Eleanor Spire

One of the great love stories of the medieval age, the love of Edward I for his wife, Eleanor of Castile is commemorated in the sculpture in front of you. Eleanor died at Harby near Lincoln in 1290 when she was travelling north to meet her husband. The distraught king honoured her memory by erecting memorials, known as Eleanor Crosses, at each of the twelve locations where the cortege rested on the way to her burial in Westminster Abbey. The last of these monuments was at Charing Cross in London but the best preserved is at Geddington in Northamptonshire.

Stamford was one of the stopping points on the way south but all that remains of our Eleanor Cross is a carved piece of stone in the shape of a rose which may be seen in the Stamford Library on the High Street.

When the Sheep Market was pedestrianised in 2006 it was decided that a significant piece of public art should be installed in its centre which would be appreciated by both residents and the thousands of visitors who cross the square on their route into the town centre. The artist Wolfgang Buttress was commissioned to design a monument which would commemorate the Queen Eleanor story and the result is the graceful spire which you see before you. The lower part of the spire is of local Ketton stone with, echoing the stone in the Library, bronze roses inset while the upper part is of bronze with fragments of the rose motif gradually fading away towards the top of this simple but elegant monument. This twenty first century memorial to a thirteenth century queen admirably complements the spires and towers of Stamford’s five medieval churches

Local stonemason Pierre Bidaud worked with Wolfgang Buttress in creating the Spire and the Ketton stone was provided by the Castle Cement quarry.