E7 Now & Then

Arnold Schwarzenegger is one of Forest Gate's most famous adopted sons. His stay in Forest Gate was the subject of this website's first-ever, and most visited, post, see here.

Arnie was in London recently, posing with one of the city's "Boris bikes" - see photo, below. So, we thought it would be timely to give his account of his days in Forest Gate - from his autobiography: Total Recall (see footnotes for details).

Arnie, posing recently in London, on a 'Boris bike'

We pick up the story in 1966, when Arnie has just spent some time in Munich, in pursuit of his body-building career:

Three months later, I was back in London, laughing and horsing around on a living room rug with a jumble of kids. They belonged to Wag and Dianne Bennett, who owned two gyms and were at the centre of the UK bodybuilding scene. Wag had been a judge at the Mr Universe contest, and he'd invited me to stay with him and Dianne in the Forest Gate section of London (ed: in what is now the burned out house on Romford Road, opposite Emmanuel's church) for a few weeks of training. They had six kids of their own, they took me under their wing and became like parents to me.

Arnie, Dianne and Wag with some
of the Bennett children, referred to above,
posing outside his temporary Forest Gate home

Wag had made it clear that he thought I needed a lot of work. At the top of the list was my posing routine. I knew there was a huge difference between hitting poses successfully and having a compelling routine. Poses are like snapshots, and the routine is the movie. To hypnotise and carry away an audience, you need the poses to flow. What do you do between one pose and the next? How do the hands move? How does the face look? I'd never had a chance to figure very much of this out. Wag showed me how to slow down and make it like ballet: a matter of posture, the straightness of the back, keeping the head up, not down.

This I could understand but it was harder to swallow the idea of actually posing to music. Wag would put the dramatic theme from the movie Exodus on the hi-fi and cue me to start my routine. At first I couldn't think of anything more distracting or less hip. But after a while I started to see how I could choreograph my moves and ride the melody like a wave - quiet moments for a concentrated, beautiful three-quarter back pose, flowing into a side chest pose as the music rose and then wham!, a stunning most muscular pose at the crescendo.

Dianne concentrated on filling me up with protein and improving my manners. Sometimes she must have thought I'd been raised by wolves. I didn't know the right way to handle a knife and fork or that you should help clear up after dinner. Dianne picked up where my parents Fredi Gerstl and Frau Matscher had left off.

One of the few times she ever got mad at me was when she saw me shove my way through a crowd of fans after a competition. The thought in my head was 'I won. Now I'm going to party'. But Dianne grabbed me and said 'Arnold, you don't do that. These are people who came to see you. They spent their money and some of them travelled a long way. You can take a few minutes and give them your autograph.' That scolding changed my life. I'd never thought about the fans, only about my competitors. But from then on, I always made time for the fans.

Even the kids got in on the Educating Arnold project. There's probably no better way to learn English than to joining a lively, happy London household where nobody understands German and where you sleep on the couch and have six little siblings. They treated me like a giant new puppy and loved teaching me words.

A photo of me during that trip (see below) shows me meeting my boyhood idol, Reg Park, for the first time. He's wearing sweats, looking relaxed and tanned, and I'm wearing my posing trunks looking star struck and pale. I was in the presence of Hercules, a three-time Mr Universe, of the star whose picture I kept on my wall, of the man on whom I'd modelled my life plan. I could hardly stammer out a word. All the English I'd learned flew right out of my head.

Arnie, with his idol, Reg Par, at the Romford
Road Bennett gym, 1966. The 'W' on his vest
stands for 'Wag'. Courtesy Schwarzenegger archives

Reg now lived in Johannesburg, where he owns a chain of gyms, but he came back to England on business several times a year. He was friends of the Bennetts and had generously agreed to help show me the ropes. Wag and Dianne felt that the best way for me to have a good shot at the Mr Universe title was to become better known in the United Kingdom.

Bodybuilders did that in those days by getting on the exhibition circuit - promoters all over the British Isles would organise local events, and by agreeing to appear, you could make a little money and spread your name. Reg, as it happened, was on his way to an exhibition in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and offered to bring me along. Making a name for yourself in bodybuilding is a lot like politics. You go from town to town, hoping the word will spread. This grassroots approach worked, and the enthusiasm it created would eventually help me to win Mr Universe. ...

Arnie and Wag, by the recently
removed lamp post outside the
now dilapidated Romford Road
house that was home
to Schwarzenegger in 1966

My initial success in London had reassured me that I was on the right track and that my goals were not crazy. Every time I won, I became more certain. After the 1966 Mr Universe contest, I won several more titles, including Mr Europe ...

I knew I was already the favourite to win the 1967 Mr Universe competition. But that didn't feel like enough. I wanted to dominate totally. ...

So, I poured my energy and attention into a training plan I'd worked out with Wag Bennett. For months I spent most of my earnings on food and vitamins and protein tablets designed to build muscle mass. ...

Arnie went on to win his second Mr Universe title in September 1967. Forest Gate and the Bennetts slip from his story for a while, but Dianne, in particular, is back making an impact with him in 1971. After four more years of success, following his second Mr Universe title, he was passing through London. The autobiography picks up the story:

On my way through London, I called Dianne Bennett to say hello.

'Your mother has been trying to find you', she said, 'Call her. Your father is ill.' I called my mother and then went home quickly to Austria to stay with them. My father had suffered a stroke."

His father died soon afterwards, when he was back in Los Angeles. The outline of Arnie's story from there is well-know: after the body-building came Hollywood stardom and a marriage into the Kennedy family then the governorship of California. You can read the detail in the autobiography.

Wag (centre) and Arnie in 2001

Forest Gate and the Bennetts do not get a further mention in Arnie's book, but the close contact between him and his Forest Gate mentors remained, as the photo of him and Wag, celebrating his election as Governor of California in 2001 illustrates (above).

Footnote: Total Recall - my unbelievably true life story, by Arnold Schwarzenegger, with Peter Petre, published by Simon and Schuster, 2012. Available from all good bookshops and Amazon, pb £8.99. Thanks to all concerned for being able to publish the above - and make the story available to a wider, local audience.

One of the great (and loudly sung) successes of Forest Gate over recent months lurks behind the boarded up decay that was once the proud Old Spotted Dog pub, on Upton Lane.

Tucked to one side of the pub is the almost equally decrepit exterior of Clapton FC. We have written about the club's history (here), its most iconic player (here) and the on-going power struggle between the club's apparent "owner" and its supporters (here) before.

There is much more to tell, however; hence this blog.

Formed in Hackney in 1878, Clapton FC moved to the Old Spotted Dog ground on Upton Lane in 1888 and two years later became the first British club to play in Continental Europe. Its proud history also features the facts that it has:

•Won the FA Amateur Cup five times; and

•Won the Isthmian - now Rymans - League (of which it was a member for 100 years) twice.

Amateur Cup winners in 1909 -
Walter Tull second from right, front row

Now playing in the Essex Senior League (eight divisions below the English Premier League), Clapton's attendances have grown rapidly since 2012, from an average of 20 to over 500 at the end of the 2014/15 season.

This article attempts to explain this remarkable turnaround in the club's fortune and provide an update on some of the more deep-seated problems it and its supporters face.

The main stand, on the half way point.
The Ultras are to be found directly opposite,
on match days, in an enclosure made from
scaffolding poles - hence the various
Scaffold references in communications

On the pitch

Last season was one of the club's most successful in living memory. For the record:

•After having not appeared in a cup final for thirty years, Clapton FC last season appeared in two (both of which were lost)!

•The club finished in eighth spot in the Essex Senior League, its highest position in the last decade. Apparently this was only the third time since the 1930's that it has finished in the top half of the division it has played in!

Part of a near 500 attendance, under
"The Scaffold", at a match, in April 2015

On the terraces

More and more football fans have started to attend because of the unique atmosphere created by the Clapton Ultras, the club's noisy and passionate supporters. They are part political and campaigning, and wholly football fans.

This is an engaging combination of characteristics and makes a refreshing change to the same old tedium experienced in so many higher league (including the Premier) grounds.

This, as their attendees will know, usually features boorish, "laddish", often intimidating, offensive right-wing and personally abusive chanting and threatening behaviour towards away supporters and players. Not to mention increasingly exorbitant entrance prices.

A spotted dog wearing the
club's strip - Up The Tons!

According to a leaflet the Ultras distributed at last week's highly successful Forest Gate Festival, they are very different and proud to proclaim themselves as:

Strongly anti-fascist and anti-discrimination, the Ultras are trying to build a club that is affordable, welcoming and family friendly, but also one that completely rejects racism, homophobia and sexism - a different experience to a lot of modern football and a chance to watch a game in a space that is safe and inclusive.

The Clapton Ultras want more local people to come along and join again, to become a genuine centre of the local neighbourhood. Over the last season we have made many new friends through our local activities, which have included:

•organising regular food bank collections for the Refugee Migrant Project (RAMP), supporting asylum seeker and refugee families with no income.

•clearing fly-tipping from the grounds of the Old Spotted Dog public house.

•raised funds for Newham Action on Domestic Violence.

•distributing information locally on people's immigration rights.

•launching and supporting a successful appeal for funds for Paris - Newham's only LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Trans-sexual, Queer) youth group.

organised a Fans for Diversity football tournament in Mile End.

Players raise the Rainbow flag, in solidarity
with the Ultras anti-homophobic campaigning

If you love watching football, but think you have no alternative but to pay a huge amount of money for a ticket and then to have to put up with nasty, racist, sexist, homophobic "banter", go and experience a Clapton game. The Ultras promise you, you won't regret it!

You'll even get to shake hands with the players - usually of both teams - after the game.

Behind the scenes

Despite success on the pitch, controversy and in-fighting predominate behind the scenes. As we have reported before (here) there is a severe clash of ambition and desire between the club's apparent owners and its fan-base.

This often happens in football, when there is a gap between the unrealistic expectations of fans and the capacity of owners to subside the route to achieving them.

The story is very different in Clapton's case. At the centre of the concerns is the very valuable piece of real estate that the club occupies.

It is perhaps no co-incidence that the ground and its buildings have been allowed to decay at almost the same rate as the historic Old Spotted Dog pub next door. The pub is the oldest secular building in Newham, but is rotting away, boarded up.

Planning permission will never be given for this local, and nationally listed, treasure to be destroyed, replaced or significantly altered. But, in its current state, it is unusable and it is difficult to see how it could again become a going concern, without a major source of external funding.

It is, however, only one careless match away from destruction. The prospect that its land foot print, extensive car park and that of the Clapton FC ground would then have for housing redevelopment, in this increasingly desirable and expensive part of East London, would make a property developer salivate. A £5m profit would not seem excessive for those in control of the land.

Enough of the speculation and fantasy. Back to the here and now.

The freehold of the Clapton FC ground rests with a property company. A 100-year lease on the ground was granted by them to the Clapton Trust Ltd in 1992.

The Trust, however, remains a separate entity to the football club, and, in any case, has subsequently changed its name to Newham Community Leisure Trust Ltd.

The public face of the Trust is its chairman, Vincent McBean, who lives in Lambeth. He has tried, unsuccessfully, to purchase the ground from the freeholders, in a personal capacity.

Trust chairman, the
controversial Vincent McBean

A former trustee was Dwayne Brooks, friend of murdered Black teenager, Stephen Lawrence. He and Stephen's mother, Doreen, have feuded for years. Brooks is currently a Liberal Democrat councillor in Lewisham, with no known connections to Newham.

Another Lewisham resident, Rashford Angus, is also a trustee, as is Newham-living Esmond Syfox.

Quite why two Lewisham and one Lambeth residents should end up running the Newham Community Leisure Trust is not clear - particularly since they have resisted all attempts by a well-organised club supporters group to become involved with it.

According to a recent Google search, the Trust is now more than nine months behind in fulfilling its obligation to file its accounts with the Charity Commission. This kind of non-compliance is not unusual for Mr McBean, who has a long history of failing to fulfil statutory obligations. He has had companies struck off for either not filing accounts or returns and being in receipt of warning letters about his financial conduct. See here, for the full details.

Worryingly, for the fans of the club, if this negligent behaviour continues the Trust will be struck off by the Registrar of Companies and the charity by the Charity Commissioners, at which point the lease could revert to the freeholders.

Players, Ultras, Diversity and pyro -
part of the Clapton experience!

This was the situation in 2003, when Mr McBean failed to similarly comply with company regulations. It was not until 2008 having opened negotiations for a sale of the lease, that Mr McBean applied to the High Court to have the company re-instated. Even then, the charity was not re-instated until the Charity Commission were alerted by the supporters with regard to their concern over the club's security of tenure on the ground.

Another bout of non-compliance with charity and company filing obligations by Mr McBean and chums could see both being formally wound up.

Cue: end of club (or at least its 127 year association with the ground) as speculators squabble over the valuable real estate spoils.

A well organised group of supporters is determined to prevent this undignified ending of the relationship between the club and its historic ground. They have tried, in vain, to engage and negotiate with Mr McBean.

They have communicated with both the Charity Commission and football authorities to try to ensure that the Trust is properly managed and accountable and that the rights of spectators and supporters are recognised and upheld

It is proving an uphill struggle.

A combination of the old adage about possession being nine tenths of the law and football authorities showing the same disregard at a local level for the rights of spectators that the Premier league quite disgracefully do at a national level for their supporters, means that voices which are loud on the terraces are not being listened to by the relevant authorities.

Legal action is afoot to preserve the heritage of this proud football club, and place its future in the hands of the one big consistent about football at all levels - the supporters. We would urge all those with an interest in grass roots football, local history and community action to engage with this important local campaign (see below for details and contacts).

Spreading the word

Fortunately, the vociferous supporters are well organised and are very effective communicators, via social and other media. They even have their own podcast - The Old Spotted Dogcast! You can find details via the many channels listed below:

For full details of supporter activities try:

Engage with the Friends of Clapton FC - see below

www.claptonfc.info
www.claptonhistory.co.uk
www.pitchero.com/claptonfc
Twitter: @Real_ClaptonFC
@ClaptonFC_Match
@andylangalis53
@LewListz

For Clapton Ultras, try:

One of the many stickers the
Ultras use to announce their presence.
Some very far distant sightings
have been spotted!

www.ClaptonUltras.org
ClaptonUltras@riseup.net
www.Facebook.com/ClaptonUltras
Twitter: @ClaptonUltras
ClaptonUltras.Tumblr.com

As the Ultras say: "Another kind of football is possible, and it's happening right now in Forest Gate."

Go along, join in, be entertained, have fun, become a member of Friends of Clapton FC (details through links, above) and help save a great local institution!

You will find details of Clapton's home fixtures for the remainder of the year in the Events panel, to the right of this article.

The most significant series of events of the last century to affect the constituent parts of Newham: East Ham and West Ham - including Forest Gate - were the World War 11 bombings.

The whole physical structure of the borough was transformed by the destruction caused. Everyone today "knows" that the East End was badly hit, that local people were "plucky" and that sporadic visits to the sites of destruction by royalty litter the folklore of the area.

Distinctive outline of the Thames
made targeting East London
easy for the Luftwaffe, even
when the radar was rudimentary

No sane person can deny the extent of the destruction. Anyone with half an eye on architectural styles can spot areas hit by bombs, where late nineteenth buildings have been replaced by post-war structures - the lower east side of Woodgrange Road simply being the most obvious local example.

Whole swathes of the borough - particularly in the south, on the banks of the Thames - where the strategically crucial docks and other war-related industries were located - were flattened by German bombers, as they sought to disable the British war effort and demoralise the local population.

But, relatively little reliable detail of the profound reconfiguration of our area actually survives.

There is no definitive, hit-by-hit history of the bombing of London in general and Newham, in particular - just lots of fragments, that often don't correlate too well with each other.

Hundreds of books have been published about London, the war and enemy bombings and some give very compelling eye witness accounts of specific incidents, such as Cyril Marne's of the Dames Road trolley bus doodlebug of 1944, recently covered on this site, here. But there is no overarching comprehensive account publicly available.

A website www.bombsight.org was launched recently to much acclaim. It locates all the main bomb hits of the Blitz (October 1940 - June 1941), and can be searched by post codes, offering very useful maps to site visitors. But it only covers a fragment of the war and offers no detail of casualties, the impact of individual hits, photos of the bomb sites, or eye witness accounts - certainly not of the Forest Gate area. Hopefully, these will follow, as the site is developed, over time.

Some official records exist and are in the public domain. The former West Ham Council Civil Defence team published a summary of air raids on the borough, between 28 August 1940 and 8 May 1945. ARP (Air Raid Precaution - the civil defence organisation) records provide details of bomb hits, and they can be analysed by area.

The War Graves Commission, in 1954, published a list of British civilian dead (including local people), West Ham Council produced its own roll of civilian remembrance from the war.

Many of these records, however, are incomplete, and do not reconcile with each other. For example, the list of bomb hits obviously refers to the location of the dropped bomb, but the list of civilian dead is by the deceased's address, which is not necessarily where they were killed.

It is not unreasonable to assume that when bombs fell in the early hours, in a particular road on a given day and people from that road were reported as having been killed on that day, that the deaths were as a result of the bomb in question.

But other people, with addresses elsewhere may have been in the area when a missile struck, and could have been killed, but they would not have been recorded as a victim of that bomb.

That was certainly the case of the Dames Road Doodlebug incident (see above). The eye witness account talks of several bodies being thrown about as the crowded trolley bus was blown up. By definition, most of those people were travelling and may not have lived in the immediate vicinity of the explosion. The civilian deaths would have been recorded by the home address and not the location of the explosion.

Another dramatic example of this was probably the worst air raid to affect West Ham. It occurred on 10 October 1940.

Several hundred people, bombed out of their homes, gathered in the South Hallsville school, Canning Town, waiting for evacuation. The transport did not arrive and the school received a direct hit from a high explosive bomb. The official council figure indicates that 73 people were killed and hundreds injured.

To this day, survivors and their relatives are convinced that in fact many hundreds were actually killed, and the total number was hushed up, for fear of adversely affecting morale.

it is difficult to tell, because of the circumstances, many of those killed did not live in the vicinity of the school, so their deaths would have been recorded at the locations of their homes. It is unlikely, however, that a true total list of fatalities and casualties will ever be established.

This is the first of two articles on WW11 bombing in Forest Gate. It attempts to bring together the various records and supplement them with surviving photographs and some eye-witness accounts of specific incidents. It also reproduces some articles from the Stratford Express, which were heavily censored, extremely vague, and again, underestimated the numbers of deaths inflicted.

The opening paragraph of this article
from the Stratford Express of 25 April
1941 illustrates the censorship under
which papers worked under, and how
little real information readers could
gain from them. We presume it refers
to the Eric Road bombing, see below
- but the road, or even the district are
not mentioned and the copy is vague in
the extreme. It reads: "We are now
permitted to relate some incidents which
occurred in a violent raid a few weeks ago
. It was more severe than any in the vicinity
for some months and resulted in a
considerable number of fatalities.
It carries on in the non-informing way.
In fact, that bomb resulted in at least 17
deaths, not that you would know it, or
the location from the report

This post deals with the first half of the war, up to the end of 1943; it is mainly focused on the Blitz (October 1940 - June 1941). Next week's installment covers the second half of the war - particularly the horrific V1 and V11 bombings.

West Ham Civil Defence statistics claim that although the first air raid was on the opening day of the war 3 September 1939, the first bomb did not land in Newham until almost a year later 28 August 1940. ARP figures, however, indicate that the first bomb hit Forest Gate six months earlier! Just the first and most obvious lack of reconciliation between different bombing records and accounts.

These, admittedly less than reliable, Civil Defence statistics, suggest that there were a total of 1,227 air raid alerts affecting the borough and 194 actual raids. Many of the raids, of course, resulted in multiple bombings. They estimated that there were 3,221 hits in the borough; about a third of which were high explosive bombs, a third incendiary bombs and the remainder a variety of other missile devices - some of which remained unexploded.

The bombed interior of one of Forest
Gate's then most recognizable landmarks,
the former Methodist church building on
Woodgrange Road.

Their figures suggest that 1,207 West Ham civilians were killed in these raids, with 2,545 received hospitalisation and 3,322 received treatment at a first aid post. This is almost certainly an underestimate.

What follows is the ARP's listing of bomb incidents in Forest Gate, by date and location. In brackets and italics are the names of civilian fatalities identified by either the War Graves Commission or West Ham council's rolls of civilian dead most likely to have been the result of the bomb hit recorded.

Public spaces, or buildings identified in the records are presented in bold italics.

Using those figures, it can crudely be estimated that there were approximately 245 incendiary devices of different kinds dropped on Forest Gate during World War 11, and 124 Forest Gate civilians were killed during the war.

But, for reasons explained above, we cannot deduce from this that 124 Forest Gate civilians were killed in the district during the war, or that only 124 people were killed in Forest Gate!

Contemporaneous photographs, and some Stratford Express reports have been inserted following details of some of the most significant bomb hits.

We are sure what follows is far from definitive, so would be delighted to receive any corrections or additional eye witness accounts from the surviving band of war time residents of the area - which we will happily append to this post, with full credit being given to the source (if they wish).

Next week - Part 2 - 1944 - 1945.

