76 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



more or less denuded of its woodland covering and other- 

 wise deteriorated. Before, however, we describe the present 

 state of the forest, and discuss the important question 

 of how best to restore its beauty and increase its interest, 

 it will be well to give our readers some notion of its 

 former extent and of the circumstances that have led to 

 its preservation. 



It appears by the Reports of the Epping Forest Com- 

 mission (1875 and 1877) that in the reign of Charles I. 

 the Forest of Essex, or of Waltham, as it was then called, 

 comprised the whole district between the rivers Lea and 

 Roding, extending southward to Stratford Bridge, thus 

 including the site of the great Stratford Junction Station, 

 and northward to the village of Roydon, a distance in a 

 straight line of sixteen miles. Much of this wide area 

 was, however, even at that early date, only forest in a 

 legal sense, for it included many towns and villages and 

 much cultivated land, and these seem to have left the 

 actual unenclosed forest not much larger than in the first 

 half of the present century. We are told, for example, 

 that during the two centuries from 1600 to 1800 only eighty 

 acres of the forest were enclosed, and that even up to 1851 

 barely 600 acres had been enclosed. The unenclosed forest 

 at that date is estimated by the Commissioners at 5,928 

 acres. Then came the development of our railway system, 

 and the discovery of Californian and Australian gold. 

 The wealth of the country began to increase at an un- 

 precedented rate ; the growth of London became more 

 rapid than ever, and its citizens more and more acquired 

 the habit of residing in the country. Land everywhere 

 rose in value ; the wastes of Epping were temptingly near 

 at hand ; and illegal enclosures went on at such a pace that 

 during the twenty years between 1851 and 1871 they 

 amounted to almost exactly half the entire area, leaving 

 only 3,001 acres still open. 



This wholesale process of enclosure, which, if quietly 

 submitted to, would soon have left nothing of Epping 

 Forest but the name, roused the indignation of many who 

 dwelt near the forest or felt an interest in it, and a 

 powerful agitation was commenced, in which the Cor- 



