Hainault Forest

The church, dedicated to the Holy Trinity, is a small building in the Norman style, erected in 1840: it consists of a chancel and nave, with a bell-turret. Dr. Barnardo's Village Home for Orphan and Destitute Girls is the principal feature in this village. This institution, called the East End Juvenile Mission, and one out of eighteen depôts established in the eastern districts of London, was founded in 1866, for the purpose of "reclaiming, educating, and benefiting, spiritually and physically, adults and children of the poorest classes."

The Homes surround a space of about four acres, which is laid out as a sort of college quadrangle, the houses being grouped around it on all sides. Each of these is fitted for the reception of twenty girls, who are mostly between four and fourteen years of age, though some remain till seventeen, and some are infants only a few weeks old. The total of the houses is at present thirty; but ground has been secured for the erection of ten or twelve more as soon as donors are forthcoming. Many of those already in working order were opened by the Princess Mary of Teck, as recorded on stones let into their fronts; others were given or opened by Lord and Lady Cairns, Lord and Lady Aberdeen, the Duchess Dowager of Manchester, and other titled persons; whilst not a few commemorate a parent or a child. The inscriptions on their fronts are quite touching.

The girls are all brought up for domestic service, and are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, and needlework; and all take their turns at laundry and house work. The steam laundry alone, when in full operation, is a sight worth a visit; and the size of it may be inferred from the fact that often 10,000 articles are washed in it in a single week. The washing, not only of all the thirty "Homes," but that of all the boys at the Home at Stepney Causeway-a kindred institution-is done here. The girls are allowed, in some cases, to remain till seventeen, when they are drafted off into service. Some hundreds of them have been despatched to Canada, for service there; and they cannot be sent too young for the wants of the colonists. Some who are delicate have been sent for a winter sojourn on the north coast of Africa. Two adjoining mansions, with grounds and gardens, have been absorbed into the institution; the one serving as an infirmary, whilst the other is appropriated as school-rooms for the various classes. The whole of the school staff is under Government inspection, and has a resident master and mistress, who have a separate house assigned to them.

The children have their meals and, for the most

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part, sit and play in their respective Homes, though they meet on equal terms in the common ground. In the centre of the quadrangle is a dovecot or pigeon-house, and little gardens are attached to every cottage. Nothing can be prettier or neater than the general appearance of these Homes; and the bright happy faces of the children tell more plainly than words can do that they are well cared for and well treated. In fact, after a month or two in the Home, the faces of even the dullest and stupidest-looking children show a marked improvement. It is said that the demand for servants from the Homes average a thousand in a year, while the supply can never reach a hundred. The average death-rate of all the children in the several Homes is under one per cent.

The whole of the large sum collected annually by Dr. Barnardo is expended on the children, their clothing, education, and maintenance; and some of the ladies in charge of the Homes give their services gratuitously from love of the work. All the Homes have been erected by private donors, individually or collectively. It is said that the sums collected amount to over £40,000 yearly.

Prizes are distributed annually to a large number of former occupants of these Homes who, by their industry and good conduct, may have retained their situations with credit, after leaving the institution, for a number of years. At a meeting held at Exeter Hall for the above purpose in June, 1883, presided over by Earl Cairns, it was stated that during the preceding year 4,100 boys and girls had enjoyed the advantages of the Homes and institutions connected with them. A new Home, the "Leopold," had been opened during the year, and a Servants' Free Registry added. A scheme had been elaborated for sending 100 boys and 100 girls to the Colonies - emigration being the best possible mode of completing the rescue of many of those who have been trained in the Homes. One of the supporters of the Homes, having purchased 1,000 acres of land in one of the Midland counties, had offered to take 100 boys to train as agriculturists. The income of the year, it was announced, had been £45,136, a considerable increase over the most prosperous of previous years.

The old "Maypole" public-house here has been popular in its time with East London holidaymakers, on account of its proximity to the spot whereon formerly grew the famous Fairlop Oak; but it is open to question whether the worthy host was justified in placing in his bar the following couplet:

"My liquor's good, my measure 's just ;
Excuse me, sirs, I cannot trust."

The Fairlop Oak stood about a mile to the east of the "Maypole," on ground which now forms part of the Crown Farm. It has been noticed as not a little singular that the survey of the Board of Agriculture makes no mention of this oak in its list of particular trees in the county.

Mr. Coller, writing of the forest in his "History of Essex" (1861), observes :-"The parts of it about Leyton and Woodford are pleasant airinggrounds for the inhabitants of eastern London on holidays, to whom it is a luxury to breathe the fresh air of a real forest. Doubtless it is a special delight for the fair labourers in the factories of fashion to escape from their prison-houses, and, as a wag has sung

oak, and of the scenes enacted beneath its spreading branches :

"Deep in the forest's dreary tracts,

Where ranged at large fierce Waltham blacks;

Where passengers with wild affright,
Shrunk from the terrors of the night,

there stood that pride of Hainault Forest, the Fairlop Oak, which for so many years overshadowed with its verdant foliage. the thousands who

"Like Robin Hood, to feel themselves the free, And draw their beaux beneath the greenwood tree.' Even in this respect, however, the popularity of the forest has fallen off since excursion trains have stood at all the outlets of London, ready to whirl the parties further countryward, though the rabble rout that burlesques the grandeur of the old royal hunting party is still to be heard in the forest on Easter Monday. Fair and bright, too, have been the days of forest life under the Fairlop oak, which stood near Great Ilford." Not only, however, as we have already shown, has the Epping Hunt become a thing of the past, but both the Fairlop Oak and the saturnalia which for a century or so were known as Fairlop Fair have now altogether disappeared.

