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Loughton is a town in the county of Essex in England. The first settlement can be traced back to 2,500 years ago, but the earliest records of the modern-day site of Loughton are from the Anglo-Saxon era of English history, when it was known as ''Lukintone''. After the Norman conquest it became part of the estate of Waltham Abbey and is mentioned in the Domesday Book as ''Lochintuna''. It was during the 17th century, however, when Loughton began to grow significantly as a coaching stop on the newly created main route to Cambridge and East Anglia. With good transport links and proximity to both London and also Epping Forest and the countryside, it became a popular location for aristocratic and wealthy Londoners to have a home. Most of the great houses from the 17th and 18th centuries have disappeared, and much of the modern-day housing in Loughton was built in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, with significant expansion of the town in the 1930s. A major factor in the town's continuing popularity was the advent of the railways in the 1850s and a direct line to central London, so that city-dwellers had easy access for day trips to Epping Forest (the line remains to this day as part of the Central line on the London Underground system). At the time, the Great Eastern Railway Company would not offer workmen's fares to and from Loughton, so development was of a middle-class character. Loughton was a fashionable place for artistic and scientific residents in Victorian and Edwardian times, and a number of prominent residents were also socialists, nonconformists, and social reformers. The north-eastern suburb of Debden is a post-war development intended to ease the chronic housing shortage in London in the 1940s. A large estate of prefabs was built along Oakwood Hill Road with occupation commencing in the summer of 1948. Loughton today retains much of its semi-suburban character which has meant the town remains predominantly well-off and middle-class. It was given new national prominence when it was featured in the 2002 TV documentary show ''Essex Wives''. ==Prehistory== Loughton has a very long history of settlement. Standing on a strategic spur of high ground in Epping Forest is Loughton Camp, an Iron Age fort built about 500 BC. Loughton Camp is roughly oval, defended by a single earth rampart enclosing about . At one time, the Camp must have commanded a spectacular view down the Roding valley, but by 1872 it was covered by dense undergrowth and entirely forgotten. In that year it was re-discovered by a Mr B.H. Cowper, and excavations ten years later found Iron Age pottery within the ramparts. Camps like this were probably places of refuge and citadels rather than places to live. Loughton Camp lies close to Ambresbury Banks, another Iron Age fortification (which is in Epping parish). Though the two forts were once thought to be sequential - Loughton Camp followed by Ambresbury - the current view is that they face each other across a watershed which was an ancient boundary line, later re-used as the boundary between Ongar and Waltham Hundreds. It is now believed that these two forts were in separate - and presumably sometimes hostile - territories, roughly equivalent to the medieval Hundreds of Ongar (Loughton Camp) and Ambresbury (Waltham). The forts may therefore have acted as very visible strategic positions, huge frontier markers, which defined the boundary between two territories. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「History of Loughton」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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