scores of men to be fed at least for the day. The working Foresters themselves presumably had to be able
to catch deer to send as perquisites to honorary Foresters, or as occasional gifts ordered by the king.
All this implies an establishment on the scale of a small manor-house, with a hall capable of serving
as a meeting-room, a kitchen (capable of cooking for all these men. horses and hounds), store-rooms,
archives, sheds, kennels and paddocks. A few times in the year it would have been very crowded, but
there would have been somebody to act as caretaker all the time. I find no mention of a prison or a
strong-room: Forest officials seldom succeeded in arresting offenders, and I presume that the Verderers
took charge of the cash from fines levied at the Forest courts.
The only Forest lodge known to survive is the one in Hatfield Forest, a timber-framed building
which seems (from what is left of it) to have been similar to a hall-house, the ordinary middle-class
dwelling of the late middle ages. It is surrounded by the remains of an enclosure of about 7 acres. The
New Forest lodges of 1358 were timber-framed buildings of more than average pretensions, for they had
roofs of slate brought from Cornwall, fragments of which have been found. These too have remains of
enclosures round them, as does the site of the lodge of Grovely Forest (Wilts), and doubtless others.
Forest lodges are traditionally misdescribed as 'royal hunting lodges'. It is implied that all Queen
Elizabeth's predecessors were as 'passionately fond of the chase' as she was, and had special buildings
constructed for them to indulge in it. In reality, a taste for hunting is characteristic of Tudor and Stuart,
not of medieval sovereigns. Between William II (who reigned before Epping was declared a Forest)
and Henry VIII there are remarkably few records of kings hunting in person. Kings such as Henry III
often stayed at Waltham Abbey, eating deer out of the Forest. They could easily have ridden out from
there for a day with the hounds, although no such visit is actually recorded; they would not have
needed to use the lodges except as a picnic shelter if the weather turned bad.
New Lodge
King Edward III. in 1367. granted to Alan de Buxhall, during the king's pleasure, the keeping of
the king's new lodge in the Forest of Waltham, with the lands attached to it; he was to pay no rent,
but was required to keep the buildings in repair. The grant was repeated in 1378.5 New Lodge thus
first appears on record. It was already a going concern, and we do not know when it was first built.
The terms of the grants suggest that de Buxhall was a temporary tenant put in to maintain a property
which the king did not expect to be using for the next few years. He was an important person. Constable
of the Tower of London and keeper of some of the Wiltshire Forests.
New Lodge does not appear much in Forest records, probably because it gave little trouble. It is
shown on the Forest map of c.16416 (Fig. 1) and (more accurately) on Chapman & Andre's map of
c. 17777 (Fig. 2). The latter shows the enclosure of land that surrounded it. as mentioned in the 1367
grant. Such 'lodge closes' were a feature of Hatfield and other Forest lodges.
A survey of Queen Elizabeth's property in 1589 describes two lodges: the present 'Queen Elizabeth's
Lodge' and
The other house or keeper's lodge scituate in the new lodge walke being built of tymber
but after the ordinary manner consisteth of two low Romes at the grounde with two roomes
of chambering over them conteyneth in length 46 feete in bredth 16 . . .8
It had a chimney. It does not sound like an ordinary medieval house, which would have had three
compartments. It needed about £5 worth of repairs.
In the eighteenth century New Lodge was held by the family of William Sotheby, the poet.9 There
was a rabbit-warren attached to it (p. 36).
New Lodge appears in a report to the Crown in 1725. which claimed that all the Epping and Hainault
lodges were 'ruinous and ready to drop". It was ordered that New Lodge 'be intirely rebuilt' at an
estimated cost of £266. This amount, and the greater part of the £1400 or so which it was proposed
to spend on lodges, were to be raised by the sale of 'vnderling and vnthrifty trees' in the Forests
presumably Hainault Forest is meant, since the Crown did not own the trees in Epping Forest.10 There
is no indication of where the timber for the building was to come from.
The lodge in its new form was renamed Fairmead Lodge, by which name it. and the lodge closes,
are shown on the first edition Ordnance Survey of 1870-1. On Sotheby's death in 1833. it was taken
over by bakers and pastrycooks, who set it up as a place of refreshment and feasting for the growing
number of day trippers, holiday parties and school outings coming to the Forest. It was, in effect, the
earliest of the Forest 'Retreats'; it could cater for at least a thousand, and on one occasion in 1875
9