Facts about Waltham Cross
General Info
Waltham Cross is a suburban former village and now a town in the south of the Borough of Broxbourne in Hertfordshire 12 miles north by north-east of Charing Cross in central London. It is in the metropolitan area of London, the Greater London Urban Area. Three of the twelve tall ornate stone monuments named Eleanor crosses are intact, one here, one at Geddington and one at Hardingstone.
History
Waltham Cross was, for centuries from the building of its cross in the 1290s, a smaller locality in the ancient parish of Cheshunt in the Hertford hundred of Hertfordshire. The southern part of Cheshunt became increasingly to be considered Waltham Cross, which was formed into a separate ecclesiastical parish in 1855, with its church of Holy Trinity built in 1832 and designed by the architect Edward Blore.
In the early 20th century, all along the 2¼ miles of the road which Cheshunt and Waltham Cross covered, there were numerous inns and taverns, one or two of which, such as the Four Swans Inn, plied for trade until at least that date from the 17th century, but most of them dated from the 18th century and later. Waltham Cross formed part of Cheshunt Urban District from 1894 to 1974. In April 1974 the town, together with Cheshunt and the Hoddesdon urban district councils, merged to form the Borough of Broxbourne.
