[Illustration: WILBERFORCE'S OR "EMANCIPATION OAK" IN HOLWOOD PARK,
KESTON.]
CHIGWELL, ESSEX
=How to get there.=--Train from Liverpool Street or Fenchurch Street.
Great Eastern Railway.
=Nearest Station.=--Chigwell.
=Distance from London.=--12-3/4 miles.
=Average Time.=--55 minutes. Quickest train, 31 minutes.
1st 2nd 3rd
=Fares.=--Single 1s. 10d. 1s. 4d. 0s. 11d.
Return 2s. 6d. 1s. 10d. 1s. 4d.
=Accommodation Obtainable.=--"The King's Head."
In 1844 Charles Dickens wrote to Forster: "Chigwell, my dear fellow, is
the greatest place in the world. Name your day for going. Such a
delicious old inn facing the church--such a lovely ride--such forest
scenery--such an out-of-the-way rural place--such a sexton! I say again,
Name your day." This is surely sufficient recommendation for any place;
and when one knows that the "delicious old inn" is still standing, and
that the village is as rural and as pretty as when Dickens wrote over
sixty years ago, one cannot fail to have a keen desire to see the place.
"The King's Head" illustrated here is the inn Dickens had in his mind
when describing the "Maypole" in _Barnaby Rudge_, and the whole of the
plot of that work is so wrapped up in Chigwell and its immediate
surroundings that one should not visit the village until one has read
the story. One may see the panelled "great room" upstairs where Mr.
Chester met Mr. Geoffrey Haredale.
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