pasture are pollarded (or lopped); in Epping Forest this was about 2-3m above ground
level, leaving a permanent base called a boiling, which sprouts in the same way as a
coppice stool but at a height at which livestock cannot browse the regrowth.
The word 'Forest' needs some clarification: in medieval times it was purely a legal
term given to an area of land over which Forest Law had jurisdiction. The 'legal' forest
could include farmland, villages, hamlets and even large towns like Waltham Abbey and
Epping as well as (usually) being centred on a large tract of pre-existing common-land:
the 'physical' forest which could include not only trees but grassy plains and heathland
as well. It was only at a much later date that the word forest came to be applied to a large
stand of trees.
Deer could roam unhindered throughout the legal Forest, commoners' livestock
could roam the whole physical Forest irrespective of the manor from which they
originated, but wood and timber could only be cut in the land owners' or commoners'
particular manor.
Lords Bushes was part of the physical Forest in the royal Forest of Waltham. It was
an integral part of the wood-pasture system which had been in operation probably since
at least Anglo-Saxon times and until the accident of 19th century encroachment and
subsequent urbanisation caused its separation from the rest of Epping Forest. Its
predominant land-uses were grazing and pollarding carried out by the commoners and
probably also the Lord of the manor of Chigwell, the manor in which Lords Bushes was
situated.
PRE DOMESDAY (1086) HISTORY OF THE EPPING FOREST AREA
The retreat of the Devensian glaciation about 10,000 B.P. (Before Present) and the
corresponding amelioration of the climate over the next 2-3,000 years enabled the
colonisation of the land by trees, culminating in what is known as 'wildwood'. The
wildwood covered much of Britain before the emergence of man as a pastoralist, though
it is thought that in some areas of Britain mesolithic hunters may have cleared quite
appreciable areas of wildwood. From excavations carried out at High Beach it is clear
they were present in what is now Epping Forest (7). It was, however, probably not until
the late Neolithic (about 4,800 B.P.) and the Bronze Age in Britain that areas became
consistently clear of natural vegetation as a result of settled agricultural practice,
although Bronze Age remains are rare in Essex and such agriculture probably had little
influence here.
In contrast there is much evidence of Iron Age settlement in S.W. Essex (Am-
bresbury Banks in Epping Forest is thought to be Iron Age in origin) and it is probable
that at some time during this period land would have been cleared for agricultural
purposes. The number of Roman 'finds' in the lower Roding Valley; for example, the
Roman road, the villa at Woolston and the many lesser finds of Roman material in the
Chigwell area, indicates that this part of the Roding Valley was at least partly open,
settled and cultivated land by late Roman times (14).
Place names such as Loughton, Leyton and Waltham indicate the Epping Forest
area was not of late colonisation by the Anglo-Saxons, they may well have settled on the
surviving Roman agricultural landscape. The name Buckhurst Hill is thought to be of
Anglo-Saxon origin derived from Boch=beech and hyrst=grove (14).
With the coming of the manorial system, Lords Bushes must have had its first
associations with what was to become the manor of Chigwell (with which I assume it was
subsequently associated until the Epping Forest Act of 1878). Squirrels Lane (see map
3(b)) which connected Lords Bushes with Chigwell, could well have originated at this
time as the routeway by which the inhabitants of Chigwell manor could reach their
wood-pasture to graze their animals or cut their firewood. The service trees which border
what remains of this routeway (see page 39) may be an indication of its antiquity.
The Domesday survey of 1086 shows a very well established agricultural landscape
9