IV EPPING FOREST 79 



stead Orphan Asylum and Whip's Cross has been utterly 

 devastated by gravel-digging, the whole surface being a 

 succession of pits and hollows with stagnant pools of 

 water, and a few miserable oaks left standing on mounds 

 where the gravel has been dug away around them. One 

 would think that here the lords of the manors had in- 

 fringed on the rights of the commoners, by destroying the 

 pasture and even the surface soil on which any herbage 

 can grow ; and that in equity they should be called on to 

 pay damages instead of receiving payment for their alleged 

 property in the soil, which they have here succeeded in 

 rendering almost wholly worthless either for use or enjo}^- 

 ment. North-westward, towards Woodford Green, is a 

 rather pretty piece of wild forest-land, with open grassy 

 glades, intervening thickets, and ponds swarming with 

 interesting aquatic plants. There are, however, very few 

 ornamental trees, the oaks being mostly small, with a 

 quantity of miserable pollard-beeches hardly more sightly 

 than so many mops. 



Passing Higham Park we come upon a large extent of 

 illegally enclosed land, now to be thrown open, and much 

 of it already given up. Between Woodford Green and 

 Chingford Hatch there are about sixty acres of poor grass 

 and fallow-land adorned with a few bushes and one fine 

 oak-tree, but sloping gently towards the north-west, and 

 with extensive views over the wooded country beyond. 

 Further north there are more than a hundred acres of 

 small enclosures — rough pasture, fallow-land, or cultivated 

 fields, dotted with 'a few poor trees, and at present far 

 from picturesque, but with an undulating surface offering 

 considerable opportunity for improvement. To the west 

 these fields are bounded by Chingford brook, by the side 

 of which are some very handsome willow- trees growing in 

 stiff clay and indicating what this part of the land is 

 adapted for. A little to the north-east is the new village 

 of Buckhurst Hill, to the south-east of which is a fine 

 piece of enclosed forest, about a hundred acres in extent 

 and called the Lodge Bushes. 



We now enter the northern and grandest division of the 

 Forest, which stretches away for a distance of five miles 



