Sewardstone

Sewardstonebury is a small hamlet in Epping Forest, Essex, England. It is located approximately 18 km (11 miles) northeast of Charing Cross, and surrounded by the forest. The nearest places are Chingford to the south and Sewardstone to the north. The area is completely residential (there are no shops, pub, or church) and most of the housing comprises very large, detached villas set in substantial grounds. It is very close to the UK headquarters of the scouting movement, Gilwell Park, and the exclusive West Essex golf club is based in the hamlet.

The Babes in the Wood murders are the murders of two children which occurred in a copse in Sewardstone, Essex on 31 March 1970. The victims, Susan Muriel Blatchford (age 11) and Gary John Hanlon (age 12), were lured from an unknown location close to their North London homes into a copse on the outskirts of Epping Forest, where they were raped and murdered by known paedophile Ronald Jebson. Their bodies were discovered on 17 June, 78 days after the two were reported missing by their parents.The case remained unsolved for almost thirty years until 61-year-old Jebson, serving a life sentence for the 1974 murder of an eight-year-old girl named Rosemary Papper, confessed to their rape and murder in 1998. He was convicted of both murders in May 2000. Jebson subsequently died in prison in 2015.Blatchford and Hanlon became known as the "Babes in the Wood" due to the location of their murders and subsequent discovery of their bodies. They also became known by this epithet as the coroner was unable to determine if they died of exposure or foul play at the initial inquest into their deaths, leaving an initial possibility the children had died by misadventure.

Gilwell Park is a camp site and activity centre located in Sewardstonebury, Essex, England. It is in Epping Forest and is close to Chingford, London. The 109-acre (44 ha) site is owned by The Scout Association, is used by Scouting and Guiding groups. As the original base of leadership training in the Scout movement, it is an important site of the worldwide Scouting movement. In the late Middle Ages, the area was used as a farm, which grew to become to a wealthy estate that fell into disrepair around 1900. In 1919, Scout Commissioner William de Bois Maclaren bought the estate and gave it to The Scout Association to provide camping facilities for London Scouts and training for Scouters. Scout leaders from all countries of the world have visited Gilwell Park for their Wood Badge training. Gilwell Park is also host to Scout Adventures Gilwell Park, one of twelve national centres run by or in partnership with the Scout Association, including Downe, Youlbury. The site has a number of camping fields, indoor accommodation, historical sites, Scouting monuments, and outdoor adventure activities. The site can accommodate up to 10,000 people, and regularly does so. The site is also used by schools and other youth organisations, and hosts social events such as weddings and birthday parties.

The Gilwell Oak is an oak tree on the grounds of The Scout Association's headquarters at Gilwell Park, Essex. It is reputed to have been used as a hiding place by Dick Turpin and since the 20th century has become closely associated with the Scout movement. The tree is situated close to the training ground for the association's first Scout leaders and provided material for the earliest Wood Badges. The oak inspired Scout movement founder Robert Baden-Powell to create "the moral of the acorn and the oak" an analogy for the growth of the Scout movement and the personal growth of its members. The Gilwell Oak was voted England's Tree of the Year by the public in 2017 and was subsequently selected by a panel of experts as the UK Tree of the Year.

The River Lee Diversion is located in the Lea Valley, close to Enfield Lock and to the north east corner of the King George V Reservoir.

Lippitts Hill is a hill located at High Beach, Epping Forest, Essex. It has played several historic roles in the defence and policing of London. The hill was the site of a gun emplacement in the First World War and used as an anti-aircraft site in the Second World War. The United States's 184th anti-aircraft artillery installed their own guns in 1941, and added an underground control room and block houses to the site. A prisoner of war camp was established at Lippitts Hill by the British after the camp was abandoned by the Americans in 1944. Relics from the Second World War at the camp include a memorial to the American forces that served there, and a concrete sculpture of a man, left by a German prisoner of war, Rudi Webber. The local branch of the Peace Pledge Union, a pacifist organisation, would invite local prisoners of war from the camp to their homes on Christmas Day.The hill was the location of the bodies in the Babes in the Wood murders in 1970.

