E7 Now & Then

This is our 2018 summary of the food ratings awarded to almost 200 Forest Gate food retailers, restaurants and hotels, by Newham Council's inspectorate - working to Food Safety Agency guidelines. This year we have arranged the listing street by street. The date given is that of the establishment's last inspection.

As ever, lots of closures over the last year - many of them with poor ratings, and new businesses to replace them. Some of the newer ones (e.g. Arch Rivals) are still awaiting their initial ratings assessment

The star ratings are based on the Food Safety Agency's categorisation. Further details about it can be found here.

Green Street (44)

Odd numbers (24)

1 - Patel's Corner Shop, 4 stars, Feb 2016

75 - Smiling Coast Foods, 3 stars, Jul 2016

83 - Zu's Sizzlers, 2 stars, Nov 2016

2 for Zu

99 - Lahore Xpress, 3 stars, Jan 2017

101 - Toor Stores, 4 stars, Feb 2016

109 - Bay of Bengal, 3 stars, Dec 2015

115 - Pound Point, 4 stars, Oct 2015

135 - Jainal Mini Store, 4 stars, Feb 2016

149 - London Fish Bazaar, 2 stars, Jan 2017

157 - Cheap Store, 5 stars, October 2017

163 - Eggless Cake Box, 1 star, Aug 2016

165 - Mithai Box, 5 stars, Jan 2017

229 - Anand Pan Centre, 1 star, Dec 2016

253 - Nawal, 5 stars, Feb 2015

255 - Margalla Grill, 1 star, Dec 2016

Margalla - 1 star

281 - KK Fruits and Veg, 5 stars, Dec 2015

Carlton Terrace - Bharat Food Stores, 4 stars, Feb 2016

- Green Village, 3 stars, Feb 2016

- Himalaya, 3 stars, Oct 2016

- Lahori Kalfi, 3 stars, Mar 2016

- The Grill Corner, 3 stars, Nov 2014

- United Halal Meat, 3 stars, Feb 2016

- Vegetarian Pound Foods, 3 stars, Aug 2017

- Variety Foods, 5 stars, Sept 2015

Variety - 5 stars

Even numbers (20)

76 - Pakhtoonkhwa Restaurant, 1 star, Jan 2017

Long on name,
short on stars

78 - Grill it, 1 star, Oct 2016

130 - Bondor Bazaar, 3 stars, Nov 2017

132 - Kebabish Original Grill, 2 stars, Aug 2016

134 - Gafoor Pure Halal Retail, 5 stars, Oct 2015

136 - Grillo Xpress Pizza, 3 stars, Oct 2016

148 - Alauddin Sweet Centre, 1 star, Dec 2015

Not so sweet one star

170 - Aswat and Sons, 5 stars, Oct 2015

178 - Bonoful Indian Sweets, 5 stars, Jul 2017

222 - 224 - Mobeen Restaurant, 4 stars, Oct 20916

232-36 - Coffee Republic, 5 stars, Apr 2015

- Urban Chocolatier, 5 stars, Apr 2015

- Waffle Paradise, 5 stars, Aug 2016

- Route 58, 4 stars, Apr 2017

- Brioche Burger, 3 stars, Oct 2016

- Marrakech Moroccan Cuisine, 3 stars, Jul 2017

- Rooster Piri Piri, 3 stars, Aug 2016

268 - Vijay's Chawalla, 5 stars, Jan 2018

274 - Mina Stores, 5 stars, Dec 2016

276 - Nirala, 5 stars, Jul 2015

Upton Lane (32)

Odds (13)

