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EXTRACTS FROM THE MINUTES

OF THE

EPPING AND ONGAR

HIGHWAY TRUST.

FROM ITS COMMENCEMENT IN 1769 TO ITS TERMINATION
IN 1870.

With Maps and Illustrations.

A CONTRIBUTION TO LOCAL HISTORY,

BY

BENJ. WINSTONE.

London:

HARRISON AND SONS, ST. MARTIN'S LANE,
Printers in Ordinary to Her Majesty.

1891.

(For Private Circulation.)

HARVARD COLLEGE

JUN 14 1918

LIBRARY

PREFACE.

ONE of the concluding clauses in the Act of Parliament which established the Epping Highway Trust ordered that the transactions of the Trustees should be entered in a book or books, kept for that purpose. Mr. John Windus having been clerk to the Trustees when the Trust terminated in 1870, the books have been retained in the office of Messrs. Windus and Trotter, Epping.

The entries made in the Minute Book the first half of the hundred years during which the Trust existed have in many places perished, and in others have become almost obliterated. The mildew, which has been at work for some time, will no doubt continue its work of destruction; and in a few years the records of the earlier transactions of the Trustees will be obliterated, and the information they contain lost.

On the establishment of the Trust, it at once proceeded to take measures for lessening the gradients of Golden's and Buckhurst Hills; a little later on the Trustees undertook the formation of a road suitable for coaches as far as Writtle, on the way to Chelmsford, and in 1830 they commenced making the new road through the heart of the Forest, from the "Wake Arms" to Woodford.

These matters have at least a local interest. I have, therefore, thought it advisable, by printing the records of transactions of the Trustees, to preserve the history or accounts of the work carried on for the improvement of the important high road through Epping into the eastern counties. Until 1769 the road was under the management of local Justices and County Justices of the Peace, assembled at Quarter Session.

From the Acts of Parliament passed in the last century some knowledge may be obtained of the opposition against which they had to contend, and also the powers with which they were entrusted to enable them to meet difficulties as

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