The Holy Cross of Waltham

Waltham Abbey ahead, where oxen from Somerset refused to stop until they had brought a buried cross here.

Waltham Abbey takes its full name, Waltham Holy Cross, from a miracle story. Around 1016 a blacksmith at Montacute in Somerset dreamed three times of a cross buried in a hill, and digging there turned up a great black flint crucifix. The landowner, Tovi the Proud, loaded it on an ox-cart and named his estates one by one, but the oxen would only move when he said Waltham, about 150 miles away. Here he built a church for it. Years later Earl Harold Godwinson, suffering from paralysis, was said to be cured by praying before the cross, and he refounded and enriched the church.