A writer in the Literary Chronicle for 1823 gives us the following particulars of this celebrated

See ante, p. 443.

crowded under it, and the antiquity of which the tradition of the country traces half-way up to the Christian era. This vegetable wonder, which was rough and fluted, measured at three feet from the ground about thirty-six feet in girth, and the shade of its branches was proportionally large.

"Under this oak a fair was long annually heid on the first Friday in July, which was founded by one Daniel Day, a block and pump maker, of Wapping, commonly called Good Day, who died on the 19th of July, 1767, aged 84. Mr. Day was the proprietor of a small estate in Essex, at a short distance from Fairlop Oak. To this venerable tree he used, on the first Friday in July, to repair, having previously invited a party of his neighbours to accompany him, and here, under the shade of its thickest branches and leaves, the party dined on beans and bacon. For many years Mr. Day continued annually to visit this favourite tree; and attracting public curiosity to the spot, a sort of

"For several years before the death of the benevolent, though eccentric, founder of this fair and public bean-feast, the pump and block makers of Wapping, to the number of thirty or forty, went annually to the fair in a boat made, like an Indian canoe, of one piece of timber. The amphibious vehicle was covered with an awning, mounted on a carriage, and drawn by six post-horses, the whole being adorned with ribands, flags, and streamers, and furnished with a band of musicians.

"The oak, so long the great object of attraction, after having endured the fury of the whirlwind and the tempests of ages, at length fell, subdued by Time; for what will not Time subdue?' About twenty years ago the tree was fenced round with a close paling, and Mr. Forsyth's composition

following day, by which the trunk was considerably
injured, and some of the principal branches wholly
destroyed; but though thus mutilated, the stately
ruin yet still wonder gained,' and might then have
been apostrophised in the language of the poet :-
"Thou wert a bauble once, a cup and ball,

Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay,
Seeking her food, with ease might have purloin'd
The auburn net that held thee, swallowing down
Thy yet close-folded latitude of boughs.
Time was when, sitting on thy leaf, a fly

Could shake thee to thy roots, and time has been
When tempests could not.

Time made thee what thou wert-king of the woods;
And time hath made thee what thou art-a cave
For fowls to roost in.'

"The high winds of February, 1820, however,

"But, although the oak is gone, and the only remains of it, we believe, are to be found in the neighbouring church of Wanstead, where the pulpit has been made of a part of it, yet the fair is still held regularly, and is a place of great resort to the inhabitants of London, who flock in crowds, and, forming gipsy parties, spend the day. But the poet Gay must describe the scene :—

"Here pedlars' stalls with glitt'ring toys are laid,
And various fairings of the country maid.
Long silken laces hang upon the twine,
And rows of pins and amber bracelets shine.
Here the tight bass-knives, combs, and scissors spies,
And looks on thimbles with designing eyes.
The mountebank now treads the stage, and sells
His pills, his balsams, and his ague-spells;
Now o'er and o'er the nimble tumbler springs,
And on the rope the vent'rous maiden swings.
Jack Pudding, in his party-coloured jacket,
Tosses the glove, and jokes at ev'ry packet;
Here raree shows are seen and Punch's feats,
And pockets pick'd in crowds, and various cheats." "

The pulpit of St. Pancras Church, in the Euston Road, it may be added, was also made from the wood of this famous oak.*

:

The author of a brochure, entitled "Fairlop and its Founder," printed in 1847, varies the account of the origin of the fair with a few additional details. He writes: "When entire, the oak is said to have had a girth of thirty-six feet, and to have had seventeen branches, each as large as an ordinary tree of its species. Far back in the last century, there lived an estimable block and pump maker in Wapping, Daniel Day by name, but generally known by the quaint appellative of Good Day. Haunting a small rural retreat which he had acquired in Essex, not far from Fairlop, Mr. Day became deeply interested in the grand old tree above described, and began a practice of resorting to it on the first Friday in July, in order to eat a rustic dinner with a few friends under its branches. His dinner was composed of the good old English fare, beans and bacon, which he never changed, and which no guest ever complained of. Indeed, beans and bacon became identified with the festival, and it would have been an interference with many hallowed associations to make any change, or even

* See "Old and New London," Vol. V., p. 353.

Day's spirit, and came in multitudes to join in his festivities. As a necessary consequence, trafficking people came to sell refreshments on the spot: afterwards commerce in hard and soft wares found its way thither; shows and tumbling followed: in short, a regular fair was at last concentrated around Fairlop Oak . . . . . Mr. Day had thus the satisfaction of introducing the appearances of civilisation in a district which had heretofore been chiefly noted as a haunt of banditti.

