Henry VIII was the greatest of our hunting kings. His principal officers of state included the Master
of the Privy Buckhounds and the Master of the Toils, responsible for the transport of hounds and live
deer.18 This style of hunting appealed to him: he bagged 200 deer in one day at Hatfield (Herts).19 He
seldom, if ever, hunted in Forests. From 1532 onwards he was busy making parks, taking parks from
dissolved abbeys and confiscating parks from persons executed for high treason.
One of Henry's more ambitious parks was the 'new park at Fayremeade, in Waltham Forest'. It
included Chingford Fairmead, the second of the two Fairmeads in the Forest. In 1542-4 he spent at
least £1500 on paling the park and on building standings and 'parokes' (some kind of internal
enclosure, presumably for corraling deer). George Maxey was the main contractor. One of the
payments was to Maxey 'towards the ffynyscheinge . . . of on great stondeinge' in 1543; we do not
know how much it cost in all. By January 1543 the park was ready to receive the deer: the Master of
the Toils was paid £106 for bringing 500 fallow deer from the rest of Epping Forest, and 100 fallow
and 12 red deer from Bedwell Park (Herts). Hay awaited them when they arrived. The park was put
in the keeping of Sir Richard Rich, the greatest and wickedest of Henry's surviving courtiers.20
Near the Forest, Henry made lesser parks at Nazeing Wood and Pyrgo. The Nazeing park, made in
1542, cost £26 for paling, £38 for transporting posts, pales and rails (which the wood itself evidently
did not produce), £54 for grubbing out trees for a laund or open space, but only £14 for the park lodge
and the standing.21 This was a workaday park, whose function would probably have been to replenish
the deer in Fairmead after a royal or ambassadorial hunt.
The Great Standing is the only survivor of Henry VIII's courtly timber-framed buildings; it alone
evokes something of the spirit of Nonsuch Palace and other vanished works. It is a three-storeyed
tower with a grand staircase in an attached turret. Both upper floors were originally open, as in a loggia
or grandstand. Its beauty lies in its engineering rather than in decorative architecture (Fig. 5). The oak
timbers are imposingly massive, many well over a foot square. The carpentry is exceedingly complex,
with joints of royal elaboration (some of which may have been specially invented) and a profusion of
pegs."" The spaces between are filled, not with wattle-and-daub, but with an elaborate grid of small
timbers and oak laths. There is a brick chimney, which, although probably not original, may replace
an earlier one at which the king could warm himself while at the chase.
Large as they are, the timbers have been sawn lengthwise from even bigger trees; they do not follow
the usual medieval practice of cutting down many small oaks and squaring them up. (The trees were,
however, somewhat lacking in length, so that bits have had to be scarfed on to make them long enough.)
This results in some unusual features. The upper floor, for instance, follows the modern practice of
having timbers of narrow section (13 by 3 inches) set on edge. This practice, very rare in the middle
ages, would be appropriate for a floor intended to remain rigid under the weight of Henry VIII and
his Court. (David Stenning tells me that it was a fashion among upper-class buildings in south Essex
at the time.) Where the timber came from is not known. The king was now a minor landowner in
Epping Forest; but the Forest itself would not have contained much timber, still less oaks of this size.
The Great Standing is on a steep hilltop known as Dannets Hill, with views in all directions. It stands
very near the edge of the Forest, which here has probably not altered since it was built. However
Fairmead Park was not all within the Forest. The king had paid £174 on compensating farmers whose
lands had been taken into the park. These included Gowers and Buckrells, an estate near Friday Hill
in Chingford.23 This park was so short-lived that its bounds are not known, and seem to have left no
archaeological trace. I would guess that it may have been about 11/2 miles across, half in the Forest
and half out of it, with the Great Standing on the hill in the middle. (It could have been much bigger, if a
mention of 'old and new lodges' in the 1543 grant to Rich is taken to mean that it included New Lodge).
Even oh the 1870 map the sight-lines had been altered more than those of the New Lodge; and now,
owing to the further growth of trees and buildings, it is difficult to visualize the Standing in action.
The building is meant to have views to the north-west, north-east and south-west. These would have
covered Chingford Fairmead (now Chingford Plain) and much of what is now suburban Chingford.
To the south-east, where the stairs and chimney are, the views were evidently not important. According
to Chapman & Andre, trees came right up to the Standing on this side in the eighteenth century.
Whether the king ever used the Standing is not known; it was not very near any of his palaces.
On his death in 1547 his parks, especially those which interfered with common-rights, fell apart.
Fairmead Park vanished into oblivion. The next mention of the building comes in the 1589 survey of
Queen Elizabeth's property. It is described as 'The great lodg', with three stories, the second and third
being 'for convenient standing to view the game'. It stood in a paled enclosure. It was much more
dilapidated than New Lodge; it needed £36 spent on repairs, including re-tiling the roof, building a
brick chimney in place of the 'chimney of lome' which 'annoyeth greatly', and probably the covering
15