OLD LOUGHTON HALL.
21
is stated, had been accumulating during two centuries. The mere
pecuniary loss was estimated at something between £20,000 and
£30,000, to say nothing of the greater losses on which no money
value could be set. Even at this distance of time, the thought of
that disaster, endured, as it was, with manly fortitude, serves to
awaken in one emotions of sympathy and regret.
The gloom which followed on the glare of the burning house is
penetrated for us by a ray of kindlier light, when we read of the good
services of friends and neighbours, and of the "extraordinary
exertions of the labourers, with whom Mr. Maitland was a great
favourite." These exertions he himself was not, in spite of all,
backward in recognising. For just three weeks later "The Essex
Standard" (December 30th) reported that Mr. Maitland, in com-
missioning his steward to announce that he would that year double
his customary liberal Christmas gifts, "emphatically observed : 'When
the Hall was on fire, full 200 of my humble neighbours came to my
assistance, and they worked hard; and not one of them was a thief.'"
For many years the great iron gates, surmounted by the Wroth
crest and the interlaced initials of John and Elizabeth, the last of the
Loughton branch of the family, kept guard over the foundations of
the ancient house. In the year 1879, however, the road, which
passed in front of them and beside the old church of S. Nicholas,
was diverted to its present course, and a new house, designed by Mr.
W. Eden Nesfield, was built on the old site by the Rev. John
Whitaker Maitland, the first clerical owner of the manor since
Robert Fuller, last of the long line of Abbots of the Holy Cross at
Waltham, signed the Deed of Surrender on March 23rd, 1540.22
NOTE.—An incidental reference to the rebuilding of Old
Loughton Hall, on which I have since lighted, occurs in the
Chancery Forest Roll, No. 153, which is dated Sep. 21, 1630
(6 Car. I.):—" Item, wee finde that Sr Robte. Wroth, Kte, deceased,
about sixteene yeres past did build some parte of the howse called
Loughton Hall upon an old ffoundacion, nowe in the occupacion of
the Lady Mary Wroth." This, which does not profess to be exact,
brings us sufficiently near to 1616, the date said to have been found
on the leaden spouts.—W. C. W.
22 Aug : Office, No. 252.