SOME INTERESTING VILLAGES NORTH OF LONDON,
WITH WALTHAM ABBEY AND EPPING FOREST
Of the many beautiful villages north of London that have of late years
been transformed into suburbs of the ever-growing metropolis, few
retain any of their original character, or can, strictly speaking, be
called picturesque. Tottenham, in spite of its fine situation, with
the river Lea forming its eastern and the New River its western
boundaries, is to all intents and purposes a town, the restored High
Cross, about which there has been so much learned controversy, the
ancient parish church, and two or three old houses near the green,
alone bearing witness to the good old times when the quaint poem of
_The Tournament of Tottenham_ was written. It is much the same with
Edmonton, where, in the still standing Bay Cottage, Charles Lamb lived
for some time and died, and in the churchyard of which he and his
sister are buried, and where John Keats served his apprenticeship to a
surgeon and wrote his earliest poems. It bears but a faint resemblance
to the village into which John Gilpin of immortal fame dashed on his
famous ride after {50} his vain attempt to pull up at the Bell Inn, on
the left-hand side of the road from London. The once charming little
hamlet of Whetstone, too, a short distance further north, where,
according to local tradition, the soldiers halted to sharpen their
swords on the way to Barnet Field, is rapidly losing its rural
appearance. On the other hand, the scattered settlement of Friern
Barnet--beyond the completely modernised Finchley--with its picturesque
church that retains a fine Norman doorway, is still quite a country
place; whilst Edgware, the two Stanmores, Elstree, High Barnet, East
Barnet, and Enfield, though they too are already marked for
destruction, are as yet full of the aroma of the past. Edgware,
situated on the ancient Watling Street, prides itself on owning the
forge in which Handel, having taken refuge from a storm, was inspired
by the rhythmic beats of the hammer on the anvil with the famous melody
of the 'Harmonious Blacksmith'; and it also owns several quaint old
inns, one of which, the Chandos Arms, preserving the memory of the
great mansion--known as The Canons, because it occupied the site of a
monastery--that was built for the Duke of Chandos whilst he held the
lucrative post of paymaster to the forces, but was pulled down after
his death by his successor. Fortunately, however, the richly decorated
private chapel of The Canons, in which Handel was organist from 1718 to
1721, and containing the organ on which he played, is still preserved
as part of the parish church of Little Stanmore, or Whitchurch, a
pretty village about half a mile from Edgware, and in its graveyard
Handel and the {51} blacksmith whose name is so closely associated with
his are buried not far from each other.
Great Stanmore, near to which are the eighteenth-century mansion known
as Bentley Priory, replacing a suppressed monastery, and the beautiful
Stanmore Park, the seat of Lord Wolverton, is beautifully situated on a
hill commanding very extensive views, and has two churches, one now
disused, containing some interesting seventeenth and eighteenth century
effigies, the other a somewhat uninteresting modern building. The
chief charm of the old-fashioned village of Elstree, originally called
Eaglestree, because it was much frequented by eagles, is the fine
artificial reservoir haunted by water-fowl, which is nearly as
extensive as that of Kingsbury, and it also owns a beautiful old
Elizabethan mansion.
[Sidenote: High Barnet]
High Barnet, also known as Chipping Barnet, is a far more important
place than Edgware or the Stanmores, and is supposed to date from
Anglo-Saxon times. Its site, with that of East Barnet, both once
covered with the forest of Southaw, belonged to the abbots of St.
Albans, to whom Henry I. granted the privilege of holding a weekly
market in it, and it is still the chief cattle-mart of the district, a
great fair taking place there every year in September. The church,
dedicated to St. John the Baptist, founded in the early part of the
fifteenth century, and in which is a fine monument to Thomas
Ravenscroft, a local worthy of the seventeenth century, was originally
very characteristic of the time at which it was built, with a
well-proportioned nave and aisles, and square embattled tower; but it
has been added {52} to from time to time, with unsatisfactory results.
To make up for this, the ancient grammar-school, now used as a
dining-hall only, the charter of which was granted by Queen Elizabeth
to her beloved Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, is much what it was
when completed in 1575, the new buildings that supplement it being
quite distinct.
On the common, about a mile from High Barnet, there is a spring of
medicinal water that was held in high esteem in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, and is often referred to in contemporary records.
