THE MANAGEMENT OF EPPING FOREST.
75
both within and without the Club, the suggestion caused the deepest
anxiety, as in their opinion such a course of action would be simply
disastrous to the future growth of the Forest. Two counter
memorials were accordingly prepared, one from gentlemen interested
generally in the Forest, and who had recently visited it, and the other
from Forest residents. These memorials are set out (together with
the resolutions, alluded to above, from the Wanstead Meeting) in
the subjoined Report of the Epping Forest Committee to the Common
Council, dated June 13th, 1895 :—
To the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Commons of the City of
London, in Common Council assembled,
WE whose names are hereunto subscribed, of the Epping Forest Committee,
to whom on the second day of May last it was referred to make a Special
Report to your Honourable Court with respect to the charges of undue and
unnecessary cutting of timber in the Forest, have the honour to certify that, on the 4th
and 11th days of May last we visited the Forest and carefully viewed the various
sites in respect of which complaints of excessive thinning had appeared in the
Public Press. We failed to find justification for the attack which had been made ;
on the contrary, we discovered many instances of gross exaggeration. We,
subsequently, invited the attendance of some of the principal complainants, and,
at a meeting held on the 13th May last, we were attended by a Deputation con-
sisting of—Mr. J. E. Cockett, Mr. Percy Lindley, Mr. Bernard Gibson, Mr. H. E.
Kayer, Mr. A. H. Tozer, Mr. W. P. Forbes, and Mr. E. E, Cockett ; which Depu-
tation asserted that the thinning had been excessive, and urged us to give the
Forest at least five years' rest, and they laid before us copies of the following
Resolutions on the subject, passed at a Public Meeting held in the Drummond Room,
Wanstead, and at a Committee Meeting held on the 8th May last, namely :—
Copy of RESOLUTIONS passed at a Meeting held in the Drummond Room,
Wanstead :—
1. That this Meeting hereby records its deep regret that during the last few
years so many thousands of trees have been cut down in the Forest,
2. That a Committee be now formed to confer with the Epping Forest
Committee with a view' to ascertaining what arrangements are now to be made
for the preservation of the growing trees, the planting of open spaces, and the
drainage of certain parts of the Forest.
Copy of Resolution passed at a Committee Meeting held on 8th May :—
This Committee, consisting of Commoners and Residents in Loughton,
Chigwell, Woodford, and Wanstead Parishes, and others interested in the
preservation of the Forest, desire to call the attention of the Epping Forest
Committee to the very large extent to which the thinning of the underwood and
felling of trees have taken place during the last few years, and to express the
opinion of a large number of residents of the Forest Parishes that it is desirable,
in the interests of the preservation of the natural aspects of the Forest (as provided
by the Epping Forest Act, 1878, clause 3), that instructions should be at once
given for such thinning and felling to cease ; and that for a period of five years
only dead trees should be removed.
We thereupon resolved that the five gentlemen who acted as Experts and
reported upon the subject last year should be asked to visit the Forest again, and