record may include another observer's record of either droppings or tracks from
the same area in the same period. In this way, for example, the 157 fallow deer
records received for the ten-kilometre square TL40 in 1965-1969 have been
reduced to 28 entries in Appendix 3.
In Appendices 2-4, fallow deer with antlers have been recorded as males,
all other deer including fawns have been classified as females. The maximum
number of deer seen is also given in the appendices but if several observation
dates are given, it does not mean that all these deer were seen on each occasion.
RESULTS
Deer Parks
There are records of over 100 deer parks in Essex in medieval times (L. M.
Cantor, personal communication), but not all of them were necessarily in
existence at the same time. Most medieval deer parks, unlike those of today,
were tracts of woodland or wasteland. Not until the eighteenth century did the
fashion change in favour of a smaller park or paddock in landscaped grounds
surrounding a mansion. In 1867, Shirley recorded only 11 deer parks in Essex
(Table 1) but he appears to have overlooked three which were present at that
time, namely Hatfield Forest, Marks Hall and Quendon. By the time a more
comprehensive survey was published by Whitaker in 1892, the number of deer
parks in Essex had declined to ten. All these parks held fallow and four also
contained other species of deer (Table 1). In 1965, at the start of the Essex Deer
Survey, only one of these parks, that at Quendon, still survived as an enclosed
deer park but two new parks had been started. Six red deer were introduced to
Bedford's Park in 1934 but the two animals remaining in 1947 were killed. Red
deer, a stag and a hind, were re-introduced to this park about 1949 (Whitehead,
1950) and several animals were still present in 1976. Another new deer park was
established in 1960 when a red deer stag and five hinds, from Warnham Park in
Sussex, were liberated at St. Osyth Priory near Clacton-on-Sea (Whitehead,
1964). Subsequently fallow deer were also introduced and animals of both
species were present in 1976. The location of all these parks is shown in Map 1.
As will be shown later, some of these twentieth-century deer parks have had
an important bearing on the present-day distribution of wild or feral fallow deer
in the county but not on the distribution of the other species of deer. Con-
sequently, it is of interest to consider the little information that has been ob-
tained on the fate of the deer when the parks were disbanded.
Belhus Park, now in the middle of the urban sprawl of Thurrock, was
disbanded in 1915 when the deer were killed as a result of the park being used as
a camp (Tipping, 1920). Easton Park was requisitioned by the army at the
8