History of Loughton - Victorian Era

Victorian Era

In Wright's History of Essex published in 1835, Loughton is described as 'distinguished by its numerous genteel houses and beautiful and picturesque scenery'.

Like other parts of Essex, Loughton also had a strong tradition of nonconformism, and the area is liberally supplied with chapels and meeting halls of varying Protestant traditions. The Baptists founded their chapel in Loughton from 1813. After a brief false start in Chigwell in 1827, Methodism came late to the area, surprising in a district so well trod by John Wesley. A chapel was established in England's Lane in 1873 by Edward Pope, while after a spell in Forest Road, Loughton, a new site was established in 1886, in High Road opposite Traps Hill. The red-brick Gothic-style church by architect Josiah Gunton, erected in 1903, was replaced in 1987 by a strikingly modern building which is quite a Loughton landmark. Congregationalists were active in Chigwell from 1804, and in Loughton shared the Baptist Chapel as a Union Church.

Before the railways, there were regular stagecoaches from Loughton to London, and the turnpike through Loughton was an important stagecoach route through to Cambridge, Norwich, Newmarket, and other East Anglian towns.

Beyond the High Road, the arrival of the railway in 1856 spurred the town’s development. Loughton's growth was essentially infilling and expansion within an ancient village, but it was a slow process. Very roughly, the west side of the High Road being developed from about 1881 up to the First World War, and the east side largely being built up in the Edwardian and interwar periods.

The railway first came to Loughton in 1856, when the Eastern Counties Railway (later the Great Eastern Railway) opened a branch line via Woodford. This was extended in 1865 to Ongar. The loop line from Leytonstone to Woodford which takes in, inter alia, Hainault, Grange Hill, Chigwell and Roding Valley tube stations, was opened in 1903. After the Second World War, these services were electrified in stages and handed to London Transport's Central Line. Electrification was completed as far as Loughton on 21 November 1948 (including the loop line), with the section to Epping completed on 26 September 1951. After years of decline, the final section of this line, from Epping to Ongar, was closed in 1994. The arrival of the railways was undoubtedly a key factor in the growth of the area, and also provided visitors with a convenient and cheap means of reaching Epping Forest, transforming it into the "East Enders' Playground".

The railways brought a tourist boom to the forest, and Loughton's streets rang to the shouts of Cockneys making their way to the forest. Tea rooms sprang up everywhere to cater for the thirsty trippers, and at weekends hordes of cyclists poured out of London seeking the tranquility and beauty which the forest offered. The tourist invasion was not universally welcomed; the visitors were condemned by some as insanitary, irreligious, and disruptive, and Loughton was long nicknamed 'Lousy Loughton' from the lice and fleas purportedly left behind by East Enders.

The Ragged School Union began organising visits to the Forest by organised parties of poor East End children in 1891. Shortly afterwards, Loughton became the focus for their operations. Trainloads of children - with metal identity tags and locked into carriages - were brought on special trains in their thousands every summer, to be marched up Station Road and Forest Road to the Shaftesbury Retreat. The trains were paid for by Pearson's Fresh Air Fund, a charity promoted by a publishing magnate. The Retreat offered pony rides, funfair side-shows, a sit-down tea and a romp in the forest. Some local residents regarded the trips, which continued into the 1930s as a nuisance, and local streets and parts of the forest were sprayed with disinfectant after the children had passed through!