The fragment of Medieval statuary inside the castle is reputedly the remains of one of the statues from Lincoln Eleanor Cross which stood on Swine Green, where Cross O’Cliff Hill meets The Fosse Way (Newark Road) at St Catherines. It was rescued in 1863 from use as a footbridge over a stream and first cited as part of the Eleanor Cross in Herbert Green’s ‘Forgotten Lincoln’ in 1898.

Eleanor of Castile was the daughter of King (later Saint) Ferdinand III of Lyon and Castile, what is now Northern Spain. Aged 13 she married 15-year old Prince Edward, later King Edward I in 1254, heir to King Henry III. Like most medieval royal marriages, theirs had been politically motivated but history remembers the marriage of Edward and Eleanor as an enduring example of conjugal love. Eleanor is eulogised as a model of virtuous womanhood and in their 36-year marriage, Eleanor had at least 16 children, only six of whom survived to adulthood, including the future Edward II born in 1284.

Eleanor died in the nearby village of Harby on 28th November 1290 and her body was eviscerated and embalmed at St. Catherines Priory and her viscera were interred in the Chapel of St. Mary in Lincoln Cathedral. Her body and heart started the 172-mile journey to Westminster Abbey on the morning of 4th December 1290 and the 12 places the cortège stopped overnight were afterwards marked by commemorative ‘Eleanor Crosses’ to her memory.

Edward I established a chantry chapel at Harby to pray for the Queen’s soul and after her death, wrote “I loved her dearly during her lifetime …… I shall not cease to love her now that she is dead”.

Her visceral tomb in Lincoln Cathedral and the crosses at Lincoln, Grantham, Stamford, Stony Stratford, Woburn, Dunstable, St. Albans, Cheapside and Charing Cross were all destroyed 1643-44 during the English Civil War. In 1892 a replica visceral tomb was installed in the Angel Choir of Lincoln Cathedral, based on a drawing of the original in Dugdale’s Book of Monuments 1641 and her tomb in Westminster Abbey, paid for by Lincoln industrialist Joseph Ruston.

Remarkably, three Eleanor Crosses at Geddington, Hardingstone & Waltham Cross and her tomb in Westminster Abbey survive.