Long after the death of Daniel Day, which took place in 1769, the blockmakers of London used to hold an annual beanfeast beneath the Fairlop oak, going to it, it is said, in a vehicle shaped like a boat, drawn by six horses; and although the tree was blown down in 1820, and its site is now enclosed in a private garden, many merrymakers still resort to Barking Side to be present at a kind of parody of the ancient fair. The trunk of the oak was used to make the pulpit of Wanstead Church and that of St. Pancras in Euston Road, and the fact that its memory was still held dear long after its fall is proved by its name having been given to the boat presented by the London Foresters to the Lifeboat Society in 1865. [Sidenote: Havering-atte-Bower] Although, as from Hainault Forest itself, much of the glamour and romance of the past has for ever departed from the once beautiful country, between it and the Thames, that is now a mere suburb, and not a very interesting suburb of London, some few of its hamlets and villages still bear the impress of the long ago, and are intimately associated with important episodes of English history. Near to the still independent market town of Romford, for instance, is the village of Havering-atte-Bower, that gives its name to the ancient Liberty, including the extensive parishes of Romford, Havering, and Hornchurch, and is built on the site of a royal palace, once the favourite resort of Edward the Confessor, and of many of his successors. The name of Havering has been very variously explained, the most poetic and also the most probable interpretation {75} being that it commemorates a beautiful legend relating to the saintly founder of Westminster Abbey to the effect that he gave to St. John the Evangelist, who had appeared to him in the guise of a pilgrim, a ring from his own finger. Many years afterwards, when King Edward was at the consecration of a church in Essex, two pilgrims from the Holy Land came to him to tell him that the beloved disciple had met them in Jerusalem, and charged them with a message for him. The king at once inquired 'Have ye the ring?'--a sentence that was later converted into Havering--to which the pilgrims replied by producing it. The message was to the effect that St. John would meet the original owner of the ring in Paradise a fortnight later, a prophecy that was fulfilled, for King Edward passed away at that time. Some say the church in which the singular meeting took place was at Waltham, others that it was a chapel on the site of the present church of Romford, dedicated to St. Edward the Confessor and St. Mary the Virgin, whilst yet others think it was that which stood where now rises the modern church of St. John the Evangelist at Havering, which contains a font used in the Saxon building that preceded it.