By
Sam Wilkins
BASc Arts and Sciences
15th November 2025
Today, Knighton Woods is alight with orange and yellow leaves, raining down from the trees and carpeting the paths.
But, I see streaks of summer green still lingering, and tucked away buds on bushes and trees promise a regeneration in spring.
On the rhododendron bushes, the buds are tear-drop shaped, layers of dusty pink petals with milky green tips, and have a faint fuzz that blankets them. They huddle like knots at the meeting of the bushes’ long waxy leaves; sleeping, they wait for the gentle kissing nudge of spring to wake them. I think back to the unrolling of the ferns and the flowering of snowdrops that came last springtime, and look forward to their eternal return.
Change commands the woods but does not neglect the former self.
***
Dear to my heart is the ancient Epping Forest, which I have had the luxury of growing up by. There is an inexhaustible host of memories from my time there. I would run wild through the rambling paths of the forest, building dens out of fallen branches for other strollers to build upon, jumping in piles of fallen leaves. I remember muddy boots from muddy puddles, countless picnics, countless daisy chains. Epping Forest is a sacred site of memory for all those who live around it; draped along the north-eastern border of London, it is hard to believe that, mere miles away, London’s concrete and urban mania hums. Further along the Woodford New Road lives my mother, in a small town in Essex called Buckhurst Hill. It isn’t far from where I grew up, and the woodland there is familiar and precious to me. To my family, the woods are ritual: they are where my mother walks the dog daily, where we walk on Christmas Days, on Birthdays, on Sundays. The area of woodland by my mother, cut off from the rest of Epping Forest, is named the Lord’s Bushes and Knighton Woods, a stretch of woodland, pastureland, and bushland that I frequently get lost in, with its many sunny paths and shady corridors.
Monkham’s Lane, an historical bridleway, acts as a boundary line between the Lord’s Bushes and Knighton Woods. Another north-to-south path cuts through the bushland, about a kilometre east of Monkham’s lane. These wooded avenues and their bifurcations burst forth sporadically, zig-zagging across the span of the woods, looping back upon themselves, leading you down one way and then curving back through one another. A direct route is not possible, and it would be infuriating to try. The paths of the woods are rambling and entangled; yet, there is a system to it that is almost arterial.
This wood is known for its collection of ancient oaks and hornbeams, the most conspicuous being the Pulpit Oak. Situated at the top of Monkham’s Lane, it announces the wood and its rich history: it is estimated to be over 400 years old, and has a trunk that exceeds 4.5 metres in girth. Because of the cavernous hollow of the tree, it was the site of sermons; preachers would stand in the hollow and preach to crowds, hence its name. Its splendour is somewhat diminished nowadays; the gnarly and coarse trunk dwindles and does not climb very high, tapering off eventually into nothing…
I spent a season at the end of last year working in Knighton Woods with the Epping Forest Conservation Volunteers, a group of common people working to sustain the complex and singular habitat of the forest; common people, serving the common land for the good of the public. Many regeneration projects since the early 2000s have identified this area of the woods as a target for regeneration, as an influx of new growth has encroached upon older veteran trees. The City of London have woven public trails into the woodland which stroll about both the Lord’s Bushes and Knighton Woods; they help to interconnect small glades and plains in the woods that would otherwise be inaccessible to the public. This is helping to nurture the growth of older and more fragile plants and species, which have been withering under the shade of young trees and more precocious scrub. I worked with the conservation team to cut back holly and other dominating species, in order to make way for a rare heather that had been ushered away into the retreated nooks of the forest floor. After an afternoon spent lopping adolescent oaks and battling with domineering and cruelly spiked holly trees, I unearthed my reward: soft and bristly heather, deft and shy in its dusty colouring. Despite my satisfaction at warding off the so-called invaders of the woodland, I was left sweaty and curious and wondering: what wildlife deserves place in the woodland?
After all, this intervention of the conservationists is egoistical to an extent: what right do they have to decide what oak tree stays and what holly bush goes? Ought not nature take its own course?
