Mileage Central Point of London Plaque

Behind the statue of Charles I on the south side of Trafalgar Square lies a small plaque in the ground that visitors easily overlook. From here all road distances to London are officially measured. On this spot stood the original Charing Cross, which takes its name from the village of Charing between then separate Westminster and London.

In 1290 King Edward I was returning from Scotland and waiting there for his wife Queen Eleanor, who fell ill near Lincoln and died there. In her memory he had twelve memorial crosses built at each place where her funeral procession stopped on its way to Westminster Abbey. The cross at Charing marked the twelfth and last stop before the abbey and stood exactly on today's site. During the English Civil War it came down; only three of the original dozen survived elsewhere. Later a statue of Charles I rose on the same spot, while in the nineteenth century a replica of the Eleanor Cross appeared in front of nearby Charing Cross station. But only behind the statue does the plaque mark the historic location itself.

Measuring from one fixed point dates back to the early 1800s, when guidebooks and milestones used different places across England, sometimes even just the edge of the city. Here every sign has been unified since: Manchester is about two hundred ninety-six kilometers away, Liverpool about three hundred nineteen, Paris four hundred fourteen, Rome almost eighteen hundred kilometers. So next time you see a mileage sign pointing toward London, picture that small pavement roundel as your destination point.