THE largest cross in Britain, which has stood outside Westminster Cathedral for over a year, is due to arrive in the region today to create a lasting tribute to the late Cardinal Basil Hume.

The 50ft cross is heading for the Benedictine monastery of Ampleforth Abbey, in North Yorkshire, where Cardinal Hume was a monk and then abbot, from 1963 to 1976.

It will be airlifted by an RAF Chinook helicopter into position outside the famous abbey in the afternoon.

Known as the Millennium Cross, the four-and-a-half tonne structure was the idea of the late cardinal, who was leader of the Roman Catholics in England and Wales.

The current Ampleforth Abbot, the Right Reverend Timothy Wright, said: "The cross is being erected here in memory of Cardinal Basil, who became a figure of humility in high office that endeared him to the whole population.

"The community has a particular stake in his commemoration. An important part of the reasoning behind siting the cross so prominently has been to give expression to the strong sense felt by people in the locality that this exceptional man belonged to each of us in a personal way."

The siting of the showpiece cross, which was previously erected in the piazza of Westminster Cathedral in the presence of the Duke of York, is also to commemorate this year's bi-centenary of the abbey.

Cardinal Hume was also a pupil and then housemaster at Ampleforth College, one of the country's leading Roman Catholic boys' schools, which is attached to the abbey and run by the Benedictines.

The cross will be placed on a three-tier wooden plinth near St Thomas's House, in the abbey and college grounds.

Permission for the project has already been granted by the North York Moors National Park Authority, which said that, although the site was prominent, the cross would not be unacceptably obtrusive on the landscape.