The extensive parish of Walthamstow has shared the fate of that of Woodford, for it is becoming a densely populated district with little to recall the past. Its name is supposed to signify a storehouse, but whether of food, of weapons, or ammunition, there is no evidence to show. Its manor belonged, at the time of Edward the Confessor, to the Saxon, Waltheof, son of the Earl of Northumberland, and though it was confiscated by William the Conqueror, he later restored it to its former owner in recognition of his early submission. Moreover, Waltheof was allowed to marry the king's niece, who, however, was the cause of his ruin, for she betrayed to her uncle a plot in which her husband was implicated. Waltheof paid for his disloyalty with his life, and his estate was bequeathed by his widow to the elder of their two daughters, by whose marriage with Ralph de Toni it passed into the possession of the family of that name, for which reason the manor is still known as that of Walthamstow Toni, though it is now the property of the descendants of Lord Maynard, by whom it was bought in the seventeenth century. The once scattered hamlets of Whip's Cross, so called because it was the starting-point for the whipping of deer-stealers, Woodford Side, Higham Hill, and many others now practically form part of the town of Walthamstow, to which also belongs a narrow {69} strip of land, called the Walthamstow Slip, running right through the adjoining parish of Leyton, that was won under curious circumstances not long ago. It was in olden times the custom, if the place in which a dead body was found could not meet the expenses of burial, that the parish in which the interment took place should be paid with as much land as those carrying the corpse could cover holding each other's hands and walking one behind the other. An unknown man was found in the Lea, and his remains were taken to Walthamstow by way of Leyton, with the result that the latter had to yield up a slice of its territory to the former. The mother church of Walthamstow, dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin, dates from the sixteenth century, and contains some interesting monuments, including one by Nicholas Stone to the memory of Elizabeth, wife of Sir Thomas Merry, and their four children, and one to Sir Gerard Conyers, Lord Mayor of London, who died in 1737. The rest of the places of worship are all modern, and have nothing distinctive about them, but in addition to the chief manor-house Walthamstow owns several fine mansions, including those of Higham Bensted and Walthamstow Sarum or Salisbury Hall, the latter named after Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury.