The City of London maintained the ancient tradition of an Easter Monday stag hunt in the forest, but official participation ended in 1807 when the office of Master of the City Hounds was abolished. In 1827, the huntsman of Sir William Pole-Tylney-Long-Wellesley chased a forest stag as far as West Ham. The customary Easter Monday hunt was repeated annually by a large and rowdy crowd of ordinary London tradesmen and working people, who gathered at Fairmead Oak to chase a previously captured stag, which was released from a cart and usually escaped unharmed. The last of these hunts was in 1882 when it descended into a riot and had to be dispersed by the police.