1-5 - Hudson Bay, 5 stars, Jan 2018

Hudson Bay - cheap food and
drink in a clean environment

7 - Upton Lane Food and Wine, 5 stars, Mar 2016

9 - SM Food, 5 stars, Jul 2017

11-13 - Cafe Corner, 3 stars, Mar 2016

21 - Al Madina Butcher, 1 star, Mar 2017

29 - Sake Sushi, 3 stars, Jan 2017

39 - Fish Mela, 5 stars, Oct 2015

41 - TSB Cash and Carry, 3 stars, Mar 2016

49 - Saafri International, 2 stars, Feb 2017

51-53 - Akbar's, 3 stars, Feb 2016

173 - Elsha Delight, 3 stars, Jun 2017

Elsha - more adequate than delightful

183 - Perfect Grill, 1 star, May 2017

191 - 197 - Costcutter, 4 stars, Oct 2016

Evens (19)

20 - Best Kebab House, 5 stars, Jul 2017

Probably is the Best Kebab
House - with 5 stars

26 - Wenty's Kitchen, 2 stars, Jun 2016

26 - Wenty's Tropical Food, 0 stars, Oct 2016

Wenty's - continually bad ratings

28 - Ala Pizza, 2 stars, Oct 2017

36 - Paschael Exotics and Westco Express, 3 stars, Nov 2017

40 - The Second Wife, 1 star, Sept 2016

42 - Mecca Halal, 2 stars, Jan 2017

48 - Cafe@48, 5stars, Jan 2018

5 stars at number 48 ...

50 - Papa Shaf's, 1 star, Oct 2016

.... but only 1 next door

58 - Davina Supermarket, 4 stars, Sept 2016

60 - Blackstone, 5 stars, Jan 2016

70 - Bismillah Halal Meats, 3 stars, Jan 2016

80 - Pie Republic, 4 stars, Feb 2017

84 - Al Farooq Kebabish, 3 stars, Aug 2017

88 - The Cake Family, 4 stars, Nov 2016

90 - Chai Nashta, 1 star, Jul 2017

116 - Bondor Cash and Carry, 2 stars, May 2017

118 - Pizza Space and Chicken, 4 stars, Dec 2016

126 - Indiano Pizza, 1 star, Mar 2017

Poorly rated pizza joint

Romford Road (31)

Odds (15)

207 - Countryside Hotel, 3 stars, March 2015

227 - Forest View Hotel, 5 stars, Oct 2016

235 - Manor House Hotel, 5 stars, Sept 2016

297 - Lahori Zaiga, 1 star, Aug 2017

305 - Asona Ba, 3 stars, Feb 2016

317 - Ronak Restaurant, 3 stars, Oct 2017

321 - Step In Local, 5 stars, May 2015

323 - Dallas Supermarket, 2 stars, Nov 2015

327 - Everest Fish and Chips, 3 stars, Nov 2017

349 - Newham Hotel, 3 stars, Sept 2016

357 - McCreadie Hotel, 1 star, May 2017

Consistently grim at McCreadie's

365 - Hartley Hotel, 4 stars, Sept 2016

457 - Green Hut, 1 star, Oct 2016

465 - Al Rehman Food Store, 5 stars, Jan 2016

493 - Ice Gola Shack, 5 stars, Dec 2016

Evens (16)

278 - Eastern Palace, 2 stars, Nov 2015

Not great at one of the area's
longest established restaurants

280 - Maxi Grill and Pizza, 1 star, May 2017

296 - One Stop Shop, 3 stars, Feb 2016

302 - Cakes and Bakes, 3 stars, Apr 2016

322 - McDonalds, 5 stars, Dec 2016

372 - JB Sweets and Savouries, 3 stars, Feb 2016

374 - Patco Fruit and Veg, 4 stars, Feb 2016

380 - Krishna Cash and Carry, 4 stars, Nov 2015

396 - La Pizza, 2 stars, Feb 2017

446 - Nades Express, 4 stars, Feb 2016

452 - Pennies and Pounds, 5 stars, Sept 2015

510 - City Sweets Centre, 3 stars, Feb 2017

518 - 777 Shops, 3 stars, Jan 2016

522 - Sri Supermarket, 3 stars, Dec 2015

528 - Rising Sun, 4 stars, Feb 2016

542 - Tesco's, 5 stars, Oct 2015

Woodgrange Road (29)

Odds (15)

