Loughton

Loughton is a town and civil parish in the Epping Forest District of Essex, England. It is inside the M25 London orbital motorway but lies just outside the administrative boundary of Greater London. It lies north-east of Charing Cross in central London. The parish has two stations on the Central line of the London Underground: Loughton and Debden. At the 2021 census the parish had a population of 33,346.
The parish includes part of the ancient woodland of Epping Forest. Loughton has three conservation areas and 56 listed buildings, together with a further 50 that are locally listed.
The neighbouring parishes are Waltham Abbey, Theydon Bois, Chigwell, and Buckhurst Hill. The parish also borders the London Borough of Waltham Forest near Chingford.

History

There is evidence of prehistoric settlement in the area. Loughton Camp is a Mesolithic fort in Epping Forest to the north-west of the town, which was rediscovered in 1872.
The name Loughton is Old English and means the farm or settlement of someone called Luhha.
In Saxon times, Loughton was a vill. By the 1060s the vill was subdivided into six estates or manors. In 1060, two of the six Loughton manors were given to the monastery of Waltham Abbey by Harold Godwinson, along with the neighbouring manors of Debden and Alderton. The grant of these manors to the abbey was subsequently confirmed in a charter from Edward the Confessor in 1062.
Following the Norman Conquest, the Domesday Book of 1086 records the six Loughton manors as Lochentuna. Two of the Loughton manors were still owned by Waltham Abbey, as were Alderton and Debden. The medieval Alderton Hall survives on Alderton Hall Lane.
The six manors of Loughton plus the manors of Alderton and Debden became the parish of Loughton. Loughton's medieval parish church, dedicated to St Nicholas, stood beside Loughton Hall on Rectory Lane.
The manor of Loughton Hall was owned by Mary Tudor from shortly before she became queen in 1553. The manor was later owned by the Wroth family from 1578 to 1738. Sir Robert Wroth and his wife Lady Mary Wroth entertained many of the great literary figures of the time, including Ben Jonson, at the house.
In the early 17th century a new road through the forest was built. The main road from London to Epping and beyond had previously taken a more circuitous route to the east of Loughton, running through Chigwell, Abridge and Theydon Bois. The new road provided a better route from London not just to Epping, but also to Cambridge and East Anglia. The road served as a stagecoach route, and Loughton developed into a more significant village along the new road. The road through the village was bypassed in 1834 when Epping New Road was built, following higher ground through the forest to the west of Loughton to avoid some of the steeper hills on the older route.
Loughton Hall burnt down in 1836. Following the loss of the manor house, and with the principal part of the village having grown up along the main road, the medieval St Nicholas' Church was left quite isolated from the population it served. A new parish church dedicated to St John the Baptist was therefore built in 1846, just off the main road through the village. St Nicholas' Church was demolished shortly afterwards, although a smaller chapel of ease also dedicated to St Nicholas was subsequently built within the churchyard of the medieval church in 1877. Loughton Hall was eventually rebuilt in 1878 by John Whitaker Maitland, whose family held the manor for much of the 19th century. It is now a care home and is a grade II listed building.
Loughton railway station opened in 1856 at the end of a branch of the Eastern Counties Railway from London via Woodford. The Eastern Counties Railway became part of the Great Eastern Railway in 1862, and the line was extended to Epping and Ongar in 1865, which needed Loughton's station to be relocated onto the new through tracks, replacing the former terminus station. A second station in the parish was built as part of the 1865 extension; it was initially called Chigwell Road and then Chigwell Lane, being then the nearest station to Chigwell. It was renamed Debden in 1949. The railway through Loughton was transferred to London Underground as part of the New Works Programme of 1935–1940. After electrification works and the construction of a new link to the existing underground line near Stratford, the route became part of the Central line in 1948.
The arrival of the railway in the 1850s spurred on the town's development. Areas such as Baldwins Hill were developed on the edge of the forest. These new areas were popular with the middle classes, and a number of prominent artists and scientists moved to Loughton. Further enclosure and development of the forest was supported by landowners, notably John Whitaker Maitland, who was both lord of the manor of the Loughton Hall estate and a clergyman, being the rector of Loughton. Further development into the forest was opposed by many existing local residents concerned for the loss of their ancient lopping rights; Thomas Willingale, a labourer, was a prominent opponent of the landowners. These disputes culminated in the Epping Forest Act 1878 which gave statutory protection to the forest and passed responsibility for its management to the Corporation of London.
The 1878 Act protected the forest from development, but also ended the rights of local residents to lop timber. In compensation for the loss of these rights, Lopping Hall was built as a public hall for the town by the Corporation of London, opening in 1884.
On the north-eastern side of Loughton the Debden estate was built from 1945 onwards as part of the policy of London overspill, which aimed both to reduce overcrowding in London and to replacing housing and industry in London which had been lost during the Second World War. Although Loughton was outside the administrative area of the County of London, the Debden estate was built by London County Council. The estate took its name from the ancient manor of Debden, which had been centred on Debden Green to the north of the new estate.
Located within Debden's industrial estate is the former printing works of the Bank of England; in 1993 the printing works were taken over by De La Rue on their winning the contract to print the banknotes. The headquarters of greeting card company Clinton Cards and construction firm Higgins Group are also located within the Debden Industrial Estate. In 2008, electronics firm Amshold announced their intention to move the group's headquarters to Loughton from Brentwood. They moved to a site in Langston Road; in 2012, their property company Amsprop converted a headquarters building next to the Town Council offices in Rectory Lane.
In 2002, Loughton featured in the ITV1 programme Essex Wives, a documentary series about the lives of some of the nouveau riche who have resided in the Essex satellite towns of London since the 1980s. The series propelled Jodie Marsh, one of its featured characters, to fame. Journalists' use of the term "golden triangle" to describe the towns of Loughton, Buckhurst Hill and Chigwell for their propensity to attract wealthy footballers, soap-opera actors and TV celebrities as residents derives from this.
The town has been used as a backdrop in other television series, notably The Only Way is Essex, and two shops in the High Road are associated with members of its cast.

