Epping Whites Directory in 1848
EPPING is a small market town, consisting chiefly of one long and wide street, upon a high ridge of table land, on the Harlow road, and on the borders of Epping Forest, 16½ miles N.E. by N. of London, 17 miles W. by S. of Chelmsford, and 6 miles E.N.E. of Waltham Abbey. Though it is more than 350 feet above the level of the sea, it is well supplied with water from land springs. It was a great thoroughfare between London and Newmarket before the opening of the North-Eastern Railway, from which it is distant six miles ; but a railway is projected to pass southward from the town, and to form a junction with the North-Eastern line at Lea Bridge and with the Eastern Counties Railway at Ilford. Its Parish is extensive, comprising 5695 acres of land, and 2424 inhabitants, of whom 1943 are in the town and immediate suburbs ; 365 in EPPING UPLAND chapelry, about two miles N. of the town, where the parish church is inconveniently situated ; and 116 in Ryehill hamlet, about 3 miles N. of the town, near Epping Green, and in Harlow Hundred.
The Union Workhouse, and other houses on the east side of the town, are in the parish of Thoydon-Garnon, or Coopersale, in Ongar Hundred. The town is a polling place for the Southern Division of Essex, and is much resorted to in the summer months by pleasure parties from London, on account of its healthy and picturesque situation, and the delightful walks and drives among the majestic woodlands of Epping Forest. It has a Market for the sale of corn, &c. , every Friday lay, when Petty Sessions are held at the Police Station. It has Races, and a Fair for dairy cattle, &c. , on Whit-Tuesday, and has another cattle fair on Nov. 13th, and a statute fair for hiring servants on Oct. 11th. Its market supplies London with great quantities of butter, pork, and sausages, and the town is enlivened with much fashionable company during the hunting season, The Easter Stag Hunt was commenced in the forest in 1226, when King Henry III. confirmed to the citizens of London, free warren, or liberty to hunt in the forests of Epping and Hainault. Formerly the Lord Mayor and Aldermen attended on Easter Monday, when a stag was turned out. The kennel for the hounds hounds, and a house belonging to the hunt, were rebuilt about 1800.
A large and highly celebrated pack of fox-hounds is kept at Copped Hall, the seat of Henry John Conyers, Esq. , the lord of the MANORS, called Epping Bury, Epping Presbytery, Chambers, and Campions, for which Messrs. Maberley and Son are stewards, and courts are held on Whit- Thursday, at the Cock Inn. These manors comprise the whole parish, and the copyholds are partly subject to certain, and partly to arbitrary fines. Newell Connop, B. B. Colvin, Rd. Dyson, and Edw. Williams, Esqrs. , the Rev. Jph. Arkwright, the Rev. Chas. Daubeny, and many smaller free and copyholders have estates here. Epping Bury, the principal manor, and a great part of the soil, anciently belonged to Waltham Abbey, by the gift of Earl Harold, the founder.
Queen Mary annexed it to the Duchy of Lancaster ; and in 1564 it was granted by Queen Elizabeth to Sir Thos. Henneage, whose family sold it to the Earl of Middlesex, who sold it to Thos. Webster, Esq. Of the latter, it was purchased about 1720 by Edward Conyers, Esq. , from whom it has descended to H. J. Conyers, Esq. , of COPPED HALL, a stately and elegant mansion, in the centre of an extensive park, at the north end of the forest, and about a mile S.W. of the town; on the crown of a finely-wooded hill, commanding beautiful prospects, and rising in a succession of groves and plantations from the lower grounds, which extend northward to the small river Cobbin, which has its sources near the north end of the parish, and flows westward to the Lea, near Waltham Abbey. The mansion is a large and nearly square building of white bricks, much admired for the closeness of the joints, and the symmetry of their forms, having been cast in iron moulds, made expressly for the purpose. It was built between the years 1753 and 1757, but was afterwards greatly improved under the direction of Mr. James Wyatt. The old hall stood a little further to the west, within the bounds of Waltham parish, and was built in the reign of Elizabeth, by Sir Thos. Henneage, on the site of one erected in the 13th century by Richard Fitzauchre. About 80 years ago, more than 400A. of land near the park was an unprofitable waste, covered with hornbeam, pollards, brushwood, &c., and infested with gangs of wood and deer stealers, whose race had haunted the close covers of Epping Forest for centuries, and were in the constant practice of committing depredations . By the praiseworthy exertions of the late Mr. Conyers, many of these outcasts were reformed, and induced to live in small cottages which he built for them. He also provided them with labour, small gardens, and fire wood ; and by this judicious scheme, soon inured the idle to habits of industry, and brought a large
tract of waste land into profitable cultivation. About 1747, a sterile tract of 100 Acres , called the warren, was ploughed up and sown with seeds of almost every kind of trees. This now forms one of the most valuable woods in the county. In 1803, one of the trees, a cedar of Lebanon, was 12 feet in girth, and its branches extended upwards of eleven yards on each side.
