Church's Butchers, High Street, c1900
Image: Epping Forest District Museum

The Great Epping Suasage Scandal
In 'Odd People in Odd Places' (1883) James Greenwood tells of The Great Epping Sausage Scandal - "True, they were somewhat expensive, but then they were genuine. They were forwarded to London daily by waggon - a broad-wheeled wain, with a russet-coloured awning, a pair of farm horses in the shafts, and for a teamster a pippin-faced countryman, in a snowy smock-frock, and with turnpike tickets stuck in the band of his battered old beaver hat. So matters continued, until it occurred to an individual of an inquiring turn of mind to go down to Epping and view the famous factory from which the sausages came. No one in the village, however, could give him any information on the subject. It was a mystery, and the man with the inquiring mind resolved to sift it. He took lodgings within a mile or so of rural Epping, and he waited for the waggon. At last it appeared, jogging Londonward; but when the inquisitive one peeped in over the tailboard, lo! the vehicle was empty!
He kept it in sight for a few miles, until it halted at a wayside inn where there was a stable-yard, and already there awaiting was a London cart. There was the load in the cart, packed in scrupulously clean wicker baskets, each one lettered on the lid "Warranted genuine Epping sausages." While the waggoner and the cart-driver were busy transferring the freight from one vehicle to the other, the inquirer glanced at the name on the shaft of the London cart, and made it out to be that of a notorious cheap sausage-maker whose business premises were situated in Smithfield."