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Saturday 25 July 2009 saw the rededication of Katherine’s Cross in Ampthill Park following restoration works. The rededication coincided with the Ampthill Castle Community Archaeology project which, began on 13 July, and hopes to discover more detail of Ampthill Castle, built by Sir John Cornwall and which came into the hands of the crown during the reign of King Henry VIII

 

Late in 1532 or early in 1533, after 23 years of marriage, for 5 of which Henry was determinedly seeking an annulment, Queen Catherine was brought for a few months to Ampthill Castle. To the south, in the church of Dunstable Priory, the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, and four other bishops were holding a court to adjudicate on the validity of her marriage to the king.

 

Henry had been arguing for some years that his lack of a living male heir was God’s punishment for marrying within too close a link of consanguinity by taking on his brother’s widow. Of course the infatuation with Anne Boleyn had little to do with this…?! The Pope’s permission for the marriage between Henry and Catherine was also conveniently dismissed. 

 

As for the castle in which Catherine stayed and which was visited by most of Henry’s wives and his elder daughter Mary as well as Prince Edward, nothing visible remains above ground. However, visitors to the park on Aragon Day 2009 had the added treat of being able to see the archaeological ‘dig’ being carried out to investigate, through 4 trial trenches, the location and layout of the buildings which Henry once favoured and in which Catherine spent those anxious momentous months in 1533.

Catherine’s burial place in the church of Peterborough Abbey was not marked until 1895, but, at the beginning of the 19th century, Katherine’s Cross, so familiar to walkers in the Park, was erected to the memory of the ‘injured queen’ by the Lord Upper Ossory of Ampthill Park who leased the Honour of Ampthill.

The rededication was a colourful affair. In addition to the rededication by Rev Michael Trodden, the Mayor of Ampthill read out a history of the Cross, there was a dramatic interpretation of Katherine’s last letter to King Henry VIII, Greensleeves was sung and the event was rounded off by a costumed procession to the hop yard at the rear of the White Hart where a Tudor Fair was in full swing