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David Woodfall and groups of young people
funded by the Epping Forest Centenary Trust.
We found frog tadpoles and Sphagnum moss.
Earls Path Pond - another old gravel digging
with the legend that Mrs. Earl, a Loughton
Washerwoman, did her laundry here— hard
to believe when we saw the black, leafy
silt that Epping Forest Conservation Vol-
unteers lifted out - a repeat clearance
necessary to keep the island isolated for
nest ing birds.
Next we followed winding Loughton Brook
to the straight section where a landowner
once sought to enclose forest and use the
stream as a boundary. Some trees along the
brook were pollarded last year. Pollarding
means cutting off all the branches above
head height. The forest authorities are
pollarding in several areas in an endeavour
to let more light reach the ground and
encourage a greater variety of plant growth.
One bonfire site had been colonised by
Chickweed (in flower), the moss Funaria
hygrometrica (in spore), shoots of Fireweed
and two small gooseberry plants. Walking
upstream on the slopes of the valley we
heard rushing water, saw - and some went
into - the man-height tunnel through which
it came and exclaimed at the pond on the
other side of the dam. Baldwins Hill Pond
is the result of damming the brook, over
100 years ago, to build the "Clay Road" for
the new housing estate which, fortunately,
Parliament forbade.
After lunch at the viewpoint near the
Foresters Arms - they serve good food, but
not on Sundays - we carried on upstream
where the silt deposits have reached back