This unlit paved footpath came into being when a new building for the local secondary school was built on what had been an unused part of the playing fields, It was intended to give a traffic free access to the school from the town as part of the planning requirements to discourage parents dropping pupils off by car. A decade on pupils prefer to walk down the main road past the shops and this path has become a popular accessible dog and child walking route; it's often difficult to find an unoccupied bench.
From this point, beyond the managed meadow land and ditch, the school and much of the playing fields are out of sight behind ancient hedgerow, augmented by new planting. The remaining school fields spread across the foreground, with the tail end of the all-weather surfaces that are preferred near the far boundary, Bury Lane, the road that passes the Thatched Cottage. One of the few modern schools not to beholden to PFI, the new housing behind, built on the original school site, was part of the agreement to fund it. The original 60s and 70s school buildings are not missed: inaccessible, full of asbestos and a veritable bullies' paradise. the accreted extra buildings created hidden nooks and crannies beyond supervision, with paths that filled to form lakes at the first rainfall.
A detailed 1634 map of the Epping Bury estate shows an extant pond (yes, there is one in the copse to the left) and hedgerow, which were included into the architect's design to screen the school from the housing and path. The buffer land and hedgerow between the school and the path are managed by Epping Forest District CountryCare as meadow and grassland to encourage wildlife and a newly planted hedge will augment this.
The view across the fields beyond is less expansive since the Thatched Cottage (also shown on that map as part of Fortey Green) developed into quite its current form, but still, kites and buzzards have been seen overhead in this area, fieldfares love the berries on the rowan trees and there's rattle growing in the grass verge on the school side of the path.
The other side of the track is more formally maintained with flowerbeds and regularly mown grass.