A farmhouse now occupies the site of the old spa, but the actual well,
though covered over, is even now occasionally resorted to by invalids,
to whom the water is supplied by means of a small pump. The chief
claim to distinction of the village is, however, that it is near to the
scene of the great battle of 1471 between the Lancastrians and
Yorkists, at which the former were defeated, the mighty king-maker, the
Earl of Warwick, was slain, and Edward IV. firmly established on the
throne.
There has been much heated controversy concerning the actual place
where the great struggle took place, but it is now generally supposed
that the fiercest fighting occurred on Hadley Green, half a mile north
of Barnet, extending thence along the ridge sometimes called Gladsome
Heath, and sometimes Monken Mead. An obelisk, locally known as the
Highstone, with a rudely carved inscription commemorating the victory,
was set up in 1740 by Sir Jeremy Sambook, about two hundred yards from
the spot where it now stands at the junction of the St. Albans {53} and
Hatfield roads, and the low ground sloping down from Monken Mead is
marked on old maps as Deadman's Bottom, an incidental proof that it was
there the bodies of the dead were buried after the battle.
[Sidenote: Monken Hadley]
The village of Monken Hadley, that is rapidly becoming a suburb of High
Barnet, is very picturesquely situated along a green and common, all
that now remain of the once famous Enfield Chase, and its fine old
church, built some twenty years after the great battle, and well
restored in 1845-50, looks down upon the scene of that historic event.
Not far from it still stands the trunk of a huge oak, that has been
identified as the 'gaunt and lifeless tree' on which, as related by
Lord Lytton in the _Last of the Barons_, Adam Warner was hanged by
Friar Bungay, and at the foot of which the victim's daughter fell down
insensible close to the shattered fragments of the mechanical invention
from which her father had hoped so much; and a little distance off is
an elm known as Latimer's, because the zealous Protestant after whom it
is named, who was later to die for his belief, is said to have
sometimes preached beneath it.
East Barnet, a pretty village nestling in a charming valley, is the
mother parish of the other communities of the same name, and its manor
was part of that of High Barnet at the time of the Conquest. Its
church, recently enlarged and modernised, was founded as early as the
twelfth century, but it has few historic memories. Some writers,
however, assert that it was from the house of Thomas Conyers {54} at
East Barnet that the unfortunate Arabella Stuart, whose marriage to
William Seymour so greatly incensed James I., escaped, disguised as a
man, on 3rd June 1611, only to be taken prisoner immediately after her
embarkation in the boat that was to have borne her to France, whence
she was removed to the Tower, there to die four years later, without
having again seen her husband.
[Sidenote: Enfield]
The extensive parish of Enfield, through which flows the New River, and
of which the Lea forms the eastern boundary, is divided into four
parts, known as the Town, the Chase, the Bull's Cross, and Green
Street. It is finely situated on the borders of what was once a famous
royal hunting-ground, that although now almost entirely enclosed, is
not yet built over. The actual town is one of the most prosperous of
the suburbs of London, for it is the seat of a thriving Government
small-arms factory, employing several hundred hands. The whole
district is full of interesting historic memories, for even in the
eleventh century, as proved by the descriptions in Doomsday Book,
Enfield was a populous village, and the parish included no less than
eight manors--Enfield proper and Worcesters, that long belonged to the
Crown; Durants, Elsynge or Norris, Suffolks, Honeylands, Pentviches,
and Goldbeaters, each with a palace and park of its own. The children
of Henry VIII. were educated at Enfield, and it was there that Prince
Edward heard of his father's death. In 1552 the young king settled the
chief manor of Enfield on his sister Elizabeth, and also built for her
the palace, of which a small, but very picturesque, portion still {55}
remains in the High Street, but the future queen appears to have spent
the short time of liberty enjoyed by her before she was imprisoned by
the jealous Mary at Elsynge Hall, of which no trace is left. It was
there, too, that she and her escort probably put up, when in 1557 her
indulgent gaoler, Sir Thomas Pope, allowed her to take part in a hunt
in Enfield Chase, and she certainly often held her court in it during
her long and prosperous reign. Of the chief manor-house of Enfield all
that has been preserved is a fireplace incorporated in the library of a
private house in the so-called Old Park, whilst the mansion of
Worcesters, the other royal demesne, is represented by a
seventeenth-century house known as Forty Hall--in which, by the way,
there is a fine collection of pictures--designed by Inigo Jones for Sir
Nicolas Raynton, to whom the estate was given in 1616 by the then
owner, the Earl of Salisbury.
