When Epping Forest began to be taken over by a wealthy landowner, one man decided to take a stand, as reporter EDMUND TOBIN discovered

FOREST and woodland once covered virtually the entire distance from Wanstead to Waltham Abbey.

Epping Forest as we know it today is a mere shadow of the sprawling mass of woods known to people in Tudor times; but even what remains could well have vanished for ever if it had not been for the efforts of one man: Thomas Willingale.

In the 16th century, forests were Royal Preserves owned by the monarch of the day. Queen Elizabeth allowed residents in the forest the right to cut wood for fuel and to graze their cattle, though it was strictly forbidden to hunt deer or other game, and this was retained as the exclusive privilege of the king or queen of the day.

Strict rules were laid down on the practice of cutting wood, with lopping permitted only between November 11 and St George’s Day, April 23, and even then only on Mondays. It was forbidden to lop branches hanging lower than seven feet from the ground.

As London expanded, more and more forest was cut down for housing, industry and agriculture. At the same time the power of the crown diminished, with the word of the monarch no longer taken as absolute.

When upkeep of Epping Forest became too expensive, Queen Victoria sold the rights of the forest, complete with 1,400 acres of land, to William Whitaker Maitland, the Lord of the Manor at Loughton.

When Maitland’s grandson John inherited the land, he began to fence off parts of the forest and removed the lopping rights enjoyed by residents for centuries.

It was now that Thomas Willingale emerged as a defender of those rights and stood his ground against the new landowner.

Every year at the stroke of midnight on November 11, he would go into the forest and begin lopping.

The wealthy owner refused to take the slight lying down and began a lengthy prosecution against Willingale who stood his ground for ten years.

As the legal battle rumbled on, Maitland resorted to increasingly clandestine efforts to undermine Willingale, one year even attempting to get him drunk before the eve of the lopping hour.

Thomas Willingale would not live to see the fruits of his one-man crusade. He died in 1870, but his cause was taken up by his son, Sam, who racked up years’ worth of fines from the authorities. Sam Willingale’s refusal to pay many of these bills would see him imprisoned and his case became a cause célèbre as it began to be depicted in the public domain as a David and Goliath contest.

The Willingales attracted great support from the City of London and the House of Commons, helped by the upset many people felt at the widescale destruction of Hainault Forest 20 years previously.

As the public tide turned against the idea of wealthy owners fencing off their own private pieces of forest, the Corporation of London would eventually take up the cause started by Thomas Willingale and successfully challenge Maitland’s land ownership in Epping Forest.

In 1878 the Epping Forest Act declared all the enclosures made by land owners in the previous 25 years illegal, and designated the forest a public open space.

Existing loppers were financially compensated and money was set aside to build Lopping Hall, in Loughton High Road, which still stands as a monument to one man’s struggle against injustice.

An oak carved panel at the Hall commemorating the achievements of Thomas Willingale has since been lost, but a blue plaque marking his presence has now been erected there and at St John’s Church, in Loughton.