Near Copped Hall Park, on the south-east side, are traces of an ancient camp, called Ambreys, or Ambersbury Banks, and supposed to be of British origin. This entrenchment is now overgrown with old oaks and hornbeams. It was formerly in the heart of the forest, and there was no road near to it till the present turnpike from London to Epping was made. This road passes within a hundred yards of it, but it is obscured from view by the wood that covers it. Its figure is irregular, and the area contains nearly 12 acres, encompassed by a ditch and high bank, much worn down by time.
EPPING FOREST, formerly called Waltham Forest, and in more remote ages, the Forest of Essex, comprises about 60,000 acres in this and the adjacent Hundreds of Becontree and Ongar, but the greater part of it has been grubbed up, and the land cultivated, or left in large open commons, at various periods. It is under the jurisdiction of the Commissioners of the Crown Woods and Forest. Four verderers, or forest keepers, are appointed by the freeholders ; but the title of Lord Warden of the Forest is hereditary in the family of the Earl of Mornington. The forest rights are as various as the tenures of the different manors that surround it. A few miles to the east, in Barking and other parishes, is Hainault Forest, where the celebrated Fairlop fair is held. West of the town, in the three adjoining parishes of Theydon Garnon, Bois, and Mount, and in Ongar Hundred, are the handsome seats of Coopersale House, Park Hall, Hill Hall, Theydon House, the Grove, &c. , as noticed with those parishes.
Epping Parish Church (All Saints,) stands in the Upland, about two miles N. W. of the town, on a commanding eminence. It is an ancient structure, with abrick tower, containing five bells. The nave is disproportionately long, and is paved with Purbeck stone ; but the chancel is paved with Portland stone, except within the communion rails, where the flags are of white marble. The church has several handsome monuments of ancient and modern dates, and was appropriated to Waltham Abbey till the dissolution. The vicarage, valued in K.B. at £17. 13s. 4d., and in 1831 at £729, is in the incumbency of the Rev. H. L. Neave, M.A., and patronage of Henry J. Conyers, Esq. , who is also impropriator of the rectory and lord of the manor.
The vicar has a good residence in the Uplands, and the tithes were commuted in 1841, the vicarial for £800, and the rectorial for £400. The parish is in the peculiar jurisdiction of the Court of the Commissary of London, concurrently with the Episcopal Consistorial Court.
ST. JOHN’S CHURCH, or the free chapel of Epping, dedicated to St. John the Baptist, which stands near the entrance to the town from the London road, was an ancient structure, founded by the Abbot and Monks of Waltham, but was rebuilt in a plain Gothic style in 1833. It was vested in trustees for public use in 1573, and the trust has been from time to time renewed. The Trustees have about £2000 new South Sea Annuities, called the chapel stock, and they are about to take down the present church, and to erect a larger one on or near the same site. The living is a perpetual curacy, now valued at £120, and in the patronage of the Trustees, and incumbency of the Rev. Richard Sale, M.A In the town is an Independent Chapel, rebuilt in 1770, and a Friends’ Meeting House, founded in 1670. Here are also large National and British Schools, several respectable Boarding Schools, and various Charities for the poor. There is a small Independent Chapel, at Epping Green, built in 1834. JOHN BAKER, in the 10th of Henry VIII, left property for charitable uses in the parishes of Epping and Theydon Garnon, and the reparation of the highways between Harlow and London. This property is in Theydon Garnon parish, and now consists of Stonard’s or Stonehurst Farm (624., ) let for £80 a year ; the Mill Field (8A. 3R. 29P., ) let for £27 ; and Redyns Wood, in which timber is felled, and the proceeds applied in repairing and beautifying the churches of the two parishes. In 1805 and 1806, the fall of timber in this wood produced £551, and another fall in 1822 produced £233. The rents of Stonard’s Farm and Mill Field, after paying for repairs, land-tax, and other incidental expenses, are divided equally between the two parishes, for distribution among the poor. Epping has also £145 13s. 4d. three per cent. reduced annuities, purchased with its share of the money derived from the sale of timber felled on Stonard’s Farm and Mill Field. The dividends are applied in apprenticing poor boys. The charity is vested with 24 trustees, and they are not allowed to spend more than £20 a year of the trust money in repairing the highway between London and Harlow, and not anything in those years when repairs are required at the house on Stonard’s farm.