The Air Support Unit (ASU) was a Central Operations branch of London's Metropolitan Police Service. The main responsibility of the unit was to provide aerial reconnaissance and other air support operations. Helicopters are particularly useful in aiding searches for missing persons, car pursuits, suspect capture and large public order operations such as football matches. The ASU also supported other emergency services, including the London Fire Brigade, London Ambulance Service and Marine Coastguard. On 31 March 2015, the National Police Air Service took over providing air support to the Metropolitan Police Service (along with all other police forces in England and Wales). This resulted in the closure of the Metropolitan Police Air Support Unit. The Metropolitan Police Service has also reportedly been secretly using Cessna aircraft for a number of years that have been fitted with surveillance equipment capable of intercepting mobile phone calls and listening in on conversations.Formed in 1980, the unit was based at Lippitts Hill, Essex and had 48 personnel comprising 3 sergeants, 18 constables, 4 aircraft engineers, 1 avionics engineer, 11 pilots and was headed by an inspector. The unit also employed other members of staff, including operations room staff and an intelligence officer. The senior management were based at Wapping police station. All pilots were ex-military Royal Navy but also Army Air Corps. Each aircraft was crewed by a pilot with two officers acting as observers, and averaged over 260 flying hours per month.In 1980, the ASU started with Bell 222A helicopters and in 1993 transitioned to Eurocopter AS355N Squirrel helicopters.In July 2007, the ASU took delivery of three new Eurocopter EC145s costing a total of £15 million, using the call signs India 97, India 98 and India 99. Each aircraft has an L-3 Wescam MX-15 sensor pod which houses a gyro-stabilised colour "day" camera and a thermal imaging camera with digital video downlink from the helicopter.In February 2015, it was announced that the control of the Metropolitan Police Air Support Unit was to be transferred to the National Police Air Service (NPAS) on 31 March, and that the base at Lippitts Hill would close in the following year. A projected new base at Elstree was intended to serve Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, and Essex as well as London. However, by February 2017, a replacement for the Lippitts Hill base had not been procured, and the possibility of using RAF Northolt instead was being investigated.On 7 September 2017 it was provisionally agreed by Epping Forest District Council to allow the unit to operate three helicopters and one fixed wing aircraft from North Weald Airfield in Essex, with a 25-year lease.

Hawkwood is a 25-acre estate in North Chingford, London Borough of Waltham Forest, North East London, England. It is about nine miles from central London, in the fertile Lea Valley on the western edge of Epping Forest. In the 19th century it formed the grounds of a large Elizabethan-style Victorian mansion, seat of Richard Hodgson, lord of Chingford St. Pauls. The mansion became derelict after bomb damage in 1944 and was demolished in 1951. Part of the site is now a nature reserve, a special school has been built on another part, and a large part of the site is being used by OrganicLea, a workers' cooperative growing and selling food and providing horticultural training.

Enfield Island Village is a modern housing estate in Enfield Lock, in the London Borough of Enfield, north London. Before April 1994, Enfield Island Village formed part of the Epping Forest district of Essex, but it was transferred to the borough of Enfield in Greater London when the housing development was created.

The Royal Small Arms Factory (RSAF) was a UK government-owned rifle factory in Enfield (though some parts were in Waltham Abbey), adjoining the Lee Navigation in the Lea Valley. The factory produced British military rifles, muskets and swords from 1816. It closed in 1988, but some of its work was transferred to other sites. The factory designed and manufactured many famous British Army weapons including the Lee–Enfield rifles which were standard equipment during both World Wars.

The King George V Reservoir, also known as King George's Reservoir, is located in the London Borough of Enfield and is part of the Lee Valley Reservoir Chain that supplies London with drinking water. The storage reservoir is bordered by Sewardstone and Chingford to the east and Brimsdown and Ponders End to the west, and covers 420 acres (170 hectares), making it the largest in London. The reservoir and the nearby William Girling Reservoir are known collectively as the Chingford Reservoirs, and are owned and managed by Thames Water.

Newmans Weir is a weir on the River Lea located near Enfield Lock. The weir has wooden sluice gates within cast-iron guide frames. It was reconstructed in 1907, replacing a series of previous timber weirs.