The Epping Forest District covers a part of England where history runs deep, a part of England that is crowded with reminders of that history of prehistoric encampments; of Iceni and Trinobante warriors; of Roman battles, Saxon saints and Norman builders; of Tudor huntsmen; of infamous highwaymen; of labourers who fought for their rights in the forest. Through hundreds of years the forest lands then known as Waltham were owned and ruled by the monarch and administered by the monks of the great abbey built on the banks of the Lea.
Thus, Waltham Abbey throughout the earlier years exerted enormous influence over the whole forest area and the later decline of the abbey coincided with the shrinking of the forest. Although a settlement existed in the very earliest times in the Lea Valley it was Earl Tovi, standard bearer to King Canute, who founded the town. He formed a community here and built a church to serve it a church that was said to have housed a fragment of the True Cross of Christ, a sacred relic that drew pilgrims from far and wide. After Tovi’s death, the Waltham property went to the crown and Edward the Confessor bestowed it on Harold who built a minster church served by a dean and eleven canons and supported by tithes from manors throughout Essex and East Anglia. Legend has it that following the death of King Harold at the Battle of Hastings, his body was brought here and buried in the choir of his beloved church a part of the building now gone but the spot where his body supposedly lays is clearly marked.
The Normans gave the manors supporting Waltham to followers of William and the church itself went to the see of Durham. But in 1177 this was changed when the secular canons were dissolved and Henry II revested the tithes of the manors in the Abbey and re-established it as a house of Augustinian canons a house that officially became an abbey seven years later. The church was divided into two the nave being used by local parishioners as their parish church, the east end and transepts belonging to the abbot and monks. Extensive new buildings were erected at the eastern end in a contrasting style to the great Norman nave and for many decades the Abbey exerted a powerful influence, had many noble associations and was often visited by monarchs who came to hunt in the Royal Forest. One of the most distinguished guests was Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury who here originated one of the main movements that led to the Reformation.
Throughout the Middle Ages Waltham Abbey continued in favour and both it and and the settlement clustered around it were places of importance. Rights to hold a market and fairs were granted during the reign of Richard I and the fairs became great trading events with the September fair the annual time for hiring servants. Monarchs were frequent visitors to both town and abbey and their visits became more numerous. The Dissolution, however, saw the first major changes in forest life, for the Abbey lands passed to Sir Anthony Denny and the monastic buildings were pulled down leaving only the original Norman nave. Denny later built Abbey House on the north side of the churchyard and this was a feature of the town until it too was demolished in the18th Century. The constant passing of monarchs to and from hunting forays in the forest ceased at the time of the Commonwealth and great inroads were made into the forest itself, trees being felled in great numbers to provide timber for ships.
Although Waltham Abbey may have been in these earlier years the most important place in this corner of Essex, other places too were growing. At the northern end of the forest, on a high windy ridge was the village of Eppinghethe, later called Epping Street. Here Elizabeth I granted the institution of a market previously held at Epping Upland and this became a meeting place for the villagers from settlements for miles around.
Epping, however, traces its story back to even earlier times long before the Romans, several of whose villas have been excavated near the town. Legend has it that in AD 61 Queen Boudicca made a gallant last stand against the Romans at Ambresbury Banks, an ancient British camp. The Saxons first settled the area and gave the place its name or rather, variations of names that included, at different times, Ippying, Ipping, Eppinghethe and Eppingthorpe. The parish was then divided into eight manors and the church was at Epping Upland, and it was here, in Henry III’s reign, that the market first functioned.
Throughout its history Epping has been important as a market and fair town and as a place of importance on one of the main routes from London into East Anglia.
As a main road town Epping had many coaching inns 16 at one time saw many travellers (Samuel Pepys in 1660; Charles II in 1684 and Queen Anne in 1705 and 1707) - and was also a haunt for highwaymen. Dick Turpin supposedly operated here (he is said to have shot a forest keeper in 1737) but was unflatteringly described as a male of only average height and much marked by smallpox. The last recorded highway robbery took place in 1837 when a local solicitor was robbed by three men. The coming of the Great Eastern Railway in 1865 virtually put an end to both main road prosperity and thoughts of highway robbery and the road itself was toll-free in 1870. Epping gradually grew as a favoured town of residence for those who worked in London.