Of the other manor-houses of Enfield the memory alone survives, but the
neighbourhood is still rich in fine old private mansions, of which the
most note-worthy are Enfield Court and Foxhall, and on Chase side is an
ancient cottage in which Sir Walter Raleigh is said to have lived for
some time not far from which was the 'odd-looking gambogish house' in
which Charles Lamb, writing in 1825, declared he would like to spend
the rest of his life.
Unfortunately, the beautiful and characteristic Market Hall was pulled
down some little time ago, to be replaced by a modern and not very
satisfactory Gothic cross, and the church, that dates from the
thirteenth century, has lost much of its venerable {56} appearance
through injudicious restoration. It still retains, however, several
well-preserved and most interesting monuments, including that to Lady
Tiploft, who died in 1446, one to Sir Nicolas Raynton and his wife, who
passed away two centuries later, and one to Mrs. Martha Palmer, the
last the work of Nicolas Stone, the famous seventeenth-century sculptor.
[Illustration: WALTHAM CROSS]
[Sidenote: Waltham Holy Cross]
Although, strictly speaking, neither Waltham Cross, Waltham Abbey, nor
Epping Forest can be called suburbs of London, they are in such
intimate touch with the capital, that a point may well be strained to
include them in a publication intended to serve to some extent as a
guide to beautiful places within easy reach of the city. Waltham
Cross, a hamlet of Cheshunt, is specially noteworthy, as owning one of
the crosses (well restored in 1883) that were set up by Edward I. to
mark the resting-places of the body of his beloved queen Eleanor on the
way to her tomb at Westminster, and it also greatly prides itself on
the possession of the actual inn at which the bearers of the coffin
rested for a night, the signboard bearing the legend, 'Ye Old Four
Swannes Hostelrie, 1260.' The town of Waltham Abbey, or Waltham Holy
Cross, that may possibly ere long be the seat of a new bishopric, a
low-lying, straggling settlement, intersected by the Lea, which here
divides into several branches, is a far more important place than its
namesake of Cheshunt parish, with which it is often confounded, for it
is the seat of a great Government gunpowder manufactory, the works of
which occupy an area of {57} some two hundred acres. It owes its chief
fame, however, to what was once one of the grandest abbey churches of
England--of which the nave, that is amongst the oldest places of
worship in Great Britain, alone remains--that was built by Harold, the
last of the Saxon kings, on the site of an earlier one founded by Tovi
or Tovig, standard-bearer to Canute the Great, to enshrine a remarkable
crucifix that was found on his estate in Somersetshire. The story goes
that the place where the precious relic had been buried for many
centuries was revealed in a dream to a smith, and that after it had
been dug up, an attempt was made to send it to Glastonbury. The twelve
red oxen and twelve cows harnessed to the cart in which the crucifix
was placed, refused, however, to move in that direction, and Tovi
therefore bade the drovers make for Waltham or Wealdham, as the village
was then called, the name meaning the homestead in the forest.
Directly their heads were turned northwards the animals set off at so
rapid a pace that the escort could hardly keep up with them, and they
needed no guidance till they reached the site of the abbey, when they
halted of their own accord. This was at once accepted as a proof that
it was the divine will that the church should be erected there, and the
work was begun at once, the crucifix meanwhile working many miracles in
the temporary shelter in which it was housed. After the death of Tovi
the estate of Waltham was forfeited by his son Athelstan to King Edward
the Confessor, who gave it to his brother-in-law Harold. The Saxon
earl, who was a very devout {58} Catholic, considered the church
unworthy of the priceless treasure it enshrined, and he lost no time in
having it pulled down, to replace it with a stately building that was
consecrated in 1060. To it he often went to pray, the last time on the
eve of the battle of Senlac, when it was popularly believed that the
sad issue of the struggle was foreshadowed by a significant omen, for
as the king prostrated himself before the miraculous crucifix the
figure of the Lord bent its head, and gazed into the suppliant's face
with an expression of infinite sorrow. But a few days afterwards the
dead body of the last of the Saxon kings was brought to the abbey he
had loved so well, and buried in front of the high altar, whence it is
said to have been later removed to a tomb some little distance from the
present church. During the reign of Elizabeth this tomb was opened,
when it was found to contain the skeleton of a man of great stature,
but there is no absolute evidence that it was that of the unfortunate
Harold.
