Appendix No. 1. 
v 
The satisfaction with which the celebrated judgment of the Master of 
the Rolls of 24th of November, 1874, was received by those who for a 
long series of years had watched with hopefulness the attempts to 
preserve Eioping Forest, was tempered by a latent fear that the Corpora¬ 
tion would look upon the recovered land more as a park than as a tract 
of woodland to be retained in its primitive wildness and luxuriance. 
Gauging the opinion of the main body by the public utterances of some 
of its members, it was soon seen that the Corporation did not thoroughly 
appreciate the true nature and responsibility of the charge committed to 
it. Vast schemes of drainage, road-making, clearing, Ac., were talked 
of as necessary and urgent “ improvements,” and a widespread feeling 
of uneasiness arose, second only to that which prevailed before the 
decision of Sir George Jessel. The writer ventured to put some of these 
fears into words, in letters to the public press in the year 1875, and to 
suggest plans of Forest management which have since been adopted and 
expanded by various writers. 
These letters called forth a response from Mr. J. T. Bedford (a name 
to be always honourably associated with the rescue of Epping Forest), 
assuring the public that there was not the slightest intention of trans¬ 
forming “the people’s Forest into a people’s park,” or of depriving it of 
any portion of its naturalness and sylvan charm. The “Epping Forest 
Act,” which received the royal sanction on the 8th of August, 1878, 
seemed to afford, in its stringent language, additional securities for the 
integrity of the recovered Forest and its conservation as a woodland. 
But how little even the most definite promises and the strictest Acts of 
Parliament are to be trusted in matters affecting open spaces was 
abundantly shown during the years 1878—88. Roads and drains were 
made in every direction recklessly and without due consideration or 
knowledge ; the quiet and rural Chingford was wilfully transformed into a 
bad imitation of Bartholomew Fair and Cremorne; while no less than 
three railway and tramway schemes, fatal to the best interests of the 
Forest, were pressed forward, two of them being vigorously encouraged 
by the very bodies to whose care and protection the woodlands had been 
confided by Parliament. We honestly believe that, had not public opinion 
spoken out on many occasions in firm and unmistakable tones, the 
schemes of spoliation and “management” put forward within five years 
of the passing of the Act would have degraded the place from a fine free 
open woodland into a third-rate park, and for ever extinguished its chief 
charm and value as one of the national recreation-grounds. 
In accordance with the above views, and being impressed with the 
importance of Epping Forest as one of the finest districts for the study of 
Natural History in the county, the Essex Field Club has always con¬ 
sistently and vigorously protested against any schemes likely to injuriously 
affect it. In so doing the Club has acted also on behalf of the general 
public, the interests of the naturalists and ordinary visitors to the 
Forest being, as Mr. Meldola has shown, almost absolutely identical. 
Undoubtedly the most serious attacks on the integrity of the Forest were 
the three railway projects put forward during the period 1874—83, 
inasmuch as the evil effects of a railway are, from our point of view, so 
extensive, insidious, and irremediable. In the session of 1874 the Great 
Eastern Railway Company applied to Parliament for power to extend 
their Chingford line to Fairmead Lodge, near High Beach, a distance of 
two and a half miles across the Forest. This scheme was successfully 
opposed, and resulted in Parliament sanctioning an extension of about 
six furlongs, but so that the line did not enter the Forest at all. In 1877 
a new bill was put forward for a line from Chingford to High Beach. 
This was rejected by the House of Lords, but was again introduced into 
Pailiament in 1881, and supported with great energy by the Company 
