Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross

The Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross rises about twenty-one metres above the pavement outside Charing Cross station in the City of Westminster. The South Eastern Railway Company put it up in 1865, as the new station opened. Its architect, Edward Barry, also designed the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Thomas Earp carved it in Portland and Mansfield stone, set on a base of Aberdeen granite. Three octagonal stages climb to a spire and a cross. The style is Gothic Revival, meant to echo the medieval original as closely as possible.

Eleanor of Castile died in Lincoln in 1290, and Edward I marked her funeral journey with twelve crosses. One stood at every place where the procession rested overnight on its way to Westminster Abbey. The cross that stood here fell in 1647, during the civil war, and a statue of Charles I took its place. Barry worked from three surviving drawings of the lost original, from other Eleanor Crosses still standing, and from the queen's tomb. Until the Reformation, two wax candles burned beside that tomb, kept alight on Edward's orders.

Look at the first stage and you find shields for England, León and Castile, and Ponthieu in France. Together they trace her life: born in Castile and León, crowned Queen of England, with Ponthieu part of her marriage dowry. Higher up, eight crowned statues of the queen hold an orb and sceptre or Christian symbols, angels kneeling at their feet. Network Rail renewed the cross in 2009 and 2010, fitting more than a hundred replacement features. Stand here and you stand on the spot London treats as its official centre.