Katherine's Cross - Ampthill Park, Bedfordshire, UK
Posted by: 
Dragontree
N 52° 02.072 W 000° 30.449
30U E 670967 N 5767811
This majestic cross lies in Ampthill Park.
Waymark Code: WM7C15
Location: Eastern England, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 10/03/2009
Views: 4
Bedfordshire Libraries describe the cross:
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visit link)
'Ampthill castle was built by Sir John Cornwall, later Lord Fanhope, in the early fifteenth century. In 1508 it became the property of Henry VII.
Queen Katherine of Aragon stayed at Ampthill castle for three years while her divorce from King Henry VIII was under discussion at Dunstable Priory (1531-1533).
The site of the castle is now marked by a cross erected by Lord Ossory in 1770 with an inscription said to be by Horace Walpole on its base.
"In day's of old here Ampthill's towers were seen,
The mournful refuge of an injured Queen;
Here flowed her pure but unavailing tears,
Here blinded zeal sustain'd her sinking years.
Yet Freedom hence her radiant banner wav'd,
And Love aveng'd a realm by priests enslav'd;
From Catherine's wrongs a nation's bliss was spread,
And Luther's light from Henry's lawless bed." '
The cross is on the high hill in Ampthill Park and has just undergone restoration. It is a Christian Cross design with a shield underneath and is on a stepped plinth surrounded by a wooden fence.
Capability brown improved the grounds of Ampthill Park in 1771 and 1772 and the cross was a new feature in his landscape. The cross is a Grade II Listed Monument erected in 1773 from an idea by Horace Walpole, a friend of the then owner of the estate, the Earl of Upper Ossory.
The Katherine Cross is an early example of a Gothic Revival monument and is a rare surviving garden antiquity as crosses are usually memorials alone and not ornaments like this one.