Bush Wood

Description

Bush Wood is a predominantly wooded area consisting of about 13 hectares south of Bush Road and about 7.5 hectares north of Bush Road. To the south it merges into part of Wanstead Flats, and for the purpose of the survey a purely artificial boundary between the two areas has been taken as the footpath from Belgrave Road to the road called Bushwood. The rest of the southern boundary consists of the garden fences of the houses in Belgrave Road and the concrete fence of the high-rise block, Belgrave Heights. Blake Hall Road forms the eastern boundary. The other boundaries are the road called Bushwood and the Hackney Link Road (opened in 1999). To the north are the gardens of the houses in Woodcote Road. There are three buildings that project into the wood. Two of these at the eastern edge by Blake Hall Road are Epping Forest keeper's lodges. The other, by Bush Road, is a Quaker Meeting House with a high brick wall surrounding its large garden. West of this wall the area being considered is mostly grassland, but with trees along the edge of the wall and along Bushwood. Near the south end of the wall is a clearing which reaches into the centre of the wood, and there is another less-wooded area along the southern boundary running parallel to the tree avenue.

At the western edge of Bush Wood, near the Green Man public house, is a small public garden. This was the site of the Green Man Pond, which existed until the 1950s.

Another aspect of Bush Wood may be noted: near the keeper's cottage in Bush Wood (south) is the remains of a drinking fountain which is on the site of a small spring that once existed here. This may have been the site of a mineral spring which was discovered in Wanstead in 1619 and which for a short time was a fashionable spa.

An elaborate "Swiss Cottage" once stood at the southen edge of the wood. This was a timber-framed building dating from about 1850, in a corner of the grounds of Lake House. After the present Lake House estate was built, the cottage remained at the edge of Bush Wood and was accessible by a bridge across a ditch or stream. The cottage was demolished in 1962 in spite of local protests when the Metropolitan Police erected a multi-story accomodation block for police cadets on the site. The ditch - albeit without water - still remains. A door (always locked) in the concrete fence which protects the block - now a residential development called Belgrave Heights - does mark the position of the bridge, which can be ascertained from the view shown on the postcard (click here) The ditch probably at one time carried drainage water from Bush Wood - and indeed possibly from the Great Lake - to Reservoir Wood, now across Blake Hall Road, and thence into the Shoulder of Mutton Pond. (See "The Lake System of Wanstead Park")

A plant survey of the wood was carried out between 1975 and 1979 on behalf of the Wren Conservation Group, and the results published as "The Flora of Southern Epping Forest" Part 2: Wanstead Flats and Bush Wood The London Naturalist, No 60, 1981, by P. R. FERRIS

Some of the text here has been based on that included in the publication, but has been significantly updated for the website. Click here for the update of that survey