commoners were agreeing to the enclosure and subsequent loss of common rights in
Lords Bushes. The land was sold to Ephraim Salter (tenant of the Bald Faced Stag since
1850, he also operated the Buckhurst Hill Brickworks in Lower Queens Road) for £46
and he presumably had the terraced houses built (now 160-166 Princes Road) for in 1865
he sold the plot for £580! Interestingly Ephraim Salter bought the freehold of the Bald
Faced Stag from James Mills in 1868 (22).
The matter did not end there, for the original enclosure was deemed to be illegal
and the arbitrator. Sir Arthur Hobhouse, following the Epping Forest Act of 1878,
ordered the then owner of the house, Richard Perkins, to pay the sum of £15.6s.8d. to
the conservators and upon such payment "the said hereditaments should be quieted in
title against and be released from all right of common and to be held in all respects as if
the enclosure thereof had been a valid and proper enclosure."
In 1872 another railway was built, this time an experimental one (sometimes
referred to as a tramway (see Plate 10)) constructed actually in Lords Bushes, apparently
down Monkams Lane where 1700ft of track was laid consisting of two parallel level
faced timber baulks with a central steel guide rail. The railway was built in Lords Bushes
to test a railway system destined for the Lisbon Steam Railway Company in Portugal
(35).
1878 saw the passing of the Epping Forest Act and Lords Bushes became part of
Epping Forest, its boundaries now fixed precluding any further possibilty of enclosure.
The Forest as a whole at this time was well used as a recreation area, facilitated by the
extension of the railway. The royal visit by Queen Victoria in 1882 to dedicate the
Forest, finally settled its future as a public recreation area. Concomitantly, a need for
refreshment areas for the thirsty and hungry visitor arose and so it was that the famous
Epping Forest 'retreats' came into being (73). As early as 1882 there was the 'Forest
Retreat' in Princes Road, backing on to Lords Bushes and run by Jeremiah Bushell. The
retreat had seating for 500 (perhaps an indication of the degree of use as a recreation
area Lords Bushes was subjected to at this time) and donkey rides and swings were
available as well. The retreat was run later by a member of the Riggs family and was
used as a place of refreshment up to 1935. after which it became a pigeon fanciers' club
and is currently renovated as a private dwelling.
In 1883 Professor G. S. Boulger, president of the Essex Field Club, in the company
of E. N. Buxton, made a "somewhat careful examination" of Epping Forest starting off
from Lords Bushes, in order to assess the action required for the Forest's future
management (6). Buxton lived at Knighton, the estate then adjacent to Lords Bushes, of
which the 37 acre Knighton Wood is all that remains, given to the Forest by the Buxton
family in 1930. Buxton and Boulger noted that Lords Bushes was already being thinned
of its "meaner" hornbeams while the less "hopelessly deformed" pollards, it was
suggested, be allowed to spread laterally by re-pollarding, though Boulger added that
great vigilance would be needed owing to the increased possibility of illicit lopping
(lopping was declared illegal by the Epping Forest Act of 1878). Lords Bushes was
thinned out four times in the 14 years after 1880 and particular note was made of the
wealth of undergrowth and luxuriance of the colonising birch seedlings (then an un-
common tree in the Forest). William Cole, writing in 1894, said of Lords Bushes, "In
our own knowledge from being twenty years ago a dark dismal place doomed to the
clutches of the speculative builder, with an experimental tramway and a broad road to
be bordered with 'eligible modern villas', Lords Bushes as now transformed is one of the
most beautiful and luxuriant woods in the Forest, and this in spite of its nearness to a
large village and railway bringing down crowds of excursionists and school children"
(13).
Boulger also noted the effects of gravel digging in Lords Bushes, today the former
gravel workings are very much in evidence in the north west corner (see map 3(b)) and
though made illegal by the Epping Forest Act (33) the parish surveyors were noted
extracting gravel in 1883 (6), obviously still having the right to do so. Gravel extraction
13