Lady Katherine Wentworth, in 1638, left £400 to buy an estate of the value of £20 per annum ; £18 thereof to be distributed yearly among the poor of Epping, on the anniversary of her death, and £2 to be paid to the vicar for preaching a sermon before the money should be distributed. This charity was not established till 1719, when, after a suit in Chancery, the legacy was recovered, together with £220 arrears of interest. The money was laid out in the purchase of Searles Farm, 35A. 18. 10p., in Harlow, now let for £46. 10s. a year, one-tenth of which belongs to the vicar for preaching the sermon, and the rest to the poor, according to an order of Chancery in 1718.
In 1615, George Campion left the Assefield, 4A. (now let for £10, ) and directed one-half of the rent to be given towards the maintenance of the preacher at Epping Chapel, and the other half to be divided among the poor. For a weekly distribution of bread, Edward Searle, in 1688, left a yearly rent of 52s. out of Gibbon’s Bush farm, now belonging to B. B. Colvin, Esq. As noticed with Theydon Garnon parish, Epping receives £7. 10s. yearly from Reynold’s Charity, of which £1 is paid for a sermon; 5s. to the sexton and bellringer ; and the rest is divided amongst the largest poor families of the parish. Twelve of the poorest widows have the dividends of £100 three per cent. consols, left by Eliz. Walkley, in 1813. The poor parishioners have also the dividends of £300 three per cent. consols,
left by Ann Chapman, in 1834, in trust with the vicar and churchwardens.
The SAVINGS’ BANK is open on the first Friday of every month, and Mr. R. B. Andrews is the clerk.
EPPING DIRECTORY.
Those marked 1, are in EPPING UPLAND ; 2, at EPPING GREEN ( in the Upland; ) and 3, are in RYEHILL hamlet. The others are in the town, or where specified ; but those marked + are in the Theydon parishes, on the S.E. side of the town.
The POST-OFFICE is at Mr. Frederick Griffith’s. Letters despatched to London, &c., at 45 min. past 9 morning, and at 8 evening ; and to Harlow, Norwich, &c., at 8 evening. Money Orders are granted and paid.
Abrey Mr John
Alcott Rev. Joseph.
Andrews Rd. Bullock, solicitor & clerk to the magistrates & Savings’ Bank
+Capel Hon. Adolphus Frederick, Theydon House
+Champness Edwd., master of Union Workhouse
+Champness Ths. auctioneer, Abridge
Chancellor Rev. Samuel (Independant.)
Chapman Mr Charles
Chappell Mr Charles
Coel Thomas, maltster
Conyers Hy. John, Esq., Copped Hall
Cozens Samuel, fishmonger
Curtoys Mrs Ann
Day Sarah
Earle Joseph, surgeon and druggist
Eaton Rev John, B.A. curate
Egerton Chas. C., Esq. Kendal Lodge
Forster MrsCath. (and My., staymaker.)
Franklin Jph. glover & breeches maker
Giffin James, butler
Godwin Thomas, police superintendant & inspector of weights & measures
Gould John Rose, brewer
Griffith Fredrk. bookseller, printer, &c. Post and Stamp Office
Grimsdick Wm. parish clerk
Hinde Misses M. L. and C. C.
Holtway Mrs Fanny Windus
+Houblon Mrs, and Archer Richard, Esq. Coopersale House
Hutley Chas. locksmith & bellhanger
Ingham Mrs Sarah Oliver
+Jeffery Alice, matron, Workhouse
Jones Charles Wm. solicitor
Latham Samuel, Esq.
Linsell Mrs Christiana
2 Littlechild John, gardener, &c
McNab Daniel Robert, surgeon
Mansell Mr Wm. W.
Loft Thomas
+MarshWm. Coxhead, Esq. Park Hall
+Maynard John and Maria, teachers, Workhouse Schools
Merryman Charles Anthony, surgeon
Moore George, registrar and house and insurance agent
Morris Harriet, stationer
1Neave Rev Hy. Lyttleton, M.A. vicar
Patman Wm. gentleman
Payne Fredk. registrar of marriages
Payne Mrs Sarah, Vale Cottage
Reid Daniel, Esq. Epping Plain
Rogers George, gent. Epping Place
Rowlands Thomas, druggist, and British wine and brandy dealer
Sale Rev Richard, M.A. incumbent of St. John’s
Saward Wm. coach builder, &c
SlaterGabriel, Esq.
Squire Thos.
+Smijth Rev Sir Edward Bowyer, Bart. Hill Hall
+Soame Sir Peter Buckworth-Herne, Bart. (and Heydon Hall)
Thurlow John, gentleman
Viles Mr Edward
Tidy Mrs S. S.
+Whiteman John Claremont, Esq. ,
The Grove (Theydon)
Windus Mrs Sarah
Walton Sarah
Windus John, solicitor & union clerk and superintendent registrar
Williams Miss Dorothy Phillips
Winter Edward, pawnbroker, &c
FIRE AND LIFE OFFICES.
Phænix, Frederick Griffith
Royal Exchange, G. Moore
Sun, Henry Doubleday
INNS AND TAVERNS.
