For several years before the death of the generous founder of this fair and public bean-feast, the pump and block makers of Wapping went annually to the fair in the forest, seated in a boat of one entire piece of fir, covered with an awning, mounted on a coach-carriage, and drawn by six horses; attended with flags and streamers, a band of music, and a great number of persons on foot and horseback. The number of carriages was then increased to three, two of them being rigged as ships. At six o'clock precisely they all paraded round the oak, singing a glee composed for the occasion; after which the holiday-keepers returned to town. A few years before Mr. Day's death, the Fairlop Oak lost a large limb, out of which he had a coffin made for his own interment. He died on the 19th of October, 1767, at the age of eighty-four. His remains, pursuant to his own request, were conveyed to Barking by water, attended by six journeymen pump and block makers, to each of whom he bequeathed a new leather apron and a guinea. There is a memorial of him in Barking churchyard. The fair long survived the patriarchal pump-maker, good John Day, as did also the oak. It was enclosed, as we have stated, at the commencement of the present century. But, notwithstanding the appeal to the "good foresters," and the respect due to the veteran of the forest, the rabble broke down the palings and lit their fires within the trunk in the cavities formed by the roots, and several of the limbs were broken off. The space within the trunk may be estimated by the evidence of a resident in the neighbourhood. "When a boy," he writes, "I have driven in a hot day from out of the hollow three or four horses, and sometimes four or five cows." But the tree received the greatest injury on the 25th of June, 1805, when a party of sixty persons, who came from London to play at cricket, &c., kindled a fire, which, after they had left, spread very considerably, and caught the tree. It was not discovered for two hours, and though a number of persons brought water to extinguish it, yet the main branch on the south side and part of the trunk were consumed. Fifteen years later, the high winds of February 1820, brought the massive trunk and limbs to the turf which the tree had for so many ages overshadowed with its verdant foliage. Its wood was very much prized; a pulpit was made of it for Wanstead Church; the rest of the timber of the Fairlop Oak was purchased by Mr. Seabrook, the builder, who formed with it the very handsome pulpit and reading-desk for the church of St. Pancras, in the New Road, then in course of erection.