110
THE WOODLANDS OF ESSEX.
earliest to be cleared of woodlands, and as population increased
the destruction proceeded to less productive areas. There is
little doubt that so late as early Norman times there were dense
tracts of woodlands stretching over portions of the County. Mr.
Guy Maynard tells me that there is a space surrounding Bishops
Stortford which has proved to be almost devoid of Romani
remains. Probably this space, bare of Roman remains, was
thickly wooded during the Saxon period, and that thick woods
extended to the neighbouring district of Dunmow in the east, to 
Saffron Walden and Radwinter in the north, and to Waltham
Forest (including Hatfield Forest) in the south. The writings
of Harrison and others in the reign of Henry VIII. refer to
traditions which quite accord with the Domesday evidence. The
Domesday survey also shows us that the woods had then been
greatly reduced in all other parts of the County. A large area
north of Waltham on the Boulder-clay was even at that time a
most thinly wooded track, but south of this area there was a
well-wooded belt coinciding with the stretch of sands and gravels
which follow the course of the Stratford to Colchester road. Mr.
Round has drawn attention to the absence of Saxon names
between West Ham and Boreham, near Chelmsford,18 both of
which places are upon this road. He also suggests that in
Saxon times this belt of country was woodland and waste. As
a fact it is still the most heavily wooded belt in Essex, second
only in this respect to the Epping Forest itself, of which it
probably formed a continuation, and with the marshes which
bordered the rivers, separated Essex from the adjoining
Western Counties.
The Domesday record shows us that the primitive woodlands
bad been much cleared off from the remaining portions of the
county, and the statements of Roman and later writers all agree
in leading us to believe that these districts constituted the
Agricultural Lands of the Briton, Roman, Saxon, and Norman
peoples. Our coast line has always been very bare of woods.
It was "morass" when Caesar invaded Britain, and provided
pasturage for the sheep from whose milk the huge Essex
cheeses were made by our Saxon forefathers of later date.19
18 Victoria History, Essex, vol. 11, p. 204.
19 Ibid. Vol. 1. pp. 368-9.