Delapré Abbey

We are not quite done with Northampton. Delapré Abbey is a short drive outside the town.

It was founded in 1145 as a Cluniac nunnery set in 3,000 acres. The founder is the same Simon de Senlis who founded St Peter’s (see yesterday’s post) and it’s the site of the Battle of Northampton in 1460; a victory for the Yorkists. Then not much happened until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1538 when it was seized by the Crown and rented out until 1550 when it was sold. The Northampton Corporation bought it in 1946. There is not much to say except almost nothing remains of the medieval abbey.

In the still extensive grounds is an Eleanor Cross, in good nick after recent restoration by English Heritage. There were twelve of these crosses put up by Edward I, marking the overnight resting places of Eleanor of Castile’s ( his wife) funeral procession. She died in 1290 and the crosses were made between 1291 and 1295. Edward probably got the idea from the montjoies marking the funeral route of King Louis IX of France, who had died in 1271. One of the meanings of montjoie is a cairn – not a word I had heard of until now.

There were twelve crosses. “The crosses stood at Lincoln, Grantham and Stamford, all in Lincolnshire; Geddington and Hardingstone* in Northamptonshire; Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire; Woburn and Dunstable in Bedfordshire; St Albans and Waltham (now Waltham Cross) in Hertfordshire; Cheapside in London; and Charing (now Charing Cross) in Westminster”(Wikipedia). (*Hardingstone is a suburb of Northampton and the site of Delapré Abbey.)

Today three remain and Charing Cross is not one of them. The cross there is a fanciful, Victorian reconstruction of the original medieval cross. The three extant ones are at Geddington, Hardingstone and Waltham Cross. The queen is buried in the chapel of Edward the Confessor in Westminster Abbey in a chest tomb topped with her recumbent bronze effigy.

My day out in Northampton was organised by The Rectory Society, my first outing with them. There were more than thirty of us and most are regular attenders on the RS tours. Our leader was James Miller who lives not far from Northampton. He was an excellent guide and organiser arranging for the churches to be open and chivying us to keep to the timetable.