WW11 Forest Gate Bomb hits, by road
1940

March
29th - Latimer Road

June
29th - Gower Road

August
15th - Woodgrange

September
3rd - East London Cemetery

7th - Margery Park, Odessa, Sebert, Station Road, Wellington, Avenue Road, Upton Lane

8th - Upton Lane, Forest Street, Hampton, Latimer (Forest Gate Station)

9th - Osborne, Capel, Clova, Disraeli (Deaths: Ada Louisa Barnes, aged 40, 81 Disraeli; Ada Dorothy Barnes, aged 14, 81 Disraeli; Brenda Beach, aged 12 months, 81 Disraeli,;Dorothy Beach, aged 25, 81 Disraeli; Leonard Beach, aged 24, 81 Disraeli), Dunbar x 2, Upton Lane, Sebert, Wyatt (West Ham Cemetery)

10th - Romford x 2, Earlham Grove, Clova

16th - Sidney, Woodford x 4, Woodgrange, Dames, Forest Lane x 3

17th - Upton Lane

18th - Odessa, Ridley, Wellington

20th - Odessa, Sebert, Tower Hamlets (Deaths: Alice Scott, aged 69, 140 Tower Hamlets Road; Isabella Scott, aged 34, 140 Tower Hamlets Road, William Scott, aged 44, 140 Tower Hamlets Road), Wellington

23rd - Cranmer, Hampton, Odessa x 2 (Deaths: Elizabeth Clarke, aged 46, 29 Odessa; George Clarke, aged 46, 29 Odessa; Harry Clarke, aged 14, 29 Odessa; Lily Clarke, aged 8, 29 Odessa; Arthur Clayden, aged 37, 29 Odessa; Lily Clayden, aged 8, 29 Odessa; Margaret Clayden, aged 8, 29 Odessa; Mary Clayden, aged 67, 29 Odessa; Annie Hopgood, aged 26, 23 Odessa), Upton Lane

24th - Capel, Disraeli, Clova (Deaths: George Hamer, aged 87, 70 Clova; George Frederick Hamer, aged 56, 70 Clova; Mary Hamer, aged 79, 70 Clova; Cecil Partridge, aged 52, 68 Clova Road; Daisy Partridge, aged 56, 68 Clova Road; Hubert Partridge, aged 42, 68 Clova Road; Lilian Partridge, 68 Clova Road), Romford (Upton Lane School)(Death: Ronald Harris, aged 17, 32 Wellington)

28th - Windsor

The top of Windsor Road after the bombing,
and the debris had been cleared

29th - Knox, Skelton

Communal grave of early air raid casualties,
established September 1940 in East London Cemetery

October
1st - Sprowston (East London Cemetery)

2nd - Forest Lane, Odessa, Woodford (Forest Gate Hospital : Death: Elizabeth Sinclair, aged 61 at FG Hospital, Wanstead Flats)

4th - Hampton (Deaths: Hilda Humphreys, aged 23, 73 Hampton Road; Joyce Humphries, aged 23, 73 Hampton Road), Latimer

7th - Nursery Lane

8th - East London Cemetery, Dames

9th - St James', Romford x 3, Balmoral, Odessa (Forest Gate Hospital)

14th - Earlham Grove, Sebert, Station Road, Romford, Woodgrange

15th - Dames, Forest Lane, Leonard, Vansitart (East London Cemetery, West Ham Cemetery, Forest Gate Hospital) Deaths: Mrs Sabbon, aged 62, 102 Earlham Grove

16th - East London Cemetery

17th - Dean

18th - Sebert

22nd - Upton

27th - Romford

28th - Glen Parke

November
15th - (Death: Charles William Bryant, 67, an APR of 1 Dunbar Rd, killed Royal Albert Dock)

18th - Dunbar, Upton Lane x 3, Skelton

23rd - Ridley

December
3rd - Odessa, Sylvan, Whytevlille, Romford x 4, Woodgrange, Upton Lane, x 2, Kitchener x 2, Knox, Glen Parke, Gower, Green Street, Chaucer x 2, Claremont, Disraeli x 3, Earlham Grove, Clova x 3 (Emmanuel Church)

4th - Clova

9th - Margery Park, St James, Tower Hamlets, Whyatt, Romford x 7, Clova, Crosby, Earlham Grove x 4, Leonard, Upton Lane (Forest Gate Hospital, Upton Lane School)

What at the time was the maternity hospital on
Forest Lane, after one of the six hits,
in total it received during the war

19th - Odessa, Forest Lane

29th - Upton Lane

1941

January
11th - Disraeli

19th - (Forest Gate Police Station)

29th - Clova, Osborne, Green Street

March
8th/9th - Claremont x 3, Forest Gate Station, Vale, Romford x 3, Vale (East London Cemetery)

19th - Wellington, Windsor, Talbot, Sidney, Knox, Hampton, Green Street x 3, Clova, Bignold, Atherton (Godwin School)

20th - Eric Road (Deaths: Albert Clements, aged 15, 25 Eric Road; Joyce Clements, 12, 25 Eric; Sarah Louise Clements, aged 52, 25 Eric; Ivy Denham, aged 26, Eric; Elizabeth Goddard, aged 70, 19 Eric; Frederick Ellis, 41, 161 Station Road; Alfred Middlehurst, aged 35, 20 Eric Road; Babrara Murrell, aged 2, 24 Eric Road; Doris Murrell, aged 18, 24 Eric Road; Dorothy Murrell, aged 13, 24 Eric Road; Rose Murrell, aged 16, 24 Eric Road; Susan Murrell, aged 46, 24 Eric Road; Thomas Murrell, aged 20, 24 Eric Road; Elizabeth Spooner, aged 51, 22 Eric Road; Annie Tallintire, aged 53, 21 Eric Road; Betty Tallintire, aged 14, 21 Eric Road; Charles Tallintire, aged 65, ARP stretcher bearer, 21 Eric Road)

Iconic photograph of Eric Road after
the bomb. It is a small side
road, just off Station Road

Parachute mine, of the kind that hit Eric Road

April

8th - Sebert (Godwin school)

Godwin school, after 1941 bombing

16th - Ridley

17th - Woodgrange (Methodist Church)(Deaths: Lucy Bruce, aged 68, 5 Claremont; William Bruce, aged, 68, 5 Claremont; Myer Cash, aged 65, 6 Claremont; Rosetta Cohen, aged 23, 3 Claremont; Ruth Cohen, aged 19, 3 Claremont)

Above the bomb damaged Methodist
church on Woodgrange Road

Once more, the Stratford Express
report is very vague about location or
details, but it probably refers,
in very vague terms to the
bombing of the church, which
is vaguely mentioned in the third
paragraph in a small article,
the week after the hit.

18th - Romford

19th - Earlham Grove x 3, Romford (Princess Alice Pub)

Bomb site left where original Princess Alice
pub stood, junction of Romford and Woodgrange Roads

20th - Margery Park (Deaths: Herbert Kaye, aged 60, 1 Woodgrange Road)

29th - Romford (Queen's cinema)

Queen's cinema, soon after 29 April bomb

December
9th - Margery Park

1942

July
27th - Vansitart

1943

January
17th - Palmerstone, Romford (Death: Ronald Kirby, aged 18, a firewatcher)

18th - (Forest Gate Station)

March
3rd - (Forest Gate Hospital)

This is the second of a two-part post on World War 11 bombs and Forest Gate, covering the last two years of the conflict. The first post can be found below.

As we explained in the earlier article, we have pulled together information from a range of official sources, together with some contemporaneous photographs, press reports and eye-witness accounts, to try and provide as definitive a record as possible.

We accept, however, that it is not complete, may well underestimate the scale of fatalities suffered and tries to aggregate different lists measuring different outcomes (see previous post for consideration of methodology and difficulties presented).

It is presented, however, as what we believe is the first and most likely near-comprehensive account of the affect of World War 11 bombings on the area and civilian population of Forest Gate.

West Ham, as a borough, saw about 14,000 houses - or a quarter of the housing stock - destroyed by bombs in the World War 11. Forest Gate was heavily hit, although considerably less so than the southern part of the borough, which embraced the docks and some strategically important industries and factories.

After the Blitz (1940-41) there was a lull in German bombing of London, while German military engineers developed more horrific weapons to inflict by air. The conceived their Vergeltungswaffe - vengeance weapons - understandably abbreviated to V1 and V2 bombs.

Clearing up after June 1944 Upton Lane bombing

Each bomb was 25 feet long and had a wing span of 16 feet, driven by an engine, that hummed. They were dubbed Buzz Bombs, or Doodlebugs by British civilians who were on the receiving end of them.
.
The first was launched in June 1944. Within three days over 500 people had been killed in London. They came to terrorise the city, and their impact were felt on some of the most savage subsequent attacks on Forest Gate.

1944

January
22nd - (West Ham Cemetery)

29th - Crosby, Knox, Vansitart (Forest Gate Hospital, Wanstead Park Station, Upton Lane School)

30th - Claremont

February
2nd - Romford x 2

7th - Sprowson

19th - Strode

20th - Tylney

21st - Romford

22nd - Sprowson, Whyteville, Romford

24th - Dunbar, Forest Street, Windsor (West Ham Cemetery)

March
22nd - Vansitart

April
18th -Katherine Rd - Trebors
This bombing does not appear in the ARP listings of bombings in West Ham, but features significantly in the company's official history, The Trebor Story by Michael Crampton. The book publishes the photograph, below and the accompanying text says:

Factory caretaker, Mr G Taylor reported the following, of the night of 18 April 1944 "The building was severely damaged because the bomb landed in the warehouses and set fire to a great deal of tea chests and tins of dry lemonade. A row of shops across the way was destroyed by blast and through the heavy shutters of the garage being thrown across the street. Several of the people in the houses were killed, including one of the firm's stokers. But there was one miracle. For most of the war the firm had thrown open the basement to the public, and about two hundred of them were sheltering there that night. Imagine my relief on entering the basement to find not one casualty among them.

Trebor factory on Katherine Road, after
the unreported bombing. Note presence
of police on far right of photo. He was
there to prevent looting of sugar

June
16th - Upton Avenue (Death: May Wright, aged 30, 41 Upton Avenue)

Upton Lane after bombing on 16 June 1944

July
5th - Osborne

19th - Romford

27th - Dames (Deaths: Gladys Blackman, aged 39, Dames Road; Wendy Blackman, aged 4, Dames Road; Abraham Ince, aged 76, Dames Road; Edith Tilley, aged 41, Dames Road). This was the Dames Road trolley bus bomb, featured at length in the post on the Page family of bootmakers, see here.

The quote from Cyril Marne, who was later to become West Ham's Chief Fire Officer, in that article suggests that many more than the people named here were killed. Indeed, the Straford Express article, covering the incident produces the names of a small, but entirely different group of fatalities of that explosion. They presumably did not live in the immediate local area (see discussion on methodology for explanation).

Doodlebug of the kind that hit Dames Road -
25 feet long and 15 wide. Unsurprisingly, the
devastation it created was horrific

28th - Forest Lane (Deaths: Lilian Simpkins, aged 64, 103 Forest Lane), Woodgrange

29th - Junction of Woodgrange and Earlham Grove (Ronald Stuchbery, aged 16, at Rio Cinema, and Robert Scales, ofTower Hamlets Road)

August
12th - Upton Lane School: Deaths: Ursula Mercer, aged 32, an SRN at Upton Lane School; Kate Skingle, aged 67)

Upton Lane school, hit 12/13 August 1944

Stratford Express reports Upton Lane
school bombing, without mentioning
its name, or location. It does,
however mention those killed.

15th - Wellington (Deaths: Eli Nightingale, aged 63, 133 Wellington Road; Ernest Tickel, aged 59, 20 Odessa Road)

October
27th - Romford Road

30th - Earlham Grove (Deaths: Clara Hall, aged 69, 7 Earlham Grove; Alice Everitt, aged 66, 7 Earlham; Annie Everitt, 56, 7 Earlham; Ellen Everitt, 64, 7 Earlham; Charles William Hazell, aged 14, 3 Earlham Grove; Edith Read, aged 42, 5 Earlham Grove; Terence Read, aged 7, 5 Earlham Grove; Agnes Turner, aged 55, 3 Earlham Grove; Agnes Turner, aged 24, 3 Earlham Grove; William Turner, aged 13, 3 Earlham Grove)

November
1st - (Wanstead Flats)

1945

January
28th - Kitchener (Deaths: Alfred Chamberlain, aged 43, 90 Kitchener; Catherine Chamberlain, aged 66, 90 Kitchener; Alice Dearson, aged 70, 90 Kitchener; George Dearson, aged 87, 90 Kitchener; William Eyre, aged 46, 95 Kitchener; Arthur Finch, aged 32, 100 Kitchener; Ernest Johnson, aged 30, 96 Kitchener Road; Kenneth Johnson, aged 22 months, 96 Kitchener Road; Louisa Johnson, aged 30, 96 Kitchener Road; Patricia Johnson, aged 5, 96 Kitchener Road; Annie Kenovan, aged 41, 98 Kitchener Road; Patrick Kenovan, aged 39, 98 Kitchener Road; Phillip Kenovan, aged 2, 98 Kitchener Road; Albert Poree, aged 30, 94 Kitchener Road; Alice Shekyls, aged 28 99 Grosvenor Road; George Skekyls, aged 30, 99 Grosvenor Road; Mabel Vamplew, aged 55, 94 Kitchener Road; Doris Wales, aged 22, 92 Kitchener Road; Jane Wales, aged 48, 92 Kitchener Road; Margery Wales, 92 Kitchener Road; William Wales, aged 50, 92 Kitchener Road; Eliza Walker, aged 74, 102 Kitchener Road; Harriet Walker, aged 47, 102 Kitchener Road; Joseph Walker, aged 74, 102 Kitchener Road).

Stratford Express covers the
Kitchener Road bombing, or
as they locate it, as "a residential
district in southern England."
Official records identify 24
dead, but this report only 12.

March
6th - Earlham Grove (Deaths: Joyce Adams, aged 25, 56 Earlham Grove; Edgar Adams, aged 50, 56 Earlham Grove; Beryl Joyce Adams, aged 18 months, 56 Earlham Grove; Hetty Bogansky, aged 31, 62 Earlham Grove; Nathan Bogansky, aged 29, 62 Earlham Grove; Geoffrey Golding, aged 2, 60 Earlham Grove; Hilda Golding, aged 30, 60 Earlham Grove; Jack Golding, aged 23, 60 Earlham Grove; Sadie Golding, aged 22, 60 Earlham Grove; Sarah Golding, aged 61, 60 Earlham Grove; Samuel Hainsville, aged 85, 64 Earlham Grove; David Coles, aged 43, Freemasons Tavern, Romford Road; Ellen Coles, aged 39, Freemasons Tavern, Romford Road; Albert Lucas, aged 63, 104 Kitchener Road; Alfred Lumley, aged 60, Grosvenor Road; Mamie Lumley, aged 54, 97, Grosvenor Road: Bernard Marcovitch, aged 16, 58 Earlham Grove; Rachel Marcovitch, aged 38, 58 Earlham Grove; Rose Schector, aged 62, 62 Earlham Grove)

Poor reproduction of
a small Stratford Express
article of 9 March 1945.
It appeared on page 9
and in a matter of fact
way reported the Earlham
Grove bombing, in which 19
people died. The article
only refers to eight people

11th - Romford Road (Deaths: Nicholas Mackey, aged 43, 342 Romford Road; Rose Seeley, aged 56, 342a Romford Road; Violet Seeley, aged 31, 342a Romford Road; Elizabeth Sharpen, aged 67, 1 Westbury Road).

Conclusion/summary/observations

Although the Blitz (1940 - 41) saw the largest number of hits on Forest Gate during the war, it was the deadly V1s and V2s, in the final eight months of the conflict, that caused the greatest number of civilian deaths in the area.

Between 1940 and 1943 there were a total of 197 recorded hits on Forest Gate, and 54 Forest Gate civilians killed by enemy action. 1944 - 5 only saw a fifth of the number of bombs (38), but 40% more deaths (70).

The most lethal attacks on Forest Gate during the war would appear to have been:

28 January 1945 - Kitchener Road - 24 identifiable deaths

6 March 1945 - Earlham Grove - 19 identifiable deaths

21 March 1941 - Eric Road - 17 identifiable deaths

30 October 1944 - Earlham Grove - 10 identifiable deaths

23 September 1940 - Odessa Road - 9 identifiable deaths

24 September 1940 - Clova Road - 7 identifiable deaths

9 September 1940 - Disraeli Road - 5 identifiable deaths
27 July 1944 - Dames Road - five identifiable deaths - most certainly a gross underestimation of total killed.

17 April 1941 - Claremont Road - 5 identifiable deaths.

German bombing, for the most part, became more accurate and direct as the war wore on. The fact two of the three most destructive hits in the latter stages of the war fell on Earlham Grove brought to mind a remark in Bryan Forbes' autobiography, when talking about his childhood in Forest Gate (see here).

He referred to Lord Haw-Haw's German propaganda radio messages during the conflict, in which he ranted:

We shan't be dropping bombs on Earlham Grove tonight, we'll be dropping Keating's Powder (a disinfectant).

Perhaps the Earlham Grove bombs, on the road of the West Ham synagogue (Essex's largest) - in the most Jewish area of Newham - were, in fact, deliberately aimed to be a part of the "Final Solution", the Nazi's adopted in their attempt to destroy the Jewish people, world-wide.

In previous posts on this blog (see here, in particular), we have referred to the presence of barrage balloons on Wanstead Flats. They were there to deter low-flying aircraft from bombing locally.

What is now known as "the village" area of Forest Gate - between Sebert and Capel Roads - was probably the least bombed part of Forest Gate during the war, perhaps this was in no small part due to the effective deterrent effect of those barrage balloons.

We have, similarly, covered the presence of Prisoners of War camps on Wanstead Flats during the war, in previous posts (see here, in particular).

Perhaps the German high command was not too concerned about bombing their own captured soldiers - as the Dames Road Doodlebug refrered to above fell only a couple of hundred metres from the PoW camp location.

This is the third of our popular annual look at Forest Gate's drinking spots. And, this year, it's good news. No closures, a new opening and the prospect of a restaurant selling "craft beers" on the horizon.

The new outlet is, like the longer standing Wanstead Tap, to be found underneath the arches - at 361 Winchelsea Road. Hawkes is largely a cider house and at present only open on Saturdays.

Two years ago we used the price of the then ubiquitous Stella Artois as a benchmark for the pubs at work. Stella is no longer available in all local boozers, whereas draft cider now is. In view of this we have used cider as our price barometer, and at the end of this blog we produce our first Forest Gate Draftcidrometer.

One other, good, local feature has been the complete refurb and relaunch of neighbouring Manor Park's Golden Fleece - a regular for many Forest Gate locals - so, we've included it in this year's round up.

We've tried to offer a bit more consistency in our descriptions, so are using a common format of features examined. Each drinks outlet, of course, has its own unique characteristics that don't fit this format, so, we've produced a paragraph, or so, on these, for each drinks house examined. They appear in alphabetical order.

Forest Gate Hotel

The only Forest Gate pub not on a main drag - it's on Godwin Road. The pub clearly caters almost exclusively for very local customer base. It has had problems with drugs in the past and now displays many "zero tolerance of drugs" notices. Very quiet pub. Must be tempting for owners to turn into flats - see Holly Tree, below.

Drink: Real ale pumps on display, but look infrequently used.

Food: No menu on display. Small selection of bar snacks.

Entertainment: Pool table, wide-screen TV, with BT football. Quizzes on Wednesdays and Karaoke evenings.

Garden: Small terraced area with tables and much larger tarmaced car parks area, available. Mainly for smokers, as no interesting landscaping, design features.

Child-friendly: "No under 18's, after 8.30 pm".

Forest Tavern

Improbable as it may seem, this pub, at the centre, physically and socially of much of the recent regeneration and gentrification of Forest Gate has only been open for two years. Everything about it seems to sum up the "new Forest Gate", from its client base, to its offer.

Drink: Up to eight real ales on tap, plus a couple of ciders. Trendy enough to get away with selling Pimms in jam jars, and for people not to feel put-off by it.

Food: Menu constantly evolving, with a varied and innovative option currently on offer. Meals can be taken either in the back, restaurant area, or in the bar.
Standard of food varies a bit, but can be very good; not the cheapest - with Haddock and chips being served at £11.50. Good range of tasty bar snacks on offer, too.

Entertainment: The Tavern has cracked it, and is now reflecting local interests well, with regular free Forest Gap music nights, Saturday record sales, open mike nights, quizzes, all soon to be joined by Swing Patrol on Monday nights - a fusion of two of the more prominent manifestations of the "new Forest Gate".

Garden: Decent back garden that has been spruced up recently. Not an exclusive preserve for the smokers and very pleasant on a summer evening. There are a couple of tables at the front, usually used for smokers - which minimises the smoke pollution in the back.

Child-friendly: Yes, in both garden and pub, although not much to assist with child entertainment.

Fox and Hounds

Sits cheek by jowl with the Forest Tavern, facing Forest Gate station, on Woodgrange Road/Forest Lane junction. The juxtaposition is a mirror image of the shopping centre options in Stratford - one catering for the "new" arrivals in the area and the other - the Fox and Hounds, like the old Stratford shopping centre - for the older established residents. Home drinking base for the Clapton FC Ultra fans.

Drink: Now sells Real Ales, though two of the pumps were out of order, when we visited.

Food: None advertised, other than a small range of bar snacks.

Entertainment: Sky Sports, pool table, regular Karaoke nights.

Garden: Described as a "secret garden", at the back of the pub; small and mainly a smokers' area.

Child-friendly: Nobody under 14 permitted.

Golden Fleece

Capel Road, overlooking Wanstead Flats. Had a major face lift this spring, from which it is clearly benefitting. Wide range of seating, including nooks and crannies, if you don't want to eat, or join in the entertainment. Packed when we visited, very popular with the shiny black-BMW crew.

Drink: Six real ales, good range of other drinks, including ciders.

Food: Large and varied menu. Like an upmarket Wetherspoons: e.g. steak and ale pie, £7.99 and regular list of interesting specials, averaging £10.

Entertainment: A very full week of entertainment advertised, see photo.

Garden: Wanstead Flats, to the front! In addition, large, well furnished back garden, with comfortable furniture and very good children's play and climbing equipment.

