on a large scale may well have been a nineteenth century phenomenon in Lords Bushes.
Lords Bushes may have been one of the few places locally where there were easily worked
surface deposits of gravel. Elizabeth French the founder of the now international firm
Freneh-Kier started her business in Buckhurst Hill, carting gravel, about 1860 (71); also
E. N. Buxton had Knighton Pond dug out at about this time and was able to sell the
extracted gravel. Gravel was probably used for road repair and construction.
Boulger did note that many of the trees around the excavations were being undercut
(it being illegal to fell the trees and this undercutting is still visible today) and he also
adds that the diggings could be "natural, irregular and picturesque pieces of water,
instead of being elaborately drained as at present" (6) this could well account for what
were until recently the two good ponds (see maps 3(c), Pl and P2). Buxton himself may
have superintended the construction of the concrete dam (middle background of Plate 4)
to create a pond; today, sadly, the ponds are infilled with beech leaves from the
surrounding trees and the dam has been broken and thus the ponds have only a poor
flora and fauna.
HISTORY 1900—PRESENT DAY
After a much troubled nineteenth century, Lords Bushes entered the twentieth
century relatively secure in its boundaries, no longer exploited as a natural resource for
wood, pasture or gravel but as a popular recreation area for London's public. Events
since then have been rather unremarkable. The woodland suffered from fires in 1921
(though not to the extent of the 1976 fires). The 1930's brought increasing urbanisation
to the Buckhurst Hill area, in 1936 Monkhams Farm was sold and demolished (60) and
this was followed by the development along what is now Forest Edge and Broadfield
Way. About this time the 'retreat' in Princes Road ceased to operate, indicative of a
decline in the number of visitors to this part of the Forest. Following the development in
the late 1930's the woodland was cleared of its undergrowth and small trees along the
Forest Edge side (Scott pers. comm.). During World War II, two bombs (including a
parachute bomb) fell on Lords Bushes creating the two craters we see today (see map
3(b)).
The prevailing drought conditions of 1976 drastically altered the ecological
character of Lords Bushes (see section on the flora). Today the wood is used mainly by
local people walking their dogs, though in spring and summer non-local people visit
Lords Bushes, though perhaps more frequently the adjacent Knighton Wood. Other
users include 'treasure hunters' who use metal detectors to discover buried artefacts,
orienteers and also (though very rarely now since the move of the Nightingale Riding
Stables from Buckhurst Hill High Road) the occasional horse rider. In December to
February 1979/80 holly and further dead beech trees were cleared from Lords Bushes by
the Conservators (see Plate 1) due to concern about further outbreaks of fire and un-
desirable characters lurking in the bushes.
PHYSICAL FEATURES
Geology
The two dominant features of the geology of Lords Bushes are;
(1) Eocene London Clay
(2) Pleistocene Sands and Gravels.
Over much of Lords Bushes the London Clay is overlain by an outlier of sands and
gravels presumed to be glacial in origin, London Clay outcrops only along the Forest
Edge side of Lords Bushes (see map 3(a)). The sands and gravels are a very variable
deposit in depth, being deepest in the north west corner of Lords Bushes (notably where
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