Patrick Comerford
I was in Dunstable last week, mainly to visit the Priory Church of Saint Peter and Saint Mary’s Church on West Street, the 1960s church by Peter Williams that typifies his work and the liturgical insights that came at the time of the Second Vatican Council.
But throughout Dunstable, there is no escaping the fact that this town in Bedfordshire owes much to a continuous royal presence from Henry I building a small palace or hunting lodge and then endowing the foundation of the Augustinian priory, to the choice of Dunstable as one of the stopping places for Queen Eleanor’s funeral cortege in 1290 and the erection of one of the 12 Eleanor Crosses, to the annulment of the marriage of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon in the Lady Chapel of the Priory Church in 1533.
Today, the Old Palace Lodge on Church Street, opposite the Priory Church of Saint Peter, is an ivy-clad hotel and restaurant. The building was converted from a farmhouse in the 18th century, but it stands on the site of Kingsbury Palace, frequented by monarchs and royalty ever since the 12th century. The wood panelling and furnishings create an ambience of warm old English charm in the Old Palace Lodge that dates back several hundred years.
Henry I came to the throne in 1100 and soon became engaged in the development of Dunstable at the junction of two roads dating back to the Roman era. He built a palace near these crossroads, appointed a steward, and Kingsbury Palace was finished and furnished ready for a royal visit in 1109.
When the old palace became too costly to maintain, King John gave handed it over to the Augustinian Priory. In 1290, Dunstable became one of the stopping points along the elaborate funeral procession of Queen Eleanor.
Cardinal Thomas Wolsey’s secretary and biographer, George Cavendish (1497-1562), bought the old palace immediately before the dissolution of the monastic houses, perhaps saving it from destruction. Cavendish married Margery Kemp, a niece of Sir Thomas More, and was related to Bess of Hardwick and the ancestors of the Dukes of Devonshire.
William Marshe and his wife Elizabeth were living at Kingsbury by 1600 and their children grew up there. Later generations of the Marshe family built the Marshe Almshouses further along Church Street in 1743.
When the Old Palace Lodge was depicted in the Gentleman’s Magazine in 1816, the house was part of Kingsbury Farm, which included 164 acres across the three parishes of Dunstable, Houghton Regis and Caddington. The east end of the house was re-roofed in the 1920s, with a gable end facing Church Street that altered the appearance of the façade.
The house was divided in two in the 1930s, one part being Kingsbury Court, Dr Ashton’s house, the other the home for a time of a Mr Wallis who re-named it the Old Palace Lodge. Creasey Hotels bought the premises in 1959 and opened as the Old Palace Lodge Hotel in 1960. That year, a barn that once belonged to Kingsbury Farm, and was later Kingsbury Stables, was converted into a public house that became the Norman King. When the inn was built, stone was brought from a Norman castle and a cottage near Cambridge, with panelling from a mediaeval inn in Caxton, Cambridgeshire.
The thatch of the Norman King caught fire in in August 2011, the fire burned all night, and the pub was destoyed. The Tudor Walled Gardens at the Old Palace Lodge were designed by Matthew George Garden Design in 2018-2019. They have been laid out on the site of the Norman King Inn in an ambitious heritage project of classic gardening.
Ornamental grasses give a modern feel to the planting and provide year-round interest with seasonal flowering bulbs and annual flowers in beds and linear zinc jardinières. The main planting compliments the hard landscape materials of the classic English garden style, while evergreen clipped hedges, box and yew topiary set within borders of hardy perennial plants and small ornamental trees bring the Tudor theme to life.
Shrubs and climbing roses add colour and scent, with some fruit trees along the walls. Outside the hotel entrance, topiary yew cones are growing in large stylish terracotta planters. Along the red brick wall, bordered with pearls of lights in the evening, evergreen hedges create natural alcoves for private seating while at the centre is a terrace of grey porcelain pavers with rattan sofas and a fire pit.
An aged zinc water feature set in front of the Norman stone wall is surrounded by exotic grasses and herbaceous plants, sweet shrubs and yew trees. There is an oak-framed gazebo on the left hand side of the garden, a shaded pergola walkway and two glass pods that can be hired for private dining.
Dunstable was the location of one of the 12 tall decorated stone columns or Eleanor Crosses erected by King Edward I to mark the route of the funeral of his wife, Eleanor of Castile. She died at Harby, near Lincoln, on 28 November 1290 and her body was brought to Westminster Abbey on a journey that took 12 days, following a route that stopped at several important religious houses.