5 - Devran Supermarket, 4 stars, Jan 2016

9 - Subway, 5 stars, Sept 2015

13 - Percy Ingle, 5 stars, Jan 2018

It's 5 stars for Percy's - as it is for most
chain food suppliers in the area

31 - KFC, 5 stars, Aug 2017

37 - Papa's Chicken, 3 stars, Nov 2017

39 - Gregg's, 5 stars, Dec 2017

45 - Khan Brothers, 1 star, Jul 2016

45a - Perfect Chicken, 1 star, May 2017

49 - Barry's Meat Market, 5 stars, Jan 2018

Barry's looking to move further up
Woodgrange Road after development
on that stretch of the street.
Hope he takes his 5 stars with him.

51 - Angie's Stock Shop, 4 stars, Sept 2015

61 - Forest Cafe, 2 stars, Mar 2017

67 - 73 - Co-op, 5 stars, Jan 2017

79 - Osiediak - 3 stars, Aug 2017

107 - Ghost Chilli, 4 stars, Mar 2016

109 - Seafood Supermarket, 1 star, June 2016

Evens (14)

4-20 - Iceland, 5 stars, Jul 2017

22-24 - Poundland, 3 stars, Aug 2017

28 - Tesco, 5 stars, Feb 2016

30-32 - MK Bros, 5 stars, Jan 2017

5 for MK Bros

50 - Ali Peri Peri, 2 stars, March 2016

58 - Corner Kitchen, 5 stars, Jan 2016

60 - Pizza Hut, 3 stars, Apr 2017

8-10 Railway Station Bridge, - Eat More, 3 stars, Jun 2016

72 - London Sweet and Grocery, 3 stars, Jan 2016

74 - Dixy Chicken, 2 stars, May 2017

Only 2 stars for this Dixy

76 - Grange Food and Wine, 3 stars, Nov 2015

90 - Forest Gate Foods and Wine , 4 stars, Jan 2016

116 - Bereket Food Centre, 3 stars, Jan 2016

118 - Compotes Cafe, 1 star, Dec 2016

Katherine Road (24)

Odds (12)

241 - Katherine Food and Wine, 4 stars, Nov 2015

359-361 - Happy Shoppa, 4 stars, Feb 2016

365 - Himalaya Food Store, 4 stars, Sept 2016

369 - Chicago 30, 4 stars, Aug 2017

379 - Khan Restaurant, 4 stars, Jan 2017

4 for Khan

401 - Peri Peri Crush, 2 stars, May 2017

409 - Best Roaster Grill and Cafe, 5 stars, Apr 2017

491 - Roast, 0 stars, Jul 2017

493 - Atawakai Fresh Halal Meat - 1 star, Aug 2016

499 - Lariss and Nicholas Magazin, 4 stars, Aug 2017

513 - Unique Supermarket, 1 star, Jan 2017

529 - Rikis, 5 stars, Aug 2017

Evens (12)

326 - Tesco, 4 stars, Oct 2015

332 - Himalaya Food Store, 4 stars, Sept 2016

342 - Lahoori Spicy Biryani, 1 star, Jan 2016

350 - Zaraza, 5 stars, Mar 2016

364 - Provincia, 4 stars, Feb 2016

376 - A & S Mini Mart, 3 stars, Aug 2016

396 - Panda's Kitchen, 1 star, April 2016

418 - Unique Cash and Carry, 2 stars, Jan 2016

426 - Daily Fry and Spice, 1 star, Jun 2017

Just the one star

428 - TSB Cash and Carry, 5 stars, Aug 2015

466 - Alnuur Cafe and Restaurant, 3 stars, May 2017

470 - Zadran Supermarket, 4 stars, Jan 2016

Forest Lane (5)

171 - Vasara, 5 stars, Aug 2014

Good ratings for a
popular Polish store

172 - Aromas, 4 stars, Aug 2016

173-175 - Forest Tavern, 5 stars, Jan 2018

176 - Fox and Hounds, 3 stars, Sept 2016

180 - Familia Cafe, 4 stars, Feb 2016

Dames Road (3)

