The Skirts of the Great City

by N. D'Anvers

Originally part of the great forest of Essex, the beautiful woodlands of Epping, in spite of all the changes through which they have passed, still retain something of their primeval character, and enshrine in their recesses some few relics even of pre-Norman days, of which the most noteworthy are the two camps of Ambresbury Banks and Loughton, for each of which it has been claimed that it was the stronghold from which Queen Boadicea watched the last stand of her army against the invaders, and the massacre of the women and children who had come, as they fondly hoped, to rejoice over a victory! Whether this or any of the many other theories advanced be true, it is certain that long before the Conquest, Epping Forest, which at that date included some sixty thousand or seventy thousand acres, was the property of the Saxon kings, and that in Norman times it was strictly preserved for the royal pleasure, the game-laws being terribly severe and most rigidly enforced. The killing of a stag was in fact more severely punished than the murder of a man, for in the former case the eyes of the offender were put out, whilst for the latter crime a money payment was often accepted. The first king to sanction any disafforesting was Stephen, who allowed certain districts to be cleared for cultivation, and his example was followed by John, who reluctantly gave up the portion north of the main road between Stratford and Colchester, the concession having been wrung from him by the united barons, who compelled him to sign the Charter of Forests, the wording of which is very significant of the terrible oppression to which the people were subjected at the time. Later the concessions were confirmed by Henry III. and by Edward I., who had at first shown signs of going back from the promises of his predecessors, but in 1301 he was brought to a better mind by means of a heavy bribe of money. Gradually, through grants to nobles, unauthorised enclosures, etc., the forest lands belonging to the Crown were reduced to about a third of what they were at the Conquest, and a survey made in 1793 estimated the still uncultivated woods and wastes at twelve thousand acres only. From that date until the middle of the nineteenth century the history of the once magnificent forest was one of constant encroachment, one beautiful tract after another having been sold and enclosed, for the officers of the Crown interpreted their duty to be to turn the land to as great a money profit as possible rather than to preserve it for the enjoyment of its owners or of the people to whom at various times certain rights had been granted. In 1850 some six thousand acres only were left, and in the next twenty years these were reduced to little more than half that amount. Fortunately, however, about this time public feeling began to be aroused on the subject, and thanks to the enlightened efforts of a number of influential men, amongst whom special recognition is due to the members of the Commons Preservation Society, the matter was brought before Parliament, and in 1882 five thousand five hundred acres were bought by the Corporation of London for the nation, including the woodlands beginning near Chingford and stretching northwards beyond Theydon Bois, parts of which are still much what they were when royal parties used to go forth to hunt from the palaces of Chigwell, New Hall, and Writtle, and when the post of Lord Warden of the Forest was eagerly sought by the great nobles, whilst a far less picturesque portion extends southwards to Wanstead Flats and Aldersbook Cemetery.

Some two miles from Waltham Abbey begins what is known as the Sewardstone district, supposed to be named after a noted Saxon thane, that is dotted with picturesque hamlets, from one of which, known as Sewardstone proper, a pretty lane leads to High Beech Green, a straggling village that once belonged to the Priory, with a good modern church, near to which is the loftiest point of the Forest: High Beech Hill, 759 feet high, that commands a very beautiful view. According to popular tradition, Dick Turpin used to lie in wait in a cave at the base of this hill for the travellers he intended to rob, undeterred by fear of betrayal at the hands of the landlords of the neighbouring Robin Hood and King's Oak inns, now represented by modern hotels, the latter named after the stump of a venerable oak known as Harold's—the very one that inspired The Talking Oak of Tennyson, who wrote it and Locksley Hall in a house near by, since pulled down; whilst in the still standing Fairmead House, then a private lunatic asylum, the half-crazy peasant poet John Clare, who lived in it from 1837 to 1841, composed some of his beautiful descriptions of the forest scenery.

