Waltham Forest (legal forest)
Waltham Forest was a royal forest in England, starting around the 13th century after the nearby Forest of Essex was taken out of royal control. In these forests, the Norman rulers created Forest Law, giving the king or a noble the right to keep deer and regulate hunting.
At first, the legal forest often didn’t match the actual wooded land. Later, the areas of the law came to line up more closely with real woods, and the word forest came to mean woodland in general.
The name Waltham Forest appears in records from 1205. The forest mainly covered the heavily wooded areas that are now known as Epping Forest and Hainault Forest. Outside those woods, the land was only lightly wooded, especially near the River Roding and the River Lea. Within Epping Forest there were named woodlands such as Hawkwood, Bury Wood, and Great Monk Wood.
Waltham Forest was bounded on the west by the River Lea and on the south by the old Romford Road (A118), with the northern extent reaching toward the Harlow area.
The modern London Borough of Waltham Forest, created in 1965, is named after this historic forest.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 05:03 (CET).