A NEW FOREST OF WALTHAM.
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has been made by the Urban Council by permission of the Con-
servators. Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence, Bart., M.P., has erected
a handsome granite drinking-fountain near the Lodge at Ching-
ford. Finally, the old Tapestry in Queen Elizabeth's Lodge,
has been restored by the expert, M. Brignolas, at a cost of
£132 3s., and the renovated pieces have been placed in prominent
positions in the Museum.
The Forest is evidently making rapid progress, and a new
official map will soon be necessary to register the valuable
accretions and improvements of recent years.
A NEW FOREST OF WALTHAM.
PRELIMINARY NOTICE.
(With Plates I., II., and III.)
POLITICAL Economy has been called the "dismal
science," and the pseudo-"scientific" views which
prevailed on social subjects in the dark ages of the middle of the
last century well justified the phrase. To sacrifice the nation's
most precious heritage of shady woods and breezy commons for
the sake of a few thousand pounds added to the Queen's
Exchequer, or to satisfy the restless craving for unallotted acres
of avaricious neighbouring landowners, were proceedings lauded
by professors of economics as gains worthy of long years of
Enclosure Acts and landlord-created Commissions. To these
erroneous views of a people's true wealth and happiness, we owe
the most regretful of all the 19th Century enclosures, that of the
beautiful division of Waltham Forest known as Hainhault.
The disafforestation of Hainhault was accomplished by an Act
of Parliament passed in 1851. The legal "forest" then consisted
of 17,450 acres, of which about 4,000 acres were unenclosed and
subjects to rights of common; 2,900 acres of the said 4,000 were
called King's Woods, in which the Crown had the right of the
soil and timber. Under a subsequent Act (1858) the Assistant
Commissioner allotted 1,877 acres to form commons for the
parishes of Barking, Dagenham, Stapleford Abbots, Lambourne,
Chigwell, Woodford, and Navestock.
It will be thus seen that although the action of the ill-
advisers of the Crown was bad enough, they had some saving