Child-friendly: Great garden - front and back for children. Good children's menu on bar food and restaurant.

Hawkes

Under the railway arches, at 361 Winchelsea Road - yards from Wanstead Tap.

The East London based cider-making company started in 2012, and is named after traditional street sellers - hawkers. Forest Gate is its first fixed venue and was opened at the end of July, for the time being, on Saturdays only.
Hours noon till 10pm. Great new initiative for this cider house, who have doubled up with Wanstead Pizza company, Luppolo to provide an enjoyable Saturday night offer - wood-fired, stone-baked pizza and cider, inside or out.. Friendly helpful staff.

Drink: Range of ciders - including their own - made from London apples, spirits and cocktails, mainly. Nice cider sampler 3 x 1/3 pints for £4.

Food: Excellent choice from about half a dozen pizzas: £5.95 - £7.95, from Luppolo of Wanstead, baked on the terrace.

Entertainment: No, but plenty of enthusiastic conversations.

Garden: Front terrace, only.

Child-friendly: Yes, but nothing specifically to entertain them.

Holly Tree

Junction of Dames and Vansitaart Roads. Large, airy pub, with sizeable conservatory area, overlooking Wanstead Flats. Fairly quiet, whenever visited. Occupies large footprint. Seems only a question of time before freeholders, like those of Forest Tavern, above, cash in and seek planning permission to demolish and replace by £7m - £10m of apartments, in an increasingly sought-after residential area.

Drink: No real ales. Standard range of typical pub beers, wines and spirits.

Food: A limited menu. Lower end price range, e.g. Shepherd's Pie, chips and veg £5.95.

Entertainment: Sky Sports, pool table, Karaoke nights, small library.

Garden: Large garden with over a dozen tables, barbecue area
.
Child-friendly: Good garden space. Large range of children's equipment now depleted, down to only a couple of pieces.

Hudson Bay

Top of Upton Lane - the only pub in Forest Gate, south of Romford Road. Full story behind the pub's name will be featured in a future blog! A Wetherspoons house, where they pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap. Always busy; the most multi-racial pub in the district.

Drink: Good range of real ales and ciders. Regular beer and cider festivals, with lots of guest drinks. Always good value for money.

Food: Typical Wetherspoons menu: wide choice, low prices. "Special" nights, e.g. fish and chips plus a pint of beer/cider/glass of wine on Fridays, £6.25! Wetherspoons are, corporately, making a big push to challenge McDonalds and Greggs for the low cost breakfast this year. Again, very good value.

Entertainment: TV's with sport, but low/no sound. No live entertainment - just a pub/restaurant. Wetherspoons doing, what they do well.

Garden: Back garden area reasonably well laid out, but mainly a haven for smokers.

Child-friendly: Children welcome and able to eat until 8.30 pm.

Wansted Tap

This intriguing local initiative, "underneath the arches" in Winchelsea Road, goes from strength to strength: good drink, food, company and entertainment. Opening hours slightly erratic, not helped by the fact that they are not well posted on the premises. Perfect name for a watering hole, apart from the fact that it's not in Wanstead and most of the drink isn't on tap!

Drink: A wide range (up to 100 varieties) of bottled craft beers and ciders and three barrelled beers, fresh tea and good coffees. Not the cheapest, but by far the widest local selection of drink options.

Food: Regular bar snacks, plus tasty cakes and biscuits. But the food highlight is the regular hosting of local celebrity chef, Michael Sanders, Invite to Supper nights. Monthly food fests, with 4 innovative and tasty courses for £30, with a complementary drink option for each course. The food nights have now been extended to include vegetarian and fish evenings.

Entertainment: Great selection of high class evening entertainments: book launches and readings, with the likes of Ian Sinclair and Harper Lee novel launches, in conjunction with Newham Bookshop, good comedy nights, with big names like Simon Munnery and Bob Mills, free film shows, interesting music evenings, occasional historic and other local interest talks. Location for Forest Gate Arts trail exhibit. There's even a library, for dull moments.

Garden: No.

Child-friendly: Very. Comfortable, home-like furniture, children's play things and toys, where involvement is encouraged. Child-friendly play sessions some afternoons, for thirsty supervising adults! Even children's books in the library.

Off licences

There are approximately 30 supermarkets/off-licenses, selling alcohol, in Forest Gate.

Since we are in a cider vein, we thought we'd try three out, to see what the comparative cider offer is, and include them in our Draftcidrometer table, below.

The excellent Bereket, Woodgrange Road, seems to have strange licensing restrictions imposed on them: they can only sell ciders and beers in minimums of packs of 4. They sell a range of ciders, including many fruit ones.

Co-operative, Woodgrange Road. Half a dozen ciders, including fruit flavoured ones on sale. Often multi-pack offers, at discount.

Tescos in Woodgrange Road, like the Co-op, often have multi-pack discounts and sell their own brand, very cheap ciders, by the bottle.

Draftcidrometer

Forest Gate Hotel: Pint of Magners, £3.50.

Forest Tavern: Pint of Hogans, £3.90.

Fox and Hounds: Pint of Strongbow, £3.40.

Golden Fleece: Pint of Symonds, £3.60.

Hawkes: Pint of own brewed, Hawkes, £3.60.

Holly Tree: Pint of Strongbow, £3.40.

Hudson Bay: Pint of Hawkes Urban Orchard, £3.49.

Wanstead Tap: No cider on tap, but pint of bottled London Glider, £4.00.

Bereket Supermarket: Bottle of Stella Artois cider, £1.99.

Co-op Supermarket: Bottle of Carling cider, £1.25.

Tesco Supermarket: Bottles of Stella Artois, 3 for £5 - i.e. £1.66 per bottle.

If journalism is the first draft of history, websites like this have a good claim to be the second. So, in most of the articles, we try to give a flavour of what the press had to say about a particular event and add context to it with the hindsight from public records, official histories and published maps, photographs etc.

Apart from the odd extract from autobiographies that we reproduce, there are rarely accounts of how the participants, observers and those directly affected by events felt about them. We believe these are vital in coming to a rounded understanding of history, but won't bore you with treatises on the nature of history, here.

So, we are delighted to receive comments on the articles that we have published, from those directly involved or affected by the events covered - whether it was World War 11 bombings, attendances at Upper Cut gigs, or life within the rapidly disappearing local Jewish community.

They, in many senses, give "reality" and authenticity to what we publish.

They are often contributed many months after the original article was published, so it is highly likely that regular visitors to this site will not catch up with them - having already read the substantive article, and feel no need to revisit it - thus miss the comment.

Similarly, for us, it is an absolute delight when a blog provokes or adds to a reader's family story, and we have had a fair number of these, since we began publication.

So, this is the first of two articles in which we round up some of the comments subsequently made to original articles. We find it illuminating and that the comments add real value to the original piece.

For the future, we would be delighted to hear from those directly affected by all of the pieces that we write about, and if the response is appropriate, we'll be delighted to run similar 'comment round-ups', in future.

The headlines below are the original title of articles published and the comments below are edited extracts from comments related to them, with a hyperlink to the article, itself.

Fire guts famous gym

Original article link: here, date: 17 April 2003

1.Anonymous

Well said mate .. I went there today (26 September 2014) and noticed that the lamp post is still standing! ... It will soon be demolished ... I think someone should take that lamp post as a memory of the gym and all it stood for! ... or it will end up in a skip very soon ...

As predicted by the
commentator - now gone

ed note: Somebody took this poster at his/her word. The lamp post (pictured) has subsequently been "removed", by whom, we do not know.

When Otis played Forest Gate

Original article link: here, date: 27 May 2013

1.Ron Smith-Galer

I was there that night. Sam and Dave were electric and the singers wore pastel coloured suits that soon showed huge sweat stains. I was 18 and nobody could eclipse Sam & Dave that night ...

Until this big black guy came on and barely moving, with that gentle sway and gracefulness that some big guys manage started to sing. Otis, a true giant of music.

Ecstasy!

Every picture tells a story

2.Pat Morrissey, Dublin

I travelled from Dublin on my own, without a ticket for this gig. It was St Patrick's weekend. What an innocent time. No problem, I just paid on the door about 7.30pm and walked into the venue. Could you, or would you, ever try to do that today. Incredible gig that I still recall today. They all played for about 15/20 mins and when Otis came on, he was amazing.

Then it was over! My main concern was to get back to Euston to my B&B.
It was one of my most memorable gigs ever. The others were The Beatles in Dublin in 1963 at The Adelphi and the Isle of Wight Festival 1970. What a very lucky person, born at the right time.

3.Steve Cook

I saw the Stax show having travelled up to London, from Southampton... We saw it at the Hammersmith Odeon then 2 shows at the Upper Cut. Asked if they could get my newly bought copy of a Booker T album signed, and to my amazement was invited in to meet Booker T .. they all signed the album label.

Booming Woodgrange Road

Original article link: here, date:12 June 2013

Opposing views on recent developments, from two posters:

1.Carol Hale

So pleased this little bit of East London is regenerating in such a positive way. My daughter and myself have noticed a really upbeat quality in the area (which was badly needed) having lived in the area for 20 yrs with its fair share of bad press. I hope this lovely area continues to thrive and I hope I can also get involved with the market.

CoffeE7 - the good bit of the facelift

2.Anonymous

Sorry to say that the shopping experience in Woodgrange Road is really depressing. I only shop in the local butchers, co-op and fishmonger. The betting shops and chicken shops are a real let down and the various grocers all sell the same stuff. Thank goodness for the lovely new coffee shops.

The Sound of Music from Earlham Grove

Original article link: here, date:19 June 2013

1.Frontier Publishing

Curwen professionally thieved Sarah Anna Glover's intellectual property, expressly without her permission, (he had asked) and attempted to pass off the whole Sol-fa phenomenon as his own. He profited greatly from his deceit and even today people are not aware that Curwen ripped off Glover's work - his feeling being that she couldn't take it further (perhaps true) because she was a mere woman. The forthcoming book about Glover by Dr Jane Southcott will confirm the true attribution of Sol-fa and permanently expose Curwen for the cheat he was.

Sarah Anna Glover

ed note: We have not been able to trace any sign of this book being published, by Frontier Publishing, or any other publisher. Neither have we been able to trace a book by Dr Jane Southcott, who would appear to be a lecturer in music history in an Australian University.

Sarah Anna Glover's (1785 - 1867) Wikipedia entry says that she was an English music teacher, who invented the Norwich sol-fa system. She was born in Norwich and developed her learning system to aid teachers with a cappella singing. Her instruction book Scheme for Rendering Psalmody Congregational met with great success. It was later refined and developed by John Curwen and others over the years. The concept became known in popular culture, after it was featured in a song from The Sound of Music.

The Upper Cut Club, part 1 - the rise

Original article link: here, date:24 July 2013

1.Martin Smith

Thanks so much for a great article. After nearly 50 years the Otis/Sam & Dave and the Nina Simone gigs still stand out as favourites for me, partly due to the great atmosphere in the club. My parents skated there as teenagers.

2.Peter Read

A very good article. Thanks. I was at the Boxing Day 1966 matinee gig at the Uppercut, with my mate Steve Jolly. Hendrix played a great set (of course) but the advertised Pretty Things did not appear. Instead we saw John Lee Hooker, solo, and Zoot Money with (I think) his band Dantalian's Chariot. JLH was amazing, and very cool, wearing a sharp mod-style suit. I remember thinking it was a cheap entrance ticket for a wonderful bill. Best Boxing Day ever, thanks to the boxer, Billy Walker.

The great John Lee Hooker
- another name to add
to the Upper Cut's
illustrious performer list

The Upper Cut Club, part 2 - hitting the deck

Original article link: here, date:31 July 2013

Upper Cut club - after the event

1.Michael Claxton

I played in The Trend, a soul/R&B band from Canning Town - Norman, Frank, Phil and me - and I certainly remember playing the Upper Cut because I had to set my new amp at Spinal Tap volume 11 so that my new Vox Continental organ could be heard - on stage! - in that vast venue. We backed the Soul Sisters and various permutations of the 'Original' Drifters as well as playing in our own right, so it was either us alone or as a backing group. If the former, at a talent evening, maybe? Does someone remember?

This is the second of two postings, summarising comments on some of the articles that have appeared on this blog, since its inception.

Please see the opening paragraphs of last week's blog - immediately under this - for the rationale for running these pieces.

And - if you have memories relating to any of the articles that have appeared on this website, we'd be delighted to hear from you (by name, or anonymously). Simply type away in the 'Comments' section at the end of each article.

The rise and decline of Forest Gate's Jewish community

Original article link: here, date:20 November 2013

This is one of the site's most visited posts and has certainly provoked the largest number or recollections from visitors. Below are edited highlights of a number of them. A visit to the original posting on : xxxx is highly recommended for more detailed memories.

1.Anonymous

My grandparents, aunts, my mother, a cousin, my father all lived in Forest Gate. Three or more marriages at Earlham Grove shul 1933 - 1961. There were many that had moved from Whitechapel. Granddad worked as a presser and in the evenings finished suits that were sold in a shop in Green Street... It was all tough work. My mother told me she remembered in the late 1930's coming across graffiti: "All Jews are rich". This was far from the truth.

Earlham Grove synagogue

2.Anonymous

I grew up in Forest Gate and remember my childhood with fondness. When we moved to Forest Gate from Clapton the Earlham Grove Synagogue was full to capacity over the Jewish New Year and we had to use the Youth Services building. The Simchat torah party was very lively. My mother was on the ladies guild and I used to go with her to prepare for the party. I remember buttering so many bridge rolls. Laying the tables for 200 and a lady called Big Bloomah scared the life out of me. The parents association always took the kids from the Hebrew classes out every summer, usually to Westgate, and we went to the Norfolk Hotel for lunch. They were good times, never to be repeated.

3.Anonymous

My father was caretaker at this Synagogue from 1961 - 1963. I was only a five month old baby when my mum and dad moved here. I can remember it as if it was yesterday. Rabbi Shnider was so lovely, but Cantor Blackman wasn't very nice. There were 2 Irish sisters who helped my dad with the upkeep of the 2 shuls, 1 hall and the grounds. I remember the children coming into the Hall for lunch. There was a school over the road from the Synagogue, and a men's gym in the basement of one of the buildings.

4.Anonymous

I grew up in Forest Gate my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins were all members. I remember some very happy times going to the synagogue for the Sabbath, High Holidays and Hebrew classes... I of course remember Rabbi Waller, who was a wonderful teacher, Rev Schneider, Mr Woolf, Mr Weinburg, Mr Barnett all the committee and Ladies Guild. The most upsetting thing was when the fire burned it down.

5.P Shapiro

I grew up in Green Street, but my best friend lived in Earlham Grove and my sister married a man from Earlham Grove and got married in that shul. Back in the 50's and 60's it was a very close community. There were several kosher shops and a large Jewish population who had moved from the East End. I used to attend the Youth Club, which was held in the shul hall. A reunion a few years ago brought back many memories. From Stratford Grammar School in Upton Lane, my friends and I went to Kosher dinners at the shul too. They were not very good, but oh! that jam and coconut tart! My mother had a stall in Queen's Road Market, down Green Street. Recently that was saved from redevelopment. It is now called "Queen's Market" and there is a support group. Nobody had a car in my family and I remember very clearly the long hikes between Oakdale Road and Earlham Grove, which seemed a never ending length! Happy days.

Fascists in 1930's Forest Gate

Original article link: here, date:16 April 2014

A number of posts on this site have provoked family recollections or stirred an interest in delving into family history. This one provoked one of the most painful stirrings (see second comment below).

1.Birdman

I remember Higgs the furriers extremely well and used to go past it on my way to school in the 1960's. I had no idea of its links to British Fascism. I know the wife of the Jewish landlord we had kept her furs there, so perhaps she didn't know of the link either.

471 Romford Road - from fascist furrier's
to Islamic charity shop, in one generation!

2.Kate Higgs

James William Higgs was my great grandfather and although I know he was a racist and an eccentric, I had no idea about his fascist history!! I'm completely shocked and unsettled by what I have just learnt. Especially as I was brought up by his grandson in the complete opposite way - to stand up for human rights, equality and to respect others religious beliefs - which I am so incredibly grateful for. This has inspired me to learn more about my family history and to write it down for the future generations. If anyone out there has information on (or photos) of my great grandfather (nicknamed Jimmy) and the shop Higgs Furriers please contact me at kateyhiggs@gmail.com I'd be so grateful! Thank you for putting the information up.

Kenny Johnson and the Lotus Club

Original article link: here, date:17 September 2014

1.Eddie Johnson (Kenny's brother)

It might interest people to know that Norman Arsonsohn, the owner of the former skating rink that found renewed fame as the 'Upper Cut' first approached me about what to do with the premises. I passed him to my brother, Kenny, who was enthusiastic about opening a rock venue, he produced detailed plans for Aronsohn and it was a cause of much angst when a deal with the Walker brothers was signed and they seemed to follow Kenny's plan, probably given to them by Norman Aronsohn. Aronsohn was a shadowy figure in the world of high finance and it was often said that he was the 'Mr X' behind many of George Walker's schemes.

Kenny Johnson, in the cloakroom
of the Lotus club, 1960's

Forest Gate's proud suffragette legacy

Original article link: here, date:6 March 2015

1.Jean Bodie

I am trying to research old 'Granny Baldock' for whom my mother worked as a young girl when she lived in Hamworthy. Minnie Baldock lived across the street from us when she was old and we were afraid of her because she wore long black dresses and we thought she was a witch. It was my mother who told us that she had been a suffragette when she was a younger woman. Now that I am older too, I am pleased that I knew her, despite the fact that as a kid I went scrumping on her property.

Minnie Baldock, c 1908

I'm wondering if she sold the land (in Poole) to the Labour Club, or they were sponsoring her to live at 73 Rockley Road, where the Labour Club was built. I just cannot remember when it was built; do you know?

Forest Gate short-changed

Original article link: here, date:20 May 2015

Cllr Rohima Rahman - still missing,
but not collecting £6,000 for it.

1.John Walker (posted two months after a critical article attacking the inaction of Cllr Rohima Rahman as the Mayor's "Advisor" on Forest Gate, at £6,679 per year).

We are delight to report that Cllr Rahman has now been replaced, without public comment, by Robin Wales as his Forest Gate Advisor. The new post-holder is Forest Gate North councillor, Rachel Tripp.

Turning the Pages of history

Original article link: here, date:27 May 2015

1.(Cllr) John Gray

I have lived around the corner from the rocket impact for 26 years and never knew about it.

A V1 rocket, of the kind that hit Dames Road

2.Richard40

I lived in Bective Road through the war, Page was our local shoe mender. I also remember the V1 incident vividly. It was a sunny day, we children were all playing in the gardens, our mothers all chatting over the fences, when suddenly someone shouted. There above us was the V1, it passed us as we scrambled into the Anderson shelters. It hit the top of a large Sycamore tree in Gobbells Bakery, breaking the top off, carrying on to Dames Road, where the damage was caused. Although we had little damage in our road, we had plenty of real scares, with a prisoner of war camp a few yards away, our mothers were always on edge.

3.Brian Arthur

I was born in Pevensey Road in 1948 and my mother spoke about the doodlebug hit on the trolleybus. They eye-witness account really conveys the full horror of the event, which would have been hushed up at the time. Before the new houses were built, opposite the Holly Tree pub, an infants schools occupied the site, which I attended. Half of the playground was still a bomb site when I was there and I remember playing on it - great fun for a little boy!

Forest Gate's role in WW1, the Hammers battalion (1)

Original article link: here, date:5 June 2015

Evonne

William Busby was my great-grand-uncle.... Thank you for posting such interesting pictures and stories about the men. It was wonderful to see the homes of the Page and Holthusen families as they are now. We live in the United States and I've been researching Forest Gate/William's life, your blog has been wonderful to learn about Forest Gate, then and now.

William Busby - hero then,
cherished now

This is the first in an occasional series of articles by local historian, Peter Williams, who specialises in Newham housing, maps and local history. In each he will be looking, in detail, at the history of particular streets in Forest Gate.

See here for Peter's history of the Fire Brigade in Forest Gate, posted earlier on this blog.

Peter has complemented his own knowledge by accessing the increasingly digitised national newspapers' collection - which can be found via FindMyPast.com - and has added extracts from this that refer specifically to the roads he will feature. The reproduction isn't always great, so we have transcribed sections of them. They add greatly to an understanding of social circumstances of the time. Some, with hindsight, are quite amusing today.
Peter would like to express thanks to fellow local historians Lloyd Jeans, Mark Gorman and this website for further informing his work.

Woodford Road

The current Woodford Road lies to the north of the town centre, right on the edge of the modern London Borough of Newham. The Eagle and Child pub also goes back many centuries (though the surviving building, opposite the Lord Lister clinic, is, itself Victorian).

Rocque's map of 1746 marks the Eagle and Child, which would have been used by cattle drovers. They brought cattle, on foot, from the north of England and Wales to the great annual cattle market that was held on Wanstead Flats (probably the origin of the current fairs).

Woodgrange Farm can be seen on the Rocque map, just south of the junction of what is now Forest Lane. The modern Woodgrange estate lies over this farm.

Portion of Rocque's 1746 map,
showing Eagle and Child and surrounds

The original Forest Gate (literally the toll gate lying at the southern limit of Epping Forest - the gate was used to control the flow of the cattle drovers) was located between the Eagle and Child and the current Lord Lister surgery.

1851 print of"Ye Olde Toll Gate",
Forest Gate 1851

The next useful map is the 1863 Ordnance Survey, published in 1873. Much of the area was still rural in character. The other day, I (Peter) met somebody who lives locally – who had a relative in the 1830's who kept poultry just behind the Eagle and Child.

