File:ECR(1851) p21 - Tottenham Cross.jpg

The cross at Tottenham High Cross, in Tottenham village, "a long straggling hamlet of considerable antiquity, for we find itmentioned in Domesday Book."

"At the western extremity, called Tottenham High Cross, on the east side of the high road, stands the Cross, erected in commemoration of that spot being one of the places where the corpse of King Edward's Eleanor rested. It was originally a wood cross covered with lead, which was taken down, and the present brick structure erected in its place, by Dean Wood, about the year 1600. In 1809, however, contemporary taste, not satisfied with the plain brick monument which had stood the storms of so many years, determined to "modernise" it,and it was accordingly stuccoed and gothicised.

This Cross has been rendered famous by Izaak Walton, who describes it as "a sweet shady arbour, interwoven of woodbine, sweetbriar, jessamine, and myrtle", in which he used to refresh himself, and drink "sack, milk, oranges, and sugar, which all put together, made a drink like nectar; indeed, too good for any but us anglers." This, however, has, alas ! long since departed, and the sweet shades he speaks of live only in the fervid imagination of the cockney poets, who come here, as to classic ground,to read Izaak, and to dwell on the pathos of Cowper's comical ballad of "John Gilpin", who, by his equestrian eccentricities, has made this neighbourhood sufficiently notorious."