Recently I’ve been doing my research for the Loughton local election results and as a result firstly found a detailed map of Loughton with all the houses and gardens - I intend to share it on this site later - but then found another map, which has totally fascinated me. It’s a map of Epping Forest and surrounded towns and villages from the beginning of the last century. This map has amazed me because I’ve never known what Loughton, Buckhurst Hill, Chigwell and Epping used to be at that time.

I’ve cut a bit from it where Loughton is. Below is the old Loughton map from circa 1910.

As you see, there are plenty of self-explanatory road names like

• Alderton Hall Road - where Alderton Hall used to be; now Alderton Hill;
• Rectory Lane - where the Rectory used to be;
• Church Hill - where St John’s Church is;
• Borders Lane - from Border’s farm that used to be located nearby.

Pink coloured spaces on the map show where the houses stood at that time and - no surprise here - currently the oldest houses in Loughton are still there. Despite the fact that railway station has been opened in 1856, there hasn’t been much of a development around it. I assume that the majority of houses alongside High Road, Forest Road and York Hill have been built before the railway came to Loughton.

Loughton has even had its own hotel at the time and a couple of chapels in addition to St.John the Baptist’s, St.Mary’s and St.Nicholas’s churches. The last one is used to be where Epping Forest College is now.

The map is so peaceful and gratefully old that I can just imagine myself being in that beginning of century Loughton with fields all around the town, farms and churches with unobscured views. No newly built commuter belt houses yet, no Debden Estate, the old railway terminus is in place of current Sainsbury’s parking lot, roads are not congested and railway trains are fast and reliable.

The whole 1910 Epping Forest map can be found on the Hunt House website.