The turf maze cut into the Common on the east side of town is about a hundred feet across, first recorded in 1699 and last recut in 1979. It is thought to be the largest turf maze of its kind in England, and free to walk.
North-west of the centre sit Bridge End Gardens, seven interlinked Victorian gardens laid out by the Gibson family from around 1840 — a rose garden, a walled garden, and a restored hedge maze, free to enter. The Gibsons were Quaker bankers connected to the founding of Barclays. Adjoining the gardens, the Fry Art Gallery holds the North West Essex Collection, more than three thousand works by the Great Bardfield artists, Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious among them. Bawden lived at 2 Park Lane Studio until 1989.
For pubs, the Eight Bells on Bridge Street is the best-known dining pub, a timber-framed inn that has been Grade II* listed since 1951. The Cross Keys is another of the town's medieval timber-framed buildings, on the High Street corner by the market. The Temeraire is the Wetherspoon, open from eight in the morning and named after the ship Sir Eliab Harvey, a member of the local Harvey family, commanded at Trafalgar in 1805; it stood second in line behind Nelson's Victory and later became the subject of Turner's painting. The Old Sun Inn no longer pours a pint, but it is worth a look for its elaborate seventeenth-century pargeting, the moulded plasterwork across its front. Cromwell is said to have lodged there in May 1647, when the New Model Army made the town its headquarters.
The open-air market fills the Market Square on Tuesdays and Saturdays, as it has in some form since a charter of around 1300. Independent shops, delis and cafes cluster around the Market Place, Cross Street and King Street.
St Mary the Virgin is the largest parish church in Essex, 183 feet long, rebuilt in Perpendicular Gothic by John Wastell — the master mason behind King's College Chapel, also associated with Canterbury's Bell Harry tower. Its spire rises 193 feet, the tallest in the county, added in 1832. Inside lies the tomb of Sir Thomas Audley, Lord Chancellor, of Audley End across the fields to the west.
The name is a pun the town wears on its coat of arms: a saffron crocus set within castle walls, "Saffron walled-in." The crocus was grown here from the sixteenth century for dye, medicine and flavouring, and gave the town its name by the 1540s. When demand collapsed, malt took over — more than forty maltings by 1800.
Walkers can pick up the Harcamlow Way, a 141-mile figure-of-eight between Harlow and Cambridge, running through the centre. Footpaths west lead toward Audley End and the River Cam valley. The nearest station is Audley End, two miles south-west; the town's own branch line closed in 1964 and never came back. Cambridge and the aircraft at Duxford are both about fifteen miles north.
In the museum, founded in 1835, stands Wallace, a lion who lived from 1812 to 1838 and is said to have inspired the poem about the lion and Albert.