"Fun of this kind, like fame, naturally gathers force as it goes along. We learn that for some years before the death of Mr. Day, which took place in 1767, the pump and block makers of Wapping, to the amount of thirty or forty, used to come each first Friday in July to the Fairlop beansand-bacon feast, seated in a boat formed of a single piece of wood, and mounted upon wheels, covered with an awning, and drawn by six horses. As they went, accompanied by a band of musicians, it may be readily supposed how the country-people would flock round, attend, and stare at their anomalous vehicle, as it hurled madly along the way to the forest. A local poet, who had been one of the company, gives us just a faint hint of the feelings connected with this journey :

"O'er land our vessel bent its course,
Guarded by troops of foot and horse;
Our anchors they were all a-peak,
Our crew were baling from each leak.
On Stratford Bridge it made me quiver,
Lest they should spill us in the river.

"The founder of the Fairlop feast was remarkable for benevolence and a few innocent eccentricities.

He was never married, but bestowed as much kindness upon the children of a sister as he could have spent upon his own. He had a female servant, a widow, who had been eight-and-twenty years with him. As she had in life loved two things especially, her wedding-ring and her tea, he caused her to be buried with the former on her finger, and a pound of tea in each hand-the latter circumstance being the more remarkable as he himself disliked tea, and made no use of it. He had a number of little aversions, but no resentments, It changed the usual composed and amiable. expression of his countenance to hear of any one going to law. He literally every day relieved the poor at his gate. He often lent sums of money to deserving persons without any charge for interest. When he had attained a considerable age, the Fairlop oak lost one of its branches. Accepting the fact as an omen of his own approaching end, he caused the detached limb of the tree to be fashioned

into a coffin for himself, and this convenience he took care to try, lest it should prove too short. By his request his body was borne in its coffin to Barking Churchyard by water in a boat."

Gilpin, in his "Remarks on Forest Scenery," written in the last century, describes the branches of Fairlop oak as "overspreading an area nearly 300 feet in circumference. About a yard from the ground," he adds, "where its rough fluted stem is thirty-six feet in circumference, it divides into eleven vast arms; yet not in the horizontal manner of an oak, but rather in that of a beech." In his day it had "suffered greatly from the depredations of time." In 1805, as stated above, it lost some of its greater branches, and was otherwise considerably injured by a gipsy party, who had kindled a fire in too close proximity to its aged trunk; and although considerable care was afterwards taken to preserve it, the work of decay went on gradually, until, in the month of February, 1820, the "grand old oak" was blown down in a violent gale. The fall of the tree, however, did not put a stop to the " 'fair," notwithstanding that it was popularly supposed to have been held "by charter, under the shadow of the great oak." Even when the power of holding it was supposed to have been taken away by the Disafforesting Act in 1852, so firm a hold had the idea. of celebrating Fairlop Fair taken on the minds of the East Londoners, that they still hovered round its site for their annual "outing" for some three or four years, until the ground was actually enclosed. Mr. Thorne, in his "Environs of London," says that " even now (1876), on the 'first Friday in July,' the block-makers of Wapping visit Barking Side in their ships, drawn by six horses, and after skirting the scenes of their old revels, dine at the Maypole,' or one of the neighbouring inns. A sort of

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fair continues to be held on the unenclosed waste, but it is a fragmentary, disreputable mockery. It may be noticed," he adds, as illustrating the tenacity with which the memory of Fairlop is held, that the London Foresters named the lifeboat which they presented to the Lifeboat Society in 1865 The Fairlop.'" Indeed, down to within the last few years Fairlop Fair, on the first Friday in July, was a favourite Cockney holiday-making, and almost as celebrated at the east end of London as the Epping Hunt used to be at Eastertide. The open space of ground whereon the old tree once flourished was on this one particular day in the year crowded by company of every description. "Lord, what a group the motley scene discloses !

False wits, false wives, false virgins, and false spouses." Aldborough (or Aldbury) Hatch is a small hamlet and ecclesiastical district of Barking. It lies about two miles north-east of Ilford, and is a straggling little place, with a population of about 500. The church, a small Gothic structure, was opened about the year 1863. Here, on the verge of the old forest (as implied by the name), is a dreary level district, lately disafforested, and largely built over with straight roads and middle-class dwellings. It is a woodland district simply spoiled.

Morant, in his "History of Essex," says that the place was called Aldbury Hatch, as "denoting an old seat near a hatch, or low gate, belonging to the forest." According to Lysons, a mansion stood here at the beginning of the present century. There are other places in this neighbourhood bearing the same affix to the name, as Pilgrims' Hatch, Howe Hatch, &c., all of which mark the entrances at former times to the once great Forest of Waltham, just as Colney Hatch* has reference to a side entrance to the Royal Chase of Enfield.

MAKING our way southward, by a winding country lane, past Hatch Farm, towards the main road which runs east and west through the heart of the county of Essex from Colchester, Chelmsford, and Romford, through Ilford and Stratford to London,

we leave on our left the uninteresting locality of Chadwell, and the outlying hamlets of Padnall and Great and Little Newberies. Chadwell Heath is in

See ante, p. 342.