Grazing
In this period grazing rarely attracts attention in the records. It was
restricted to cattle and horses, except on Wanstead Flats, where sheep were still
allowed (58). In 1713 in Chigwell and Barking 86 owners turned out 804 cows
and 173 horses, which would be at least as many as Hainault Forest could be
expected to bear. One man indeed turned out 82 cows (48).
THE DECLINE OF THE FORESTS, 1800 - 1878
The story of the last decades of the Forest system has been many times told.
The Crown ceased to take care of the deer. The red deer disappeared — the
survivors were allegedly caught and taken to Windsor in the 1820s — and the
fallow deer declined almost to extinction by 1870 (24).
In 1830-34 the local turnpike trust made a main road — the present A11—
running the length of Epping Forest: a route that even for those days shows
scant respect for the Forest's amenities, though the trust could not have
foreseen the disastrous effect that the road was eventually to have on the
grazing.
Enfield Chase had been largely destroyed in 1777. In 1851 the Crown,
forgetting that experience, secured an enclosure-act abolishing the legal
restrictions on destroying Hainault. Nearly all (94%) of the Forest was grubbed
out and ploughed with a speed that would have done credit to modern
bulldozers. As at Enfield, the destruction produced poor farmland; both sites
have now reverted to public open spaces, though their ancient character is, of
course, lost for ever.
There was no systematic attempt to destroy Epping Forest, but en-
croachments were made by individual landowners and by 1871 only a third of
the Forest remained unenclosed. Small areas in the south were built on and lost.
Elsewhere the enclosures seem to have had little effect on the vegetation. A few
landowners were foolish enough to try to plough the Forest, but in many places
the grazing and woodcutting continued. There were various interferences with
common-rights, of which the famous and partly legendary incident of the
Loughton woodcutting is the most picturesque.
Public recreation had been a minor land-use of the Forests since at least the
sixteenth century (2). By the 1860s visitors were numerous and influential
enough to be a major factor, as shown by the formation of the Commons, Open
Spaces, and Footpaths Preservation Society. The Corporation of the City of
London became concerned lest Epping Forest be lost as a public place. In 1871
their Commissioners of Sewers, who had a legal standing as the owners of a
property carrying grazing rights, began litigation to reverse the encroachments.
This was followed by the Epping Forest Act of 1878 abolishing almost the whole
system.
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