76 - Forest Food and Wine, 4 stars, Jan 2016

141 - Holly Tree, 5 stars, Mar 2017

5 for the Holly Tree

215 - Dames Off Licence, 3 stars, Feb 2013

Field Road (3)

55 - Convenient Off-Licence, 4 stars, Feb 2016

64 - Jin Hui Chinese Takeaway, 3 stars, Dec 2016

66 - SNM Food, 5 stars, Oct 2017

St George's Road (3)

2 - East London Wine, 5 stars, Oct 2016

4 - Iqbal Food Stores, 4 stars, Feb 2016

14 - Cod and Chips, 5 stars, Jan 2018

Sebert Road (3)

1 - Kiheta African Shop, 2 stars, Jan 2017

4 - Conne and Son, 1 star, Nov 2017-

14 - Pizza Haven, 4 stars,. Oct 2017

Looks like the best show on the road

Station Road - (3)

19 - Reids Minimart, 5 stars, Jul 2015

78 - Vrai General Store, 4 stars, Jan 2016

Arch 370 - Aphrodites, 5 stars, Feb 2016

5 stars for this Dixie,
at Aphrodities

Elmhurst Road (2)

32 - Sweet 2 De Belly, 5 stars, Feb 2017

32- Wint Original, 5 stars, Feb 2017

Godwin Road (2)

105 - Forest Gate Hotel and Public House, 3 stars, Dec 2015

Average pub, average rating

122 - Forest Gate Offy, 4 stars, Feb 2016

Shrewsbury Road (2)

281 - KK Fruit and Veg, 5 stars, Dec 2015

184 - Ismaeel Halal Butchers, 3 stars, Mar 2017

Winchelsea Road (2)

Arch 352 - Totally Toasted, 4 stars, Feb 2016

Arch 352 - Wanstead Tap, 3 stars, Feb 2016

Food hygiene at the Tap
may be average, but the events
offers are without parallel in the area

Avenue Road (1)

436 Railway Arches - The Avenue (Johnny Rocco's)- 5 stars, Nov 2016

Gower Road (1)

51 - Bakes by Amina, 5 stars, Jul 2017

Lorne Road (1)

453 Railway Arches - Ali Ices, 4 stars, Mar 2016

Oakdale Road (1)

25 - Mona Food, 2 stars, Feb 2017

Odessa Road(1)

163 - Caner Supermarket, 4 stars, Feb 2016

Reginald Road (1)

2 - Orbit Food Stores, 3 stars, Mar 2017

Wellington Road (1)

77 - 7 till 11, 1 star, Jun 2016

Woodford Road (1)

12-14 - Zaga Supermarket, 4 stars, Jan 2016

Footnote. Details of previous year's articles on this subject can be found:
2013 - here
2014 - here
2017 - here

The familiar frontage - it is what
it says on the fascia board

Today is World Book Day, and the beginning of the month in which Newham Bookshop - managed by Forest Gate stalwart, Vivian Archer - celebrates its 40th anniversary. In this article we examine its history, the challenges it has faced and its golden autumn.

Thanks all round - but especially
to Newham Bookshop

The bookshop emerged, in March 1978, from an initiative begun five years previously in an attempt to confront low educational achievement in Newham. 1973 saw the establishment of Newham Education Concern (slogan, "stick our NECs out"), in Plaistow, by some concerned parents.

Within two years the pressure group had established the Parents Centre, which thrived for over 20 years, promoting educational advancement in the borough. One of the Parents' Centre's offshoots was a small publishing arm, which produced a number of fine historic, autobiographic and photo-books celebrating the borough - including those shown in the picture, below.

Some of the Parents' Centre's
impressive publications

Before the Centre was established, local parents could not get hold of good educational materials to help their kids at school, so the idea of an Education Shop emerged. It was initially located in an old Eel and Pie shop in Prince Regents Lane.

