TWO large and "beautiful" sycamore trees, which had lined the banks of Cripsey Brook for decades, were hacked at by diggers and pulled to the ground.
Disobeying polite requests from Epping Forest District Council not to destroy the four trees on the bank, a man, known by the council as Mr Rexha, and his workforce continued to pull them down.
By the morning of July 16, two of the trees had been pulled to the ground, shredded and dumped into a waste disposal unit.
On discovering that its requests had been ignored, the council placed Tree Preservation Orders on the remaining two, which had already been badly damaged.
Labourers were also told not to touch a preserved yew on the site, which sits next to the road opposite the Two Brewers.
An Epping Forest District Council spokeswoman said: "An order to preserve the two remaining trees of four large bankside sycamores was served on a Mr Rexha at the above site.
"Discussions the previous evening had been ignored by him when he was politely requested to refrain from destroying the line of trees beside the brook.
"On returning to the site, two of the trees had been destroyed and the remaining two specimens had been badly damaged.
"Mr Rexha was warned that wounds to the preserved Yew TPO/EPF/23/08 were unauthorised and might result in his prosecution.
"He had been told the previous day not to cut any branches off this tree.
"No planning applications have been made at this time and constraints exist both in the form of physical risk of flooding and green belt designation."
When a man at the site, who appeared to be in charge, was approached by the Gazette he refused to give his name, refused to tell us who he worked for and refused to give us the reason for the clearance.
The green belt site, which is also at risk of flooding, would be notoriously hard to develop.
When asked why he was doing it, the man said: "It will look a lot better – you should have seen it before we got here. It was a mess."
The site was at one point used as allotments but is not owned by the council.
The man, who said he was based in London, added: "I used to live here 15 years ago and it has always been a mess.
"We are sorting it out and making it better."
Fay Hewett, who owns nearby shop Balloonatics, in High Street, said: "I saw it happen. I believe they were told not to do it.
"The trees were beautiful and now it looks sparse, bare and ugly.
"The way they were hacking them down was ridiculous."
