Painting of Joan

Painting of Ralph first Earl of Westmorland 

Raby

 

Visiting Raby Castle as part of my ongoing research for a forthcoming talk on Joan Beaufort.

What a place. Peaceful, beautiful and steeped in history — yet once home to one of the most influential women of the fifteenth century.

Raby is forever linked with Joan’s marriage to Ralph Neville, Earl of Westmorland. Together they had fourteen children, and through them Joan became ancestress to an extraordinary cast of later history. Their daughter Eleanor Neville was mother of Henry Percy, Hotspur. Cecily Neville became mother of Edward IV and Richard III. Another grandson was Richard Neville, remembered as the Kingmaker.

Yet Joan’s life was no fairytale. Her first marriage to Robert Ferrers brought two daughters before early widowhood. Her second marriage brought status and power, but also years of bitter inheritance dispute with her Neville stepchildren.

After Ralph’s death, Joan appears to have turned increasingly to religion and later took a vow of chastity — perhaps understandable after a lifetime of childbearing, politics and family conflict.

It strikes me that Joan’s story is so often told through others: in books about Katherine Swynford as daughter, or Cecily Neville as mother. Yet Joan herself deserves centre stage. I am increasingly tempted to try to tell her story myself.

For now, Raby was a reminder that Joan Beaufort was never merely adjacent to history. She helped shape it.

Elanor of Castile is very much part of Johns Story as his Great Grandmother

Millennium window Harby

Harby Church today

 Victorian representation 

Looking towards the supposed site of Harby Manor 

It is easy to think of Eleanor of Castile in terms of what came after her death—the great crosses, the long funeral journey, the tomb at Westminster. Yet the story does not begin there. It begins here, in Harby, a small and otherwise unremarkable village that became, for a brief moment in 1290, the centre of royal attention.

In November of that year, Eleanor was travelling with Edward I. By the 13th, her health was clearly failing, and the court left Clipstone heading towards Lincoln, perhaps intending to visit the shrine of Hugh of Lincoln to pray for her recovery. The journey, however, was cut short. On 20 November, Eleanor was brought to Harby, to the manor house of Richard de Weston—a reminder that this was not a grand royal residence, but a local house drawn suddenly into royal history. Suffering from what contemporaries described as a “slow fever,” she declined steadily over the following days.

Her final hours were carefully attended. Present at her deathbed were the local priest, William de Kelm, and the Bishop of Lincoln, Oliver Sutton. On the evening of 28 November 1290, Eleanor died. The setting could hardly have been more modest, yet the consequences of that moment would extend across the whole of England.

The response was immediate and practical. Eleanor’s body was taken to St Catherine’s Priory in Lincoln, where it was eviscerated and embalmed. Her viscera were buried in Lincoln Cathedral, while her body and heart began the long journey south. On the morning of 4 December, the funeral cortège set out on the first stage of a journey of some 172 miles to Westminster Abbey. Travelling in the short daylight hours of December, it moved along medieval roads, stopping at twelve places that would later be marked by the Eleanor Crosses. These monuments have come to dominate the narrative, fixing Eleanor’s memory across the landscape, but Harby was the point from which that process began.

Edward did not forget the place of her death. At Harby he founded a chantry chapel so that prayers would be said for Eleanor’s soul in perpetuity. Consecrated in 1294 and served by its first incumbent, Roger de Newton, the chantry was supported by an endowment that included the manor of Navenby. Unlike the great crosses, which proclaimed royal grief in public, the chantry represented something quieter and more enduring: a daily act of remembrance rooted in place. It is here that Edward’s words—“I loved her dearly during her lifetime … I shall not cease to love her now that she is dead”—feel most appropriate.

The medieval church associated with these events has not survived intact. Rebuilt over centuries and ultimately replaced in 1877, the present building stands on the same site, carrying forward layers of memory rather than preserving a single moment in time. Within it, one of the most striking commemorations of Eleanor is the stained glass window installed in 2008.

Designed and made by Lincoln Cathedral glazier Stephen Lewis, the window commemorates Eleanor’s death at Harby and, more broadly, celebrates two thousand years of Christianity. Eleanor stands at its centre, framed by her heraldry—the arms of León and Castile, England, and Ponthieu. Around her, twelve crosses flow across the design, symbolising the original Eleanor Crosses and echoing the stages of her funeral journey.

At the heart of the window, a roundel places the cross itself as the central symbol of Christianity, accompanied by a carnation and narcissus—emblems of enduring love and resurrection. It is a composition that brings together dynastic identity, personal loss, and theological meaning within a single visual narrative.

The use of stained glass is particularly apt. As the light changes, so too does the image: colours deepen, soften, and shift, and the sequence of crosses seems almost to move. In this way, Eleanor’s final journey is not simply depicted but quietly re-enacted, carried again in light across the interior of the church.

Other traces of Eleanor remain: a statue set into the tower, heraldry that anchors her identity, and smaller details that connect past and present. Yet even here, memory is not entirely secure. A brass plate by the altar rail records her death as 27 November 1290, a small but telling error that reminds us how easily history can shift in the act of commemoration.

Standing in the churchyard today, looking out across the fields, there is little to suggest that this was once the setting for a royal death. There is no sense of spectacle, no grand architectural statement—only the quiet continuity of a village landscape. And yet from this place, Eleanor’s memory travelled the length of England: fixed in stone, carried in ritual, and sustained here, most quietly of all, in prayer, glass, and light.

 

Harby is not simply where Eleanor died. It is where her memory began.