Charing Cross
Charing Cross (/ˌtʃærɪŋ ˈkrɒs/)[1] is a junction in London, England, where six routes meet. Clockwise from north these are: the east side of Trafalgar Square leading to St Martin's Place and then Charing Cross Road; the Strand leading to the City; Northumberland Avenue leading to the Thames; Whitehall leading to Parliament Square; The Mall leading to Admiralty Arch and Buckingham Palace; and two short roads leading to Pall Mall.
A bronze equestrian statue of Charles I by French sculptor Hubert Le Sueur has stood there since 1675.
The original Charing Cross was one of the medieval Eleanor crosses that stood in the heart of the hamlet of Charing, Westminster, from the 1290s until its destruction on the orders of Parliament in 1647. The cross gave its name to the immediate locality, and to landmarks including Charing Cross railway station, on the forecourt of which stands the ornate Queen Eleanor Memorial Cross of 1864–1865. Until 1931, "Charing Cross" also referred to the part of Whitehall between Great Scotland Yard and Trafalgar Square. Drummonds Bank, on the corner with The Mall, retains the address 49 Charing Cross (not to be confused with Charing Cross Road).
Since the early 19th century, Charing Cross has been the notional "center of London" and is now the point from which distances from London are measured.
History
Location and Etymology
Erect a rich and stately carved cross,
Whereon her statue shall with glory shine;
And henceforth see you call it Charing Cross.
— George Peele The Famous Chronicle of King Edward the First (1593)
The name of the area, Charing, is derived from the Old English word cierring, referring to a bend in the River Thames.
The addition of the name "Cross" to the hamlet's name originates from the Eleanor cross erected in 1291–94 by King Edward I as a memorial to his wife, Eleanor of Castile, and placed between the former hamlet of Charing and the entrance to the Royal Mews of the Palace of Whitehall (today the top of Whitehall on the south side of Trafalgar Square). Folk etymology holds that the name derives from chère reine ("dear queen" in French) but the name in fact pre-dates Eleanor's death by at least a hundred years. A variant form found in the late fourteenth century is Cherryngescrouche. The stone cross was the work of the medieval sculptor, Alexander of Abingdon. It was destroyed in 1647 on the orders of the purely Parliamentarian phase of the Long Parliament or Oliver Cromwell himself in the Civil War. A 70 ft (21 m)-high stone sculpture in front of Charing Cross railway station, erected in 1865, is a reimagining of the medieval cross, on a larger scale, more ornate, and not on the original site. It was designed by the architect E. M. Barry and carved by Thomas Earp of Lambeth out of Portland stone, Mansfield stone (a fine sandstone) and Aberdeen granite; and it stands a few hundred yards to the north-east of the original cross, on the Strand. Since 1675 the site of the cross has been occupied by a statue of King Charles I mounted on a horse. The site is recognised by modern convention as the centre of London for the purpose of indicating distances by road in favour of other measurement points (such as St Paul's Cathedral which remains as the root of the English and Welsh part of the Great Britain road numbering scheme). Charing Cross is marked on modern maps as a road junction, and was previously a postal address denoting the stretch of road between Great Scotland Yard and Trafalgar Square. Since 1 January 1931 this section of road has been designated part of the Whitehall thoroughfare.
The cross has given its name to a railway station, a tube station, police station, hospital, a hotel, a theatre, and a music hall (which lay beneath the arches of the railway station). Charing Cross Road the main route from the north (which becomes the east side of Trafalgar Square) was named after the railway station, which was a major destination for traffic, rather than for the original cross.
