by Len Knight
My earliest recollections of Epping Forest are from around 1946 when I went to an area with my parents and grandmother somewhere in the vicinity of The Royal Forest Hotel. Back then there were still red squirrels to be seen and they and small green caterpillars of some sort dangling on threads from the trees and sunshine dappling the ground through the foliage are my most vivid memories. My grandmother sang an old song called ‘The Umbrella Man’ which may have meant it rained but I don’t recall that; you tend to remember the best bits.
The Lake at Hainault Forest. Photo © Len Knight
Since then Epping Forest has been a regular place to commune with nature as they say and always a favourite place to walk either with friends or the dog. For 50 years I lived in Hainault where Hainault Forest (a mere 800 acres detached from the main Forest of Epping) gave me lovely walks throughout the year usually accompanied by whichever dog I had at the time from mongrel languid Lassie to Rufus the fiery Manchester/Jack Russell cross. That particular area was notable for hornbeams and oak woods with large patches of hawthorn and open swathes of grassland that at one time was all cut and then left in patches for the benefit of wildflowers. Hainault Lake is a feature and many kinds of duck and mainly Canada geese can be seen through the latter can become a nuisance with their cropping of all the grass and droppings. The numerous walks had lovely views over the countryside in places over to Havering and through a far as Lambourne End and the Beehive pub where a lovely country lane called Hoe Lane led through to Abridge from where you could drive through Buckhurst Hill to the main forest.
High Beach Epping Forest. Photo © Len Knight
I now live further away near Clacton-on-Sea where there are nice sea walks but I still miss the woodland rambles and sometimes drive the 60 or seventy miles to Epping Forest, now mainly the High Beech area where a tasty fried egg sandwich or various other comestibles can be had at the kiosk adjacent to The King’s Head. Not far from there is Wellington Hall, a large wooden building where in the early 50s I was taken by ancient pre-war red Dennis or green Bedford coach which served John Bramston School in those days. The coaches were called Swift and Swallow if I remember correctly. Miss Taylor was the teacher who taught me what variable polystictus and saddle fungus were, not to mention fly agaric and puffballs. I think the trips were often in the autumn to catch the best fungi. Wellington Hall was where we ate our packed lunches. The massive beeches, maybe two hundred years old or more and huge in girth were defiled with carved names and dates, some greatly distorted with time and growth and some of considerable age. Sadly a number of those old venerable giants are now fallen with age and high winds and a lot of the adjacent hillside is now eroded showing the bare clay beneath what was in those days fine, springy turf peculiar to that area.
As a child in the early 50s we (my brother my mother and I) used to be taken by a family friend to the High Beech area in his 1936 Hillman Minx. Those were the days of picnics on the grass with tomato sandwiches and orange squash in small bottles with the hum of insects in the background.
RMs with one RT Bus at Royal Forest Hotel 1970s. Photo © Len Knight
By the late 60s I lived for a while in a caravan on a farm down Hornbeam Lane, Chingford, which backed onto the forest that lay behind the Royal Forest Hotel, after the golf course if my memory is correct. There grey squirrels would come up to the back window of the caravan on a fence and wait to be fed. It was during that period that I drove London buses for four years, out of Leyton Green Bus Garage which was in those days run by London Transport. The route was no. 38 usually and ran between The Royal Forest Hotel outside of which there was parking for busses and Victoria Train Station in west London. The bus types were either RMs (Routemasters) or RTs (AEC or Leyland Regents), the latter being my favourites. It was always a pleasure to take a break at Chingford with the lovely view of the forest, often with a cup of tea and a packet of Smith’s Crisps. The drive up there was more of a pleasure than work though on a busy weekend in summer the poor old busses sometimes had a struggle full-loaded up Chingford Mount.
Hainault Forest 1992. Photo © Len Knight
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