Waltham Abbey is across the River Lea from Waltham Cross — about a mile's walk east — but it is the older and arguably more important place. The Norman parish church of Holy Cross and St Lawrence is what remains of what was once the largest abbey in southern England, refounded by King Harold Godwinson in 1060 just before his death at Hastings.
The surviving church is the abbey's old nave — the chancel, transepts, lady chapel and monastic buildings were demolished after the Dissolution in 1540. What is left is a magnificent piece of late-Norman work: massive cylindrical and lozenge-patterned piers, semicircular arches, and a great Romanesque heaviness that is rare to see at this scale in southern England. The Lady Chapel survives separately and houses a small museum.
Outside, the churchyard slopes down to the river. A simple stone slab marks the traditional location of Harold's tomb, set roughly where the high altar of the Norman quire would have stood — somewhere now well out under the open grass.