HIGHLIGHT: Waltham Abbey Church, burial place of King Harold
At Waltham Abbey I reach the first major place of veneration for medieval Walsingham pilgrims after leaving London.
They were drawn to this abbey because of the remarkable 10th century Montacute Cross, an object of veneration for a string of kings including Edward the Confessor, Harold, and Henry VIII.
Just to the north of Waltham Abbey Church’s west door flows Cornmill Stream. I trace it, past a weir against which a duck ladder is carefully placed, to the surviving abbey gatehouse. Here it was that monks, pilgrims and kings left the boats that had ferried them up the Lea from London to enter this great Augustinian abbey.
This is also the route that the revived London to Walsingham Camino takes from its starting point at St Magnus the Martyr, alongside London Bridge.
Many medieval pilgrims will have come here via Ermine Street, but that is now the traffic-clogged A10 running via Tottenham. Much better to follow the Lea.
I walk past the surviving passageway that led into the cloister, now just a ghost sketched out in the grass, and round to the east end of the church. Here I come upon what must, historically, be one of the most significant patches of ground in all England.
A simple memorial slab and square stump of stone mark the point where the tomb of King Harold, defeated and slain at the Battle of Hastings, once lay beneath the high altar.
The miracle-working Montacute Cross drew pilgrims here from the 11th to the 16th centuries. There is a powerful story attached to it.
The legend is that, some years before the Norman Conquest, a Somerset nobleman called Tofig or Toley had a vision, in which he was told that if he dug on St Michael’s Hill in Montacute, Somerset, he would find a holy cross. He did so, and unearthed a Purbeck marble crucifix which was christened the Montecute Cross. He brought it to Waltham, where he also had land, and placed it in the church.
The cross quickly drew pilgrims seeking cures. Among them was Harold Godwinson, Earl of Essex and East Anglia, the future King Harold, who was suffering from paralysis. Harold was cured and, in 1060, he rebuilt the church in gratitude, dedicating it to the Holy Cross. Edward the Confessor, Harold’s predecessor as king, attended the ceremony.
When Harold was killed at the Battle of Hastings, in 1066, his body was brought here and buried under the high altar.
In 1177 Henry II comes into the story. As part of his penance following the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, he undertook a massive building project, trebling the size of the church, and established this as an Augustinian abbey.
Henry VIII was particularly fond of Waltham, coming here regularly, up the river alongside which I walked yesterday, to escape the pressures of London, to hunt and to converse with the abbot.
At the time of the Dissolution, the abbey had great status, and its church very nearly became a cathedral. Instead, it was reduced to a stub, and the Holy Cross was lost.
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