After being despoiled of its treasures by William the Conqueror, and
suffering many things at the hands of his successors, the beautiful
church of Waltham was given in 1187 to a branch of the Augustinian
order by Henry II., who added greatly to the monastic buildings and was
from the first a liberal patron of the abbey. It was for many
centuries a favourite resort of the English kings, probably on account
of the fine hunting-grounds in its immediate neighbourhood, and it was
there that Henry VIII. received from Cranmer the joyful news that a
device had been hit upon for justifying the {59} divorce from Katharine
of Aragon on which his heart was set. It was at Waltham, too, that the
Reformation may in a certain sense be said to have begun, for it was
there that the king first decided on the drastic measures which
inaugurated it. Harold's foundation shared the fate of the rest of the
religious houses, and was given to Sir Anthony Denny, to whom there is
a beautiful though much defaced monument in the church, that was well
restored in the early nineteenth century. Of the monastic buildings,
however, that were associated with so many historic memories, the only
relics now remaining are a single gateway, a small vaulted chamber in a
market garden once part of the abbey grounds, a few fragments of the
walls, and some subterranean arches. A quaint little bridge spanning
the Corn-Mill stream, a tributary of the Lea, is still called Harold's
Bridge, and a picturesque modern mill occupies the site of the one that
belonged to the monks of the abbey.
[Sidenote: Waltham Abbey]
The immediate neighbourhood of Waltham Abbey is still thoroughly rural
in character, well-watered undulating districts dotted here and there
with beautiful seats--amongst which Copped Hall and Warlies Hall are
the chief--replacing the forests which once extended over nearly the
whole of Essex, including with what is now known as Epping Forest, the
so-called Harold's Park--the name of which is still retained by a
farm--that was given by Richard I. to a branch of the Augustinian order.
At the ancient Copped Hall--so named from the {60} Saxon _cop_,
signifying the top of a hill--that occupied the site of the present
nineteenth-century mansion, the Princess Mary lived during the brief
reign of her brother, and from it she addressed in 1551 a remarkable
letter protesting against the prohibition to have mass celebrated in
her private chapel. There, too, she received the messengers who
brought back the king's unfavourable reply, and gave to the chief of
them, no less a personage than the Lord Chancellor himself, a ring to
be delivered to His Majesty, who was to be informed 'that she would
obeye his commandements in all things excepte in theis matters of
religion towchinge the mass.' It is noteworthy that three years later,
when the tables were turned on the Protestants by the accession of
Mary, the same Lord Chancellor should have received orders from her 'to
be presente at the burning of such obstinat persons as presently are
sent downe to be burned in diverse partes of the county of Essex.'
[Sidenote: Epping Forest]
Originally part of the great forest of Essex, the beautiful woodlands
of Epping, in spite of all the changes through which they have passed,
still retain something of their primeval character, and enshrine in
their recesses some few relics even of pre-Norman days, of which the
most noteworthy are the two camps of Ambresbury Banks and Loughton, for
each of which it has been claimed that it was the stronghold from which
Queen Boadicea watched the last stand of her army against the invaders,
and the massacre of the women and children who had come, as they fondly
hoped, to rejoice over a victory! {61} Whether this or any of the many
other theories advanced be true, it is certain that long before the
Conquest, Epping Forest, which at that date included some sixty
thousand or seventy thousand acres, was the property of the Saxon
kings, and that in Norman times it was strictly preserved for the royal
pleasure, the game-laws being terribly severe and most rigidly
enforced. The killing of a stag was in fact more severely punished
than the murder of a man, for in the former case the eyes of the
offender were put out, whilst for the latter crime a money payment was
often accepted. The first king to sanction any disafforesting was
Stephen, who allowed certain districts to be cleared for cultivation,
and his example was followed by John, who reluctantly gave up the
portion north of the main road between Stratford and Colchester, the
concession having been wrung from him by the united barons, who
compelled him to sign the Charter of Forests, the wording of which is
very significant of the terrible oppression to which the people were
subjected at the time. Later the concessions were confirmed by Henry
III. and by Edward I., who had at first shown signs of going back from
the promises of his predecessors, but in 1301 he was brought to a
better mind by means of a heavy bribe of money. Gradually, through
grants to nobles, unauthorised enclosures, etc., the forest lands
belonging to the Crown were reduced to about a third of what they were
at the Conquest, and a survey made in 1793 estimated the still
uncultivated woods and wastes at twelve thousand acres only. From that
date until the middle of the {62} nineteenth century the history of the
once magnificent forest was one of constant encroachment, one beautiful
tract after another having been sold and enclosed, for the officers of
the Crown interpreted their duty to be to turn the land to as great a
money profit as possible rather than to preserve it for the enjoyment
of its owners or of the people to whom at various times certain rights
had been granted. In 1850 some six thousand acres only were left, and
in the next twenty years these were reduced to little more than half
that amount. Fortunately, however, about this time public feeling
began to be aroused on the subject, and thanks to the enlightened
efforts of a number of influential men, amongst whom special
recognition is due to the members of the Commons Preservation Society,
the matter was brought before Parliament, and in 1882 five thousand
five hundred acres were bought by the Corporation of London for the
nation, including the woodlands beginning near Chingford and stretching
northwards beyond Theydon Bois, parts of which are still much what they
were when royal parties used to go forth to hunt from the palaces of
Chigwell, New Hall, and Writtle, and when the post of Lord Warden of
the Forest was eagerly sought by the great nobles, whilst a far less
picturesque portion extends southwards to Wanstead Flats and Aldersbook
Cemetery.