Bell, Robert Harvey
Black Lion, James Hammond
1 Chequers, Mrs Elizabeth Smith
Cock, George Tweed (posting)
2 Cock & Magpie, Louisa Newman
Duke of Wellington, Stephen Ellis
Duke of York, David Brown
George and Dragon, Thomas Hobbs
Globe, Richard Fairchild
Royal Oak, Isaac Payne
Sun, William Marrable (chapel clerk)
Thatched House, Wm. Smith
White Hart, George Wright
White Horse, James Grout
White Lion, Henry Clark
White Swan, Edward Wakeling
ACADEMIES
(++Boarding.)
Butcher Mary A.
++ Day Rachel
Giffin Mary Ann
Invetto Anthony
National School, Rd. Shergold & Mary Brown
++ Palmer George
++ Underton Misses Ann & Hannah
++ Usmar Rev.Thomas, D.C.L.
Varney Geo. British School
BAKERS .
Allen Michael
Bridgman Henry
Kirkby John
Miller John
Whipps Charles
Wilson Thos.Jas .
BLACKSMITHS.
Barltrop My. and Jonathan
2 Barltrop William
Burden John
Hutley Charles
Saward William
BOOT & SHOE MAKERS.
Adeane Frederick
Austin Thomas
Burgess William
Giffin William
Grimsdick William
Green Joseph
HummerstoneJn.
Ingham William B., (& spirit merchant)
Lawrence John
Oddy Timothy
Pratt Richard
Stace Thomas
BRAZIERS.
Barnes Frederick
Hoy Thomas
BRICK MAKERS.
Champness Geo.
Harvey & Davis( & potters)
Hinde Misses
Stiles John
BRICKLAYERS.
Heath Henry
Marrable Charles
BUTCHERS.
Fairchild Charles
Fairchild William
Field James
Hills Thomas
Kirkby Henry
Mantell George
Parker Thomas
Stevens Henry
Teece Chas. James
COOPERS
Butcher Matthew Maxwell
Wright George
CORN FACTORS .
1 Gingell & Scruby
Miller John
Whipps Charles
Wilson Thomas Jas.
Wright William
CURRIERS.
Green Joseph
Wakeling Edw.
FARMERS
2 Adams George
3 Brown John
2 Brown William
1 Dean William, Hunter’s Hall
1 Fitch James
1 Gingell Daniel
Hills Thomas
3 Kyburn James
Miller John
1 Nicholls Thos.
Northover William & Jas. Epping Bury
2 Perry William
Pouterell Samuel
3 Rickett John
1 Scruby James
Simes Edward
2 Smith Peter
GROCERS .
2 Brown James
Clarke William
Doubleday Henry
Fairchild William
3 Kyburn Isaac
Maxwell Betsey
Palmer John
Pollard Nathaniel
Pratt William
Rankin John
Wolton James
HORSE AND GIG LETTERS .
Champness Samuel
Harvey and Davis
Hobbs Thomas
Smith William
Tweed George
Wakeling Edw.
IRONMONGERS.
Barnes Frederick.
Doubleday Henry
JOINERS AND BUILDERS.
Champness Geo.
Champness Samuel
Freshwater John
Harvey and Davis
Lawrence James
LINEN & WOOLLEN DRAPERS.
Adeane Fredk.
Champness Wm.
Haslam Wm. (& nurseryman)
Rankin Abraham
Wolton James
MILLINERS AND STRAW HAT MKRS.
Ash Celia
Clark Betsey
Haslam Mrs
Hobbs Mary
Hummerston A.
Pollard Miss
Wilson Sarah
Wood Mary Ann
PAINTERS, &c.
Clarke William & Samuel
Foster Catherine
2 Mott James
Osborne John
PERFUMERS AND HAIR DRESSERS
Campbell William
Hallows Thomas
Wright John
SADDLERS .
Cooper Thomas Wheeler
Crossingham Samuel
Phipps William
SHOPKEEPERS.
Barltrop Mary
Champness Sarah
Clements Henry
2 Fitch Jas.beerhs.
Hampton Rachel
Hummerston Ts.
Marsh James
Pratt William
TAILORS .
Adeane Frederick
Foster William
Hasler William
Mantell George
Spencer John
Wood Thomas
WATCH MAKERS &c.
Barnes Fredk.
Palmer William (fancy depôt)
Pratt Chas. (and bird stuffer)
WHEELWRIGHTS.
Goodwin Charles
Greatrex James
Pouterell Samuel
Saward William
COACHES
From the Cock & Thatched House to London, at 8½ morning and 5 evening, through Waltham and Woodford.
CARRIERS.
To London, Tues. Thurs. & Sat.
Hollingshead William and Son
Lanes William
Willis Daniel
Wright William