To get a clearer view of this map, click here

To quote Robert Clayworth's 1837 Sun Insurance schedule "3 tenements north side of the Eagle and Child in Epping Forest". In the mid nineteenth century this area was largely rural, but on the urban fringe. Clayworth had a poulterer's shop on the Mile End Road and a stall in Leadenhall market, in the City.

The 1895 Ordnance Survey map, below, is noticeably different from the 1860's map, as the 1870's was the main period of development in the area, with speculative builders knocking up terraced houses cheaply and quickly.
Sidney Road has some notably large villas still surviving. That area was developed from 1900.

To get a clearer view of this map, click here

Notice that the southern area of Wanstead Flats is part of West Ham borough council, with the boundary angling past 113 Woodford Road. To the north was Wanstead and Woodford urban district council.

The map show more or less the current street pattern. This also marks the arrival of the Tottenham and Forest Gate Junction railway (now the Barking - Gospel Oak line), with Wanstead Park station opened in 1894.

You can see Angell Pond at the junction of Capel Road and Woodford Road, developed by West Ham council engineer Lewis Angell to assist drainage on the Flats, which were very boggy.

A bandstand soon appeared, to be demolished in the 1950's. The tinted photo of the bandstand in the first decade of the last century (below) shows it in its fully glory.

Tinted photograph of bandstand
on Wanstead Flats c 1910

Bandstand in the distance, avenue of
trees known as Monkey's Parade,
1910, around Angell Pond

The tree avenue, to the right of the bandstand in the photo, was known as Monkey's Parade.

A contributor to the Newham Story, in a recollection of the Parade in the early years of the twentieth century, said:

Every Sunday when she was a kid, all the men would dress up in their best clothes and walk the streets to attract the girls or simply to be on their way to see a girl they already had an arrangement with. Winny and her mates would get a bucket of water and a load of newspaper, soak the paper in the water, wad it up into a ball, then try and knock the hats off the young men walking by.

The photo below is a pre 1908 view of the old pond, on the opposite side of Centre Road, before it was enlarged to become the Model Yacht pond. Dames Road is in the background of this photo.

Below is the same pond, in about 1908, when it had been developed fully for model yachting. There are impressive crowds in the background. It was used for much of the time up to the 1960's for model boating - hence its popular name - but subsequently the pond fell into disrepair, did not retain water and became more of an eyesore than an amenity.

Local concern about the state of disrepair at the turn of this century resulted in a considerable refurbishment of the pond as a wild life preserve and educational facility, and its re-branding. It is now known as Jubilee Pond, but continues to suffer from problems associated with water loss and leakage.

View from a similar position, today

An 1893 OS map shows a small pond with its more northerly end opposite Ramsey Road. Works were undertaken in 1905-6 to improve drainage to Wanstead Flats which included laying surface drains from Leytonstone to this pond. Unemployed labour, mainly from West Ham was used to enlarge the pond to its present size, extending it to both the north and south. Surface water using drains in Cann Hall Road and Sidney Road fed into the enlarged pond, which opened in 1908.

The fairs

As mentioned, above, the fair goes back centuries and is bound up with the movement of livestock into London to feed a growing population, before the advent of railways, in the 1840's.

Cattle were driven distances on foot and arrived in East London in poor condition. They needed to be fattened up before being driven to Smithfield for slaughter. They were grazed in the Flats and deals were done in local pubs like the Three Rabbits in Manor Park (see next week's post!) and the Eagle and Child.

Local farm owners continue to have grazing rights for their cattle over Wanstead Flats. A right that readers who have been familiar with the area for more than a couple of decades may well remember. It was only an outbreak of BSE in the late 1990's that has effectively stopped (interrupted?) that practice. The delightful photo below records a relatively frequent event, up until the 1980's of cows wandering down Woodford Road.

Cows from Wanstead Flats wandering
down Woodford Road in the 1980s

The Flats were also used for horse fairs, and travellers had caravans on the Flats. Within living memory, travellers were born in vans on the Flats. It became a funfair in the late nineteenth century. See below for photograph of the Whitsun fair in 1905.

Whitsun Fair, 1900

Trams

This blog has covered the history of trams and Forest Gate previously, see here. The photograph below shows trams at the terminus in Woodford Road. The trams stopped where the houses ended.

The turning to the left is Forest Road. When larger numbers of passengers began to use the services, additional tracks were laid in Forest Road and then at the western end of Capel Road, to facilitate additional traffic. Later the Forest Road length was joined to tracks from the Leyton borough tramways, allowing them to merge in Woodford Road.

West Ham Corporation tramcar no 45
in 1905. The trams stopped where the
houses ended, just at the borough boundary.

The tram terminus office was located in Bective Road, as this photo from 1903 shows.

Tram terminus offices in Bective Road, 1903

Social survey - 1907

As this site has previously mentioned (see here), Howard and Wilson, in 1907, set out to describe conditions in their highly-acclaimed "West Ham - a study in industrial problems". They said this of the area, around Woodford Road:

A great part of the western section of the ward, that between the Woodford Road and Tower Hamlets Road, belonged to the Dames estate. In 1855, it was sold in plots of 75 to 80 feet by 100 to 110 feet, but was developed very slowly, a few houses being put up at a time. In about 1866 it was bought by a land company, and the development became more rapid. Londoners, such as Curtain Road (Shoreditch) cabinet makers and inhabitants of Whitechapel, often bought plots for gardens.

They used to put up huts and spend the week-end in them, and many built houses at a later time. A large number of the plots were bought by the Conservative Land Society and United Land Company, who cut them up into smaller plots and resold them for sites. Building ceased about 1880.

In Dames Road, which for the most part runs northward from Woodford Road, are some new flats, with separate front doors. The accommodation consists of four rooms and a wash-house downstairs, and three rooms and a wash-house upstairs. They were built in 1903, and are inhabited mostly by newly married City clerks.

These flats are very strictly kept, as they are in great demand. The rest of Dames Road, which was built in 1878, is chiefly inhabited by clerks and businessmen in the City, and has shops on one side of the southern end. The rents vary from 8s 6d, per week to £40 per year.

What the Papers say

Below are a series of newspaper cuttings, from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries referring to the area. They offer useful contemporary insights to conditions in the area; and the longest one, offers a delightful description of the Easter fair on the Flats in 1898.

Chelmsford Chronicle - 14 December 1900

Transcript:

Wanstead.

Urban Council, Dec 7

Mr RA Ellis chairman

The road across the Flats - The Essex County Council wrote offering £100 as a contribution towards the cost of widening the road across the flats. The Clerk said the cost of the widening was estimated at £600, and the Wan-.stead Council had decided that £100 was a fair.contribution from that parish. The Forest Gate.Ratepayers' Association would probably give£100, making a total of £300 - The Clerk was.directed to write to the West Ham Town Council.again asking for a contribution.

As a result, Centre Road in its current form was developed at the turn of the century

Chelmsford Chronicle - 5 April 1907

Transcript:

Petitions are being signed in Forest Gate and Leytonstone asking the City Corporation to abolish the Bank Holiday fair on Wanstead Flats.

Plus ca change - residents unhappy with the disturbance caused by bank holiday fairs. As working class people acquired more leisure time towards the end of the nineteenth century (enshrined in the Bank Holidays Act and the half day closing of shops), Epping Forest, in general, and Wanstead Flats in particular, became a major leisure destination for workers from Inner East London.

There were works outings, picnics and sports teams arriving in large numbers, by train, charabancs and especially by trams, which were cheaper than trains.

Thousands could turn up on a busy day, as shown in the cutting below, from 1898.

Chelmsford Chronicle - 15 April 1898

Partial transcript:

Bank Holiday on Wanstead Flats

by a Perambulating Pressman

Wanstead Flats have long been a favourite resort for the East London Bank Holiday crowd, and this Easter my curiosity led me to Wanstead to see how their amusement is catered for. ...

The streets were thronged with people and all were enjoying themselves with that absolute abandon which is so characteristic of the Easter holiday maker. ...

The young ladies ... sang with a gusto which only high spirits could produce, but "Marry the girl you fancy" was the popular refrain.

There are several railway stations "quite adjacent" to the Flats, and a good service of buses is capable of rapidly transporting visitors to the gay scene, but for the holiday traffic special brakes were put on the route from Stratford, and at: "Tuppence all the way", these command full complements of passengers. ...

The centre of the fun, I found, was on Dames Road, had by the Holly Tree Tavern. Here was a gigantic country fair, or rather twenty country fairs rolled into one, constituting a scene of startling splendour, which is difficult easily to describe. A gorgeous merry-go-round occupied a central position, rivalling in its gold and brilliant colours, its mirrors and dazzling lights, scenes depicted in the Arabian Nights.

... This elaborate piece of mechanism must have cost a small fortune, but it was providing a gold mine to its proprietors.

... A "wild Indian chief" emerged into the open, brandishing a sword and uttering horrible gutteral sounds. He was silenced in summary fashion by the proprietor, who gave graphic accounts of the sights to be seen inside. Meanwhile the "Indian Chief" had disappeared into the wigwam and I followed bent on investigations.

Answering a common-place remark, the wild warrior lapsed into unmistakable Cockneyese, and openly admitted he was a fraud. ...

Chelmsford Chronicle - 23 June 1911

Transcript:

Harem skirt scare

Near the bandstand on Wanstead Flats on Sunday night somebody shouted "Haremskirt!" A crowd at once gathered around a lady who was smartly dressed and fol-lowed her to the tram terminus. By the time the Woodford-road was reached over.500 people had collected, and the young lady had to board a tramcar going to Stratford to avoid them. She was wearing a hobble skirt.

A hobble skirt was a skirt with a narrow enough hem to significantly impede the wearer's stride, and was a short-lived fashion trend around the turn of the twentieth century and the early 1910's

Chelmsford Chronicle - 23 September 1921

Transcript:

Model Yachting

The race for the Hall Cup in connection with the Forest Gate Model Yachting Club was held on Saturday, and was a win for the Vice Commodore, Mr Breach. Messrs. Copper and Wilson tied for second place.

Meticulous work by Private Eye and friends has tracked down over 100,000 properties in the UK owned by companies based in overseas tax havens - usually for tax avoidance purposes.

This pattern of property ownership is, of course, well-known in such up market areas as Mayfair and Knightsbridge.

More surprisingly, perhaps, the tentacles of the trend are beginning to stretch into Forest Gate.

Using Private Eye's detailed, inter-active map (see here) we have located more than 20 such properties in E7, and provide details of them and their "owners" in the article and photos, below. We would put a conservative estimate of their collective value today of around £20 million.

Readers may be able to offer further details about these properties and the people behind them, about which, we and Private Eye would be delighted to hear.

Below is a list of all local properties registered in overseas tax havens between 2005 and 2014, with, in some cases, details of the purchase price recorded at the time of registration.

The tax advantages gained by foreign registered company ownership include the avoidance of Capital Gains Tax (usually 28%, after allowances) and Stamp Duty (rates varies according to price) on their sale and purchase (though there has been a recent attempt to tighten up on the latter) and the ability to pass the properties on, without incurring Inheritance Tax (40% after allowances), on death.

The sums saved can, of course, be huge, depending on the values of the properties in question.

The fact that the companies owning the properties listed below are registered overseas means that little can be established about their ultimate owners, or beneficiaries. They may be UK citizens who prefer to spend their money on hiring the services of expensive lawyers and accountants to arrange their tax avoidance affairs, than to pay tax, and thus contribute to public services.

They may be genuine foreign nationals, with diverse assets portfolios, or they could be people with dubious records to hide (money launderers, drugs dealers, criminals or kleptocrats).

The British exchequer looses £ billions, annually, by the kind of tax avoidance practiced by many of the foreign companies listed below, and their ilk. It is unlikely that the present government will do too much to curtail the practices for as long as the Conservative party is recipient of donations from many of the beneficiaries of such schemes.

About half the properties listed are simple domestic houses. Given property inflation, tax savings from foreign registration could exceed £30,000 p.a. per property - as shown in a couple of examples.

There are a second set of properties which are, broadly, obviously commercial.

They constitute a mixed bunch, from a fairly prestigious office block, through some industrial property to some rather strange clusters of land, which could, at some stage, be used for a lucrative residential or commercial development.

The final property, to which we draw attention is a former pub, which has been converted into nine flats, with a supermarket attached. According to the "owning" company's declaration, that has probably increased in value by about £2,000,000 since registered - saving the owner (depriving public services) of about £500,000 should it be sold, today.

The fate of that former pub is becoming increasingly common these days, and the money to be saved from tax-haven registration of the developments are considerable.

Iconic office building - City Gate

City Gate - Romford Road

The City Gate building (above) on Romford Road (246 - 250) was registered as being owned by BCP City Gate, based in the Isle of Man, on 8 July 2005, with a value of £3,658,840.

Residential property

These are listed in alphabetical order of the names of their streets.

50 - 50d Avenue Road

Five separate properties
registered here - at
50 - 50d Avenue Road

Five properties, all at this address were registered as being owned by Dominion Ltd, Isle of Man in May and June 2012. They were number 50 (no price recorded), 50a (£192,000), 50b (£158,900), 50c (£204,275) and 50d (£122,650).

45 Chaucer Road

45 Chaucer Road

This house was registered to the ownership of Yaas Investments, in the Isle of Man, in September 2012, with a value of £285,000. This company was also registered as owner of nearby 314 Cann Hall Road, in July 2013, with a value of £800,000.

10 Crosby Road

10 Crosby Road

This terraced house was registered as being owned by Balinara, incorporated in Guernsey, with a value of £247,750, in June 2011.

113 Earlham Grove

113 Earlham Grove

This property was registered as owned by Gibraltar based Northern Trading in August 2004, for a value of £750,000.

27 Knighton Road

27 Knighton Road

This house was registered as owned by Tarleton Investments, based in the British Virgin Islands in April 2005. No details of the purchase price are logged with the Land Registry.

1 - 12 Sycamore Court - Romford Road

1 - 12 Sycamore Court, Romford Road

This is a small 12-unit residential block, which was registered as being owned by Almond Land, in Guernsey. For reasons that are not altogether clear, it was listeded as costing £20,648 - which represents less than 1% of its current value. If it were sold today, the Capital Gains Tax saved would be in excess of £500,000.

23b South Esk Road

23b South Esk Road

This flat was registered as being owned by Exel Venture in Guernsey in November 2013, with a value of £134,500. It is worth nearer £200,000 today - meaning a potential Capital Gains Tax saving of approximately £25,000.

115 Trumpington Road

115 Trumpington Road

This two-bedroom property has recently been sold for £400,000, after a major refurbishment. It was previously registered, in September 2007, as being owned by Charming Properties, based in Jersey. A considerable capital gain will have been made - and no tax paid on it.

133 and 137 Upton Lane

133 Upton Lane

137 Upton Lane

These two neighbouring properties have been listed as being owned by British Virgin Islands based compan, DAS Properties. 133 was registered in March 2005, with a value of £165,00 and 137 in 2007, with a value of £250,000.

Commercial and industrial properties

Land

There are three plots of land in and around Romford Road, almost adjacent to the City Gate office block (see above), all owned by a St Vincent and Grenadines company called Loesch.

One is described as "land adjoining 286 Romford Road", and was registered to the company in March 2007.

Land adjoining
286 Romford Road

A second property is described as "land adjoining 8 Nursery Lane". Nursery Lane is a long and uninviting alleyway, just behind Romford Road, off Upton Lane. The land value was registered with a value of £110,000 in 2008.

Land adjoining 8 Nursery Lane

The third piece in that area is 10 Nursery Lane, registered with the company to a value of £75,000 in 2007.

10 Nursery Lane

These three pieces of land will probably be joined up and form the footprint of a significant commercial or residential development at some time in the future. The capital gain from these seemingly valueless chunks of land will, then, be considerable - all tax free, of course.

Restaurant - 99 Green Street

99 Green Street

This Asian restaurant was registered to Cranbrook Properties in the British Virgin Islands in 2012, to a value of £500,000.

Sherrard Works

Two views of Sherrard Works

This is a large, antiquated industrial property, running behind the restaurant, above, with a side entrance into Sherrard Road. It, too, was registered to a British Virgin Islands Company, in 2012 - Sherrard Works Ltd - with a value of £1,500,000.

The footprint of these two properties is very large and could form the basis, planning permission dependent, of a considerable residential development - with a large value and consequential tax-free capital gain.

The big one: 326 - 330 Katherine Road

326 - 330 Katherine Road

This former pub site has been developed into a unit of 9 flats, with a Tesco Local occupying the ground floor. It is typical of the fate of many former large, corner, Victorian pubs.

It was registered to the ownership of a British Virgin Islands based company in 2013, with a value of £870,000.

The nine flats could now be sold for in the region of £2.5m, and the Tesco's could probably command an annual rent of £30,000.

Not a bad, tax-free, return for those behind the company with its very British sounding name - Irlam Properties Ltd.

The facts relating to the tax-haven ownership of each of the properties highlighted above is indisputable. Some of the speculation about levels of tax-free capital gains and tax avoidance may be challenged by the overseas owners. If so, we would be delighted to hear from them, and would welcome the opportunity to set the record straight.

As it is, in the absence of information about the beneficial owners, it has been difficult to contact them for clarification about their motives and financial benefits.

The fate of Forest Gate's longest surviving, purpose-built, religious building hangs in the balance since a recent attempt by an evangelical church to take it over and restore it to its original purpose has been challenged locally, by campaigners objecting to its "change of use".

The building in question, in its most recent use

The building itself has an almost 200 year history - and is one of Forest Gate's oldest. It has certainly had the most varied range of uses during its existence, of any local landmark.

It is, of course, the rather innocuous-looking building which until recently hosted the Angel's restaurant, at 79 Woodgrange Road. The building was then empty for some months, during which period a local catering company, Pyramid Pizza, thought they had a lease on the premises - only to be gazumped by the evangelical church.

The church had its name board up for about a month and began meeting, earlier this summer, before the planning challenge was made. As the photo at the end of this article shows, it is currently without a facia board, pending an outcome of the planners' investigation.

The building was constructed in 1830.

Jabez Legg was a Stratford-based Congregationalist minister in the early years of the nineteenth century (see here for details of his life and the almshouses he supported, locally). He took to preaching in a hut next to the old Eagle and Child pleasure gardens (later to become a pub), on what we now know as Woodgrange Road - previously Eagle and Child Lane - in the mid 1820's.

Jabez Legg, the congregationalist
minister (1786 - 1867),
inspiration behind
the original chapel

He chose the location because the tearooms and pleasure gardens were something of a "resort" for day trippers, getting away from the hustle, bustle and filth of the streets of the inner East End - with Wanstead Flats on its doorstep. Thus, he was provided with something approaching a captive audience/congregation.

1851 sketch of the original Forest
Gate, next to which Legg first
began to preach in the area

Forest Gate was barely developed at this time and the tea gardens and preaching effectively operated in the middle of the countryside. The congregation, however, soon outgrew the hut, by the old Forest Gate, so Legg and William Strange, whose daughter ran the Sunday school attached to the church, raised funds for a purpose built chapel for the congregation on the corner of Forest Lane and Woodgrange Road.

Sketch of Legg's first local preaching
spot - by the original Forest Gate.
See footnote for source

The couple were able to solicit a donation from near-by resident and prison reformer, Elizabeth Fry, to help towards the £220 construction costs of the 100 seater chapel. The building was known simply as the Forest Gate Chapel.

This new, purpose-built, church expanded to run a day school during the week, in the era before state provided education. It opened in 1832 - at about the time of the passing of the Great Reform Bill, and seven years before the railway - which provided the real spur to Forest Gate's development - arrived in town. The school started with 48 pupils, when the population of Forest Gate was barely 350 people.

Sketch of the building in its original
state as a Congregationalist chapel.
See footnote for source

At this time most schools were based around religious institutions, those attached to the Church of England became generally known as "National" schools, and those associated with non-conformist churches - like the Congregationalists - were known as "British" schools. This was a "British" school, as can be seen marked on the 1863 Ordnance Survey map, see below - the first of its kind in the area.

1863 Ordnance survey map, showing
the building as a "British" school, and the
new chapel, around the corner, in
Chapel Street - see below

With the coming of the railways and the growth of Forest Gate, the congregation soon began to outgrow the newly established premises, and the Congregationalists were on the lookout for a new and larger home, yet again.

Samuel Gurney, the banker, relative of Elizabeth Fry, and local landowner, who prospered greatly from the sale of his holdings for the development of Forest Gate, donated £100 and land to the Congregationalist church, just behind what is now Forest Gate school, in the mid 1850's, for the construction of a much larger chapel (see map, above).

Sketch of the Chapel Street chapel.
See footnote for source

A total of £1,560 was raised to pay for the 350 seater church (see diagram below), described as being "a commodious and neat building of Italian design, similar to those recently erected in Yarmouth and Lowestoft and by the same architect". It was opened in 1856, in what the 1863 map, shown below named Chapel Street (later Chapter Street), in honour of the building.

Forest Gate photographer, Edward
Wright's undated photo of the
Chapel (later Chapter ) Street building

Membership of this congregation more than doubled by the 1880's - expanding significantly, in keeping with the rapid development of the area's population - and it outgrew the building. So, it was, in turn, replaced by the 1,000 seater church, which still stands on Sebert Road.

1880's constructed, fourth and final
location of Forest Gate Congregationalist
church, Sebert Road

We are getting ahead of ourselves. The Woodgrange Road building remained as a British school once the Chapel Street church was built in the 1850's. In 1871, according to the newly established West Ham School Board, it had a roll of 65.

One of the first acts of the new School Board was to construct its own purpose built school, Odessa, with a roll of 703. This opened in 1874 and the National School closed. Its, then, 88 pupils transferred along the road to Odessa school.

