Buckhurst Hill

Buckhurst Hill is a town in the Epping Forest district of Essex, England. Part of the metropolitan area of London and the Greater London Urban Area, it is adjacent to the northern boundary of the London Borough of Redbridge, around 10 miles north-east of Charing Cross. The area developed following the opening of a railway line in 1856, originally part of the Eastern Counties Railway and now on the Central line of the London Underground.

The first mention of Buckhurst Hill is in 1135, when reference was made to "La Bocherste", becoming in later years "Bucket Hill", originally meaning a hill covered with beech trees. It lay in Epping Forest and consisted of only a few scattered houses along the ancient road from Woodford to Loughton. Before the building of the railways, Buckhurst Hill was on the stagecoach route between London and Cambridge, Norwich, Bury St Edmunds and Dunmow. Originally it was a part of the parish of Chigwell; there was no road connecting the two communities and in order to get to church, parishioners had to ford the River Roding at Woodford. The Parish Church of St John was built in 1838 as a chapel of ease but Buckhurst Hill did not become a separate ecclesiastical parish until 1867. St John's National School was also built in 1838. The lord of the manor gave a site next to the church; the building cost £209, most of which was donated by the church congregation. The opening of Buckhurst Hill station in 1856 saw a rapid expansion in the population of the area; nearly six hundred new houses had been built near the station by 1871, leading to the opening of the Prince's Road school in 1872. Some of the land for this expansion was enclosed from Epping Forest, before this practice was halted by the Epping Forest Act, 1878.

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