The only surviving
remnant within
50 miles of
London of the great
forests which once blanketed
southern England. A
deciduous wood,
the main trees found there are
oak,
beech and
hawthorn. Once there
used to be many majestic
elm trees in the forest, but the ravages of
Dutch elm disease has as good as eliminated them.
Epping Forest lives in a perilous position on the Essex border of
London, in land that is officially designated green belt but still seems
to get dug up and developed far too frequently. Mentioned as far back
as the Domesday Book, the forest was famously the playground of the
Tudor monarchs: Henry VIII had a lodge built so that he had somewhere
to rest during his deer hunts. This building still stands, now named
Queen Elizabeth's Hunting Lodge after his daughter, who also favoured
the area.
150 years later the forest became notorious as the hiding place of the
outlaw highwayman Dick Turpin, and the cave in which he hid from
the forces of law and order is still visible (if you know where to look).
Pressurised by the expansion of the metropolis to the south and west,
and by farmland on all other sides, the forest somehow still manages to
survive and is a haven for foxes, deer, badgers, adders and
assorted other British wildlife.
Personally I've lived near the forest all my life, and I love it with a
passion. A walk through the forest not only changes with the seasons
but even on a daily basis: early morning with a mist about your feet
and rabbits popping out of their burrows to feed, late afternoon
with sunbeams drifting through the tree branches while squirrels play
in the brambles, or midnight, illuminated only by moonlight, when
every sillhouetted tree looks sinister, and every sound is eerie.
For more information and some pictures of this beautiful place, you should
take a look at http://www.eppingforest.co.uk