A chapel was built In Harby, the village where she died. When she was taken to Lincoln, her viscera or internal organs were removed and buried in a tomb in the cathedral and her body was embalmed. The original viscera tomb and what remained of Eleanor were destroyed by Cromwell’s troops in the 1640s, and it was restored in 1891.
The entourage continued south towards Watling Street and crossed the Great Ouse at Stony Stratford on the journey to Woburn Abbey. A stop at Stony Stratford was not part of the original plan and flooding and short winter days meant crossing the river took some time. It is unclear where Eleanor’s body stayed in Stony Stratford, but it was possibly at the parish church of Saint Mary Magdalene, whose tower still stands.
From Stony Stratford, the procession continued on to Woburn Abbey before reaching Dunstable on 11 December. There her coffin rested on a bier in the middle of the town’s marketplace before being taken to the Priory Church, where it stayed overnight before going on to St Albans the next day.
Dunstable is the only place on the route where the king did not stay in the same town as his wife’s body. Instead, he had gone ahead to St Albans for the election of the new abbot, John of Berkamsted. In London, her heart was buried at Blackfriars while her body was buried in Westminster Abbey.
In all, 12 Eleanor Crosses were erected along the funeral route. All were tall, stone monuments, almost 40 ft high. They differed in detail, but all were built in three tiers, decreasing in size as they ascended, surmounted with a cross, and all elaborately carved with statues and coats of arms.
The first Eleanor Cross to mark the journey was at Lincoln, but only three survive: Geddington Cross, Northamptonshire, the best-preserved and most complete of the crosses; Hardingstone, Northampton, on a hill overlooking Delapré Abbey; and Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire. The original crosses at Charing Cross, London, and St Albans were destroyed during the Reformation and Civil War, but are marked by modern replicas and plaques.
The Eleanor Cross at Stony Stratford was also destroyed during the Civil War, and no trace remains of it, although there is a plaque on the arch at 157 High Street. The local artist Luke McDonnell has also created a mural of Eleanor at the corner of High Street and New Street, diagonally opposite the Old George.
For about two years, from 1291 to 1293, stonemasons and sculptors worked to create the Eleanor Cross in Dunstable, with its effigies of the queen and other carved decorations. It remained a landmark in Dunstable until the English Civil War, when Cromwell’s Roundhead troops smashed it to pieces in 1643. Nothing above ground has survived.
It is difficult today to identify the exact location of the Eleanor Cross in Dunstable, and the layout of the crossroads and the site of the market have changed over the years. Most sources seem to agree that the foundations of the cross probably lay beneath the crossroads, near the Church Street exit, and a plaque on street corner recalls the cross.
A small shopping precinct opened in 1985 on the west side of High Street North, opposite the Quadrant shopping centre, and was named Eleanor’s Cross Shopping Precinct. A modern sculpture of Queen Eleanor by Dora Barrett was a gift to the people of Dunstable and was unveiled on 23 October 1985 as a symbolic replacement for the long-lost cross, though no-one claims that this was the site of the 13th century Eleanor Cross.
If Edward did not stay at the priory or the old palace in Dunstable during Eleanor’s funeral, then neither did Henry VIII during the hearing of his annulment and the proceedings against Catherine of Aragon in the Lady Chapel in the priory church. Instead, he stayed at the White Horse Inn on High Street North during his visit in 1533.
When Catherine of Aragon died in 1536, she did not receive an elaborate funeral like Eleanor in 1290. Instead, she was buried in the monastic church that is now Peterborough Cathedral. Henry returned to Dunstable with Anne Boleyn in 1537 and once again stayed at the White Horse Inn.
The entrance to the site of the White Horse Inn at No 13 High Street North incorporates the Anchor Gateway, an early 17th century gatehouse. A paved setting on the street recalls that Henry VIII stayed at the White Horse Inn and played a game of bowls on the green behind the inn, near the site of Christ Church today.
At the end of last week’s walk around Dunstable, I sat in a shaded area in the Old Palace Lodge, lazily nurturing a long cool drink and looking out on the recreated Tudor Walled Gardens. The panelled walls are filled with mementoes of Henry VIII, including portraits of Henry, Catherine of Aragon and Cardinal Wolsey. One portrait frames Henry between all his six wives – perhaps a light-hearted talking point for wedding guests who might otherwise find any conversation of annulments, divorces or even beheadings, inappropriate in the company of a bride and groom.
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