Have you ever gazed at a picture (or better still, stood in the doorway) of a mediaeval cathedral and wondered “‘How on earth…? How did architects, carpenters and masons design and build such soaring, improbable, beautiful structures…and all without a computer, power tool or motorised crane in sight?

I remember staring up at the awesome Lincoln Cathedral and thinking just that. It’s a truly memorable place, but now I wish I could have read Alice Loxton’s book before I visited, as I missed several interesting historical features there.

Loxton is a British historian, writer and presenter whose latest book Eleanor: A 200-Mile Walk in Search of England’s Lost Queen begins in Lincolnshire, where (in 1290, more than 700 years ago) a little-remembered English queen, Eleanor of Castile, died. In his grief, her husband King Edward I commissioned a series of memorial crosses, to be constructed at each of the places where her body lay on its long journey south to her final resting place in London’s Westminster Abbey.

Of the original twelve, only three still stand, though there are plaques to commemorate the original positions of many of the others. They were works of great beauty, cutting-edge design, a demonstration of a man’s love for his dead wife and created to ensure that she lived on in the collective memory of his kingdom.

Loxton decided to walk the same journey, from Lincoln to London, and write a book about the experience.

The result is a charming, entertaining and informative mix of travel writing, historical narrative and a fascinating hodge-podge of historical tid-bits.

She writes of Queen Eleanor, her life and achievements, saying Today, she’d be winning prizes for Women in Business, photographed in a no-nonsense power suit surrounded by her brood of children. She’d write books like ‘How Women Really Can Have it All.’ Really, a mediaeval queen up there with her better-known namesake Eleanor of Aquitaine, and a woman whose life story shows that women (even so long ago) were far from sidenotes to the story of their husband, father or sons. p11

She also delves into topics including mediaeval death and burial customs; churches and cathedrals and that question of how they were built; money and coins and how they were authorised and made; a history of Jewish people in England; bell ringing; the history of forks (yes, the cutlery kind); how Charing Cross in London got its name (yes, it was the site of an Eleanor Cross); the role of pilgrimage across the ages.

Loxton’s walk is itself a pilgrimage of sorts. She did much of it alone though segments were shared with family or friends. Along the way she met and talked to the kinds of people any pilgrim might have encountered in the thirteenth century: inn-keepers, artisans, shop keepers, religious folk…all of whom shared their knowledge and enthusiasms with her. It’s a picture of a generous country with glimpses of life from long ago. Her own approach is to savour the experiences, mentally (if not physically) slow down and notice all the hidden clues to England of long ago.

Already, it was becoming clear: if you simply take the time to look, our landscape is dotted with these forgotten memorials to the endeavours and sufferings of generations past.
Eleanor p78

Eleanor is another of those library treasures I write about sometimes. I was browsing the ‘new books’ display at my local library and this book was face-out on the shelf. I picked it up, thinking it was a story of Eleanor of Aquitaine (a more famous mediaeval queen) but was taken by its premise of walking and retracing such a long-ago journey. I was richly rewarded with an interesting and entertaining read.

And here is a quote that Loxton (I think quite correctly) describes as among the most romantic words ever written; by Edward I about his wife:

…whom in life we dearly cherished and in death we cannot cease to love.

Eleanor was published 2025 by Macmillan, an imprint of Pan Macmillan.