In this study of its 'Retreats' Bernard Ward has recaptured the
spirit of that exuberant period, extending from the 1870's to the 1920's,
during which Epping Forest flourished uniquely as the Cockney
paradise. Throughout its history it had been a place of popular resort
for the people of East London and West Essex. Its inns and alehouses
had been well able to cater for their needs until, in the middle of the
nineteenth century, a series of events brought greater changes within
twenty years than had been experienced during the previous two or
even three hundred. The most radical of these came with the con-
struction of branch lines of the Great Eastern Railway, which reached
Loughton in 1856, Epping and Ongar in 1865, and Chingford in 1873.
The opening of these stations came at a time when the population of
London-over-the-Border, as Dickens called the eastern suburbs, was
expanding at a phenomenal rate, and when the movement for increased
leisure for the working classes was finding practical expression in such
Acts of Parliament as the Metropolitan Commons Act, 1866, (the
earliest Act under which commons were regulated primarily in the
interests of the public), Sir John Lubbock's Bank Holidays Act, 1871,
and the Commons Act, 1876. In 1878 the decisive Epping Forest
Act, which for the first time in history gave the public the right to resort
to these thousands of acres of unfenced heath and woodland for
recreation and pleasure was passed. In 1882 Queen Victoria dedicated
the Forest to the enjoyment of her people for all time. Never before had
there been such a succession of liberating events for the pent-up
emotions of the common people and the effect was explosive.
Edward Bartholomew had been catering for Sunday School parties
at Fairmead as early as 1853; but the man who seized on the need for
catering establishments on a scale never before contemplated was an
East London builder named John Riggs, who turned not only his own
energies but those of his entire family of three sons and one daughter
to an imaginative enterprise for providing cheap meals for hundreds at
a sitting in giant pavilions which he called 'Retreats'. Nor did he stop
at providing food. All the fun of the fair was laid on in roundabouts,
swings and donkey rides. All in all, these Forest Retreats reflected the
invincible Cockney spirit at its most irrepressible.
This is the story Bernard Ward tells. As fellow Verderer and
devotee of Forest history I have been in touch with him throughout his
enquiries and I can testify to his painstaking research and conscientious
determination to have all his 'facts' checked. Memory is notoriously a
fickle jade. The Forest Retreats vanished with the advent of cheap
motoring and the Second World War. This has meant that little re-
mained by way of reliable record to establish the truth about them.
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