What was the Cheapside Cross?

King Edward I built the Cheapside Cross in the 1290s in memory of his late wife, Eleanor of Castile. It was one of 12 stone memorials marking the stopping places on her funeral route from Nottinghamshire to London. One of the crosses was also built in Charing, which back then was a village near Westminster. You can see a replica outside Charing Cross Station today.

The monument was decorated with crests and Catholic imagery, as England was a Catholic country then. In 1411, the original cross was rebuilt with additional Catholic figures like the Virgin and Child, a pope and a cardinal. This structure soon decayed and was replaced once more in 1486. It was four storeys high and decorated with statues of the pope and the disciples.

The Cross was mostly the site of public displays of royal authority, including processions for coronations, visiting royals and wartime victories. This print shows the grand parade for the visit of Marie de Medici, King Charles I’s mother-in-law, in 1638. The Cross was also once used as a starting point for jousts and horse races.

From the mid-1500s, England became a mostly Protestant country. King Henry VIII wanted to divorce his first wife, but the pope wouldn’t let him. So in 1534, Henry appointed himself the head of the new Church of England and broke away from the Catholic Church. The reigns of his children King Edward VI (1547–1553) and Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603) led England even closer to Protestantism.

The famous Cheapside Cross became a target. Some Protestants rejected religious images, like those on the Cross, as they believed it led people to worship idols, rather than God. They called for the monument to be removed, but the royal family and City of London authorities wanted to protect it. The Protestants even tried to argue it was a traffic hazard. This tactic failed, too.

Over the next few decades, the Cross was attacked, damaged and restored a number of times. Eventually, near the start of the Civil Wars (1642–1651), Parliament established a committee “for the demolition of monuments of superstition and idolatry”. In simpler terms – to destroy Catholic imagery. The Cheapside Cross was dismantled by workmen under the protection of soldiers in May 1643.

The lead statues were melted down, remoulded into bullets and used during the Civil Wars. Unlike the Charing monument, we don’t have a replica Cheapside Cross to look at today. All that’s left are two stone slabs that were found in 1838 during works to build a new sewer along the street. Both are now in our collection.