We do not have a complete timeline for the subsequent fate of the building. Kelly's Directory of 1890, however, shows it as the headquarters of the Forest Gate and Upton District Liberal and Radical Association, confirmed by the 1895 map, below and the turn of the century photograph taken by prominent Forest Gate photographer, Edward Wright.

1893 Ordnance Survey map, showing the premises as a "club", and round the corner, in Chapel Street showing a Sunday school (belonging to Sebert Road Congregationalist church) after the church itself re-located, yet again, a couple of hundred yards away to Sebert Road.

By 1908 the club had been renamed the South Essex Club.

Turn of century Edward Wright photo,
showing the building as headquarters
of the Forest Gate and Upton
Liberal and Radical Association

According to histories of cinema venues, the building had a short life as a cinema, between 1910 and its closure at the start of World War 1, in 1914. It was known as the King's Hall (not to be confused with the King's Cinema, which occupied what later became the Upper Cut Club, at the foot of Woodgrange Road). Unfortunately, no photograph of the building serving this function seems to have survived.

Between the two World Wars, the building was converted to become Max Fietcher's house furnishers (according to a 1925 trade directory), and subsequently Shenker Brothers, drapers (1938).

Following the second world war the premises housed WM John Biles, glaziers and glass suppliers, from at least 1949 until the 1990's, when it closed, having employed a dozen or so people. It was a well-known local landmark and boon to many a local builder and diy-er.

Since the 1990's the premises have been a restaurant, in a number of guises, most recently as Angel's - see photograph, below. For at least some of that time it functioned as Forest Gate's most notorious drug dealing premises!

Angel's closed last year, having acquired a pretty poor reputation, food-wise and in terms of the behaviour of its customers. Since that time Pyramid Pizza were on the point of acquiring it, then pulled out after a rent hike, and after a short period of continues closure it re-emerged as a meeting place for an evangelical church - apparently without permission for a change of use.

In its current state. What next for
this undistinguished-looking,
but historic, local landmark?

The sign is now down - so watch this space for further twists in the development of this rather ordinary, but quite remarkable local building.

NB. We are deeply indebted to the publication Hitherto, Henceforth, published in 1956, celebrating the centenary of the Chapel Street church for the sketches, showing the meeting places of the Congregationalists, in Forest Gate.

This is the second in an occasional series of articles by local historian, Peter Williams, who specialises in Newham housing, maps and local history. In each he looks, in detail, at the history of particular streets in Forest Gate.

See here for Peter's history of Woodford Road, posted earlier on this blog.

Peter has complemented his own knowledge by accessing the increasingly digitised national newspapers' collection - which can be found here- and has added extracts from this that refer specifically to the roads he will feature.

The reproduction isn't always great, so we have transcribed sections of them.

They add greatly to an understanding of social circumstances of the time, and describe some pretty poor public health and social conditions.

Ebor Cottages and Irish Row

This corner of Forest Gate has a very interesting history.

The map below, dates back to 1800, and shows the area considered in this blog as being almost completely undeveloped. The highway running from left to right, at the bottom is what is now Romford Road. The Eagle and Child pub is clearly marked at the centre, towards the right, and lies on what was then Eagle and Child Lane - now Woodgrange Road.

Map illustrating area covered by this blog, c 1800

What is described as "Mr Greenfield's Field - formerly Hamfrith Wood" is the land largely occupied today by the Woodgrange Estate.

"The Sun" - towards the right of Romford Road, where it meets Shrewsbury Road, is what we now know as The Rising Sun pub.

The boundary between West and East Ham is clearly marked on the map, and is considered later in the article, below.

The small black mark above "Mr Greenhill" is Plashet, or Potato Hall - also considered later in this article. The small black mark to the north of this, on what is now Romford Road, was "Irish Row", examined below. The road immediately to the right is Katherine Road, which in less sensitive Victorian times was known as Gypsy Lane - presumably because of its proximity to Irish Row.

Here is the Ordnance Survey map of the area as it was in the 1860’s:

Ordnance Survey map of 1860's showing
area covered by this article

There are a number of features worth looking at. There is the animal charcoal works in the centre. Animal charcoal appears to be something to do with converting ammonia into sulphate of ammonia.

This is likely to be a very smelly business. After the Metropolitan Building Act 1844 the smelly, noxious or offensive trades had by law to be located east of the River Lea i.e. they were driven out of metropolitan London into Essex.

West Ham ended up with many noxious trades – blood and bone boilers; tallow manufacturers; tanning animal hides; soap and fertiliser works; tripe boilers; animal rendering works (Carpenters Rd area of Stratford was known as stinky Stratford into the twentieth century).

Indeed the last one of these factories John Knights in Silvertown only closed in late 2014, and has been prosecuted by Newham council in the last couple of years in effect for making bad smells. They made pet food and soap by rendering down animal carcasses. See here.

For another animal charcoal works, see New Gravel Lane Shadwell here

Engine house on the map will mean the building that housed the steam engine to power the factory.

Plashet Hall This house, locally known as Potato Hall, stood on the junction of Romford Road and Katherine Road, seen below about 1890. It was the residence of one of the Greenhill family which farmed the nearby 150 acres of Hamfrith farm. (Greenhill Grove and the Greenhill Centre in Manor Park recall the name). It was also called Potato Hall from the large number of potatoes cultivated in the neighbourhood, see here.

Plashet Hall, popularly known as Potato Hall

A local rhyme said:

Potatoes now are Plaistow’s pride,

Whole markets are from thence supplied

In 1796 there were 420 acres set down to potatoes in West Ham parish according to the Victoria County History. An 1828 parliamentary Select Committee on the police, mentioned that Irish migrant labour was being used to cultivate potatoes in East Ham.

The Potato Hall roof was surmounted by an octagonal lantern. This seems to have been a favourite feature in the area, probably because of the view it could command of the River Thames and its shipping, see here.

On the far left of the map is Emmanuel Church on Upton Lane built in 1852 and enlarged later in the Victorian period.

Prospect House There seems little information on this.

The Rising Sun pub sits at the top of Shrewsbury Road, and is locally listed by Newham Council.

The same area in 1898, see below for description

The same area in 1898 – what is noticeable is how much development has taken place in those 35 years. Plashet Hall has become a tramway depot – there was a sweet factory here later.

North of the Romford Road the Woodgrange estate has been developed. The current industrial buildings occupied by Elfes stonemasons co-incide with the old Ebor cottages – the estate simply excluded it (see here for an earlier blog on the estate). See below for more on Ebor.

The estate included some larger detached houses as well as terraces. The Manor Park side of it, from Durham Road to Romford Road, was mostly completed about 1883, and the Forest Gate side, from Hampton Road to Romford Road (so far as this lay in East Ham) a few years later.

The developer was A. Cameron Corbett, who later built much of Ilford. He operated on a large scale, and kept down his prices while maintaining a good standard. (see here and here)

South of Woodgrange, at Plashet, development began in 1883 with the sale of the Plashet House estate (between St. Stephen's Road and Plashet Grove).

This estate, with adjoining parts of East and West Ham, became known as Upton Park. By 1890 building was in progress in the whole Plashet area from Green Street to High Street North, including the estates of Plashet Cottage (Grosvenor, Eversleigh, and Spencer Roads), Plashet Hall (Sherrard, Halley, Strone, and Monega Roads), and Wood House (between Woodhouse Grove and High Street North). See here.

The site of Ebor Cottages

Now the yard of Elfes memorial masons off Balmoral
Rd Forest Gate – photo by Peter Williams May 2010.

Studying the map above there seems little doubt that Elfes occupy the space previously occupied by Ebor Cottages. These did not exist in 1800 (see first map), but were clearly evident a little over half a century later (see second map, above)

Ebor was, of course, the Roman name for what is now the city of York. Quite why the cottages in Forest Gate should have been given this name is unclear. Although what is now Romford Road, on which the cottages sat, is the route of the old Roman London - Colchester Road.

The surviving Elfes buildings clearly look quite old and predate the surrounding Woodgrange estate and the shops fronting Romford Road, including the Claremont Clinic, and the nearby mosque.

By the mid nineteenth century the cottages had become a fairly notorious slum area (see press clippings, below, for further evidence). In 1855, Alfred Dickens, brother of the novelist Charles was commissioned to conduct a survey into public health issues in and around West Ham. His report was damning and lead to the creation of local bodies designed to address some of the issues he highlighted.

He chose Ebor Cottages for special mention, when he wrote:

Ebor Cottages - these are at the eastern extremity of the parish of West Ham. There is no water. There used to be a pump, but it became rotten and broke down; the landlord refuses to replace or men it. The privies are overflowing and running to the surface. Near these cottages, in the front, and at the side of the Romford turnpike road, is an offensive stagnant ditch, full of all kinds of filth; a similar nuisance, at intervals is repeated all along this road.

A considerable quantity of house drainage, including that from the Pawnbrokers Almshouse (ed: see here, for details), finds its way into these places. Even along Upton Place (Upton Road), where there are some handsome houses paying rents varying from £70 to £150 a year, no proper drainage is provided; and immediately facing them are these open ditches to the extent of full a quarter of a mile on both sides of the road.

The Commissioners' scheme does not touch this part. There is another stinking ditch near the Three Pigeons public house (ed: now a Tesco local, on Romford Road, near the fire station, close to Stratford). It is very much complained of.

Surviving cottages, built in 1850's
and local authority "conserved", adjacent to
what was "Irish Row" Romford Road.

A little further along Romford Road are the cottages illustrated above.

These are part of the Romford Road Conservation area. A two bed-roomed and modernised one was recently on the housing market for £450,000.

Site of former Irish Row, today
- Romford Road, facing Claremont Clinic

A row of late Victorian shops, including the Post Office, opposite the Claremont Clinic, occupies the space between these old, surviving cottages and what is now Katherine Road.

This is the site of what was previously known as "Irish Row" This was demolished as slums in the 1870's - 1880's, and replaced by the current shops.

They appear on the 1863 OS map, above, but are certainly gone by 1898, and the shops have yet to be built by this time.

The official Newham council document, describing the area is here. To quote from it:

During the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the land to the north and south of the Romford Road was undeveloped farmland.

The First Edition Ordnance Survey map, published in 1844, confirms that this area was largely undeveloped during the first and much of the second quarter of the nineteenth century. These cottages do not appear on a map of the area published in 1839 but the occupiers of the houses are listed in the 1841 census.

It is therefore logical to assume that the houses were built during the period 1839 - 40. A large house, called Potato Hall, was nearby and it may well be that these cottages were built for agricultural workers and were those locally known as ‘Irish Row’.

It is clear that this official council document confuses Irish Row and the surviving cottages, which we now know are quite different buildings.

What the Papers say

Below are a series of newspaper cuttings, from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries referring to the area. They offer useful contemporary insights to conditions within it;

Chelmsford Chronicle - 13 May 1864

Partial transcript:

Beating the bounds of West Ham Parish

... at eight o'clock on Thursday morning at Rokeby House (in central Stratford), the company took their seats and went forthwith to Ebor cottages on Romford road where they alighted and on reaching Gypsy Lane (the former name of Katherine Road), the first stone was beaten, and christened "Ashdown" after then name of the vestry clerk, who underwent the old custom of "bumping" nearly all of the company being bumped during the day; and by way of a finale the vestry clerk received thirteen bumps at the stone where the start was made.

Ed: Beating the bounds was an ancient tradition and involved a procession from the parish church visiting the boundary stone markers at the parish boundaries, to ensure that they were still visible, and thus that the extent of the parish could be determined. You can still see one of these on the south side of Balmoral bridge, as you head north (see below).

Boundary stone today,
Balmoral bridge: WHP
(West Ham Parish)
Dated 1864 (the "1" has
been damaged)

A second, later, iron boundary marker,
today - on the kerb stone, Claremont
Road, near junction with Balmoral Road

Essex Newsman - 14 June 1887

Transcript:

East Ham: alleged theft of a donkey

Chas Williams, a general dealer and Thomas Reynolds, both of Ebor Cottages, Romford Road, East Ham, were charged with stealing a donkey, valued at £2.10s, the property of Henry Rose, of the Broadway, Stratford. The donkey was stolen from a stable on the night of the 3rd of June, and on the 10th the prisoners sold it to a man named Mason. The prisoners were remanded.

Chelmsford Chronicle - 27 Sept 1867

Partial transcript:

Report of the medical officer: Dr Elliott, the medical officer read his report. The deaths in the parish for the week ending Sept 134 were 20 and for the week ending 21st Sept, 20. ... The report alluded to the nuisances still remaining at Ebor cottages, Romford Road, Stratford. The clerk was subsequently instructed to take immediate steps for the removal of various nuisances contained in the medical officer's report.

Essex Standard - 8 Sept 1865

Partial transcript:

West Ham Board of Guardians

...Mr Tanner drew the attention of the Board (of Guardians) to the outbreak of typhus fever in Ebor Cottages, Romford Road. ... Mr McDowell, the relieving officer of the district stated that the inhabitants of the locality alluded to were very dirty people and fever might be traced to that cause. In one house there were only two rooms for 17 people to live in.

Ed: Typhus was an infectious disease of poverty that Victorians began to tackle in earnest through the new science of public health. It was sometimes called "Irish Fever" and was noted for its virulence. It killed people of all social classes as lice were endemic and inescapable, but it hit particularly hard in the lower or "unwashed" social strata.

Chelmsford Chronicle - 31 Aug 1866

Partial transcript:

The Medical Officer's Report: ... There were various nuisances requiring suppression, among which the animal charcoal factory at East Ham was the most prominent; so late as Saturday last the inmates in the houses Sun-row, Ilford-row were driven out by the stench and fetid smoke arising therefrom. The instantaneous removal of these works was strongly urged.

Chelmsford Chronicle - 1 August 1845

This is an advert for the sale of the 247 acre Woodgrange estate, included within the auction are:

Partial transcript:

Eight neat cottages with gardens. ...Lot 7 will consist of eight brick-built cottages (ED: i.e. Ebor Cottages), with good gardens to the front of the high road.

Essex Standard - 13 Oct 1854

Transcript:

A fatal accident from running behind a wagon - on Thursday last, as Mr Wells jnr carrier from London to Brentwood was on his home journey near the Rising Sun, Stratford, several children from Irish Row ran after the wagon and hung on the tail-board: one of them, a boy about eight years of age, got too near the wheel, which caught his pinafore and drew him through the spokes of the wheel with his head under the springs. Mr Wells, who was driving, felt some obstruction, and got down to see what was the matter, when he found the poor boy with his head crushed to atoms and quite dead. The body was tightly wedged in that it was with considerable difficulty extracted. An inquest was held on Saturday before CC Lewis Esq, and a verdict of "Accidental Death" returned.

Chelmsford Chronicle - 2 June 1865

Transcript:

Beerhouse Offence - Mrs Sarah Styles, beer house keeper, Irish Row, West Ham was convicted of having her house open for the sale of beer after eleven o'clock on the night of the 19th inst, and fined 10s and costs.

Chelmsford Chronicle - 27 Feb 1863

Transcript:

Caution to carriers - On Tuesday night last, Mr Maunt, carrier from London to Hornchurch was conveying a box from the former to the latter place, containing a dressing case, jewelry, and ladies wardrobe, the property of the Rev C Row of Cranham, and although on nearing Irish Row, Forest Gate, at ten minutes past seven, he saw the box perfectly safe, and had gone only a few yards further when he missed it, nor could he find the least trace of it. Information was quickly given to the police and the same evening one of the metropolitan police force, K 342, found the box in an adjoining field, in the occupation of Mr Adams, farmer. It was broken open, and part of its contents, to the value of £10 had been abstracted.

Great detective work by the local Green Party has thrown up an interesting story about the property interests of some of our local councillors, which we examine, below.

This blog also provides a timely update on matters relating to our previous article on overseas companies' interests in Forest Gate properties - following comments from a couple of our followers/readers.

After an examination of the Greens' work, you might conclude that as far as some local representatives are concerned, they could as well be described as representing the local Landlord Party, as the local Labour Party.

The Green Party has established that - between them - 46 Newham councillors own or control nearly 100 properties in Newham. A charitable observer may conclude that 43 of those properties are effectively owner occupied by councillors.

Which leaves the interesting story of the remaining 56 (that we know of).

Nine Newham councillors (about one in 7 of the total) are, by any standards, significant local landlords - and all elected as Labour members.

Beckton councillor, Ayesha Chowdhury is queen of the group, with 19 properties in the borough, which have a combined estimated value of in excess of £4.5 million, and a collective monthly rent of over £20,000.

The capitals gains on these properties since their original purchase (using Land Registry and Zoopla figures) exceeds £1.5million. She built up her property empire from her home - a Newham council flat (!) - until exposed by the national press four years ago.

Cllr Ayesha Chowdhury - property queen, who built her empire while living in a Newham council house and her Forest Gate interest - 21 Eric Close

Second in the local landlord/councillor stakes is Royal Docks member Antony McAlmont, whose registered properties (mostly controlled by limited companies, including Ashbel UK) total seven, with a value of almost £3.5 million.

Cllr Antony McAlmont, whose local
property interest is wrapped up
in limited companies

Third placed is Ahmed Noor (Plaistow South), with at least five properties in Newham, conservatively valued at £3million. He has provoked considerable controversy because of his property dealings in Forest Gate (see below).

Next on the local landlord/councillor list is Unmesh Desai (East Ham, Central), who has recently been selected as Labour candidate for the Greater London Assembly seat of City and East London, in next May's election.

The Greens have tracked down five properties in his ownership, with a combined Zoopla estimated value in excess of £2million, and a hypothetical capital gain of almost £1million, since their original acquisition.

Step forward Green Street East Councillor Mukesh Patel, as next in line. There have been five Newham properties registered to his name, two of which have subsequently been transferred to Piyush Patel (his wife?).

Green St East's Mukesh Patel,
with five Newham properties

Next our very own, former absentee Mayoral adviser on Forest Gate, Rohima Rahman (Green Street East). She is registered as the beneficial owner of three Newham properties, with a combined value of £1.25 million. One of these properties is a leasehold one, with Newham Council owning the freehold.

Forest Gate South member, Mas Patel, owns two properties in Newham and at least one other in Ilford, while neighbouring, Green Street West councillor Idris Ibrahim is the registered owner of two Newham properties.

Green St West's Idris Ibrahim
- just the two local properties

2 and 21 Westbury Road, in Forest Gate, for local councillor, Idris Ibrahim

Manor Park councillor Salim Patel rounds up this part of this survey - he, also, directly owns two Newham properties. He is, however, involved with a complex web of property companies, which between them own a further 10 properties in the borough.

The Forest Gate interest

32 councillor-owned properties are located in Forest Gate and at least four councillors with a direct interest in the area feature in the lists, above.

Property queen Ayesha Chowdhury (see above) has an interest in the E7 postcode, with the ownership of 18 Eric Close, from which she receives £1,000 rent per month. She has overseen a capital gain of £75,000 on this property, since she took ownership of it, which is now valued by Zoopla with a value of £264,000.

Four of Ahmed Noor's five properties lie within the E7 postcode; and the fifth is in East Ham. Two of the Forest Gate properties (218 and 230 Green Street) are shops. A third is 46 Windsor Road, from which he collects a monthly rent of £3,500.

Cllr Ahmed Noor (left) - suspended from the Labour Party nationally and locally after breaching planning permission. 238 Romford Road, the controversial building in question, whose flats, additionally provided "poor quality accommodation" (see below for details)

Noor's two Green Street Shops - 218 and 230

46 Windsor, another of Noor's Forest Gate
portfolio, delivering a monthly rental of £3,500

Most controversially Cllr Noor also owns 238 Romford Road. Forest Gate resident, Martin Warne, in his excellent blog: Forestgate.net has tracked his relationship with this premises. The building (see photo, above) has planning permission for commercial, not residential use. It was, however, sometime recently converted into a rooming house, or more officially a "house in multiple occupation", without appropriate approval.

Cllr Noor was issued with an enforcement notice this Spring, following its unauthorised conversion, which not only highlighted the unlawful refurbishment, but drew attention to its shoddy state. The notice said:

The conversion of the property to a house in multiple occupation provides a poor quality of accommodation, which is to the detriment of the persons who live there, and at a neighbourhood level, harms the objective of creating healthier neighbourhoods. It is therefore contrary to the policy ... and requirements of the Lifetime Homes Standards. (our emphasis).

Cllr Noor quickly said that he complied with the notice and returned it to commercial usage (see photograph suggesting that it is the headquarters of a plumbing company). He was, however, suspended from the Labour Party, locally and nationally, pending an investigation into his actions surrounding it.

Cllr Noor's excuse was that it was rented out to a third party which was responsible for the conversion, without his knowledge. It is not clear whether Newham Council has conducted a subsequent inspection to determine that the premises are actually commercial now, or that the unsightly advertising is simply a smoke screen for continued unauthorised domestic occupancy.

Would-be Greater London Authority member and Newham Councillor, Unmesh Desai's local property portfolio includes 115 Tower Hamlets Road, in Forest Gate. He receives a monthly rent of £1,300 for this and has benefitted from a capital gain from it of in excess of £200,000, since he first purchased the house. His other E7 acquisition is 34 Rothsay Road.

Would be Greater London
Authority councillor, and
close associate of Mayor
Robin Wales, Unmesh
Desai with two Forest
Gate and five
Newham-wide properties

34 Rothsay and 115 Tower Hamlets Road - part of local the Desai property collection

Rohima Rahman, Forest Gate's now deposed former mayoral Advisor on Forest Gate owns 21 Dorset Road, as one of her three Newham properties. She has seen a capital gain on it of almost £200,000, since her original purchase of it.

Familiar face? The former absentee "mayoral advisor" on Forest Gate. Too busy looking after her property interests (one of which, 21 Dorset Road, shown right) to be an active Forest Gate advisor?