A fire following a drought several centuries ago devastated many of the trees in the bushland. Remarkably – and quite literally – from the ashes came nutrients that stirred dormant seeds of sedge and rush, which promptly erupted from the new, almost volcanic mud. A new ecosystem emerging from destruction, mechanised by the biology of the woods and motored by the elements. So, who holds the right to take a chainsaw to an oak, deemed invasive, situated in a wood that is so temporary and moving? How do you pin it down? The Conservation Volunteers certainly go to lengths to follow nature’s path, allowing their projects for regeneration to be informed by the wood’s natural progression over time. Its constitution has been pruned, cutting away decaying and diseased limbs and nurturing back new, healthier growth, fresher but nonetheless informed by what was there before. I find it cathartic to walk through and identify the old and the new, the natural and the fashioned.
One of the most notable assets of the woodland is the marvellous and enormous rhododendron bushes that promenade down the length of Monkham’s lane. These bushes, standing well over two metres high and stretching down the path three to five metres apiece, bear, in the springtime, the most fixating and delicious purple flowers, and for the spring to early summer period, not much else can be noticed for the hypnotism of their resplendent grandeur. The striking bright purple inflorescences completely cover the plants, and though not all rhododendron ponticum are scented, it is not uncommon to enjoy a gentle, spiced fragrance hanging intoxicatingly in the air, smelling like something between camphor and honeysuckle.
The rhododendrons hold an elevated status as icons of Epping Forest, having been regarded as jewels of the woods for a long time: I discovered an old issue of The Woodford Times, from 1904, in which they remark on how, “this delightful wood has been open to the public, and many have availed themselves of the opportunity of inspecting the magnificent rhododendrons which are to be seen here in great profusion and variety”. The establishing of the rhododendron as a plant of the Lord’s Bushes and Knighton Woods calls back into question who has the right to a sense of belonging in the woods. Rhododendrons are native to Eastern Asian and Himalayan regions; these exotic, foreign jewels were likely introduced into the woods sometime after it was disafforested. They are an invasive species, and likely suffocated other native plants as they encroached upon Monkham’s lane; the sedge and rush shirk back into reclusion from view, and it is hard to see other plants behind the rhododendrons, as they can grow anywhere from one to four metres deep. Edward North Buxton, in his travelogue of Epping Forest, remarks, “[The rhododendron] have appeared to find a congenial home, and, though I am opposed on principle to the introduction of exotics, these have established their right to the soil”. Beauty and prowess has granted these arresting plants permanent residency, and I certainly believe them to be part of the woods of my memories. Who decides whether all plants must be native to be authentic? Who decides, equally, to pare back the holly, the sedge, the heather, to make way for exotica?
***
When I need to disengage myself from the efficiency of London, to perambulate and be led along by the woods, I can count on these woods to smooth my mind’s rigidity, slow down my clock and deepen my breathing. This feeling of disrobing from my mind’s urban apparel is not new, nor original, but in fact a privilege permitted me by campaigners and conservation groups in the late 1800s. They championed for commoners’ rights legislations, in an attempt to parry off the ever-proliferating grey of a newly industrialising London. The Epping Forest Mass Trespass of July 1871 saw thousands of protesting activists de-fence the enclosed areas of Epping Forest that had been cordoned off from the public and left for the indulgence of the wealthy. Defended by the City of London Corporation, these commoners wielded their right to intercommoning, and the trespass accelerated activist action against the privatisation of London’s green spaces. They rallied at the Pulpit Oak, repurposing the preacher’s pulpit as a stage for political activism. When I come back to my mother’s, I stop at the old tree to reflect. I listen out for the cries of the preachers and the shouts of the common people. It is because of the members of those conservation groups 150 years ago that I might amble and perambulate amongst the fine familiar oaks.
Even whilst I perambulate, I think of the word’s historical meaning. Perambulation originally referred to the act of officials marking out the boundaries of a woodland. Now that perambulation is used to describe my aimless wandering around the woods, I think to what degree ownership is entitled to those afforded the pleasance of making their way to and fro through the woodland’s bordered geography. There is no fence to stop my venturing into the denser folds of shrub and tree, but nonetheless the now-public paths demarcate a fixed pattern that echoes the old foregone perimeter of the Knighton Estate.