One of the pressure group's founders, and for the last 30 years Secretary of the London Voluntary Sector Training Consortium, Ray Phillips, said this of the present shop's origins:

When we moved to the Boleyn in 1978, we set up a separate company to develop a proper Education Shop for the sale of play materials and books. Later, we were also able to refurbish the double-fronted bookshop, with the now familiar space split between children's and adult ranges. After a difficult start, we never looked back.

Ray wrote that in a booklet to celebrate the shop's silver anniversary in 2003. And the final sentence could not be truer, today.

The shop is community-owned and the management committee consists of volunteers. The overall manager, Vivian Archer, joined the shop 30 years ago. She is ably assisted by another Forest Gate stalwart, John Newman, who manages the children's section. CJ Gajjar, was in charge of that when we visited.

CJ with just some of the extensive children's stock

Vivian's background is in drama. She studied at the Central School for Speech and Drama in the late 60's, where she made a series of acquaintances - like the Redgraves, Ken Loach and others - who spurred her on. She spent 10 years as a working actor, with roles on both the stage and TV, before moving to the more settling world of bookshop management.

Her first experience was in Hackney, before moving to Newham in the 1980's. She has built up a network of influential literary supporters, including poets John Hegley and Benjamin Zephaniah (who wrote a poem to celebrate their silver jubilee) - and one-time children's laureate, poet and Radio 4 stalwart, Michael Rosen.

Benjamin Zephaniah - an early and loyal supporter

Michael, who will be appearing in one of the events being hosted to celebrate 40 glorious years (see footnote), had this to say about the shop in 2003:

Newham Bookshop is simply the best bookshop I know. In the years I've had something to do with it, I've seen the way in which it is a place that reaches out to the people who live, work and study nearby. With meetings, signings and readings, the bookshop announces to the community that it is interested in ideas, people, history, education and life itself....

In Michael Rosen's view: "Newham
Bookshop is simply the best bookshop I know"

It is a showcase for what a bookshop should be about and I can only wish that many other booksellers ... would come and see what is possible, when you treat the people ... with respect and interest. May the bookshop live on and all who work in it!"

Newham Bookshop's survival has been remarkable, and down to the dedicated staff and volunteers who work for and with it. Consider the challenges it has faced over the last 20 years alone.

Until 1997 a scheme known as the Net Book Agreement (NBA) was in operation - which meant that all new books had to be sold at a publisher's fixed price in every shop and outlet. There was a level playing field in the industry , designed to protect small independents, like Newham Bookshop.

The scrapping of the NBA meant a free-for all in the book market. It saw the emergence of large chains such as Waterstones, who, along with established sellers like WH Smith, could now bulk purchase, and sell new and popular books at discount.

Supermarkets jumped on the bandwagon too and handpicked pot-boilers and books from popular authors, bulk purchased and sold them - often as lost leads - at huge discounts, sometimes far below the price shops like Newham Bookshop could even purchase them at.

Unlike these 'pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap' competitors, Newham Bookshop stocks a huge range of books on politics, history, literature and local interest and the children's bookshop is a must for relatives looking for books and educational toys and aids for the very young.

Vivian says that you can almost track the different waves of immigration coming into Newham, by the sales of the various bi-lingual dictionaries and phrasebooks sold at the store.

Vivian, surrounded by some
of the shop's many thousands
of books

Having ridden the storm of seeing the sale of best-sellers effectively taken away from them, independents, like the Newham shop began to face two more massive challenges as the 21st century changed people's leisure and shopping habits.

Kindles emerged a decade ago - 'to make hard copies of books and their retailers redundant'. Newham Bookshop did not bow to the proclaimed inevitable, but persevered. The result has seen "the dead Kindle in the cupboard" emerge, as readers have reverted to the hard copy book.

Kindle's manufacturer, Amazon, have not given up, however. They are now the dominant force in the retail book market, and almost all the competition is suffering badly.

This fateful combination of negative book trade factors has had a dramatic effect. Over 550 -almost half - of small UK bookstores have closed in the last decade.

On top of these factors , Newham Bookshop has had to overcome its own very local difficulty recently.

