OF THE FOREST OF WALTHAM. 9
referring to the text of the Perambulation, it will be seen that each
stone is described as being "sculptured and inscribed," so that,
unless there were some special reason for re-inscribing or replacing
the stones, it is improbable that the inscriptions on Mark's and the
Warren Stones should have withstood the weathering of two centuries
and a-half, better than those of their companion stones.
Continuing northward, the next in order, was Collier Row Stone,
and then the Park Corner Stone. The former, in spite of many
visits and inquiries, has not yet been found. The latter was searched
for unsuccessfully at first by Mr. R. Foxall of Noak Hill and my-
self in the autumn of 1894, although inquiries in the neighbourhood
elicited the information that there was an old stone lying in a ditch
by the side of a field adjoining a farm on the Havering Park Estate.
This stone was subsequently found by my friend, Mr. Foxall, and
on April 12th of this year, I went to inspect it in his company.
Like the Warren Stone it lies prostrate in a ditch ; it has not been
broken off at the base but simply overturned, or removed bodily
from its site. An old man who had worked on the land nearly
all his life, and who first told us where to look for the
stone, stated that it had lain in its present position as long as
he could remember, and during the period covered by his
recollection had never been erect. It is impossible, therefore, to
surmise whether it is on its original site or not, since the land has
been so much cultivated in this district, that the ancient boundaries
are lost and Hainhault Forest has been cleared away completely from
the neighbourhood adjoining Havering Park. It is certain that the
Park boundary extended further west in the time of the Perambu-
lation. The stone is somewhat damaged by chipping away from the
top, but the letters
are still distinctly legible.
The fragment of local history thus recovered seems to me to
appeal to the interest of the members of the Essex Field Club with
sufficient force to make it worthy of record in these pages. It is
almost romantic now to consider that the great stretch of Forest to
the east of London began "at the Bridge of Stratford called the
Bow," and that the little patch of common-land and woodland in the
extreme north-east corner now called Curtis Mill Green is an outlier
of this Forest which can have undergone but little change since the
time of Charles I., while all the intervening expanse of Hainhault
Forest has been grubbed up with the exception of a few patches
about Lambourne End and Chigwell Row. In conclusion I can