Erected in the forecourt of Charing Cross railway station in 1864-1865, the Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross is a fanciful reconstruction of the medieval Eleanor cross at Charing. The Victorian monument was designed by Edward Middleton Barry, who also served as the architect of the railway station. It features multiple statues of Queen Eleanor by the sculptor Thomas Earp, alongside the coats of arms of England, León, Castile, and Ponthieu.
Barry based the memorial on three surviving drawings of the Charing Cross held in the Bodleian Library, the British Museum, and the collection of the Royal Society of Antiquaries. Due to the fragmentary nature of this evidence, he also drew from a wider range of sources including the other surviving Eleanor crosses and Queen Eleanor's tomb at Westminster Abbey. In this search for precedents, Barry was assisted by his fellow architect Arthur Ashpitel.
The memorial is located 200 metres (220 yd) northeast of the original site of the Charing Cross, which was destroyed in 1647. That original site is now occupied by Hubert Le Sueur's equestrian statue of Charles I, installed in 1675. Both the monument and the statue are situated along the Strand roadway.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Nicolo Ciampini
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