244
THE ESSEX NATURALIST.
the remnant of the Fairmead Oak, where the annual meet took place
for the Easter Monday hunt, when, for that one day in the year,
the citizens of London had the run of the Royal Forest. It must have
been a tumultuous hunting, for the field seems to have consisted of some
thousands of the London rabble, led by the Lord Mayor, accompanied
by the aldermen:
"My Lord Mayor takes a staff in hand to beat the bushes o'er ;
I must confess it was hard work he ne'er had done before."
So sings the 18-century balladist; though why the Lord Mayor should
have so exerted himself does not appear, for it seems that a stag was
carted and turned out to the populace. The festival was done away
with in 1853.
There are no more stags in the forest, for the red deer were found
to be too destructive to neighbouring crops and gardens.—the forest being
all unenclosed—and what remained of them were transferred to Windsor.
The last of the roe deer also seem to have been killed within quite recent
years. But the fallow deer survive in goodly numbers, and are of especial
interest. Most fallow deer in English parks and woodlands are either
from imported stock or have a strain of exotic blood in them, as their
multi-coloured coats show. But the Epping deer are believed to be a
survival, uncorrupted, from the original indigenous British race, and
their coats are all alike, almost of one colour—a dark, blackish-brown.
And they are wild deer, still, not half-domesticated, like their friendly
cousins that come to beg for bits of cake at the tea room windows in
Bushy Park. If you go quietly in the remoter areas of the forest, or sit
motionless in the shade by one of the glades by the Long Hills beyond
Grimston's Oak or about Broad Strood and the Furzeground, you may
get a glimpse of them, shy though they are, and your day will be made
the richer for the glimpse.
After all, it is these wilder parts that are the chief joy of the forest.
You can follow paths, if you will, or go where no paths are, soft-footed on
the tall seeding grass in openings among the bracken; and you can
lose yourself as completely as if you were in the remotest solitudes. Noble
views, too, there are from many places, as about Baldwin's Hill, and
Ash Green, from the Furzeground Hill, and from near the Verderer's
path by Honeylane Plain. And there is High Beach itself. But every
lover of the Forest will have his own favourite glade and tree and
view-point; and they are all good.
The Forest, with its present 5,800 acres, is but a remnant of the great
Royal Forest of Waltham, but it is a splendid remnant; and all blessings
be on the Footpaths and Commons Preservation Society and the Cor-
poration of the City of London, which won it for us 44 years ago! For
it was only in 1882 that Epping Forest was opened to the public, "to
remain forever an open space for recreation and enjoyment," and the
older residents in the surrounding towns remember when most of it was
still surrounded by a double fence, and trespassers were warned that
there were mantraps and spring-guns therein." Times, Aug. 10th, 1926,