The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Waltham Abbey
WALTHAM ABBEY, or WALTHAM-HOLY-CROSS, England, a market town of Essex, 12 miles north by east of London, on the left bank of the Lea. It consists chiefly of one irregular main street, and has a spacious Norman church, which once formed the nave of the famous abbey church of the Holy Cross, where King Harold is buried. There are here government manufactures of gunpowder and percussion-caps, cordite and small-arms, besides breweries, flourmills, etc. The old abbey of Waltham was founded or enlarged by King Harold in 1060 and is said to have once possessed a fragment of the cross on which Christ suffered. In the neighborhood are the village of Waltham Cross, and an “Eleanor cross,” recently restored. Pop. about 9,000.