How this guide is put together
Theydon Bois is an Essex parish outside Greater London, and its planning authority is Epping Forest District Council. It has no conservation area, so instead of a heritage boundary this page uses an analysis circle of 750 metres centred on Theydon Bois Underground station, and the national listing, flood and geology figures below describe that circle rather than the parish.
The district sits outside London, but the site files it under the East London guide. Epping Forest is a charity with the City of London Corporation as Conservators and Trustee rather than district council land, and the district council's own local heritage list for the parish adds detail that the national records do not hold.
What the records show without a conservation area
Every statement below links to the public record it comes from; sources were re-checked on .
No conservation area: the 750-metre circle
No conservation area is recorded here in the planning.data.gov.uk conservation-area dataset, so there is no heritage boundary to measure from.
Statistics for listing, flooding and geology below therefore cover the land within 750 metres of the Underground station, about 176.7 hectares, an analysis area with no planning status, unlike the boundaries in the planning.data.gov.uk register.
The planning.data.gov.uk Article 4 dataset contains no direction inside the circle, but that dataset may be incomplete, so the district council should be asked whether any direction applies before permitted development rights are relied on.
Listed buildings within 750 metres
The NHLE listed-building data, queried on 1 November 2026, returns 11 list entries within 750 metres of the station, all of them at Grade II.
None of those entries is Grade I or Grade II*, and the entry text is read before work is planned, since listed building consent can reach internal changes too.
The parish local heritage list
The district council's Local List of Heritage Assets for the parish, marked as last updated in October 2024, identifies buildings and structures of local interest across the whole parish, not only within the 750-metre circle.
Entries on that local list are non-designated heritage assets: they are not on the National Heritage List, but their local significance can be weighed when the council decides a planning application.
The station itself is on the list: it opened as 'Theydon' on the Great Eastern Railway on 24 April 1865, and the entry covers the single-storey station and the two-storey station master's house, which has since been rendered and painted.
Mulberry Cottage, Brackley and Ridge House on Forest Side are described in the local list as detached two-storey Victorian houses of about 1860 in smooth render with decorative quoins, part of the mid-19th century private enclosure of Epping Forest.
On Piercing Hill the document records Manor Villas, a group of detached houses built between 1870 and 1872 on sites laid out as early as 1848 on newly enclosed land north of Theydon Green.
Other entries in the list include the Old Schoolhouse on Coppice Row, built as a schoolroom in 1840 and enlarged in 1894 and 1903, almshouses on Coppice Row established under a deed of 1753, a 1930s Neo-Georgian telephone exchange on The Green and a City of London cast-iron coal duty post dated 1861.
Where an owner's building appears in the local list, a surveyor notes the original features its description singles out, such as the Forest Side quoins and window surrounds or the yellow-brick detailing at the station, since that description is the council's own record of why the building is valued.
London Clay ground
All five sample points within 750 metres of the station are mapped as London Clay Formation on the BGS 1:50,000 geology.
The superficial layer adds head deposits of clay, silt, sand and gravel at one point and Lowestoft Formation diamicton at another, with nothing recorded at the remaining three.
London Clay shrinks as it dries and swells as it wets, and trees close to a house exaggerate both, so wherever clay is mapped on the BGS viewer, an inspection looks closely at crack patterns, nearby trees and the depth of any visible footings.
Head and diamicton are mixed, variable deposits, so where the geology viewer maps them, conditions can change over short distances.
River flood zones
On the Environment Agency Flood Map for Planning, river flooding puts 3.4% of the circle in Flood Zone 3 and 2.4% in Flood Zone 2.
Planning flood zones leave defences out of account and are not assessed property by property, so the long-term flood risk lookup is used for the address as well, since it maps surface water too.
Housing stock near the station
The VOA's 2025 Council Tax stock of properties gives about 510 dwellings for LSOA E01021805, the statistical area used here, with every count rounded to the nearest 10.
Its build-period table dates 41.2% of dwellings to 1919-1939 and 56.9% to 1945-1972; the other periods show zero, which in VOA tables can hide counts of fewer than five.
Semi-detached houses account for 78.4% of dwellings in the VOA type figures, followed by bungalows at 11.8%, detached houses at 7.8% and flats at 2.0%.
Bands F to H hold 70.6% of these dwellings in the VOA band table, and band F by itself accounts for 62.7%.
With the VOA count this dominated by interwar and post-war semi-detached houses, extensions, loft conversions and arrangements with the attached neighbour are likely topics; the LSOA only approximates the area around the station.
Guides for this part of the district
The guide on the left covers one kind of instruction for this area, and the page on the right describes the same service across the practice.
Practice-wide services
Nearby guides in the same district
Epping, Loughton, Buckhurst Hill and Chigwell come under the same district council and each has its own guide, all of them linked from the regional East London guide.
Questions about the parish and its records
Why does this page use a circle around the station instead of a boundary?
Because there is no conservation area to use: none is recorded here in the planning.data.gov.uk dataset. So the listing, flood and ground figures describe the land within 750 metres of the Underground station instead, an analysis area with no planning status of its own.
Does being on the local list stop me altering my house?
No. Entries on the council's local list are non-designated heritage assets, so no separate consent of the kind needed for listed buildings applies. Their local significance can still be weighed when a planning application is decided, so the description is worth reading before alterations are designed.
How many listed buildings are close to the station?
The NHLE data returns 11 list entries within 750 metres of the Underground station, all Grade II, when queried on 1 November 2026. They are separate from the parish local list, whose entries are not part of the National Heritage List.
Is the ground around the station clay?
Mostly. London Clay is the bedrock at every one of the five sample points near the station on the BGS geology map, with head at one point and Lowestoft Formation diamicton at another. Clay shrinks and swells with moisture and trees, so cracking and nearby trees are looked at closely.
What share of the circle is in a flood zone?
A small part: 3.4% of the circle sits in Flood Zone 3 and 2.4% in Flood Zone 2 on the Flood Map for Planning, all of it river flooding. Planning zones ignore defences and individual buildings, so look up the address itself on the GOV.UK long-term flood risk lookup.
What kinds of houses are most common near the Underground?
Semi-detached houses, by a wide margin: the VOA 2025 figures put them at 78.4% of about 510 dwellings in the LSOA used here, with bungalows at 11.8%. Almost all of the counted stock dates from 1919-1972, so ask the seller for consents covering any extension or loft conversion.
How we work on an instruction
Hampstead Chartered Surveyors is a RICS-regulated firm (RICS Regulated Firm No. 923064) working from its registered Hampstead NW3 office. The firm does not claim premises, staff or completed instructions in an individual locality, and it does not treat a neighbourhood name as evidence about a particular building.
An instruction starts with the full address, the decision the client faces and the documents already available, such as leases, drawings, notices or earlier reports. The scope, fee and inspection date are confirmed in writing only after that review, and access to roofs, lofts, basements or common parts is agreed before the visit.
Reports include RICS Level 2 and Level 3 home surveys, building and defect investigations, party wall appointments, reinstatement cost assessments, contract administration and schedules of condition. Each report records what was inspected, what could not be seen and what further investigation the evidence supports.
Public datasets such as the conservation-area register, the National Heritage List for England, British Geological Survey mapping, the Environment Agency flood map and Valuation Office Agency housing statistics describe areas rather than individual properties. They frame questions before an inspection; they never replace it.
Reviewed by Savas Bulduk BSc (Hons) MRICS, Director & Chartered Building Surveyor at Hampstead Chartered Surveyors & Building Consultancy. Last reviewed: . Our people · RICS firm record