Waltham Abbey was close to a station on the Great Eastern Railway main line to Cambridge (Waltham Cross station, opened in 1840) and the building of branches of the GER saw the development of Epping, Chigwell, Loughton and Buckhurst Hill, places that not only grew up as residential areas but eventually formed one administrative area. Yet here too, history traces a long story, for the Iron Age people had a hill-top camp at Loughton. The Romans chose the fertile Roding Valley in which to settle and build their Suffolk Way, the main road from London through Chigwell to Dunmow. Near Woolston Hall at Chigwell a large Romano-British cemetery still remains to be excavated.
Loughton first appeared, as ‘Lukintone’ in a charter of 1062 and was ‘Lochetuna’ in the Domesday Book in which Chigwell also found mention as ‘Cinghvella’. In 1135 reference was made to ‘La Bocherste’ (Buckhurst Hill), an area referred to in much later years as Bucket Hill, meaning a hill covered with beech trees. The three communities remained as small forest clearings through the centuries, but with only Chigwell and Loughton having churches, the former certainly being in existence as far back as the 12th Century. In the great days of the forest as a Royal hunting ground, visits from monarchs were frequent. Henry VIII often stayed at a hunting lodge known a Poteles at Buckhurst Hill and Kings Avenue today perpetuates the memory of his visits with Anne Boleyn. James I was entertained at Loughton Hall in 1605.
As well as monarchs, this part of the forest perhaps because of its proximity to London drew numerous literary and military figures during the 17th to 19th Centuries. Tennyson, John Clare and Edward Thomas are associated with High Beach; Sotheby rented a house called Fairmead Lodge. Loughton was quite an artistic and literary area in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century. Amongst those who have lived there were writers Arthur Morrison and W.W. Jacobs, lexicographer Robert Hunter and sculptor Sir Jacob Epstein; Kipling was also a visitor. Admiral George Cockburn who ferried Napoleon into exile on St Helena, lived at High Beach where, ironically, that emperor’s nephew, Prince Louis Lucien Bonaparte also lived in a house less than three hundred yards distant! Another famous admiral, Sir Elias Harvey, who fought alongside Nelson on the Temeraire at Trafalgar, had his home at Chigwell. The town’s famous grammar school also had celebrated pupils and visitors William Penn, the quaker, was a scholar here and James Smith, the poet, wrote about the District when revisiting Chigwell in later years. The famous cartoonist F. Curruthers Gould lived at Buckhurst Hill.
Although this part of the District has seen great changes since 1920, there are plenty of reminders of the past. Victorian taverns such as the Robin Hood, The Royal Standard and The Plume of Feathers remain in Loughton, along with numerous weatherboarded cottages. Chigwell has a number of fine Georgian houses and Loughton the 17th Century North Farm and Alderton Hall. Buckhurst Hill development dates from the coming of the railway in 1856 and returns some superb stucco and brick Victorian villas. The King’s Head at Chigwell stands to remind us of what a great Tudor coaching inn looked like.
Chipping Ongar dates back to Saxon and Norman times and in its church are to be found Roman bricks, reminders that the Roman road from London to Dunmow passed nearby.
William the Conqueror granted the manor here to Count Eustace of Boulogne with other extensive lands of which Ongar became the governing centre under a feudal lord. He built a fortified house here on a site that had been used by the Saxons for defensive purposes. In 1162 Richard de Lucy, Chief Justice of England, built a ‘great’ castle here and 14 years later after the barons’ rebellion, Henry II seized and held it to prevent a repetition of this uprising. The castle was eventually demolished in the 16th Century and the mansion built on the site suffered a similar fate in 1744. Little is known of the castle’s story but it is recorded that Edward II stayed there for some days in 1321.
The town itself takes its prefix from the Saxon words ‘cheape’ or ‘cheppyng’ meaning a market, and this suggests it was quite important from earliest times. It became the ‘capit’ of the Hundred to which it gave its name and served a wide area as a market town through many hundreds of years. Today it still retains the air of an ancient town.
In later years Chipping Ongar became one of the parishes of Epping and Ongar Rural District and the Urban areas to the west were formed into four Urban Districts Epping, Loughton, Buckhurst Hill and Waltham Holy Cross. Chigwell, Loughton and Buckhurst Hill were merged in 1933 and since 1974 all boundaries have gone and the area is sited in the present Epping Forest District.
© 2005 Epping Forest District Council.