Being a Councillor for Green Street West is handy for Idris Ibhrahim. It means he can keep an eye on the interest of the two properties he owns on Westbury Road (2 and 21) - see above for photos.

Forest Gate South councillor, Mas Patel is similarly well-placed to look out for developments regarding to his properties at 23 Vale Road and 74 A - C Upton Lane.

Forest Gate South's Mas
Patel

Mas of property in Forest Gate: 74 a-c Upton Lane and 23 Vale Roads

Manor Park's Salim Patel's local property empire is difficult to fully establish, given the complex property-owning structure of companies he benefits from.

But he certainly has an interest - possibly controlling - of five Forest Gate properties, through these arrangements, being those at 278 Shrewsbury and 6 Lincoln Roads, together with 113a and 115 Godwin and 12 Stafford Roads.

Manor Park's Salim Patel,
with five Forest Gate properties

Salim Patel's five Forest Gate properties: top: 6 Lincoln, 113b - 115 Godwin, second row: 278 Shrewsbury, 12 Stafford Roads

Many would argue that there is nothing intrinsically wrong about landlordism, or being a "buy-to-let" landlord in the complex property jungle that is London. Nor should it simplistically be assumed that "all landlords are Tories".

However, in the one-party state that is Newham, pretty much the only way to guarantee election to the Council - and to keep a watching eye over the fate of your property portfolio - is to stand as a Labour candidate.

How many of these landlords would be Tories, if Newham were less loyal to Labour? How many of them use and stand for Labour as a "flag of convenience", while having no regard to the party's policies about providing decent, reasonably-priced, homes for people?

In a one-party-state, with an autocratic mayor, it is particularly important to s/elect strong candidates, who will stand up for local people, rather than simply party hacks, or those flying under flags of convenience.

It is difficult to conclude that all of Labour's councillors fall into the category of candidates who will always stand for the interests of local people.

N.B. If any of the councillors above feel we have misrepresented, or indeed under-estimated, their property interests in this article, we will be happy to correct the detail, all of which has come from publicly available sources.

Overseas ownership update

There is progress to report on the building that we described as "prestigious" and "iconic" in the 'Offshore Forest Gate' post, last month (see here): BCP City Gate, on Romford Road.

We recorded this property, you may recall, as being registered in the Isle of Man in July 2005 to BCP City Gate Ltd, with a recorded value - then - of £3,658,840.

The Isle of Man company which
owned this local landmark -
City Gate House - went into
liquidation in the Spring of this year

We have subsequently learned that the company was put in the hands of liquidators on 10 April this year. Quite how a company with that level of assets could sink into insolvency is unclear, unless the property concerned has been moved on to the ownership of yet another company.

We do not know why this should have happened, but will not be shedding any tears of sorrow for the fate of the liquidated company. It is difficult to believe that there are not ulterior motives at play, which will further enhance the position of the beneficial owners of the building - all firmly out of the sight of the British tax collector - of course!

Meanwhile, one more significant local building can be added to the list of the foreign owned, and largely exempt from British tax liability.

When it became clear that Forest Gate was to become a beneficiary of the opening of Crossrail, Woodgrange Road's Telephone House was snapped by a Saudi company, sensing a good return on the investment would be pretty much guaranteed.

Although Saudi Arabia is not a tax haven, in the way that some of the countries mentioned in the original article are, there is no doubt that the British exchequer will not gain the same benefit from increased rents or values that it would have experienced had the building remained in UK ownership.

We also mentioned the cluster of properties around 50 Avenue Road, in our post, as being beneficially owned by Isle of Man based Dominion Ltd.

The property was formerly a hostel owned by the London and Quadrant Housing Association. We understand from someone who knew the project well that the building was home to many of Forest Gate's "characters".

50 Avenue Road, forming housing
association hostel, sold to Isle
of Man based landlords, following
unresolved dampness problems

Persistent, unresolved, dampness problems with the premises, however, lead the housing association to sell the premises and move the residents on elsewhere. Thus explaining the sale of the property - but not providing an explanation for it coming under tax haven Isle of Man ownership.

Footnote. If you are interested to know more about our local Green Party, to whom we are greatly indebted for the bulk of the information in this blog, please follow @rachel_shares (chair of Newham Green Party, @newhamgreens on Twitter, or Like them on Facebook: http//www.facebook.com/newhamgreenparty.

- the last active member of a five-generation-firm dies

A piece of local industrial history slipped by, almost unnoticed, last month. The Chestnut Avenue factory of H Brettell & Sons Ltd, woodturners, stair and handrail manufacturers, closed for the last time.

Getting ready to close the doors for
the last time at Brettell's in Chestnut Road

In a downsizing move, the company, now branded as 'Brettell's', transferred their local business to a railway arch in Winchelsea Road – just a couple of doors along from the Wanstead Tap – thus returning near to a previous Forest Gate location.

Busy workshop in Chestnut Road,
just a few months ago

The company started life in Haggerston, around 1830, when Henry Brettell, a 14-year old descendent of Huguenot French cabinet makers, began to produce handles for tools and turnings for local traders, next to a sawmill. He was able to use their off-cuts and scrap as the basis for his raw materials.

Eighty years after establishment, the firm – then run by the founder's son (also Henry) and grandsons – moved to larger premises in Bethnal Green, and soon began war work – making munition boxes and handles for trench periscopes for the army during World War 1. There was no electrically powered machinery - everything was driven by wide leather belts from pulleys on overhead line-shafting and run from a neighbour's motor through a hole in the wall.

Henry Brettell with second son, Will

In the age before handles for almost everything were made of plastic, companies like Brettells' contributed to a bewildering range of products and supplied numerous occupations: jewellers, for their rosewood engraving tools' handles; glass merchant's cutter handles; handles for paint brushes and most hand tools; boxwood post office date stamps; publicans' beer pump handles; judges' wig stands; lighter bases for Ronsons; ceremonial sword scabbards for Wilkinson: chair legs for furniture.

Henry James Brettell, Rob's grandfather
and third generation of the family
to work at the firm

Lignum pucks for deck quoits on the great Cunard liners, were made by Brettell's, as well as mallets for croquet, fids for plaiting rope in the Royal Navy, collars for GPO transatlantic telephone cables, morticians mallets, police truncheons, floggers for hammering bungs into beer barrels, lemon cutting boards for pubs, stone masons mallets and lead dressers for roofers. The list is almost endless and in its heyday, extended to every part of British industry and enterprise.

Inter- war price list from Brettells

The third generation Henry, and his brothers, continued to run the business after the death of their father, in 1921 – although closed briefly during the depression of the early 1930's. By the end of that decade they were back in business, concentrating on “war work” and their employees were designated to be in a “reserved occupation”, and thus exempt from military service.

War damage in Bethnal Green

Although bombed, the company survived the blitz and continued working from their Bethnal Green base on civilian work, post war, until its premises was CPO'd by the London County Council in 1955, to make way for housing.

And, so began its almost 60-year relationship with Forest Gate. James Brettell moved the business to four railway arches and 10,000 square feet of space at 350 Winchelsea Road - where it would remain until 1980.

Surviving company documents show that Brettell's took over an existing Forest Gate firm of wood turners – H Oliver and Sons Ltd, when they moved in. Not only did it acquire their arches' lease from British Rail, it also took Oliver's wood turning machinery – some of which was still in use, until recently, in Chestnut Avenue. The buy-out cost Brettell's a mere £500.

Goldstein hand turning lathe being put
through its paces, in Brettell's heyday

Brettell's website describes the local setting soon after their move:

Winchelsea Road during the 70’s was surrounded by a fascinating mix of interesting characters with a variety of occupations with, it seemed, the woodturning factory at its heart. There was the car mechanic; the blacksmith; the women bottle washers; the sprayer; the seed merchant; the tinsmith and the stone masons. We all got sandwiches from Alec’s corner café (ed: now a Caribbean Cafe)with a juke box, Bev coffee and a pin ball machine jacked up on wooden blocks to make the ball run faster. There was the corner shop; the brush makers; the clothing factory and the printers. The street seemed to be full of cars all tied together with string.

When a free coffee machine was installed outside the office this often became a focal point and an excuse for people to visit and of course at some point everyone needed a piece of wood or some wood chips. The company supplied the whole road with wood chips for their chip burners. Every so often they would bring back some charred spanners that had been swept up and bagged with the chips. A lot of trading went on within this small community under the barter system and it became known as “The Mill”.

Jim Brettell, James' son and the last surviving member of the family, who has never played an active part in its production, says that his father was well known for giving local characters in search of work, or who had fallen on hard times, a break and a job at the company. He employed many a released prisoner on the advice of Probation Officers, together with one of the first black immigrants in the area from the Dominican Republic.

James Brettell, fourth generation
family member and father of Rob,
the last in the active line

The business continued to prosper, under family control, and in 1980 moved to more convenient freehold premises, 8,500 square foot of industrial space in the midst of the otherwise residential Chestnut Avenue, less than a mile away. These premises had been vacated by Messrs Westgate Grafton, dealers in woodworking machinery. Control of the firm had passed successively through the third and fourth generation Brettells, until fifth generation, Rob (Jim, above's brother) took over in 1995.

Rob, as a youngster at the workshop

The company began to diversify in the early years of the present century, moving into production of large turnings for staircases and complex hand-railing in order to supplement general woodturning which was becoming less profitable as demand fell.

It has been from Chestnut Avenue that highly skilled craftsmen, using a variety of machine tools and lathes have been able to produce bespoke products to the very highest of standards for a wide range of customers – from building merchants to high-spec jobs in some of the most prestigious locations in Britain, such as Mayfair and Knightsbridge (see photographs).

Chestnut Road workshop, recently, as it
is cleared out, before house building
commences (above and below)

At its peak, the company employed up to 20 people. With the departure of some of them, and the move away from woodturning, we have lost some of the most skilled turners and woodworkers in the country, whose craft and techniques have been forever lost.

Recently deceased Rob Brettell,
last in the family active in the company

With the fifth generation, Rob's, death this Spring, there is no longer an active member of the family employed on the manufacturing side of the business. The company has decided to downsize and move back to its former stomping ground in Winchelsea Road railway arches – just occupying one, this time, about 50 yards away from its earlier base.

Back home? inside the new
premises in Winchelsea Road

So much for the history, what of the practice, and present?

The company still produces staircases and fittings to the highest order and maintains the tradition of hand-crafted production, spurning the growing use of computer-controlled 5 axis CNC machines.

Fork lift truck entering the new premises

They continue to believe that it's only by the use of old-style techniques that the very best results can be achieved and when required, especially in sensitive historic locations. A look at their website: www.brettells.co.uk shows the high quality workmanship and range of products and customised goods made and supplied.

A recently produced and customised staircase

Although the closure of Chestnut Avenue feels like the end of an era, the firm is still producing locally. If you have specialist joinery needs, why not pop in, have a chat and see if they can match your specification?

'The Wanstead' - one of the
company's standard products

The vacant premises on Chestnut Avenue will become the site of six new houses and the bulldozers will be in soon to demolish the old (and frankly crumbling) workshops currently standing there.

For details on the fascinating history of the rest of Chestnut Avenue, see next week's blog, when local historian Peter Williams produces another of his historical Forest Gate street guides.

Footnote. There is a great selection of photographs of Brettell's, as a small woodworking factory, in an edition of Spitalfields Life from June 2014 (see here), to whom we are indebted for the use of some of the photographs in this article (as indicated). Brettell's own website (see here) provides more information and photographs about the firm, to whom we are also indebted for their use.

This is the third in an occasional series of articles by local historian, Peter Williams, who specialises in Newham housing, maps and local history. In each he looks, in detail, at the history of particular streets in Forest Gate.

Peter has complemented his own knowledge by accessing the increasingly digitised national newspapers' collection - which can be found here- and has added extracts from this that refer specifically to the roads he features. The reproduction isn't always clear, so we have transcribed sections of them.

They add greatly to an understanding of social circumstances of the time, and describe some pretty poor public health and social conditions.

Chestnut Avenue

Chestnut Avenue, especially the wider section, has been in existence since well before the Victorian houses were built. Its current shape may well be to do with land holdings going back to the 18th century and earlier – for example Chestnut Lodge a country house with orchards which lay immediately to the west of wide Chestnut Avenue.

For details of the previous article on the nearby Woodford Road, the former Eagle and Child pub, Lord Lister clinic and cattle on Wanstead Flats, see here. That article also looked at the earlier Woodgrange farm and the original Forest Gate.

The 1863 Ordnance Survey map published 1873 (see below) shows the narrow and wide Chestnut Avenue, more or less on the current alignment, but with no housing development.

For an enlarged view of this 1863 map, click here:

Trade directories of the time show that there was a pub at 40 Chestnut Avenue, The Globe, between 1871 and 1886. There is currently a house at this address, which almost certainly replaced the former public house.

40 Chestnut Avenue today,
location of The Globe pub,
1871 - 1886

There is a very interesting plaque surviving on the wall of 48 - 50, in narrow section of Chestnut Avenue that records the role of the Spitalfields Investment Society in developing the houses in 1875.

Plaque on wall between 48 and 50 Chestnut
Avenue, reading: "This stone was laid on August
5th 1875. Amos Sanders, John Newman and
George Roberts, trustees of the Spitalfields
Investment Society. Edward Brown,
architect, C W Beale, builder

Below is an extract from a contemporary newspaper, which is the tender for painting 35 of these, cottages at Forest Gate.

Chelmsford Chronicle 11 May 1877

There were a number of these kind of societies in East London at the time, they were often known as Four Per Cent Societies. They were privately funded by non- exploitative investors/landlords, who wanted to build decent housing for working people, and in exchange were guaranteed a four per cent return on their capital - paid for from the rents.

The idea was to provide good housing at reasonable rents, a far cry from much of the accommodation in the slums of East London, at the time (or, indeed, today). These, some of the original "building societies", were not totally philanthropic, but offered a fair rate of return on capital to the builders of decent houses. An idea that wouldn't go amiss, in helping address the housing crisis in London, today.

The need for good housing and sanitary conditions in this area was rather well illustrated twenty years previously. A number of concerned citizens called for an inquiry into poor environmental health conditions in the West Ham area in the early 1850's. The result was a very influential report, to which we will return at a later date, written by Alfred Dickens, the brother of the famed author.

His report, of 1855, had the rather clumsy title of Report of the General Board of Health on a Preliminary Inquiry into the Sewerage, Drainage and Supply of Water, and the sanitary Conditions of the Inhabitants of the Parish of West Ham in the County of Essex.

Its publication had far reaching local consequences, as we will show in a later blog. Page 55 of it specifically referred to the area around what we know as Chestnut Avenue:

There is a well in Chestnut Walk, an open ditch flows into it and pollutes it. Near the Eagle and Child there is an open ditch, which is said to be very offensive.

The surrounding area had a number of market gardens and smallholdings, no doubt supplying the London Market. For details of some of the local market gardens, see here.

Chelmsford Chronicle 17 Jul 1896:

Partial transcript:

Lord Claude Hamilton, chairman of the Great Eastern Railway Company is announced to open the fruit, flower and vegetable show which has been arranged by the salesmen of Stratford Market in aid of the funds of West Ham Hospital. Numerous entries have been received ... The entrance to Chestnut Lodge Paddock, Carnarvon road, Stratford is quite close to the tram cars running between Stratford and Manor Park ...

The press cutting, above, shows that even in the 1890s in Carnarvon Road, just this side of Stratford, there were active market gardens and horticultural producers.

Originally some of the market gardens had wooden shacks occupied by residents from inner East London – Shoredittch, Hoxton – as weekend or holiday homes.

Stratford had a wholesale fruit and vegetable market developed by the railway company in Burford Rd.

The cutting also shows the impact of the Great Eastern Railway (the current Liverpool Street line) in opening the area up to development, allowing rapid movement of people and goods to central London. It is comparable to CrossRail opening up Forest Gate again from 2018.

The Great Eastern arrived at Forest Gate in 1839. The army of clerks in the City of London needed housing and new suburbs sprang up to meet the demand as shown on the next map.

For an enlarged view of this 1895 Ordnance Survey map, click here

This map shows more or less the current street pattern and the tree lined wide Chestnut Avenue.

The map below also marks the arrival of the Tottenham and Forest Gate Junction Railway (now the Barking-Gospel Oak) with Wanstead Park station opened 1894. This is an example of blatant marketing by the railway company, since it is nowhere near Wanstead Park proper.

For an enlarged view, click here

You can also see Angell Pond at the junction of Capel and Woodford Roads, developed by West Ham council engineer Lewis Angell to assist drainage on the Flats, which were very boggy. A bandstand soon appeared too demolished in the 1950s.

Angell Pond, with bandstand, as described, above

The development process is spelled out in this piece from the 1907 publication West Ham, a Study in Social and Industrial Problems by Howarth and Wilson:

Chestnut Avenue and Avenue Road, which leads from Forest Gate Station to Wanstead Flats, were built about 1875. The houses are detached, or semi-detached, and are let by the year or quarter at rentals varying from £28 to £50 per annum. The tenants are chiefly business people and clerks, whose work lies in the City. A change has come over the Avenue Road property during the last five years (i.e. the early years of the twentieth century). The houses are difficult to let, and although the tenants are of the same class as formerly, they belong to a rather lower grade. On the other hand, some of the Chestnut Avenue property has largely increased in value. The reason for this is that several of the houses have very long gardens, and there is a demand in this district for houses with gardens. The lease of one of these, with four rooms and a wash-house, was recently sold for £230, whereas it fetched £175 twelve years ago.

By way of explanation for the variations mentioned in the extract above, building started in the mid 1870s but the 1880s saw a major recession in Britain and speculative house building slowed down. The report says that there was an adequate supply of housing between 1892 -97, but from 1897 -99 demand outstripped supply and rents rose. Families took rooms not houses.

By the early 1900s the area was in some decline but then bounced back with a house costing £175 in 1895 and £230 in 1907. House price volatility is not a new thing.

Chestnut Avenue in 1910

In 1910 Chestnut Avenue was a quiet leafy suburban street with only the occasional small cart to be seen on the road. Notice the trees on the left, in the photo above, are in the carriageway not on the pavement.

Chestnut Avenue achieved a less welcome footnote to history between the two World Wars. It was the home of Millicent "Scat" Bullivant, a leading light in East London fascism.

Bullivant was the daughter of middle class conservatives from Norfolk and was employed as the secretary to the sales manager at Yardley, the cosmetics company, the core of whose iconic headquarters survives on the approach to Bow Bridge, in Stratford. She lived at 94 Chestnut Avenue.

She was a long-standing doctrinal fascist, having joined the Fascisti, a forerunner to Mosley'e British Union of Fascists (BUF) in the 1920's. She, and her brother, Richard Alveston Bullivant, were active early organisers of the fascists in Forest Gate and established its bookshop/headquarters, just around the corner from their house, at 18 Woodford Road.

Bullivant, centre, with a couple of
fascist colleagues in their blackshirt
uniforms, before they were banned

Their ultimate fate isn't known, but they recruited the local organiser, Arthur Beavan to the role of local organiser. He was a thug, who was detained, without trail, in 1940, following the outbreak of war with Germany.

See here for a fuller account of Fascism in Forest Gate in the 1930's.

What the papers' say

Essex Newsman - 2 February 1895

Transcript:

Run over and killed in Forest Gate

Mr Lewis held an inquest at the King's Head Inn, West Ham on 24 Jan, on the body of George Gilbert, aged 68, lately residing at 10 Derby Road, Forest Gate, who was run over and killed by a horse and van in Chestnut Avenue. Albert Edward Perkins, of 81 Park Road, West Ham who was cautioned, said he was employed by the Forest Gate Steam Laundry Company as carman, and was collecting linen in Chestnut Avenue. He pulled up at No 89 and got out to pu the chain on the hind wheel. Before he could do so the horse bolted and galloped Chestnut Avenue towards Woodford Road. Witness could assign no reason for the horse bolting. The horse was sent to the company on trial. He was told not to leave it. A boy went with him, but at the time he was in Capel Road collecting linen. The jury returned a verdict of "Accidental death", but said that they considered that there was negligence on the part of the laundry servants, and that the widow be compensated.

Chelmsford Chronicle - 3 Aug 1900

Partial transcript:

Alleged artfulness of a servant

At West Ham police court on Tuesday Emily Taylor, 21, a servant of earl Street, Stratford, was charged with stealing a quantity of silver and other articles, a large quantity of household linen etc, valued at £!5, the property of William O'Reilly, of Chestnut Avenue, Forest Gate. The prisoner entered Mrs O'Reilly's employment on July 19 and the next day the family went away for a fortnight. ... The prisoner admitted that she had had a man in the house, and that she had helped him to pack up the things and to count the money, and that she had pawned some of the things. A remand was ordered.

Essex Newsman - 18 July 1896

Transcript:

Shocking death on Wanstead Flats: Something frightful

On Thursday an unknown wanderer was found in a dying condition on Wanstead Flats. He expired before medical assistance could be obtained. The body was in a fearful condition, showing long-continued neglect. The coroner (Mr C C Lewis) held an inquest as soon as possible in order that the body might be buried. Constable Comley, 229K, who deposed to the poor man's death opposite Chestnut Avenue, said the clothing was of a very shabby description, and covered with vermin. Flies had also attacked his body and left live matter about. On the left leg of the deceased's trousers there was an appearance of blood, and the smell was "something frightful - you could hardly breathe". Witness loosened deceased's neckerchief and administered smelling salts, which he carried. He also blew his whistle, and thereby obtained assistance. Dr Boyton came, but the man was dead. The body was conveyed to the mortuary, where it was examined. The left leg was discovered to be one mass of mortification. Nothing was found in the clothing to lead to identification. The body was much emaciated, and live creatures were crawling over it. Deceased said nothing to witness. The Coroner adjourned the inquiry.

