EPPING FOREST PONDS SURVEY 33
Little Sampford Church.—With reference to the carved figure-head drip-
stone described in the report of the Ordinary Meeting (see Vol. 28, p. 317)
Rev. G. Montagu Burton, President of the Essex Archaeological Society,
very kindly writes as follows:
The carving is, of course, modern and represents a boy wearing a copy
of a 14th cent. hat found walled up in the angle between the tower and
nave during repairs in 1908. The original hat is preserved in Saffron
Walden Museum; and I recorded the story of its discovery in the Essex
Review, 33 (1924), pp. 162-3.
The Epping Forest Ponds
Survey
director's report
by w. b. broughton
It is a far cry to that time before the war when Colonel E. N. Buxton
first pressed upon members of the Essex Field Club the need for a regular
and continuous survey of Forest ponds, in order, by watching the ecological
changes consequent upon cleaning, to establish an adequate system of rules of
thumb by which future cleaning operations could be governed in the interests
of best preserving those very unstable habitats. The idea bore fruit in January
1951 when at the Verderers' request the Epping Forest Ponds Survey was
brought into being—with a field meeting at Strawberry Hill Pond (51/414965).
A preliminary outline of the sequence of changes leading from the new raw
condition to senescence and ultimate drying-out of a pond was given, and
some attempt was made to show how to assess the present stage of this pond
and the sort of treatment it needed to maintain it approximately at that stage
if such were desired.
Since then several ponds have been placed under regular survey by teams of
volunteers varying from three to eight in number; and recommendations for
treatment of five have been made to the Verderers at their request. These are
Baldwins (51 /425975), Fairmead Old Elm (51 /409966), the Rising Sun Boating
Lake (51/391897), Buckhurst Hill Church (51/408941) and Goldings Hill
North (51/429981). Due to the immense cost of operations on ponds of its
size, only Baldwins has been tackled by the Conservators this season, sub-
stantially in line with our recommendations; and though finances would not
permit of the entire pond's being cleared, a good beginning was made with the
lower half. A splutter of abuse in the local Press at the time criticized this
limitation to the lower half, but it would have been more constructive to
propose a fund to assist the Corporation of London in its expensive public
service of maintaining the Forest.
Disposal of the mud in local hollows was ingenious. Of course the site looks
like a battlefield, but that is to be expected; and there will be some interesting
raw habitats for life to colonize and the terrestrial naturalist to study. The
critics should learn that nothing stands still in nature and that the price of