Table 4. Domesday Book statistics for places later involved in Epping and
Hainault Forests.
Ploughs Swine for Meadow Actual
which there acres pigs
"Epping" places (1066) (1086) was wood (1086)
Epping 61/2 53/4 210 44 29
Waltham 53 50 2882 1001/2 61
Theydon Bois 8 5 640 27 92
Debden 4 2 300 6 8
Loughton 61/2 41/2 270 20 10
Alderton 5 4 400 15 10
Chingford 10 9 1050 118 48
Higham 6 6 300 18 37
Walthamstow 17 24 300 80 60
Wanstead 3 31/2 300
Leyton 131/2 71/2 490 165 15
Woodford 15 9 500 26 50
Total 1471/2 1301/4 7642 6191/2 420
"Hainault" places
Stapleford Abbots 11 9 490 35 43
Lambourn 3 3 100 20
Wolston 1 1 60 4 -
Chigwell 22 15% 870 33
Ilford 4% 2 20 20
Barking 74 71 1000 100 150
Total 115% 101% 2540 212 193
GRAND TOTAL 263 2313/4 10182 8311/2 613
No records survive of the creation of a legal Forest. Obviously it involved
declaring the boundaries and setting up the bureaucracy; but it would involve
the one practical matter of introducing some deer. The deer of Epping, as of
most Forests, were chiefly fallow, a species indigenous to the Near East and
introduced to Britain almost certainly by the Normans. It has the advantage
that the force of habit, necessary to retain deer in an unfenced Forest, works
more strongly in fallow than in other species (8).
The Forest of Essex originally embraced the whole county. The boundaries
were reduced or enlarged on many occasions, but in 1301 were stabilized at
those shown in Fig. 4: one jurisdiction included the three south-western Forests,
while the other three Forests each had its own jurisdiction. The boundary
changes were merely administrative and do not concern us, except to note that
the legal Forests, at their most reduced, covered at least five times the area of
the physical Forests: a difference responsible for much of the belief in the
shrinkage of Forests.
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