152 NOTES ORIGINAI, AND SELECTED. 



restoration of the Lodge excited very considerable public interest and a large 

 number of newspapers, as well metropolitan as provincial, took notice of the 

 affair in paragraphs and short "leaders." As a specimen, a leader which 

 appeared in the London Daily Telegraph may be quoted : — " That much- 

 maligned body, the Corporation of London, acts as the custodian of many 

 places of great historical interest in the immediate vicinity of the Metropolis, 

 and its bitterest critics can find little fault with the way in which it carries 

 out this important public trust. It is now engaged in restoring, the famous 

 Hunting Lodge at Chingford. which for the last few years has been the home 

 of the Epping Forest Museum, so as to provide double the present accommo- 

 dation for the Essex Field Club's exhibits. The intention is to reorganise the 

 collection, and possibly supplement it with a loan of art objects, and thus 

 make it, so to speak, an annexe of the museum now being erected at Stratford. 

 The scheme is one that will commend itself to all antiquarians, and will 

 greatly enhance the interest of the Hunting Lodge to the thousands who visit 

 it year by year. Time has dealt very kindly with the fine old building, which 

 takes its name from the Maiden Queen who constantly honoured it with her 

 capricious presence when she hunted the hart in Epping Forest. Elizabeth, 

 who had a strong taste for the classics, and more than the ordinary share of 

 feminine vanity, delighted to hear her courtiers address her as Diana of the 

 Woods, and there are portraits of her still extant in which she carries the bow 

 of Artemis and is accompanied by her faithful hounds. But the Tudor 

 Queen was a thoroughly good sportswoman, in spite of all her affectation, 

 and even at the age of fifty-seven, she indulged in the pleasures of the chase. 

 Local tradition, indeed, has.it that she used to ride up the massive staircase at 

 the Chingford Hunting Lodge to the great chamber above, and alight by the 

 door at a raised place which for centuries has been known as ' the horse 

 block.' The feat was successfully performed by a forester on an untrained 

 pony seventy years ago, and the solid oak stairs, which are about six feet wide 

 and run in fours, with six broad landings to the twenty-four steps, would still 

 bear the weight of the heaviest charger. There is nothing impossible in the 

 legend, therefore, and it is not at all improbable that the daughter of 

 Henry VHL, who, in spite of her devotion to dress and her passion for 

 colossal ruffs, farthingales, quiltings, slashings, and embroideries, could rap 

 out tremendous oaths, and was so forgetful of strict etiquette as to box a 

 courtier's ears and tickle the back of Leicester's neck when he knelt to recei\e 

 his earldom, should show off lier horsemanship by riding her palfrey up the 

 staircase. The Lodge itself, with its gable ends, high-pitched roof, and old- 

 fashioned fireplace in the basement, commanding a fine view across Epping 

 Forest to High Beach and Buckhurst hill, makes an ideal museum, where the 

 setting is as worthy of a visit as the exhibits themselves." 