Some two miles from Waltham Abbey begins what is known as the
Sewardstone district, supposed to be named after a noted Saxon thane,
that is dotted with picturesque hamlets, from one of which, known as
Sewardstone proper, a pretty lane leads {63} to High Beech Green, a
straggling village that once belonged to the Priory, with a good modern
church, near to which is the loftiest point of the Forest: High Beech
Hill, 759 feet high, that commands a very beautiful view. According to
popular tradition, Dick Turpin used to lie in wait in a cave at the
base of this hill for the travellers he intended to rob, undeterred by
fear of betrayal at the hands of the landlords of the neighbouring
Robin Hood and King's Oak inns, now represented by modern hotels, the
latter named after the stump of a venerable oak known as Harold's--the
very one that inspired _The Talking Oak_ of Tennyson, who wrote it and
_Locksley Hall_ in a house near by, since pulled down; whilst in the
still standing Fairmead House, then a private lunatic asylum, the
half-crazy peasant poet John Clare, who lived in it from 1837 to 1841,
composed some of his beautiful descriptions of the forest scenery.
It was from a height not far from the King's Oak that Queen Victoria,
on 6th May 1882, set a seal on the gift of the forest to the people by
declaring it free and open to them for ever, and on the south of Beech
Wood opens the beautiful lane that winds through the still virgin woods
to what is known as Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge, supposed to occupy
the site of the original manor-house of Chingford Earls, the history of
which can be traced back to early Saxon times. However that may be,
the lodge with its high-pitched roof and gables, its massive timber
supports and ceiling beams, projecting chimneys and wide ingle-nooks,
broad oak {64} staircases and spacious outside landings, the main
structure is a very typical example of fifteenth and sixteenth century
domestic architecture. The fact that the highest landing is still
called the 'horse block' recalls the tradition that good Queen Bess
used to ride up to the door of the great reception-room at the top of
the house, and that she may have done so is proved by the fact that the
feat--not a very difficult one after all--was successfully achieved for
a wager some few years ago by a man on an unbroken pony.
[Illustration: EPPING FOREST, NEAR LOUGHTON]
The village of Chingford, or the King's Ford, close to the Lodge, and a
beautiful sheet of water, named after the present ranger, the Duke of
Connaught, is charmingly situated on the edge of the forest, and the
ancient church, now disused, about a mile from the new Gothic building
that has supplanted it, is extremely picturesque. The parish
originally included two manors--the one already referred to in
connection with Queen Elizabeth's Lodge and that known as Chingford St.
Paul's, which, until it was seized by Henry VIII. belonged to the
Metropolitan Cathedral. It was held before the Conquest by a Saxon
thane named Ongar, and the manor-house that replaced his old home, now
a farm, is still standing, though the present lord of the manor lives
in Hawkwood House a little distance off.
