The battle over the Bell hotel: how a year of asylum protests tore apart a pretty, prosperous Essex town
Last summer, a 14-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by an asylum seeker in Epping and this small community was engulfed in protest. Can it recover?
Last summer, a 14-year-old girl was sexually assaulted by an asylum seeker in Epping and this small community was engulfed in protest. Can it recover? When Sherzod* moved to Epping in 2025, he was dreaming of a little garden, long dog walks in the forest and more space to breathe.
At 20, he had moved from Uzbekistan to the UK to study law, then lived in north London for decades. In his mid-40s, after establishing himself in a media job, he began visiting the forest – 5,900 acres of green lung saved by the Epping Forest Act 1878.
The pretty shops of the old south-west Essex town delighted him. “I just liked the high street, I liked the people,” he says. “The people were really friendly.” Epping was created by the canons of Waltham Abbey in the 13th century as a market town on the road from London to Cambridge.
Its high street is still thriving. There is a Gail’s bakery and an M&S Food shop; the four-bed semis in the estate agents’ windows are listed at just shy of £1m. Continue reading...
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