The Waltham Cross — actually the Waltham Eleanor Cross — is a tall, slender stone monument that stands in a small precinct at the centre of the town's high street. Built between 1291 and 1294 to mark the eighth overnight resting place of Queen Eleanor of Castile's funeral cortege on its way from Lincoln to Westminster, it is one of only three of the original twelve Eleanor Crosses to survive (Hardingstone and Geddington being the others).
The cross has been restored several times over the centuries — most heavily in the 1830s and 1950s — and several of the figures are 19th-century replacements; the originals are in the Victoria and Albert Museum. But the structure itself is genuinely medieval, and the canopied niches with their statues of the queen are still recognisable Edward-I-era work. It gives the town its name and is its one nationally significant monument.