Two possible hunting lodges

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Yapping dogs and crackling logs

Leyton High Road has a similar mystery, Walnut Tree House, also timber-framed, built about 1600, and still there now.  The large fireplaces survive.  It was in the manor of Leyton Grange which had its boundary at the Fillebrook stream. (Leytonstone was in the manor of Ruckholt on the other side of the stream.) There are no records for the construction of Walnut Tree House or its early owners, yet it was for the period an expensive and prestigious building.  One explanation might be that it was a hunting lodge.  In the middle of the 13th century the Abbey of Stratford Langthorne which owned the church and Grange manor of Leyton was allowed to take Wallwood out of the Epping Forest jurisdiction, to make a visible boundary, and to have hunting rights within it.  In the 17th century Wallwood belonged to the King.  Queen Elizabeth I, James I and Charles II all visited Ruckholt House.  From there they could have reached both the Royal Lodge and Walnut Tree House, and both Wanstead Flats and Wallwood, in one day’s sport.  All this is supposition, but it does offer a possible solution to two mysteries.

Walnut Tree House room Walnut Tree House previous page