Waltham Abbey

Waltham Abbey has the reputed grave of the last Anglo-Saxon king, a market chartered by Richard the Lionheart and a museum on the site of the old Royal Gunpowder Mills, and most drivers still know it as Junction 26. Harold was supposedly carried here after Hastings, which makes it one of the few Essex towns whose most famous resident arrived already dead. Its nearest station is a mile away in Hertfordshire, under another town's name, and it dropped "Abbey" from that name in 1969. Epping Forest sits on one side, the River Lea on the other and the M25 cuts through the parish, which is about as honest a portrait of life on the edge of London as anyone has drawn.