[Sidenote: Buckhurst Hill]
From Connaught Water a good road, known as the Green Ride, leads to
Ambresbury Bucks and Epping, and another called the Rangers to
Buckhurst Hill and Loughton. Buckhurst Hill, from {65} which for many
years the famous Easter Hunt used to start, must once have been one of
the loveliest villages in the forest, and is still charming in spite of
the many new houses that have been built. Its name has been very
variously explained, some supposing it to commemorate the aristocratic
poet of Elizabethan times, Lord Buckhurst, others that the original
form was Book Forest, signifying a tract reserved in otherwise open
moorlands by royal charter. Before the Easter Hunt was transferred to
Beech Hill there were many descriptions in the contemporary press of
the scenes that used to take place at Buckhurst, notably one that
appeared in the _Morning Herald_ in the week after Easter 1826, in
which the writer gloats over the gay costumes worn 'by the three
thousand merry lieges then and there assembled' to watch the uncarting
of the stag that, when released, marched proudly down between an avenue
of horsemen 'wearing a chaplet of flowers round its neck, a girth of
divers-coloured ribbons, and a long blue-and-white streamer depending
from the summit of its branching horns, adding that when it caught a
glimpse of the hounds and huntsmen waiting for it, it bounded sideways,
knocking down and trampling all who crowded the path it chose.' The
account ends by stating that the stag was finally caught at Chingford,
'nobody knows how, for everybody returned to town before the end except
those who stopped to regale afresh and recount the glorious perils of
the day.'
The picturesque village of Loughton, perched on high ground above the
valley of the Roding, about a {66} mile from Buckhurst Hill, was
originally a mere appanage of the manor of the same name that was given
by Harold to the Abbey of Waltham, and after the Reformation was
presented by Edward VI. to Sir Thomas Davey, only to revert to the
Crown in the reign of Mary, since which time it has changed hands again
and again. Its ancient church is now a mere ruin, but it has been
supplemented by a fairly satisfactory modern building in the Norman
style. The old manor-house, in which Queen Elizabeth and James I. were
guests at different times, was destroyed by fire in 1836, with the
exception of part of the great hall, now incorporated in a farm, and
the fine wrought-iron entrance gates. In olden times the inhabitants
of Loughton enjoyed, in addition to the privileges common to all of
pasturing their cattle in the forest and turning out their pigs at
Michaelmas to eat beechwood and acorns, that of lopping the trees in
the vicinity of their village, and it was the interference of the lord
of the manor with the undue exercise of this right that inaugurated the
agitation which in the end had the happy result of securing to the
whole nation the priceless possession of Epping Forest.
[Sidenote: Chigwell Row]
Not far from Loughton is the scarcely less charming village of
Chigwell, the name of which calls up the memory of Charles Dickens, for
in it were laid many of the most exciting scenes of his immortal
romance, _Barnaby Rudge_. It was, however, by the way in the King's
Head, a low, rambling, half-timbered building with a projecting upper
story, not in that now known as the Maypole, that John Willett and his
{67} cronies are described as meeting to gossip together and in which
the sturdy but obstinate landlord awaited the coming of the rioters.
The ancient hostelry seems to have altered but little since the great
novelist used to delight in going down to what ne called 'the greatest
place in the world, with such a delicious old inn opposite the
churchyard, such beautiful scenery,' etc., and it is much the same with
the church, with its noble Norman doorway approached by an avenue of
venerable trees. The chief manor-house, known as Chigwell Hall, on the
site of one that belonged to Harold, is still standing, but a modern
grammar-school replaces that founded by Harsnett in 1629; and the home
of the Harewoods, in the garden of which Dolly Varden was, as related
by Dickens, robbed of her bracelet by Hugh of the Maypole, was long
represented by an ancient red-brick mansion that was burnt down a few
years ago.
Chigwell Row, that was long a beautiful secluded hamlet noted for its
spring of mineral water, from which the name of Chigwell is derived, is
now, alas, a mere suburb of uninteresting modern houses, and is chiefly
remembered as having been the home of the peasant who posed for
Gainsborough's famous picture of the 'Woodman.' Close to it begins the
extensive parish of Woodford--named after the old ford over the Roding
that is now spanned by a bridge--in which are many villages rapidly
growing into towns, such as Woodford Green and Woodford Wells, given by
Earl Harold with seventeen other manors to Waltham Abbey. That of
Woodford {68} remained in its possession until 1540, when it was
confiscated with the rest of ecclesiastical property by Henry VIII.,
but the old manor-house, now a convalescent home for children, founded
by Mrs. Gladstone, is still standing.
