of the timbers with lath and plaster.9
Queen Elizabeth was the mightiest hunter among all our sovereigns. She visited Havering Palace,
Wanstead House and Loughton Hall near the Forest."4 She could conceivably have used the Standing for
its original purpose, although with the park gone a hunt would have been more difficult to stage-manage.
Later the Standing became a lodge and its origin and purpose were forgotten. In 1725, repairs to
'Chinckford Lodge' were estimated at £118; little or nothing of these repairs can be identified in the
building today. Having big rooms, it was used for Forest and manorial courts; and when these migrated
to public-houses, it became the farmhouse for the farm that usurped Chingford Fairmead.25
Under the Epping Forest Act the Standing became the property of the City of London Corporation
(Plate 16). Although its true significance was not discovered until later, the romance that hung about
it saved it from the fate of New Lodge and brought upon it the opposite kind of trouble that of too
much money. It was restored in 1879, so badly that it needed restoring again in 1901 (plate 17). This
fourth restoration, and the installation of central heating, cost £959." * It lasted until c.1978, when
there was a fifth restoration. This was done so badly that it needed restoring yet again in 1991. The
last restoration was mainly concerned with undoing the ill effects of the previous ones. The cardinal
mistake, in 1901, was to renew the plaster with cement rendering, which caused the timbers to rot;
the timbers of the restorations were in worse condition, by 1991, than the original timbers.
The Little Standing
This was probably older than the Great Standing. It is shown on the c. 1641 map and (as 'High
Standing') on Chapman & Andre.
Cecil Hewett made the remarkable discovery that the Little Standing still survives, buried in the
house called The Warren which has grown up round it. It is a two-storeyed timber-framed tower, much
smaller than the Great Standing but strongly built of good-quality timber. A detailed study must wait
for the next repairs. In c.1747 the Rein Deer Inn, probably the first tourist establishment in the Forest,
was built around it. In 1816 this was converted into a house. Humphry Repton, the great landscape
emparker, being the architect. (John McCann has kindly given me these particulars.)
This, like the Great Standing, was on a prominent hilltop. Its sight-lines cannot be known in detail;
already by 1870 the surroundings had been altered by encroachment on the Forest. It would have
commanded views of the whole eastern limb of Loughton Fairmead, and (according to Chapman &
Andre) a view south-east to the edge of the Forest at Warren Hill.
* Expressed in terms of man-days of builders' labour, the 1901 restoration would have been about three times as extensive as that of 1725.
and more than four times as extensive as that of 1589.l3
References
1 Tubbs CR 1986 A natural history of the New Forest Collins p5I
2 Rackham O 1989 The last Forest: the story of Hatfield Forest p58
3 Calendar of Close Rolls. 25 July 1312; repeated in Hatfield Forest (note 2) p53
4 Hatfield Forest (note 2) p172-81
5 Calendar of Close Rolls
6 Reproduced in: Waller WC 1905 'The Foresters' walks in Waltham Forest' Essex Review 14 192-203
7 Chapman J and Andre C 1777 A map of the county of Essex, from an actual survey taken in MDCCLXXII: LXXIII & MDCLXXIV London
8 Waller WC 1893 'Two Forest lodges' Essex Naturalist VII 82-6
9 Essex Naturalist VIII (1894) 158-9
10 Rolls of the Court of Attachments of the Royal Forest of Waltham. 1713-1848. 1 p83-4
11 Layton R 1987 'Fairmead Lodge' Essex Journal 22 No. 2
12 Essex Naturalist X (1898) 295-6; XI (1899) 56
13 Brown EHP and Hopkins SV 1956 'Seven centuries of building wages' Economics 24
14 Pam D 1984 The story of Enfield Chase Enfield Preservation Society
15 Hatfield Forest (note 2) p177
16 Waller WC 1901 'Anent a Forest lodge in 1444' Essex Naturalist XII 145-7
17 Hanson MW 1983 'Lords Bushes: the history and ecology of an Epping Forest woodland' Essex Naturalist VII 3-69
18 Letters & Papers Foreign & Domestic 21(2) p4()4; 16 pl78, 703
19 Erickson C 1980 Great Harry Dent, London
20 Letters & Papers Foreign & Domestic 17 p137, 207; 18(1) p91.261-3, 545; 18(2) p124, 126, 128-9; 19(1) p243-4; 20(1) p.270, 537; 21(1)
p319
21 Shirley EP 1867 Some account of English deer parks Murray, London
22 Hewett CA 1980 English historic carpentry Phillimore. London p219
23 Victoria County History: Essex 5 104-5
24 Addison W 1945 Epping Forest: its literary and historical associations Dent, London chVIII
25 Neale KJ 1965 Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge, Chingford Chingford Historical Soc. Bulletin 3
26 Essex Naturalist XI (1899) 56, 153-7; XII 50-2
17