It was from a height not far from the King's Oak that Queen Victoria, on 6th May 1882, set a seal on the gift of the forest to the people by declaring it free and open to them for ever, and on the south of Beech Wood opens the beautiful lane that winds through the still virgin woods to what is known as Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge, supposed to occupy the site of the original manor-house of Chingford Earls, the history of which can be traced back to early Saxon times. However that may be, the lodge with its high-pitched roof and gables, its massive timber supports and ceiling beams, projecting chimneys and wide ingle-nooks, broad oak staircases and spacious outside landings, the main structure is a very typical example of fifteenth and sixteenth century domestic architecture. The fact that the highest landing is still called the 'horse block' recalls the tradition that good Queen Bess used to ride up to the door of the great reception-room at the top of the house, and that she may have done so is proved by the fact that the feat—not a very difficult one after all—was successfully achieved for a wager some few years ago by a man on an unbroken pony.

The village of Chingford, or the King's Ford, close to the Lodge, and a beautiful sheet of water, named after the present ranger, the Duke of Connaught, is charmingly situated on the edge of the forest, and the ancient church, now disused, about a mile from the new Gothic building that has supplanted it, is extremely picturesque. The parish originally included two manors—the one already referred to in connection with Queen Elizabeth's Lodge and that known as Chingford St. Paul's, which, until it was seized by Henry VIII. belonged to the Metropolitan Cathedral. It was held before the Conquest by a Saxon thane named Ongar, and the manor-house that replaced his old home, now a farm, is still standing, though the present lord of the manor lives in Hawkwood House a little distance off.

Buckhurst Hill

From Connaught Water a good road, known as the Green Ride, leads to Ambresbury Bucks and Epping, and another called the Rangers to Buckhurst Hill and Loughton. Buckhurst Hill, from which for many years the famous Easter Hunt used to start, must once have been one of the loveliest villages in the forest, and is still charming in spite of the many new houses that have been built. Its name has been very variously explained, some supposing it to commemorate the aristocratic poet of Elizabethan times, Lord Buckhurst, others that the original form was Book Forest, signifying a tract reserved in otherwise open moorlands by royal charter. Before the Easter Hunt was transferred to Beech Hill there were many descriptions in the contemporary press of the scenes that used to take place at Buckhurst, notably one that appeared in the Morning Herald in the week after Easter 1826, in which the writer gloats over the gay costumes worn 'by the three thousand merry lieges then and there assembled' to watch the uncarting of the stag that, when released, marched proudly down between an avenue of horsemen 'wearing a chaplet of flowers round its neck, a girth of divers-coloured ribbons, and a long blue-and-white streamer depending from the summit of its branching horns, adding that when it caught a glimpse of the hounds and huntsmen waiting for it, it bounded sideways, knocking down and trampling all who crowded the path it chose.' The account ends by stating that the stag was finally caught at Chingford, 'nobody knows how, for everybody returned to town before the end except those who stopped to regale afresh and recount the glorious perils of the day.'

The picturesque village of Loughton, perched on high ground above the valley of the Roding, about a mile from Buckhurst Hill, was originally a mere appanage of the manor of the same name that was given by Harold to the Abbey of Waltham, and after the Reformation was presented by Edward VI. to Sir Thomas Davey, only to revert to the Crown in the reign of Mary, since which time it has changed hands again and again. Its ancient church is now a mere ruin, but it has been supplemented by a fairly satisfactory modern building in the Norman style. The old manor-house, in which Queen Elizabeth and James I. were guests at different times, was destroyed by fire in 1836, with the exception of part of the great hall, now incorporated in a farm, and the fine wrought-iron entrance gates. In olden times the inhabitants of Loughton enjoyed, in addition to the privileges common to all of pasturing their cattle in the forest and turning out their pigs at Michaelmas to eat beechwood and acorns, that of lopping the trees in the vicinity of their village, and it was the interference of the lord of the manor with the undue exercise of this right that inaugurated the agitation which in the end had the happy result of securing to the whole nation the priceless possession of Epping Forest.

Chigwell Row