Conclusions
The traditional topography of S.W. Essex — the Forests on the high
ground, with farmland around and between them — has its roots at least as far
back as the Romans. Epping and Hainault Forests have been separated for
nearly 2000 years. To some extent they may be remnants of wildwood; we shall
discuss later how their vegetation has been altered; but even in prehistory there
must have been extensive clearings in what is now wood-pasture. By 1066 the
Chapman and Andre topography was almost fully developed. The future
Forests were surrounded and largely hemmed in by settlements; far from being
a wilderness, the area was nearly half under the plough (a proportion which has
never been much exceeded); arable farming was, indeed, slightly declining by
1086 (Table 4). Waltham Abbey was already a thriving town.
Whether the future Forests were larger in 1086 than in 1640 or 1774 is
uncertain. There is clearly not room for them to have been much larger. The
indications are that Hainault was almost unaltered in 700 years but Epping was
somewhat reduced; small pieces were taken out here and there and a larger
block to the north, between Upshire and Epping church, where the boundary is
not hemmed in by ancient settlements (Fig. 7). This still remote and mysterious
countryside, its muddy lanes, innumerable groves, and suggestive place-names
like Takeleys, Hayleys, and Woodredon (ryddan, to grub out woodland), may
have been created by early-medieval encroachments on a larger Epping Forest.
In this area are the early parks of Harold's, Copt Hall, and Wintry. In 1189-90
Waltham Abbey was given retrospective permission under Forest Law to assart
— turn into farmland — 770 acres of land (probably measured with a long
perch, and equal to 1250 modern acres); nearly all of this was on the north-west
of the Forest (24). There was also the foundation of Epping town, apparently in
the mid-thirteenth century (61), which severed Wintry and Epping Forests.
These are by far the largest recorded encroachments on the Forests.
EPPING AS A FOREST
The popular belief that Epping was declared a Forest by William the
Conqueror, or even by the Anglo-Saxon kings, cannot be substantiated.
Medieval forgeries, such as the "Laws of Pseudo-Canute" (31) and the Ran-
dolph Peperkin "grant", sought to invest Forests with respectable antiquity;
but Domesday Book, though mentioning many other Forests, records Essex in
unusual detail without any allusion to a Forest except at Writtle.
The earliest references to the legal Forest of Essex date from the 1130s (49).
Evidently Epping Forest (like Sherwood) was declared a Forest not in the first
phase of afforestment under William I but in the second phase under Henry I.
Henry made extensive use of the powers, first used by William probably in the
New Forest, of extending Forest Law to lands which were not the Crown's.
26