Twenty times a year the shop could count on a bumper sales day, as West Ham supporters, from near and far would descend on the shop on match-days, snaffling up some of the wide range of club-related books on sale - or perhaps to meet an old crowd favourite player who would cheerfully sign their autobiographies in the shop.

No more. West Ham's move from the Boleyn to the London Stadium in the Olympic Park has cut off that regular piece of passing trade. None of those associated with the new stadium will enable fans to buy what they want from the Bookshop there.

Despite the very formidable obstacles Newham Bookshop has encountered, particularly over the last two decades, the shop soldiers on. And this is in no small part to the goodwill and contacts that Vivian has built up over that period.

So, on World Book Day, the shop will receive visits from possibly hundreds of local school children, ready to exchange the tokens they get for the occasion for books in the shop. Last year they had 1800 visitors on the day. And all because the Bookshop has cultivated great relationships with schools in Newham, Redbridge and Barking over the years - bringing authors to schools and helping with school libraries and book sales.

CJ welcomes you to
World Book Day

Vivian has matched her great contacts in the book trade with one of Forest Gate's quirkiest ventures, to provide great evenings of local entertainment and education. The, now regular, book events at the Wanstead Tap are almost guaranteed sell outs and big local crowd pleasers.

It is a real win:win:win:win combination. Authors love coming to the relaxed, invariably packed venue, and meet engaged audiences at the Tap, Forest Gate comes out in force for the events, Dan Clapton entertains, gets alcohol sales and cements his place on the map as the area's best events venue and the Bookshop gets sales. An almost ideal combination. And as Dan says - "Viv lines 'em up, I say 'yes' and a great evening is had by all!' See footnote for details of forthcoming events.

Vivian's car is like a travelling bookstore. In addition to author's events at the Tap, she regularly services events at Conway Hall, and for 5x15 sessions in Notting Hill, as well as other venues, across London.

As Michael Rosen has said, much of Newham Bookshop's success is down to its relationship with the communities it serves. So, the bookshop plays an active part in trying to retain the now-famous World Cup statue in its original home - just opposite the shop - rather than have it moved to the soulless London Stadium.

Of the community - campaigning for
the community in the fight
to keep this landmark local

Vivian is a trustee of a charity set up in honour of East End author, Gilda O'Neil, and as such is promoting Holding the Baby - sponsored by the charity, a travelling exhibition, around Newham's libraries sharing memories of childcare and parenting in the East End in the 1950's. It is launched today (1 March 2018 at 5.30 in Plaistow library) and will tour the borough's libraries for a year.

Vivian used her contacts and entrepreneurial skills to persuade publishers and authors to donated signed copies of their books to her, to auction, with the proceeds going to the survivors of Grenfell Towers. Over £7,000 has been raised to date.

So, Newham Bookshop is in the community, and of the communities it serves. And it is this formula that has ensured its success against very formidable obstacles. Long may it continue to prosper - for all of our sakes!

A busy shop window, for a busy shop

Footnotes

1.Anniversary celebrations. Newham Bookshop has arranged a series of exciting events at the Wanstead Tap, to celebrate its anniversary. Over the coming months renowned authors such as Misha Glenny (of McMafia fame), Michael Rosen, Stuart Cosgrove and Helen Pankhurst, will be appearing, together with important evenings with authors discussing books on autism and others on the future of the Labour Party.For contact details see below.

2. Contact details Newham Bookshop is based at 745-747 Barking Road E13 9ER. Opening hours: Tuesday - Friday 9.30 - 5pm, Saturday 10 am - 5pm. Phone: 020 8552 9993.

Its website is https://www.newhambooks.co.uk, e.mail address: info@newhambooks and Twitter account (8,000 followers): @NewhamBookshop.

3. Events bookings Tickets for events are sold via both The Wanstead Tap and Newham Bookshop websites. A handy hint: The Tap often sell out before the Bookshop. If you want to go to an event and the Tap says 'Sold out' - try the Bookshop - you may be lucky!