[Sidenote: Walthamstow]
The extensive parish of Walthamstow has shared the fate of that of
Woodford, for it is becoming a densely populated district with little
to recall the past. Its name is supposed to signify a storehouse, but
whether of food, of weapons, or ammunition, there is no evidence to
show. Its manor belonged, at the time of Edward the Confessor, to the
Saxon, Waltheof, son of the Earl of Northumberland, and though it was
confiscated by William the Conqueror, he later restored it to its
former owner in recognition of his early submission. Moreover,
Waltheof was allowed to marry the king's niece, who, however, was the
cause of his ruin, for she betrayed to her uncle a plot in which her
husband was implicated. Waltheof paid for his disloyalty with his
life, and his estate was bequeathed by his widow to the elder of their
two daughters, by whose marriage with Ralph de Toni it passed into the
possession of the family of that name, for which reason the manor is
still known as that of Walthamstow Toni, though it is now the property
of the descendants of Lord Maynard, by whom it was bought in the
seventeenth century. The once scattered hamlets of Whip's Cross, so
called because it was the starting-point for the whipping of
deer-stealers, Woodford Side, Higham Hill, and many others now
practically form part of the town of Walthamstow, to which also belongs
a narrow {69} strip of land, called the Walthamstow Slip, running right
through the adjoining parish of Leyton, that was won under curious
circumstances not long ago. It was in olden times the custom, if the
place in which a dead body was found could not meet the expenses of
burial, that the parish in which the interment took place should be
paid with as much land as those carrying the corpse could cover holding
each other's hands and walking one behind the other. An unknown man
was found in the Lea, and his remains were taken to Walthamstow by way
of Leyton, with the result that the latter had to yield up a slice of
its territory to the former.
The mother church of Walthamstow, dedicated to St. Mary the Virgin,
dates from the sixteenth century, and contains some interesting
monuments, including one by Nicholas Stone to the memory of Elizabeth,
wife of Sir Thomas Merry, and their four children, and one to Sir
Gerard Conyers, Lord Mayor of London, who died in 1737. The rest of
the places of worship are all modern, and have nothing distinctive
about them, but in addition to the chief manor-house Walthamstow owns
several fine mansions, including those of Higham Bensted and
Walthamstow Sarum or Salisbury Hall, the latter named after Margaret
Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury.
The low-lying districts of Walthamstow parish, which before the Thames
embankment was made were constantly flooded, were some years ago turned
to good account by the East London Waterworks Company for the formation
of their fine reservoirs, {70} which resemble a vast lake dotted with
picturesque islets. During the progress of the excavations, moreover,
many very important geological discoveries were made, with the aid of
which the whole life-story of the valley of the Lea can be read
backwards to the time when the forest of Essex was the home of the
elephant, the elk, the reindeer, and the wild ox, as well as of the red
and fallow deer of modern times.
[Sidenote: Wanstead]
Wanstead, the name of which may possibly be a corruption of the word
Woden's Stede, or the place sacred to Woden, near to which many traces
of Roman occupation have been found, was not very long ago a pretty
rambling village on the very outskirts of the forest, but is now
practically a town; and close to it is the somewhat dreary district
known as Wanstead Flats, once a beautiful furze-clad common with clumps
of fine old trees that has given place to brickfields and gravel-pits.
The manor of Wanstead has, however, an interesting history, for it was
once the property of the Abbey of Westminster, and owned a famous
manor-house known as Naked Hall Hawe, that was pulled down in the
sixteenth century by its then owner, Lord Chancellor Rich, who built in
its place a stately mansion, in which Queen Mary rested on her way from
Norwich to be crowned in London, and Queen Elizabeth was more than once
entertained by Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who had bought the
estate in 1577. Later it changed hands again and again, and in 1683,
as proved by an entry in John Evelyn's diary, it was owned by Sir
Joshua Child, to whom there is an interesting monument in the parish
church, whose {71} son replaced the Earl of Leicester's house with an
even more magnificent one, which he filled with art treasures, and that
was considered one of the finest private residences in England. In
1794, through the death of the then owner and his only son within a few
months of each other, the valuable estate passed to Miss Tylney Long,
then a mere child, during whose long minority the mansion was let to
the Prince of Condé, and was for a time the house of Louis XVIII. and
other members of the French royal family. Unfortunately Miss Long
married a profligate spendthrift, the Honourable W. Tylney-Long
Wellesley, who quickly dissipated his wife's wealth, necessitating the
sale of the Wanstead property. The art treasures were dispersed, and
the mansion sold for building materials, but fortunately the gardens
and grounds were bought for the nation by the London corporation, and
thrown open to the public in 1882.
{72}