Fig. 1 The pillow mounds at High Beach. The 20 or so mounds constitute the best known evidence
of a rabbit warren in the Forest (From EN XXI p.215)
In the records of the Court of Attachments for 1753 (CAII p.33) the Keepers of Loughton, Epping,
Chingford and Leyton and Wanstead Walks presented the various warrens as being 'a nusance to the
Forest and detrimental to his Majestys Venison and also to the commoners upon the sd Forest'. Rabbits,
by the 18th century, had become well adapted to the British countryside and were beginning to increase
to what were probably locally unacceptably high levels, and were competing with commoners' beasts
for the grazing on the Forest. The warrens, according to the court roll were situated 'at Kings Oak in
New Lodge Walk now occupied and enlarged by Thomas Atkins ... '; 'near New Lodge now in
occupation of Henry Thompson ... '; 'at Mill Hill and Ridden Hill now occupied by James Fisher...';
'Chingford Walk' and lastly 'the Warren on Wanstead Heath now occupied by the widow Hepburn.'
The first mentioned is of some interest since it confirms that the pillow mounds opposite the King's
Oak, High Beach, were actually used as a Warren and that they were created as such for this purpose.
The aptly named S. Hazzledine Warren (1926) excavating the mounds in the autumn of 1925 found
'the mounds are honeycombed with burrows, which render exact archaeological work peculiarly
difficult' and added further 'the burrows contain a large amount of the debris of the present-day tripper
(this included several ladies' high heels!) and many quite new objects occur down to the 4 to 5 foot
level. I found no object of medieval date in them'.
The 20 or so mounds at High Beach are typically up to 100 feet long, rise to 3 ft high and are
surrounded by a ditch (Fig. 1). The mounds were probably constructed over a period of time.
Occasionally new mounds would have been added and old ones refurbished. Hazzledine Warren still
could not believe that the mounds constituted simply a rabbit warren and that anyone would go to
these lengths to make such a structure just to keep rabbits and preferred, rather romantically, to think
that they 'represent the sites of ancient funeral pyres'!
The second warren mentioned was situated somewhere near the New Lodge (Fairmead Lodge) on
Fairmead Bottom. Presumably it was only a small warren as I can find no further written evidence as
to its exact location. I suspect an earthwork at TQ 408969 by the side of Fairmead Lane is an old
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