The boundary lines of the wider Epping Forest and its constituent parts have had a trepidatious history of privatisation, enclosure and disafforestation. Epping Forest was, for many years, the hunting grounds of the royal family: populations of deer were introduced, and paths were cleared out of the dense and diverse woodlands, shrublands and pastures of the forest to make way for the Royals’ playground. Then, sold off to the wealthy, the forest was further divided into private gardens and farmland. This inevitably siloed the forest from loppers, tradespeople and farmers without land that needed the forest to allow their cattle to graze – the common people. By the end of the 19th Century, Epping Forest had become a crucial site in the history of the right of common. The Metropolitan Commons Act of 1878, enabled by the efforts of common people and radical landowners alike, saw the prevention of any further public land in and around London be made saleable and therefore enclosed from the public, and pushed back against the building upon green land to support the rapid expansion of London.
Edward North Buxton bought the Knighton Estate in 1836, which he in time donated to the common people. Buxton campaigned for the rights of common people to roam in what he considered public land. Him and his brother were founding members of the Commons Preservation Society, a group that campaigned and fought for the eventual passing of the 1878 Act. Buxton was also appointed Verderer of Epping Forest, a role that granted him the privilege of protecting Epping Forest with the interest of the people in mind. His writings on walking trails in Epping Forest strike deep resonance within me, and I see his observations echoed in my own diary. It builds on this incredibly spiritual and atmospheric feeling of history that runs through me as I walk the woodland, and I can feel him in me as I observe the old spear beeches that he used to walk past.
Land is for all who will engage with it, who hold it as a site of memory or ritual. Epping Forest is enmeshed with the history of those who shaped it. The rhododendrons and the manmade pond in the Lord’s Bushes and Knighton Woods remind us that the landscape has been fashioned, but the heather reminds us that nature endures. The Pulpit Oak stands as a beacon of common people, a threshold upon which we must look back and see the moments from the past that give us our freedom to roam. Looking back over time, in my diary, in photographs, I see how closely my memory is mapped onto the geography of Epping Forest, how my catharsis relies on therapeutic walking through land remembered, touching and reconnecting with flora and fauna that is ever-changing and yet immovable. No one owns the land, but all belong to it.
***
9th March 2026
I woke up early this morning to birdsong, and to mum bringing me a tea before going to work. She climbed into bed and held me and said she wished she didn’t have to go.
It’s alright, I said. I’ll be fine.
Heart aching.
Instead of falling back asleep, I got up and changed. I made a tea in a flask and took myself to Knighton Woods.
There is a low and heavy mist today, and the woods felt suspended, held in thoughtful illusion. The birds were loud and energetic, and everywhere raindrops had made visible beautiful cobwebs, lacy canvases stretched over branches. People said good morning as they passed, before being swallowed back up by the fog.
I went to the pond, perhaps for the first time, since I do not remember it before. The mist framed it in this awesome mirage – I sat on a bench under a colossal hornbeam tree and watched a group of mallards meander around, flipping themselves over into the water as their tails and bright orange feet waggled in the air. I followed a new path for a time, around the pond’s perimeter and then, suddenly off and around in such a perambulatory fashion I didn’t know in what direction I was headed.
***
“Lord’s Bushes, a wood of 120 acres, is, I think, in as healthy a condition as any block of the Forest. The fine spear beeches and oaks have made notable progress during the sixty years that I have known them most intimately as neighbours and passed almost daily through their ranks. There are some very rugged and picturesque old hornbeam stems, but large numbers of meaner ones have been cut out. There has been more frequent and more drastic thinning in this grove than in any other part of the Forest. Yet it is now the densest wood we have.”
Edward North Buxton, Epping Forest, 1923
Bibliography
Buxton, E.N. (1923). Epping Forest. Ninth Edition Revised with Chapters on Its History, Topography, Animals and Birds, Entomology, Flora, Fungi, Geology of the District, and Forest Management ed. Edward Stanford.
Knighton Wood. (1904). Тhe Woodford Times. 27 May.
Leutscher, A. (1974). Epping Forest. David & Charles Publishers.
This piece is a response to Temporalities, the theme of our 2026 print issue, which you can read here.
Anthropolitan 