Records of Commissions

Records of the Epping Forest Commissioners and Arbitrator are in WORK 9

• Epping Forest Arbitrator, 1878-1882
• Epping Forest Commissioners, 1871-1877

Topics

Forestry

The New Forest and Waltham Forest Act 1849 had provided for the appointment of commissioners to enquire into and report on rights and claims in, boundaries of and unlawful encroachments upon the two forests. Following their report in 1851, an act was passed disafforesting the eastern area of Waltham Forest in Essex, known as Hainault Forest.

Responsibility for Epping Forest (the western part of Waltham Forest) was transferred to the Commissioners of Works from the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, by the Crown Lands Act 1866.

In 1871, the Epping Forest Act authorised enquiries in Epping Forest similar to those previously undertaken for Hainault Forest; their much-postponed report was finally published in 1877. Commissioners were appointed, under the general oversight of the Commissioners of Works. Meanwhile, however, concerns about disafforestation as a result of enclosures by lords of manors had come to a head in the case of the Commissioners of Sewers v Glasse, which ran from 1871 to 1874 and ended with judgment against the lords, an injunction prohibiting future enclosures in the forest and a requirement for the removal of all fences erected in the previous twenty years. In the light of these developments, the commissioners' proposals for disafforestation were rejected in favour of a different scheme, embodied in the 1878 and 1880 Epping Forest Acts, which provided not only for disafforestation, but also for the preservation and management of the unenclosed parts as an open space for public enjoyment. The forest was henceforth to be managed by the Corporation of London.

The 1878 Act also appointed an arbitrator for a period of one year (with a possible extension to three years) to hear and settle all disputed matters arising from the Act; his term of office was extended to three years, with a possible extension to four, by the 1880 Act.