The parties in a Forest
Forests are the most complex example of the medieval love of multiple
land-use. Normally there were at least three parties in a Forest, whose rights in
S.W. Essex are summarized as follows:
1. The Crown as owner of the Forestal rights (the right to keep deer and to
hold Forest courts);
2. The lords of manors and other landowners, owners of the soil of the
physical Forest, of the timber growing thereon, and of part of the wood
and grazing;
3. The commoners, having rights (differing from one individual to another) to
grazing and wood, but not usually to timber.
Deer and other livestock could roam over the whole physical Forest, but timber
and wood could be cut only on the territory of a landowner's or commoner's
particular manor.
The distinction between the rights is important, even if they were not
always held by different individuals. The Crown had some landowning as well as
Forestal rights. Landowning rights were often hired out to lessees; sometimes a
commoner might be a landowner as well.
The various interests often came into conflict, though Epping Forest was
largely free from violent dispute. All the interests could affect the ecology, and it
is easy to overlook some of them and to tell an unbalanced story.
THE FORESTS OF ESSEX AND MIDDLESEX
There were six physical Forests in medieval Essex (Fig. 4): Epping, Wintry
(alias Epping Lower Forest), Hainault, Hatfield Broadoak, Writtle, and
Colchester (anciently Kingswood). The first three, the south-western Forests,
are very similar in land-use history and somewhat similar in vegetation.
The name Epping Forest is first recorded in 1662 (51). Anciently it was
called Waltham Forest, a term often used also for the south-west Forests in
general. Wintry Forest, though physically distinct, is now merged ad-
ministratively with Epping.
The name Hainault Forest appears in the thirteenth century. The early
spelling Hineholt is an Anglo-Saxon wood-name {-holt = wood); the meaning of
the first element is uncertain. Successive forms, such as the eighteenth-century
Heynault, show that the modern spelling is a natural development and is not
based on a false analogy with Hainaut in Belgium. The records of Hainault are
copious and can be used to supplement those of Epping. In particular, because
the Crown happened to own the soil as well as the deer of much of Hainault, we
learn from the state archives about the activities of Forest landowners, who are
otherwise poorly documented. Most of this Forest was destroyed in 1851, but
the surviving fragment is rather better preserved than Epping.
18