CHAPTER III

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.

[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.

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}