WHY CHARING CROSS?

Te Aroha News, Volume XLI, Issue 6598, 12 May 1925, Page 2

WHY CHARING CROSS?

Many a street name in London is a link with English national history. The first English queen of whose funeral there is any account is not likely to be forgotten since memorials of her still remain. This was Queen Isabella, wife of Edward I. She died at Grantham in 1291, and was taken for burial to Westminster Abbey, the journey taking nine . days. At each place at which the body rested Edward caused a cross to be erected, the first being at Lincoln, the last at a village named charing, near Westminster. Two of these crosses still remain, one at Northampton and another at Waltham. Charing Cross was the finest of them all.

The stone came from Caen, in France, and the marble of" the steps from Corfe, -in Derbyshire. It was pulled down in the year 1647. The modern cross in the yard of the Charing Cross railway station is said to be a replica of it.