Fig. 4 Hatch Grove and Bluehouse Grove - private woodland abutting the Forest, a detail from the
Chapman and Andre map of 1777
are typical of coppiced woodland. In the wood are Bluebell, Honeysuckle, Wood Anemone, Hedge
Garlic. Wood Avens, Arum, Lesser Celandine and Wood Poa. The woodbank bordering the playing
field is also interesting. It has a solitary Hazel (Corylus avellana) stool on it and just outside the
woodbank grow Enchanter's Nightshade (Circaea lutetiana), Slender False-brome, Wood Anemone
and some 30 or so plants of Wood Sanicle. These plants together with others found nearby along the
Ching Brook, such as Wood Melick, Goldilocks, Herb Robert and Oxalis, almost certainly represent
the plants that would have occurred in these woods after coppicing. The Hornbeam stools in these
woods are not particularly large, few are more than five feet across. An oblong portion of the
north-eastern edge of Hatch Grove was grubbed out at some stage after 1777. The ground still bears
cultivation marks and the area is covered with much secondary growth.
Native Trees and Shrubs
Oak is favoured by wood-pasture: it tastes nasty, the seedling easily recovers from damage by
browsing, and it is a pioneer tree, colonizing glades and the edges of plains during recessions of grazing
(there are many examples in the Forest at present). Both species of oak are present; the greater
abundance of Quercus robur in the Forest - in contrast to Q. petraea which usually predominates in
woods on similar sites - is probably because grazing favours robur.
Hornbeam, having few specific uses and easily confused with other trees, is seldom reorded in
place-names or medieval documents. For many centuries it has been the commonest woodland and
wood-pasture tree in south Essex. Its earliest record in the Forests is in a survey of 1544, by which
time it was certainly as common as it is now.
Beech has sometimes been thought an anomaly in the Forest, because of the popular myth that it is
peculiarly a tree of the chalk-lands. There can be no doubt that it was common on high ground in
medieval Epping Forest. In 1612 there were ancient beeches in Loughton, and Beech was felled in
Monk Wood in 1582. Its further antiquity is attested by the Anglo-Saxon place-name Buckhurst Hill
(Bochirst "beech-grove" 1135) (Rackham, 1978).
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