Geography

Loughton is bounded by Epping Forest to the west and the Roding river valley to the east. After the Epping Forest Act of 1878 prohibited any further expansion of the town into the forest, the forest and the river have formed two natural barriers constraining any expansion westwards or eastwards, and consequently most of the growth in the last 100 years has been through infilling and construction of new housing estates to the north and south of the old town centre, plus the purpose-built suburb of Debden to the north-east. The Roding valley is somewhat marshy and the river is prone to flooding, so construction close to the river is very limited and the majority of the land around it has been designated as a nature reserve or left as open space parkland. The M11 motorway that follows the course of the Roding along this section of its length is built on raised banks or flyovers, to avoid potential problems with flooding.
The highest parts of the town are the roads that border the forest's edge; from the green outside the Gardeners Arms pub near the junction of York Hill, Pump Hill and Baldwins Hill there are views of London, south-west Essex, Kent and Surrey. From here, on a clear day, there is a panoramic view of London landmarks and the North Downs beyond. There are numerous other fine views from different parts of the town, including one roughly at the junction of Traps Hill, Borders Lane, Alderton Hill and Spareleaze Hill, and another on Spring Grove and Hillcrest Road. In the valley between these two hills flows Loughton Brook, which rises in Epping Forest near Waltham Abbey and flows through the forest and Baldwins and Staples Ponds before traversing the town and emptying into the Roding.
There are several distinctive neighbourhoods in Loughton mostly identifiable by the building types incorporated during their development:

Old Loughton refers to the original settlement which grew up around Loughton High Road.
Debden occupies about 650 acres/225 hectares to the north east of Loughton; London County Council built the woodland development between 1947 and 1952 out of county to rehouse people from London whose homes had been destroyed or damaged during the Second World War. The largest open space in Debden is Jessel Green, an open hillside towards its centre, deliberately planned as a central open resource by the LCC.
Debden Green is a hamlet set around an ancient green in the north-east corner of the parish. Debden House in Debden Green is an adult learning and conference centre run by the London Borough of Newham; the grounds include a campsite.
Goldings Manor is a modern estate of mostly large detached houses built in the grounds of 'Goldings Manor', a large mansion demolished after being hit during the Blitz. It comprises four residential streets; Broadstrood, Campions, Garden Way and Stanmore Way.
Great Woodcote Park is a modern housing estate at the southern end of Loughton, built on the site of the former North Farm.
Little Cornwall is a hilly area of north-west Loughton closest to Epping Forest characterised by steep hills, weatherboarded houses, narrow lanes and high holly hedges.
Roding Estate or South Loughton is the area south-east of the London Underground Central line and was mostly built up between the First World War and Second World War.