This article is published on International Women's Day, one hundred years after women first achieved the parliamentary vote in Britain. It brings together a small collection of photos and papers, held by the Museum of London, concerning prominent Forest Gate suffragette, Minnie Baldock.

We have written before about Minnie and her role in the local suffragette movement here and here.

These documents and photos, many published for the first time today, give a glimpse of the involvement of Minnie in not only suffragette politics in London, but also in the wider sphere of radical Edwardian politics, in the early years of the twentieth century.

She was at her most active, politically between 1905 and 1911, when the onset of cancer enforced her early retirement from campaigning political life.

Below, we provide a short synopsis of her life, accompanied by relevantly dated photos, letters and other material related to it.

c 1864 - born in Polar, later to become a shirt maker

1889 - married Harry Baldock, a general labourer, also of Poplar

1890 - birth of oldest son, also Harry - who later is employed in the ship-building trade

1891 - census - living at 23 Oak Crescent, Canning Town - now an unbuilt upon grass area - see photo

Oak Crescent, Canning Town today

1896 - birth of second son, John Francis Baldock (known as Jack), who also was later employed in shipbuilding industry

1890's - became a member, along with her husband, Harry, of the recently formed Independent Labour Party (ILP) and a comrade of local MP, Kier Hardie

1901 - 1907 - husband, Harry, becomes ILP councillor for Tidal Basin of West Ham Council

1903 - Minnie, with Kier Hardie organised political meetings in Canning Town about low pay for women in the area

1905 - joins Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU) and becomes active in demonstrations

1905 - successfully contests election to become a Guardian of West Ham Workhouse

Minnie's leaflet for her
successful campaign as ILP
candidate for West Ham
Board of Guardians, 1905

1905 - December, heckles Chancellor of the Exchequer Herbert Asquith at a meeting in Queen's Hall, Langham Place

1906 - leading suffragette, Annie Kenney lodges with the Baldocks in Canning Town, when she moves to London

Late 1900's - moves to 447 Green Street (see envelope address, and the house as it is today)

447 Green Street address of Minnie

Baldock in late 1900's

The house, today

1906 - July 4, Minnie speaks at WSPU rally in Hyde Park, in support of Teresa Billingham. She and Minnie had led a demonstration to Chancellor of the Exchequer Herbert Asquith's home, in Cavendish Square. The resulting altercation with the police lead to several suffragette arrests, including Teresa Billingham. The subsequent conviction became the first occasion on which

a London suffragette was sent to prison. She received the longest sentence available - two months in Holloway - although an anonymous donor later paid her fine and she was released

Handbill for a demonstration in Hyde Park,
organised in support of arrested suffragette
Teresa Billingham.

1906 - July 15, Minnie speaks at WSPU rally in Victoria Park. The meeting was provoked by the arrest of Adelaide Knight, Mrs Sparboro and Annie

Kenney on 19 June 1906 for protesting outside Asquith's home.

The leaflet announcing Minnie as a speaker.
The reverse (below) of the leaflet
spells out the WSPU's case

1906 - November, imprisoned in Holloway, for the first time. We have no details of the incident surrounding the imprisonment, but a fragment of a letter from Minnie to her husband survives, in which she shows herself to be a loving wife and devoted mother, clearly greatly upset at the separation imprisonment had caused the family. See text and copy, below

Prison letter

Minnie's prison letter to her
husband - transcript below

From: Lucy M Baldock, Holloway Prison Nov 6 1906

My dear husband and comrade,

I wanted to say a great deal to you. But am reminded of the fact that all letters will be seen by someone before you receive them.

Therefore, I cannot say quite credibly what I would like.

As your opinions we cannot blame anyone for that, only those who make these rules. The first time for 18 years dear that anything has come between the sacredness of our married life. Not to kiss each other, or shake each other by the hand for even a few times seemed to me very hard indeed. But I must not complain, I have seen you and that is something to make me glad and know that things are going alright is a great blessing. You understand how much I miss you and Jack.

