In the beginning

In the beginning there was a small chapel and some scattered farms. Thickly forested land had been cleared and a field system laid out by the Anglo-Saxons who called the hamlet Eppinga.  Now it is known as Epping Upland. The little chapel ( now known as ‘All Saints’) was the centre of village life, burying, baptising and marrying. In the large porch, they ran something like a Civic office. Money was collected, deeds signed, and parish matters dealt with. At night the porch gave shelter to poor parishioners.

A footpath went down the hill over Cobbins Brook dividing at the bottom, going east to Thornwood and south to the Beacon on the highest point at Epping Heath. (Bell Common) This  was an ideal look out point as Boudicca had discovered at her last encampment on Ambresbury Banks.

People on Epping Heath maintained the Beacon and farmed the land and in 1253 King Henry gave permission for a market selling wool, timber, wheat, and food to be held every Monday. It is said that a huge earth bank was built up along the High Street to keep out people from Theydon Garnon. This may be why there are several steps down into The Black Lion and several shops in the High Street used to be like this.   The forest was a hunting ground for Royalty and anyone caught poaching by the verderer who lived in Bury Road, ( Apple Tree Cottage) was severely punished.

Trade routes went through Lindsey Street, and Coopersale, ( along the Stump Road)  meeting at Thornwood but in 1769, James 1^st gave permission for Mr Macadam to put a road through the forest. Epping is on a high ridge going from  east to west which was perfect for stage coaches and the hundreds of animals bound for the London market. Turnpikes and tollhouses were set up at Bell Common and Thornwood to collect a toll on every person, animal or carriage passing through One of Epping’s three windmills was on Mill Plain and local people  dodged round the back of it as a way of avoiding the turnpike.  Animals from farms in East Anglia walked to Epping and were then slaughtered, or quartered overnight on The Plain or Bell Common but the geese walking to London had to have their feet dipped in the warm tar pits on The Plain and Bell Common to protect them from the hard road. Highwaymen found the road full of rich pickings and were a constant hazard for stage coaches coming through the forest. Dick Turpin turned to being a highwayman when his butchers shop in Buckhurst Hill wasn’t doing too well. He is said to have hidden his horse, Black Bess behind The Pineapple alehouse on Church Hill in prosperous Epping. There were twenty five inns and alehouses between Bury Road and The Plain with the main Brewery and Maltings in Lindsey Street, a busy cattle market every Monday financed by  the Epping and Ongar Bank  set up by the Fincham family. The butter made in Epping was very famous and the Buttercross ( a little thatched building at the top of Buttercross Lane) did a roaring trade. There is a story that a man actually sold his wife in the market, and as this wasn’t very unusual in those days it is probably true.   Unfortunately there were also some terrible living conditions, particularly in the Twankhams Alley cottages. A workhouse and a pest house for people with infectious diseases was in Lindsey Street and another workhouse on the corner of Station  Road. Epping had the highest death rate in Essex. Cholera, smallpox and diphtheria were rife and in 1853 Doctor Clegg began campaigning for a decent water and drainage system. After twenty years of argument with powerful local figures  Dr Clegg took his concerns to Parliament and finally an artesian well was dug  with a Tower to house the pump. By this time the small workhouses had been closed and a large Union Workhouse built on The Plain, kept continually in use until 1950.

People could buy a smallholding on the edge of the forest for their own use to graze animals on condition that they did not fell trees, or fence it.  In 1866 the Lord of the Manor at Loughton disobeyed this law and a local man, Thomas Wilingale protested. He was put in prison but soon everyone had heard about it and some local landowners decided that in fact he was right. The rich and powerful Corporation of London who had actually bought a smallholding on the edge of Epping Forest to set up  the  City of London Cemetery heard about it  and decided to do something about it.  At that time land was being sold all round London to house the thousands of people who had gone to live there. The Corporation didn’t want this to happen so they went to the Law Court to make a law to keep the forest as it was. They won their case and in 1878 the Forest Act was passed giving everyone free access to the forest. When Queen Victoria came to Epping to unveil the fountain celebrating her Golden jubilee she said that Epping Forest was dedicated to ‘The People of the East End’ for ever.  By this time Epping had a railway, and was famous for its butter and Mr Church’s sausages. St Johns  Church was built in 1889, the French artist Lucien Pissaro came to live in ‘The pretty little town of Epping’ and an Avenue of Trees was planted on Bell Common to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

In 1906 a local man Walter Cox, bought a smallholding on Forest Side. He paid £120 which included five cows, two pigs, pony carts and harness, cow barns, piggeries, and haystacks but no land as smallholders could let their animals graze freely in the forest areas. This law still holds and until the BSE crisis, cows could wander anywhere, only restricted by the cattle grids invented and made by  Epping blacksmith, Mr Clark ( in the smithy that was in the High Street near Twankhams alley).  In 1909, Mr Wythe of Copped Hall  generously paid for St Johns church in Epping to have a  tower. Unfortunately his generosity did not extend to his workers. Later, when his cowman, Chris Morris attained a senior position in the Union which meant he might need time off for meetings, he found himself dismissed and evicted with his family from their tied cottage. 

In 1924 a fiery politician, Winston Churchill, became the member of Parliament for Epping until 1945, with just one difficult period. In 1938 the Constituency party disapproved of his strident opposition to appeasement to Hitler and. someone proposed deselection.  Fortunately the Chairman, James Hawkeye persuaded them against this.  

The war made an enormous difference to the people of Epping. Servant girls,   farmworkers, and labourers escaped to the Services, leaving the German and Italian prisoners of war doing the farm work and manual jobs. The town, full of soldiers, airmen and evacuees suffered a lot of bomb damage with several deaths and serious injuries at Spriggs Oak and St Margaret’s hospital and workhouse.

After the war Epping grew as people who had been bombed out in London needed somewhere to live. A large area of land behind the High Street as given for houses to be built.  The new Underground trains gave easy access to London which made it easy for people to find work in London and for some children who had passed a scholarship to travel to school . The M11 was followed by the M25 which was planned to cross the forest at Mill Plain by Forest side. However the Corporation defied the Ministry of Transport and insisted the road must go under the forest in a tunnel which cost fourteen million pounds.

So what about Epping Upland where it all began. The lovely Parish Church of All Saints replaced the chapel and is surrounded by the same ancient Anglo-Saxon field system and  Epping, with its fifty two listed buildings and green open spaces  is still the ‘Pretty little town’ That Lucien Pissaro the artist who lived in Hemnall liked.’