaque on the ground which reads
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."
The memorial at Charing Cross station
The memorial that stands in front of Charing Cross station is not, in fact, one of the Eleanor crosses. It was commissioned by the South Eastern Railway Company for their Charing Cross Hotel and was erected in 1865. The new version of Eleanor's cross is, as you would perhaps expect from a Victorian replica, far more ornate than the original
Directions
The centre of London is on the south side of Trafalgar Square, just behind a statue of Charles I riding a horse. The exact spot is marked by a plaque on the ground.
Sources
- Edward I, English Monarchy (http://www.englishmonarchs.co.uk/plantagenet_5.htm)
- Where is the Centre of London?, BBC London (http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2005/08/15/charingcross_feature.shtml)
- Eleanor Cross, Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eleanor_cross)
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