Essex Review
Extract from No 232 Volume
LVIII (October 1949)
The Epping Railways Company,
1859-63
By P W Kingsford
The Epping Railways Company is
not well known. This is not surprising
since it never built a mile of railway.
There had been, of course, many railway companies remarkable mainly for
their lack of achievement but they were more uncommon by the 1860’s. This company’s real interest is that it is a
local example of elbowing for position, parliamentary manoeuvring and wasteful
expenditure that characterised railway promotion in England generally.
The Act of Incorporation,
which received the royal assent on 13 August, 1859 empowered the company to
make an extension of the Loughton Branch of the Eastern Counties Railway to
Epping and Chipping Ongar and to raise capital of £100,000 in £10 shares with the
customary limited liability.
The directors, who were George
Parker Bidder (chairman), John Chevallier Cobbold, M.P., E S Cayley, M.P., and
George Josslyn, explained the purpose and prospects to the proprietors at the
first half-yearly meeting at Epping on 25 February, 1860. Promotion had been supported by the Eastern
Counties as a protective measure against a competing line which was threatened
from London, avoiding Epping, to Ongar, Dunmow and Bury. When this line was withdrawn the Eastern
Counties said the Epping line was intended only ‘as a foil’ and should be
abandoned. The Epping promoters
therefore carried their Bill through Parliament against the opposition of the
Eastern Counties.
The directors held out the
prospect of a highly remunerative line, arising from the beauty of the
locality, the close proximity to the metropolis and the ‘fertile and populous
district beyond Ongar.’ The estimated
cost from Loughton to Epping was between £52,571 and £54,571 for construction
and land not including the, always considerable, item of parliamentary and
legal expenses. The company’s own common
seal was duly approved.
The conflict with the Eastern
Counties involved the Epping men in expensive courses. Faced with a refusal to co-operate they
deposited a Bill, as a protective measure, to obtain independent connection to
Fenchurch Street by a line to the Barking extension of the Tilbury Line; this
was the Epping Railways Ilford Bill.
They also promoted a Bill to extend from Ongar to Dunmow. Both Bills were opposed in parliament by the
Eastern Counties. Negotiations were then
begun. The proposal was that the Eastern
Counties should come to a fair working arrangement in return for withdrawal of
the Ilford Bill, provided the Eastern Counties withdrew opposition to the
Dunmow Bill.
The Ilford Bill was
accordingly withdrawn. The legal costs
had been £1,245. 12s. 11d., the engineering costs about £500. The Ongar-Dunmow Bill was passed since
parliament considered the Eastern Counties had no locus standi for opposition,
but it never produced a railway. In this
case the legal costs were £1,682. 6s. 4d., and the engineering costs about
£700.
The end of the conflict came
with the approaching amalgamation of the Eastern Counties, Eastern Union and
Norfolk companies into the Great Eastern Railway. An agreement between the companies provided
that the Epping-Ongar and Ongar-Dunmow lines should be made by the associated
companies, the Eastern Counties to deposit five-sevenths of the money required
for the Loughton-Epping line. But the
Ongar-Dunmow line was to be reconsidered and so it was.
The Epping Company was not
quite dead. It had its interests, its
assets and, more important, its liabilities to hand on. Its interests were protected by a separate
Bill to vest its powers legally in the associated companies, before the
proposed amalgamation.
Then, its manoeuvres had been
accompanied by other difficulties. In
order to dispose of unsold shares it had offered a commission of one-eighth of
each share to ‘some of the professional gentlemen of Epping.’
The purchase of land created
problems. Notice had been served, in the
usual way, on landowners, the chief of whom was the Revd Mr Maitland mentioned
by William Addison in Epping Forest as the first clerical lord of Loughton
Manor, contracts of sale had been entered into, but the company was not ready
or able to pay. And so when the Revd Mr
Maitland owners amounting to £9,650 had to be passed with the rest to the
associated companies and so to the G.E.R..
Lastly the local people became
impatient. They, shareholders and
residents in Epping, memorialised the company to start the works. This too was
handed on.
In 1863, then, the new Great
Eastern Railway inherited from the Epping project firstly legal and parliamentary
expenses of £5,029. 10s. 2d., and engineering expenses of £2,525, a total of
£7,554. 10s. 2d., of which only £3,414. 11s. related to the line to be actually
built, secondly a railway on paper and thirdly a certain amount of local
discontent. The Great Eastern became the
L.N.E.R. and today the Eastern Region.
This story deals with only
quite a small affair but it could be repeated many times over. It is based on the minutes of the Epping
Railways Company.