Bodies were regularly found on the Flats in the Victorian period, a reminder of the extreme poverty of the era. There were also a number of suicides and the odd murder.

Footnote: See here for Peter's history of Woodford Road, and here for the Ebor Cottages article, posted earlier on this blog. Last week's blog featured the history of Brettell's, a firm of wood turners who have recently vacated their premises on Chestnut Road, after 30 years on the street.

This site is often contacted with family history enquiries from genealogists tracing their Forest Gate roots. We always try to assist, and where enquirers can provide a little bit of local background and flavour, we are happy to publish their requests here.

We will be happy to update this post, on a case by case basis, in future, when we get queries that offer the basis of a story and research already undertaken. Below is the first of these queries to be published.

Arthur Edington Williams (1845 - 1923)

One such enquiry recently came about a local turn of the century socialist, Arthur Edington Williams. It was from one of his great grandchildren, Anne Speight. We run her information and request, below. If anyone knows more about the family concerned, we ask you to contact Anne directly by e.mail: annep.speight@ntlworld.com.

Anne writes:

Arthur Edington Williams was my great grandfather and born in Bethnal Green, but his married life was spent in Forest Gate. He was the son of a buhl and facet cutter (ed: craftworker specialising in inlaid work on furniture), but Arthur himself was a fancy cabinet maker. One of the things he made was portable writing desks.

Arthur Edington Williams (1845-1923)

His wife Hannah originally, come to London from Norfolk, to work as a servant. They had several children and lived variously at Dean Street, Odessa Road, Boleyn Road and at Keogh Road. Their offspring were variously members of the Clarion Cycling Club, a ship’s wireless operator, elementary school teacher and two were railway telegraphers based at Stratford station.

Arthur’s daughter-in-law, Clara Williams, played violin at the Earlham Grove Music Academy c 1920.

I have the 1923 newspaper report of Arthur being knocked down in thick fog by a car on Romford Road. He died almost immediately, but his widow remained at Keogh Road till after World War Two.

Arthur was a keen socialist. I wonder if he appears in any trade directories or political hustings?

Sydney Frederick Williams (1884-1972), a son of Arthur Edington Williams, was a railway telegrapher and bachelor. He remained at the family home on Keogh Road until after World War Two.

1919 strike committee of West Ham branch
of National Union of Railwaymen,
Sydney Williams third from left in middle row.

I believe he is the same Sydney Williams as identified in the attached group photo, which is of the National Union of Railwaymen, West Ham branch, strike committee in 1919. Third from the left, in the middle row is Sydney Williams.

Forest Gate hosts some of the country's least hygienic eateries and food stores - and some of the best - according to the Food Standards Agency. This is our second round-up of the Agency's ratings for Forest Gate's food outlets.

For details of how the it judges food stores and restaurants, see our summary here, from last year's blogs. For direct access to the FSA's Forest Gate ratings, see here.

The Agency gives Star ratings to all premises - from zero to 5. We have taken journalistic licence and given our own shorthand labelling to these ratings - as shown in the sub-titles to the listings below - for which we take responsibility.

There has been a considerable turnover of premises rated - some dropping off and others joining from the lists we published last year. So, the ratings below, which follow those the FSA's currently list, and is not totally comprehensive.

We have indicated (in brackets) below, last year's ratings for the premises where comparisons are available.

Last year we also published details of all schools and social care home ratings. We are not doing so this year, as they are, without exception rated either our "good", 4 stars, or "excellent" five stars. Even Stratford Academy, which produced a rogue rating of only 1 star last year is now up with the school norm of 4/5 stars.

Stratford Academy, over its rogue 1 star result
last year, now up to a sector norm, of 5 stars

Because like is not being compared with like, it is difficult to say, overall, whether overall hygiene levels of Forest Gate food outlets are better this year than last. However, some comparisons can be made, and the results are mixed.

Four restaurants last year had zero stars. Two of those have subsequently closed, the Pakhtoon on Green Street and the New Sea Garden on Katherine Road. The other two: Abu Bakar (Upton Lane) and Afghan Kebab (Green Street) now have one star. So, that is good news.

More worryingly, however, the first food outlet that faces rail passengers leaving Forest Gate station - Eat More on the parade of shops opposite the station - went from one to zero stars. Perhaps it should be renamed: Eat Less, Clean More.

There were some pleasing improvements in cleanliness standards in some food outlets. So, the Lahore Express and Margalla Grill, both on Green Street and Himalayan Food Store on Katherine Road had their star rating risen from a low 1 to a decent 3. The Holly Tree on Dames Road moved up from a good 4 star rating to an excellent 5 stars.

Biggest credit, however, must go to TSB Cash and Carry on Katherine Road and the Best Kebab House on Upton Lane, each of which moved from a rather poor one star rating to an excellent 5 stars, within a year. Good for them, and surely a great example of what can be done with some concerted effort, that all others, locally, could follow.

Great credit to TSB Cash and Carry
on Katherine Road with a spectacular
improvement from 1 star to 5

On the down side, the Forest Gate Hotel (Godwin Road), Kebabish Original (Green Street), Lahori Baba (Green Street) and Wenty's (Upton Lane) slipped from two stars to one.

Papa's Fried Chicken (Romford Road) made a steeper fall from 3 stars to 1.

Worst plummeter award, however, must go to Romford Road's Hartley Hotel which sunk from 4 to 1 star. Unacceptable activity, surely, meriting a rotten tomato, by way of recognition.

Rotten tomato award goes to Hartley Hotel,
which has seen its rating plummet from 4 stars to 1

Shocking - 0 stars

Restaurants/pubs/hotels/takeaways

Eat More (1) - 8-10 Railways Station Bridge, Woodgrange Road
La Pizza - 396 Romford Road
S and S Biryani - Rear of 19-29 Shaftesbury Road

Welcome to Forest Gate: Zero stars,
perhaps should be renamed: Eat Less, Clean More

Shops and others

Favourite Best - 118 Upton Lane
Kiheta African Shop - 1a Sebert Road
Mona Food - 25a Oakdale Road

Poor - 1 star

Restaurants/pubs/hotels/takeaways

Abu Bakars BBQ (0) - 47 Upton Lane

From the BBQ pits of zero stars
to a solitary one - at least its
progress for Abu Bakar

Afghan Kebab House (0) - 89 Green Street
A'la Pizza - 28 Upton Lane
Caribbean Country Style/E7 Jerk Pit - 110 Woodgrange Road
Charcoal Grill and BBQ (1) - 105 Woodgrange Road
Charsi Tikka (1) - 50 Woodgrange Road
Daily Fry and Spice/Biryani House (1) - 426 Katherine Road
Faruk Chatpoti House - 16 Carlton Terrace, Green Street
Forest Gate Hotel (2) - 105 Godwin Road

Poor from Forest Gate Hotel,
which slips from 2 stars to 1

Hartley Hotel (4)- 365 - 367 Romford Road
Himalaya (1) - 9-10 Carlton Terrace, Green Street
Jin Hui Chinese Takeaway (1) - 64 Field Road
Kebashi Original/KO Grill (2) - 132 Green Street
Lahori Baba (2) - 78 Green Street
Medina Kebabish - 85 Upton Lane
Mobeen Restaurant - 222-226 Green Street
Panda's Kitchen - 396 Katherine Road
Perfect Fried Chicken (3) - 506 Romford Road

Far from Perfect - down
from 3 stars to just 1 in a year

Rajmahal Sweets and Cafe - 132 Upton Lane
Wenty's (2) - 26 Upton Lane

Shops and others

Anand Pan Centre - 229 Green Street
Atawakal Fresh Halal Meat - 493 Katherine Road
Bondor Cash and Carry (1) - 116 Upton Lane
Cakes and Bakes - 302 Romford Road
London Fish Bazaar - 149-153 Green Street

Sub-standard - 2 stars

Restaurants/pubs/hotels/takeaways

Chicago 30's Pizza (2) - 369 Katherine Road
Khan Restaurant (2) - 379 Romford Road
Lahori Zaiga - 297 Romford Road
Roast 2012 - 491 Katherine Road

Shops and others

Ali Communications - 367 Green Street
Al-Rehman Food Store - 465 Romford Road
Dames Off-Licence (2) - 215 Dames Road
Davina Supermarket - 58 Upton Lane
Karuri Newsagents (2) - 35 Woodgrange Road
MK Bros (2) - 30-32 Woodgrange Road
Perrier Wines (2) - 315 Romford Road
Pound Plus Store - 499 Katherine Road

Average -3 stars

Restaurants/pubs/hotels/takeaways

Al Farooq Kebabish (3) - 84 Upton Lane
Alnuur Cafe and Restaurant (2) - 466 Katherine Road
Aromas Restaurant - 172 Forest Lane
Bay of Bengal - 109 Green Street
Brioche Burger - 236 Green Street
East African Restaurant (3) - 14-16 St Georges Road
Eastern Palace (3) - 278 Romford Road
Express Chicken/Pizza - 136 Green Street
Everest (3) - 327 Romford Road
Family Grill - 392 Romford Road
Forest Cafe(3) - 61 Woodgrange Road
Forest Tavern - 173-175 Forest Lane
Fredor African and Caribbean Restaurant (3) - 177 Upton Lane
Kaffine - 180 Forest Lane
Lahore Xpress (1) - 99 Green Street

Pleasing progress from Lahore
Xpress - up from a poor 1
star to an average rating of 3

Lahori Kulfi - 8 Carlton Terrace, Green Street
Lazat Family Restaurant and Takeaway - 409 Katherine Road
London Travel Inn (Countryside Hotel) - 207 Romford
McCreadie Hotel (3)- 357-363 Romford Road
Manor House Hotel (3)- 235 Romford Road
Margalla Grill (1) - 255 Green Street
Newham Hotel - 349 - 353 Romford Road
NUR Restaurant (3) - 43 Woodgrange Road
Peri Peri Crush - 401 Katherine Road
PFC - 472 Green Street
Pizza Haven - 14 Sebert Road
Reggae Pot - 93 Pevensey Road
Ronak Restaurant (3) - 317 Romford Road
Safari International - 49 Upton Lane
Sake Sushi - 29 Upton Lane
The Grill Corner - 1-2 Carlton Terrace, Green Street
Vijay's Chawalla - 268 - 270 Green Street
Wakelin Court Residential Hotel - 96 Halley Road
Zu's Sizzler's (3) - 83 Green Street

Shops and others

Al Madina Butcher - 21 Upton Lane
Al Noor Fresh Fruit and Veg Store - 31 Upton Lane
AS Mini Market (3) - 276 Katherine Road
Asona Ba (3) - 305 Romford Road
Barry's Meat Market (3) - 49 Woodgrange Road
Bismillah Halal Meats (3) - 70 Upton Lane
Bondor Bazaar Cash and Carry (3) - 130 Green Street
Co-op - 67 - 73 Woodgrange Road (pre refit)
Himalaya Food Store (1) - 332 - 336 Katherine Road
Katarznynka Polish Supermarket(3) - 318 Romford Road
Kiri Food and Wine - 517 Katherine Road
Mina Stores - 274 Green Street
Muzda Bakery (3) - 129 Green Street
One Click - 522 Romford Road
Orbit Food Stores - 2 Reginald Road
Shalamar Supermarket - 513 Katherine Road
Sobji Bazar - 92 Woodgrange Road
Tesco - 542 Romford Road
Unique Cash and Carry (3) - 418 - 420 Katherine Road
United Halal Meat (3) - 3 Carlton Terrace, Green Street
Vasara (3) - 171 Forest Lane
Vegetarian Pound Foods - 4 - 6 Carlton Terrace, Green Street
Vinto - 529 Katherine Road
Woodgrange News Mart (3) - 25 Woodgrange Road

Good - 4 stars

Restaurants/pubs/takeaways

Cafe @ 48 (4) - 48 Upton Lane
Coffee 7 (4) - 10 Sebert Road
Compotes Cafe - 118 Woodgrange Road
Elsha Delight (4) - 173 Upton Lane
Hyderabad Darbar (4) - 60-62 Green Street
Indiano Pizza (4) - 126 Upton Lane
Lahoori Spicy Biryani House (4) - 342 Katherine Road
Marrakech - 236 Green Street
McDonalds (4) - 322 Romford Road
Mini Coffee Shop - 245 Romford Road
Moon House (4) - 56 Woodgrange Road
Papa Shafs Original (4) - 50 Upton Lane
Tarbush Swahili Dishes - 128 Upton Lane
Wanstead Tap - Winchelsea Road

Shops and others

Shindes Pure Veg - 236 Green Street
SM Food - 9 Upton Lane
Tesco Express (4) - 28 Woodgrange Road
Variety Foods - 20 Carlton Terrace, Green Street

Excellent - 5 Stars

Restaurants/pubs/takeaways

Best Kebab House (1) - 20 Upton Lane

Living up to its name: Best Kebab
House on Upton Lane improves
from 1 to 5 stars in just one year
- an example for all the others

Bojun's Grill - 236 Green Street
Coffee Republic - 236 Green Street
Hudson Bay (5) - 1 -5 Upton Lane
Khana Khazana (5)- 249 Green Street
Papa's Chicken (5) - 37a Woodgrange Road
Pita Pit - 236 Green Street
Pizza Hut (5) - 60 Woodgrange Road
Subway - 9 Woodgrange Road
The Holly Tree (4) - 141 Dames Road

Holly Tree: up from 4 to 5 stars

Shops and others

Akbar's (5) - 51 - 53 Upton Lane
Akro Pharmacy - 404 Katherine Road
Alaudin Sweet Centre (5) - 148 Green Street
Amba News - 108 Woodgrange Road
Amitas - 124 - 126 Green Street
Bharat Food Stores - 4-6 Carlton Terrace, Green Street
BT News - 22 Upton Lane
Cheap Store - 157 Green Street
Crailmay (chemist) - 70 Green Street
El Marinero - 11 Clifton Road
Fish Mela (5) - 39 Upton Lane
Gafoor Pure Halal - 134 Green Street
Malchem - 63 Woodgrange Road
Mayors Chemist - 45 Upton Lane
Mithal Box - 165 Green Street
Nawal - 253 Green Street
Nirala - 276 Green Street
Pennies and Pounds - 452 Romford Road
Post Office - 444 Romford Road
Post Office - 181 Upton Lane
Reids Minimart - 19 Station Road
Shan Chemist - 453 Romford Road
Shifa News - 35 Woodgrange Road
Shrewsbury Newsagents - 180 Shrewsbury Road
Step in Local - 321 Romford Road
Tesco (5) - 326 Katherine Road
The Cake Box (5) - 163 Green Street
The Urban Chocolatier - 236 Green Street
TSB Cash and Carry (1) - 428 Katherine Road
Upton News - 82 Upton Lane

Footnote: The above article was based on FSA ratings in October 2015. The ratings are regularly updated.

Reluctant as we are to add to the property price madness that is sweeping Forest Gate, it is worth noting that one of the district's more distinct, and Grade 11 listed, houses is currently up for sale by Your Move at a guide price of £2m. The house and its architect are of local historic interest.

242 Romford Road - just the £2m, then

According to the British Listed Buildings website. It was built in 1878 and probably designed by John Thomas Newman FRIBA (1831-96) as his family home, in an eclectic Queen Anne style.

It had a verandah added to the rear prior to 1920. The single-storey conservatory to the south-west was given a tile roof sometime after 1939.

Below we present a (slightly) edited, and quite architecturally detailed, description of the house. This comes from the listed buildings website, here, and is the English Heritage's justification for their award of Grade 11 listed status to it. We are grateful for, and acknowledge, their copyright of the information.

It was designated at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

* Architectural Interest: as a relatively early example of the use of the Queen Anne Revival style in a middle-class suburban house. The house is enlivened by its asymmetric design, Japanese-inspired details and lavish use of terracotta decoration

* Interior: the house provides a good illustration of the decorative features associated with the Aesthetic Movement particularly the tiled fire surrounds and Japanaiserie joinery

* Degree of Survival: both interior and exterior are little altered and the house retains the original street boundary wall and coach house which are both included in the listing

* Group Value: with the contemporary former United Reform church opposite listed at Grade II

History

The house was built in 1878 and originally occupied, and presumably designed, by the noted local architect John Thomas Newman FRIBA (1831-96).

Newman was the surveyor and head of the Mechanists Department at the Victoria Dock (1861-5) before setting up in private practice (1865-79) and was later architect to the West Ham and Leyton Schools Boards (for which he designed around 30 schools), surveyor to the London Hospital Estates Sub-committee and to the Council of the Bishop of St Albans Fund.

Several of his buildings are listed at Grade II, among them the Protestant Martyrs Memorial at St John's Church, Stratford (1878). This 65 feet monument (see photo) was erected to commemorate the death, burned at the stake, of 18 protestant martyrs in and around Stratford in 1556, on the orders of Queen Mary Tudor ("Bloody Mary").

Martyrs Memorial, Stratford

Newman's other work included three churches, Christchurch, Sutton (1887-8), St Margaret of Antioch, Leytonstone (1892) and St Nicholas, Kelvedon Hatch, Essex (1895) where he had moved to shortly before his death.

Details of house construction and features

The house was built of orange brick laid in a free Flemish bond with terracotta dressings; tile roofs with decorative ridge tiles and finials.

It is rectangular in plan but with a single-storey conservatory to the south-west. The roof-plan is T-shaped with hipped gables to the west end of the front (north) and rear (south) elevations, and to the east side elevation.

The exterior of this large, two-storey, detached house was designed in an eclectic Queen Anne style with decorative influences from the Aesthetic Movement. The north elevation to Romford Road has a varied roof line with a deep coved eaves cornice, comprising from east to west a lucarne with hipped roof; a semi-conical roof over the angled two-storey entrance bay; and a broad hipped gable with deep eaves with bargeboards.

The windows are tall sashes (some broad, some narrow) with the upper sashes and transoms having small-paned lights with a distinctive 'Japanaiserie' lattice design, mostly with coloured glass. The sills are of interlocking terracotta blocks whilst the keys of the square-headed gauged brick lintels have terracotta reliefs of sunflowers.

Further terracotta decoration occurs as a continuous band below the first-floor windows (sunflowers with foliage); square panels aligned with each window below this band (floral designs except for the two date panels over the porch bearing the date 'AD 1878'); and a second band of continuous floral motifs with a brick edging above the ground floor window lintels.

The apex of the hipped gable is decorated with a chequerboard pattern of tiles with floral motifs. The ground floor rests on a shallow concrete plinth topped with chamfered blue engineering brick and has a prominent porch to the canted entrance bay with a tiled canopy supported on large wooden brackets with turned wooden spindles.

The glazed front door has coloured glass lights and an eight-light transom. The western gable has a five-light square bay window with a hipped tile roof. The east and west elevations have similar bay windows The west elevation has a central lucarne with two tall windows and a terracotta finial.

The rear (south) elevation has an identical hipped gable to the front elevation. A square, single-storey bay with a pent roof is set off centre and connects to a single-storey range to the south-west with a steeply pitched tile roof with tile-hung gable and continuous fenestration to the south and east with top-hinged casements and multi-light transoms.

Map evidence indicates that this range was originally a glazed conservatory. The rear elevation is completed by two hip-roofed lucarnes, the western one wider than the eastern and a hipped dormer with terracotta finial set between the hipped gable and the western lucarne.

On the ground floor a later timber verandah continues east from the bay window. This has a tiled hipped roof with two skylights. The fenestration on the rear elevation is less elaborate, combining multi-pane casements and sashes, most with multi-light transoms with coloured glass. There are two tall brick quatrefoil chimneystacks.

The interior of the house is largely unaltered with some changes to the mezzanine level servants' rooms at the rear, the ground floor rooms to the east of the house which form a separate flat (not visited), and the kitchen/conservatory.

Many original features survive, often typical of the Aesthetic Movement. In the upstairs rooms there are three fireplaces with inset Milton tiles of the Shakespeare series (c.1874) designed by John Moyr Smith (1839-1912 ) and Japanaiserie floral designs, arched panelled cupboards in the bedrooms, decorative ventilation vents, original joinery including five-panel doors and more fitted cupboards on the top landing, original light switches and a Gothic ceiling rose in the stairwell.

The Canadian pine Japanaiserie open-well staircase has turned balusters and newels, ball pendants, a butler's tray rest, and glazed lattice under stair panelling.

On the ground floor there is a geometric design quarry tile floor to the hall and verandah, leaded window panels with coloured lights set in a wood frame between the hall and front parlour, deep covings (reflecting those externally) and heavily moulded door surrounds to the main doors off the hall.

In the study/lobby at the rear of the house are three built-in Canadian pine dressers, each with two hand-painted panels depicting parables or nursery rhymes, one showing a woman with two children entering what is clearly the porch of No. 224 with the inscription 'This is the house that Jack built' and the date 1878. 'Jack' is underlined suggesting that John Thomas Newman was the designer.

Also in the study is a fireplace with Japanaiserie tiles and further Moyr Smith ones from the 'Idylls of the King' series (c1875) set in a Canadian pine surround. In the rear parlour is a Canadian pine fireplace with an overmantel with shelves and spindles which match the stair balusters. The fire surround has hand-painted tiles depicting birds and flowers on a gold ground.

There is full-height wooden panelling adjacent to the fireplace and the room is divided by a deeply moulded spine beam supported on consoles and has a Gothic ceiling rose. Glazed double doors pass to the modern kitchen. These have fanlight with coloured glass. The front parlour also has the same Gothic ceiling rose, deep coving and an Anaglypta ceiling finish. The room retains its dado panelling.

