Loughton, Essex: A brief account of the Manor and Parish

Transcribed from the 1913 edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
A brief account of the Manor and Parish, being the sub- stance of a paper read in 1903 by William Chapman Waller, M.A., F.S.A.
(One hundred copies reprinted October, 1913).
Price: Six Pence.
‘Things are always ancienter than their names.’ Richard Hooker .
Foreword .—Perhaps some apology is needed for reprinting this paper. It was read some ten years ago to the Club Literary Society, fully reported in the ‘Loughton Gazette’ in March, 1903, and thereafter issued in pamphlet form, one hundred copies being struck off. But these copies have long been dispersed, like many of the people who then lived in the village, and it may be that a new generation will not be unwilling to devote a few moments to the story of the place in which their lot is, at any rate for the time being, cast. To those whose interest may be aroused I may indicate the existence of a fuller account, contained in a volume (of which only twelve copies exist,) to be found in the Guildhall Library, the British Museum, and a few other public libraries.
W. C. W.
It is not always that the story of a parish reaches back to a period beyond Domesday Book, but that of Loughton begins for us in the reign of the Confessor. In the year 1062, four years before the coming of the Conqueror, King Edward, with the assent of his Witan, or wise men, confirmed to the Monastery at Waltham a great gift of lands which had been made to the Canons by their founder, Harold, the son of Godwin. The different estates are enumerated in the document, and the boundaries of several are given—not in Latin, the language of the rest of the document, but in Anglo-Saxon. Among them are three—Lukinton, Tippedene, and Ælwartun, which are incontestably to be identified with the places we now know as Loughton, Debden, and Alderton. The boundaries of Lukinton, or Loughton, are unfortunately wanting. Not, of course, that it would be any longer possible to trace them; even in the case of Debden, where the natural features are mentioned, it is doubtful of what extent the manor was; in the case of Alderton none of the boundaries can be connected with any names occurring in documents of a later date.