NORTHAMPTONSHIRE

3 miles north-east of Kettering

All three roads into Geddington meet at Eleanor’s Cross, built by Edward I in memory of his beloved Queen Eleanor. The queen had died in 1290 at Harby in Nottinghamshire, and Edward was taking her to London to be buried. The mourning king erected a cross at each of the places where her coffin rested overnight - 12 in all. Today, only three remain; the one at Geddington is the best preserved. The 40 ft high cross - with its statues of Eleanor, niches, pinnacles, coats of arms and flowers - towers above stone cottages with steep, pitched roofs of thatch.

The scene is overlooked by the 14th-century Church of St Mary Magdalene - to which local schoolchildren annually bear garlands and ride hobby-horses in celebration of the village May Queen. The hexagonal base of the cross is used for the crowning ceremony, and during the procession the youngsters pass near the medieval stone bridge and ford over the River Ise.

The fields outside Geddington bear the remains of more than 70 miles of tree avenues. They were laid out in the 18th century by the 2nd Duke of Montagu, nicknamed John the Planter. He had originally planned to plant an avenue from his seat, Boughton House, to his London home. When his neighbour, the Duke of Bedford, refused to let the avenue cross his estates, he planted avenues of equivalent length on his own estates. Dutch elm disease has destroyed much of his work. But the old trees are gradually being replaced with limes and beeches by Boughton Estates, the present owners of the property.

One of the treasures of this village is the Cross, built in 1294 as a memorial to Edward I's beloved Queen Eleanor. He built a cross at each resting place of her funeral procession from Nottinghamshire to London. Geddington Cross is one of the three surviving and is thought to be the best, both in architectural purity and preservation. The bridge is older than the Cross by 40 years, and travellers today may cross the River Ise the same way that Queen Eleanor's cortege crossed 700 years ago. The church of St Mary Magdalene, which received the body of the Queen overnight, was then many centuries old. At the rear of the church was a medieval royal hunting palace. Nothing of this now remains except for some fragments of stone in the church, but it is possible that the steeply buttressed cottages in Wood Street originate from the same period. The name Wood Street emphasizes the reason for a palace in Geddington, for this was the heart of Rockingham Forest, and very popular with kings and courts of the Middle Ages. Many old traditions are kept. In the churchyard lies the tomb of Samuel Lee, a ranger in Geddington Chase who died in 1789. In his will he left 100 pounds to be distributed by the churchwardens every Christmas Day. This continues even today.   (The above extract from 'The Northamptonshire Village Book', compiled by the Northamptonshire Federation of Women's Institutes, is reproduced by kind permission of the publishers, Countryside Books, Newbury, Berkshire)