Unusual fitted shelves below the bay window with turned spindles and a fitted dresser incorporating the coloured glazed panels through to the hall. The fireplace has a wooden surround and overmantel but has lost its tile decoration. The kitchen has been extended into the original conservatory and largely modernised including a modern brick rustic fireplace although it retains its original fenestration and glazed door to the garden. The cellar retains its slate shelving.

To the south of the house is a contemporary carriage house built against the south boundary wall. It is of orange brick on a concrete plinth with a hipped tile roof, double carriage doors to the west and fenestration to the north elevations.

There is a tall brick boundary wall to Margery Park Road with an entrance to the carriage house with pyramid-capped gate piers. It adjoins the blind west wall of the former conservatory after which it continues as wooden paling on a concrete base with brick piers round into Romford Road. Both the carriage house and boundary wall to Margery Park road are of special interest.

Source: English Heritage

Listed building text is © Crown Copyright. Reproduced with thanks.

This is the second in an occasional series of articles taking a quick peep at the history of a neighbouring area. This time our friends to the north east: Manor Park: from the Domesday Book until the latter part of the nineteenth century.

What we now know as Manor Park was, until the late nineteenth century, called Little Ilford (the small crossing over the River Hile - former name of the Roding) - as indeed the eastern part of it still is.

The area gained its modern name to describe the growing suburb being constructed around Manor Park railway station. This, itself, took its name from the home of the Lord of the Manor of West Ham, just round the corner, in what is now Gladding Road.

Nineteenth century railway builders were a bit like modern estate agents in trying to brand areas with upmarket names; so, locally we have Manor Park, Upton Park, Woodgrange Park and Wanstead Park stations - all some distance from anything we would recognise as a formal park!.

Little Ilford was identified in the Domesday Book (1086), following the Norman Conquest, as part of Ham(me) - a low-lying pasture. It had a population of only 10. It was simply a hamlet at this time, and barely grew in population for the next 400 years.

It is thought that an alehouse has stood on the site of the former Three Rabbits pub, on the corner of Rabbits Road since the 1630's - probably taking its name from a rabbit warren on the old Aldersbrook estate (hence Warren Avenue). The pub was said to have been used by dealers trading at the annual cattle fairs on what is now Wanstead Flats, until the nineteenth century. It was situated, of course, on the old Roman - Colchester, now Romford, Road.

To the left, an early 20th century
image of Three Rabbits pub. To
the right the former Manor Park library,
now re-opened as an arts centre.

Boots the Chemist, on the corner of Rabbits
and Romford Roads, on site of former
Three Rabbits pub, location of an
alehouse for almost 500 years

The Three Rabbits lasted until the early years of this century, as a large music pub (ex-Tremeloes front man, Brain Poole was a regular, for a while), when it was refurbed into a Boots the chemist, with flats above - see photo.

Chapman and Andre's map (see below) of 1777 shows that the parish of Little Ilford, then, consisted of the parish church, Manor Farm, a few cottages, the Three Rabbits and the Aldersbrook estate. Its small size was confirmed by the 1801 census, suggesting it had a population of just 100.

Chapman and Andre's 1777 map,
showing the hamlet of Little Ilford

The Manor House that was built between 1810 and 1827 was the seat of the Manor of West Ham. It replaced a former house, of which there are few extant details. The nineteenth century dwelling, and the surrounding land, was purchased by the Eastern Counties Railway in 1839, when the London to Romford line was being constructed, to accommodate its route, for £10,000.

The Manor House,and splendid
grounds, in better days

The house, itself, however, was not directly affected by the railway line and was leased to William Storrs Fry - son of Elizabeth, the prison reformer, who lived nearby, firstly in what is now East Ham's Plashet Park and then later behind what is now West Ham Park.

The Manor House, and much of the land, remained leased to the family until 1866, when it was sold to the Victoria Land Company, from when it was to have a fascinating history.

Meanwhile, other developments were happening apace in what was still Little Ilford. Between 1829 and 1831 a jail was built in the area: The Little Ilford House of Correction (around what are now Gloucester and Worcester Roads), at a cost of £30,000.

Unfortunately no photographs of the prison survive, but when it was demolished in 1878, some of its rubble was used in the construction of houses in the aforementioned roads.

It was a brick building, designed for 100 inmates, who were expected to spend their time in silence, while incarcerated. It consisted of 60 cells, with eight day wards, 10 exercise yards and a treadmill, for the exhausting "hard labour" sentences.

Life there was grim. Existing records, still within the Essex Records Office, show a lack of adequate water supply, poor ventilation and diseases like scurvy, associated with poor diet. It is not known whether Elizabeth Fry ever visited, or was influenced by conditions there, but within a year of its opening she was giving evidence to a House of Commons Committee on poor prison conditions.

Print of prison reformer, Elizabeth
Fry, reading to prisoners

Largely as a result of the existence of this penal institution, Little Ilford's population began to expand. By 1848 it stood at 189, which figure, in turn, had more doubled by the census, three years later.

The growth came from a combination of the development of the jail and incoming Irish immigrants, fleeing the famine in the late 1840's, for cheap accommodation on the outskirts of London (see reference to Irish Row, in our recent blog about Ebor cottages - here).

We have written previously about the development of much of our local area as cemeteries in the second half of the nineteenth century (see here). Manor Park was at the forefront of this development.

In 1854 the Corporation of the City of London bought over 112 acres of land from the Manor of Aldersbrook - part of Little Ilford - for £200,000 for the construction of the City of London cemetery. It opened two years later, to accommodate up to 6,000 burials per year.

City of London Cemetery,
Manor Park, c 1850

Within twenty years, another 50 acres parcel of the land was bought in the area, this time from the former Hamfrith farm's new owner, Samuel Gurney - a relative of the Frys - for the construction of the Manor Park Cemetery. This is a privately owned cemetery (for details see cemeteries articles referred to above) and was opened in 1874, with its original chapel opened two years later. Its success would have been confirmed by the opening of Manor Park station in 1872 (see next post).

Between these two cemetery developments in the area, the Catholic church purchased the Manor House, itself, and seven surrounding acres in 1866 and established St Nicholas Industrial School. We pick up the Manor Park story, next week with the school's story.

Last week we traced the history of what we now know as our neighbouring district of Manor Park, from the 11th century Domesday book until the latter part of the nineteenth century. We pick up the story here with, the purchase of a seven acre plot of land surrounding the West Ham Manor House, by the Catholic church in 1866.

We are indebted to the research undertaken by Shea Lolin for much of what follows in St Nicholas' Industrial School and Chapel, and to the excellent website www.childrenshomes.org.uk - see footnote for details. Much more detail can be obtained from the informative booklet and website, which offers the facility for finding out details of records of children who grew up there.

The Catholic church, in the 1860's began to establish Industrial Schools - residential schools for poor, destitute children - to help provide vocational training (in a variety of trades), shored up by their religious faith. An early example was opened in Shernhall Street, in Walthamstow in 1862.

These premises were soon found to be too small, so the church bought seven acres of Little Ilford land in 1866, including the old Manor House, as a site for an expanded presence, in north-east London.

The school lasted until the 1920's. It was enclosed by a wall, which still stands, around Whitta Road, and has provoked the curiosity of many a visitor to the near adjacent Golden Fleece pub.

The former Industrial School
wall, still surrounding the
BUPA care homes, today

The house, itself was used for offices and staff accommodation, and other buildings were constructed for dormitories and teaching rooms. The school was registered with the government in 1868 to teach 250 boys. Immediate extensions to the building included a new chapel (which survives today, as the small St Nicholas' church, on Gladding Road), refectory and large workshops.

Houses in Sheringham, Hampton and Romford Roads as well as in Islington, were used for additional residential/dormitory accommodation for the boys.

Monsignor Searle, who lived in the small house, built as the establishment's lodge, was placed in charge of the institution. The other original staff comprised two schoolmasters, six industrial teachers, a housekeeper, nurse and general servant.

The industrial training included carpentry, shoemaking, knitting and gardening.

An inspection report in 1875 expressed concern about the high mortality rate of boys at the school, with twelve having died the previous year. It was suggested that sickly constitutions often found among the younger boys would benefit from better diet and clothing, and separate wards under supervision.

A year later things had improved with the death rate down to six. In August 1876, Monsignor Searle retired and the management of the house was placed in the hands of the Brothers of Mercy.

The school buildings were gradually extended and enhanced, and a swimming bath was added in 1879. The inspection report the following year showed it had 234 boys, 232 of whom were under "warrants of detention". The report was overwhelmingly positive, as the edited extracts below indicate:

There are very few schools in the country which more thoroughly provide for the necessities of life than this ... The health of the children is carefully watched and protected. ... No deaths in 1889.

The report as to conduct was satisfactory. No insubordination or gross breach of order. Some cases of theft, laziness, disorder, wilful damage, quarrelling, and impertenance. One serious case of stealing keys: a small record of offences for so large a school. Boys well in hand and managed with much tact, special experience and wisdom.

Industrial training: receives very careful attention. The new workshops answer their purpose well and are very much more healthy than the old ones. 39 boys work with the tailors; 47 in the shoemaking; good work was being turned out, 45 in the mat-making department., 21 in the field and garden. A class of juniors knit and darn the socks, and three work in the bakery. There is an excellent laundry and the boys assist in the washing. There is a large and well-cultivated garden, which receives much attention and employs a class of boys.

General remarks - The display of industrial products on this occasion was highly creditable. From every department good specimens had been sent. Much good work is turned out.

Staff: Director, Brother Polycarpo and eight brothers of the Order of Mercy, yard and drill-master, Mr Eade - tailor, shoemaker, mat-maker, gardener, cook and baker.

Average number maintained: 230

Results on cases discharges in the three years: 1886, 1887 and 1888 - of 123 discharged in 1886-8, there were doing well 107, dead, 2, doubtful 1, convicted of crime or re-committed 10, unknown 3.

The Brothers of Mercy resigned their charge of the school on 23 October 1899, when Mr and Mrs Westall took up their duties as superintendent and matron.

The school established several auxiliary homes, which provided a half-way house for boys making the transition between institutional care and adult working life. These were located at: 55 Colebrook Row, Islington (open 1894-1900 for 40 boys); Woodgrange House, 607 Romford Road (open 1906-08 for 24 boys. The house has been demolished and the site is now occupied by flats, opposite the Tescos, next to Woodgrange Park station) and 164-166 Sheringham Avenue (opened 1908, for 12 boys - see photo, below).

164-166 Sheringham Ave today -
once a hostel for Industrial School boys

A fire broke out on the school's roof on 6 January 1907. The schoolroom was gutted and the roof burned. The only casualty was one of the firemen, who was badly injured by a burning beam.

As well as taking destitute and abandoned Catholic children, the school also took in boys, aged between 7 and 14, who had been convicted by magistrates courts for a variety of offences mainly related to poverty: begging, vagrancy, homelessness and street life.

Few of these Industrial Schools achieved high standards, and were often seen simply as repositories for unwanted and forgotten children. St Nicholas' seems to have been an exception, with a good reputation, and saw only a 4% "re-offending" rate amongst its residents - suggesting a good track record for giving their charges a decent restart in life, in its 54 years of existence.

An estimated 24,000 boys went through the school in its time, including around 900, who in one of the most controversial aspects of late nineteenth/early twentieth century child care provision, were sent to Canada.

This was usually without reference to their parents. They were sent in order to start a new life in Hintonburg, Ontario, as farmers and service personnel. A useful website giving details of British children forceably removed to Canada can be found here.

So, Manor Park, as it was now known, developed rapidly from the 1830's, as a result of the construction of some major social projects: a prison, two cemeteries and the Industrial School, together with much low cost housing for rent by potential commuters.

Although much of the land in the area had been purchased by the Eastern Counties Railway for their construction of their London - Romford line, the Little Ilford area, itself, was not directly served by the company, at first. Local residents had to trek the mile or so to Forest Gate or East Ham stations, to get commuter transport into the city.

They lobbied the railway company to rectify matters, so it built its first station in the area in 1872 and named it Manor Park and Little Ilford, after the house they had formerly owned and the local area. It cost £1,117 to construct. It was later replaced it with a larger station in 1893 (see 1909 photo, below), and had its name shortened simply to Manor Park.

Manor Park railway station, 1909

With the growth of population in the late 19th century came a demand for local public services and schools. In 1886 Little Ilford merged with East Ham a for local government purposes and subsequently formed part of the East Ham Urban District, which in turn became a Municipal Borough, County Borough and is now part of the London Borough of Newham.

The Little Ilford School Board was established in 1887 and built three elementary schools, before merging with the East Ham School Board in 1900.

These were: Fourth Avenue School, in 1890 (bombed during World War 11 - see photograph, below), Essex Road School, in 1898 (subsequently, completely rebuilt), and Manor Park Board School in 1893, which later had its name changed to Salisbury School (see photo), which still survives.

Bomb damage to Avenue Road School, 1941

Ex Little Ilford school board, Manor
Park Board school, built 1895,
today, Salisbury school

Reflecting on the rapid changes that the area had undergone over the previous half century, Katherine Fry - sister of Elizabeth - had this to say in her 1888 brief history of East Ham and West Ham:

During the last ten years the parish of East Ham has almost entirely lost its rural character; while a few years ago it was still looked upon as a village of market gardens for the production of cabbages and onions, it is fast becoming a manufacturing, residential town. ... Nowhere, perhaps is this rapid growth more noticeable than in ... Manor Park, a rising locality situated to the north of Ilford (now Romford) Road, with a station on the Great Eastern railway. The wide area of the arable lands, over which the plough passed not so many years ago, has gradually been converted into streets of crowded dwellings, almost entirely inhabited by artisans and the humble city clerks, who are attracted by the low rents of the houses.

At the start of the twentieth century the district was badly hit by floods, in 1903, when the River Roding burst its banks, and many people were left homeless. Conditions were so bad that boats had to be hired to rescue the stranded, in the area now occupied by Grantham, Alverstone and Waltham Roads (see photo, below).

1903 floods in Grantham Road

A year later Manor Park became the proud possessor of an Andrew Carnegie endowed library (see photo of opening ceremony and bust celebrating its benefactor - below). That splendid building served the community as a library for almost 110 years and has recently reopened as a community arts centre.

Opening of Manor Park library, 1904

The Carnegie bust,
outside the library

To return to the fate of the Industrial School. World War 1 had an impact on the school, children were moved elsewhere, and in the early 1920s many of these schools became uneconomical to run. The premises and land were put up for sale, and eventually purchased by the London Co-operative Society, which paid £19,000 for the whole seven-acre site, minus the church.

The Co-op used the buildings - including the former Manor House - as an administrative centre and its "Industrial Colony". This turned out mainly to be its dairy, which ultimately was capable of producing 1,000 gallons of milk an hour. It also developed workshops for carpenters, joiners, wheelwrights, upholsterers, boot repairers and an educational department. At its peak it employed over 600 people.

The Manor House, centre of the
Co-op's Industrial Colony, 1930's

The premises, after decades of heavy usage began to fall into decay in the early 1970's, and the Co-op wished to redevelop the site. A sticking point was the fate of the Manor House, which was gradually falling into disrepair. The Council, as a condition for planning approval for the redevelopment of the site in the 1980's, wished to have the now-Grade11 listed Manor House restored.

This would have cost £12,000, which the Co-op refused to consider, so they gradually began to withdraw from the site.

The Manor House received its English Heritage Grade 11 listing in 1973 and the citation described it as a:

Substantial house 1810-27, probably with earlier origins. Stucco rendering slates. Two storeys and attic. Five sash windows in architrave surrounds. Central doorway with console bricketed cornice. Rusticated end pilasters. Cornice above first floor windows across front missing. Square headed sash windows retaining glazing bars. Hipped slate roof. Central C 19 timber clock and bell turret with squared dome (clock missing). Interior has some old features.

The house was eventually sold to an Irish property developer, and survives today, as 10 flats (see a recent photo, below). BUPA Care Homes bought most of the rest of the grounds and employ around 120 staff, catering for the 120 residents in the four units they have built on the site. The Co-op still has a presence on part of the lands, from where they run their Funeral Care service, servicing many of the local cemeteries.

The flats, today, together with St Nicholas church

Footnote:St Nicholas' Industrial School and Chapel by Shea Lolin Dec 2010 Available from bookshops and Amazon for £6.00.

Our thanks also go to the incredibly detailed and useful website giving details of all UK children's homes: www.childrenshomes.org.uk

Ofsted has produced its annual report this week, summarising the findings of its 5,000 school inspections, nation-wide, over the last year (here). This brief blog summarises the inspectorate's findings and judgments of Forest Gate's mainstream state-funded schools, based on its latest assessment of them.

None of the local schools, in fact, would appear to have had a full inspection over the last year. What follows is their current status, together with the date of their most recent inspection and a brief comment on the ups or downs in judgement ratings.

Gone are the days when Newham's main concern on the publication of national schools league tables, was whether the borough was able to climb out of the bottom half dozen of all local authority providers or not.

Newham's performance, according to the latest Ofsted report, put the borough's secondary schools at 25th place, out of the 147 English local authorities. Primary performance was not quite as good, coming in at ranking 99th place.

Forest Gate schools performance, applying the Ofsted criteria, would have placed the area at 31st place in the national primary league table (out of 147).

In the secondary table, the ranking would have been 99th (out of 147). If Forest Gate Community school were able to push its rating of grade 3 ("Requires improvement"), up a single grade to 2 ("Good"), Forest Gate secondaries would have come in at joint first place in the country. Not much pressure on FGCS there, then!

The schools, with their most recent Ofsted judgment are are listed in alphabetical order.

Secondary schools

Forest Gate Community school - overall assessment 3 - Requires improvement

The school had its last full inspection in December 2013, when it dropped a grade from "Good" to "Requires improvement".

Forest Gate Community school:
Requires improvement

St Angela's Ursuline school - overall assessment 1 - Outstanding

The school had its last full inspection in 2005, when it achieved "Outstanding" status. A light touch interim inspection in 2009 confirmed this judgement.

St Angela's: Outstanding

St Bonaventures - overall assessment 1 - Outstanding

The last full inspection took place in 2009, when the "Outstanding" rating was secured.

St Bonaventures: Outstanding

Stratford school - overall assessment 2 - Good

The "Good" rating was achieved in the March 2014 inspection.

Primary schools

Earlham Primary school - overall assessment 2 - Good

The last full inspection, awarding a "Good" status, took place in November 2013.

Elmhurst Primary school - overall assessment 1 - Outstanding

Elmhurst achieved an "Outstanding" status at its last full inspection, in 2010.

Elmhurst: Outstanding

Godwin Junior school - overall assessment 2 - Good

Godwin was last inspected in June 2014, when it was judged to be a "Good" school.

Odessa Infant school - overall assessment 3 - Requires improvement

Odessa slipped from "Good", awarded in 2006, to "Requires improvement" at the time of its last full inspection, in October 2013.

Odessa: Requires improvement

Sandringham Primary school - overall assessment 2 - Good

Sandringham was judged to be "Good" in its last, July 2013, inspection.

Sandringham: Good

St Antony's RC Primary school - overall assessment 2 - Good

St Antony's improved from "Requires improvement" to "Good" at the time of its most recent inspection, in February 2013.

St James C of E Primary school - overall assessment 2 - Good

St James' improved from a 2010 judgement of "Requires improvement" in 2010 to one of "Good" during its last, February 2013, inspection.

William Davies school - overall assessment 2 - Good

William Davies was judged to be a "Good" school in its latest inspection report, April 2012.

William Davies: Good

Woodgrange Infant school - overall assessment 2 - Good

Woodgrange's last inspection was in May 2014, when it was acknowledged to be a "Good" school.

Woodgrange infants: Good

In summary, three of Forest Gate's secondary schools, when last inspected, were judged to be "Good" or "Outstanding", the fourth, Forest Gate Community school "Requires improvement"

In the primary sector, all except two have been judged to be "Good" schools, the exceptions being the "Outstanding" Earlham Primary school, and Odessa Infants school, which "Requires improvement"
.
The full, current, report on each of the schools mentioned can be accessed here.

Previous articles on this blog on Ofsted reports on local schools can be accessed here, here and here.

On the pitch

On the terraces

Behind the scenes

Spreading the word

WW11 Forest Gate Bomb hits, by road1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

Conclusion/summary/observations

Forest Gate Hotel

Forest Tavern

Fox and Hounds

Golden Fleece

Hawkes

Holly Tree

Hudson Bay

Wansted Tap

Off licences

Draftcidrometer

Fire guts famous gym

When Otis played Forest Gate

Booming Woodgrange Road

The Sound of Music from Earlham Grove

The Upper Cut Club, part 1 - the rise

The Upper Cut Club, part 2 - hitting the deck

The rise and decline of Forest Gate's Jewish community

Fascists in 1930's Forest Gate

Kenny Johnson and the Lotus Club

Forest Gate's proud suffragette legacy

Forest Gate short-changed

Turning the Pages of history

Forest Gate's role in WW1, the Hammers battalion (1)

Woodford Road

The fairs

Trams

Social survey - 1907

What the Papers say

Iconic office building - City Gate

Residential property

50 - 50d Avenue Road

45 Chaucer Road

10 Crosby Road

113 Earlham Grove

27 Knighton Road

1 - 12 Sycamore Court - Romford Road

23b South Esk Road

115 Trumpington Road

133 and 137 Upton Lane

Commercial and industrial properties

Land

Restaurant - 99 Green Street

Sherrard Works

The big one: 326 - 330 Katherine Road

Ebor Cottages and Irish Row

The site of Ebor Cottages

The Forest Gate interest

Overseas ownership update

- the last active member of a five-generation-firm dies

Chestnut Avenue

What the papers' say

Arthur Edington Williams (1845 - 1923)

Poor - 1 star

History

Details of house construction and features

Secondary schools

Primary schools

WW11 Forest Gate Bomb hits, by road
1940