Queen Eleanor Cross, Northampton (a love story)

This is an unused card, dating from before 1918 but after 1902 though more likely after 1907.  Reasoning for this: the postage rate is stated as 1/2p for inland postage which was the rate in place until 1918. The card does have a divided back which was allowed in the UK from September 1902.  However many of the earlier cards with divided backs caution against using them for foreign countries.  This doesn't so I'm assuming it dates from some time after the majority of other countries accepted divided backs which seems to be around 1907.

Back to the subject matter of the card.  It shows one of the 12 Eleanor Crosses originally built between 1291 and 1294.  They were erected by Edward I in memory of his wife, Eleanor of Castile.  Theirs was an arranged marriage as was so common in the Middle Ages, but unlike many, it was a happy marriage.  They were rarely separated and Eleanor accompanied Edward on military campaigns.

When she died in Nottinghamshire in 1290, after a fever, her body was taken for burial to Westminster Abbey, a journey lasting 12 days, stopping each night along the way.  Edward accompanied her body.  He ordered crosses to be built at each of the stopping places in honour of the wife "whom living we dearly cherished, and whom dead we cannot cease to love.".

Of the 12 crosses only three remain, one of them being the Northampton cross at Hardingstone.

Althorpe, Northampton

Postmarked Canterbury, dated 26 July 1918.
Althorpe, Northampton.

Although the name Althorpe has been spelt with a final "e", it is clearly the same place as Althorp, the ancestral home to the Spencer family, and the final resting place of Diana, Princess of Wales,who is buried on a small island in the middle of a lake in the estate.