But I cannot mention this. The xxxx have xxx the great cause of the Emancipation of Women. A Miss Robinson, a lady from America visited us the other day and promised she would write to Jack. Tell him (document fades) ... Tell him that ... I know he misses. Tell him I will make it up ... (the text fades, but clearly displays a great concern for the welfare of her younger son, Jack - by now aged 10).

1906 - December

Leading members of the WSPU, including
Flora Drummond and Minnie Baldock

Suffragette leaders Christabel Pankhurst,
Minnie Baldock, Edith New

1907 - January, Minnie protests at a meeting in Baldock (sic) in Hertfordshire.

The Luton Times and Advertiser of 11 January 1907 reported that Minnie and fellow suffragette, Mrs Flora Drummond of Manchester:

"made matters rather hot for the Honourable Member (ed: Julius Bertram, MP for North Hertfordshire), the complaint against him being that he was responsible for killing the Women's Suffrage Bill, when it was before Parliament."

Mrs Drummond was ejected from the meeting.

"Then Mrs Baldock tried to speak, but she was instantly put into the street. After the exciting struggle, the meeting proceeded on its normal course."

1907 - photo of Minnie handing out leaflets in Nottingham

Minnie handing out leaflets in Nottingham

1908 - no exact date, but Minnie becomes a paid organiser for the WSPU in Forest Gate

Minnie in 1908

1908 - 13 February, with nine others, arrested in demonstration outside Parliament and convicted for obstructing the police. The demonstration occurred on the day that it was discovered that there was no mention of women's suffrage in the King's Speech.

Given the choice of a £5 fine, or a month in prison (for the second time). She, like the other suffragette demonstrators, chose imprisonment in Holloway, to gain publicity for their cause.

Arrest of Emmiline Pankhurst, accompanied
by Minnie Baldock and Gladice Keevil.
Emmiline was sentenced to six weeks in
Holloway for the part she played in the
demonstration

Suffragette leaders Christabel Pankhurst,
accompanied by Annie Kenney and Minnie
Baldock leads delegation to Parliament,
the outcome of which was Minnie's arrest

Press reports at the time, described her as a WSPU organiser of West Ham. The Daily Mirror said that she went round:

"with a megaphone and shouted 'Votes for Women' as far up the stairs of the St Stephen's entrance (of Parliament)as the megaphone could send the words."

Bound over letter

Bound over letter - transcript below

Metropolitan Police

A Division,

Cannon Row station

Take notice that you, Minnie Baldock are bound in the sum of two pounds to appear at Westminster Police Court, situated at Rochester Row at ten o'clock a.m. on the 14th day of February, to answer the charge of wilfully obstructing Police in the lawful execution of their duty at Victoria Street 13.2.08. and unless you appear there further proceedings will be taken.

Dated this 13th day of February One thousand nine hundred and eight.

Signed Officer on Duty.

Holloway discharge letter

Discharge from Holloway letter
transcript below

HM Prison Holloway

7th March 1908

14327

Minnie Baldock will be discharged from this prison at 8.30 a.m. on 13th March and I shall be glad to hear whether you intend to meet her at the prison gate. She wishes you to know that she is in good health.

Signed

Governor

1909 - Involved in recruiting for the WSPU in the West of England

While there, Minnie has a letter published in the Western Daily Press, see below, suggesting that the WSPU views of women Members of Parliament, at this time, were not very demanding, as per the last sentence in the letter: "We are today fighting for the vote, and we are not asking for seats in Parliament."

Western Daily Press May 29 1909

Transcript:

A Correction

Sir, I wish to contradict a statement which you made in reporting my speech at Roke yesterday afternoon.

You stated that I should say it was when they had a Parliament composed of men and women they would have perfectly fair and just administration, instead of which I stated it is only when women as well as men could send their representatives to Parliament that we should have perfectly fair and just administration.

We are to-day fighting for the vote, and we are not asking for seats in Parliament.

Yours truly

Minnie Baldock

Minnie in 1909

1911 - contracted cancer and was treated, successfully in the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson hospital in Euston. This effectively signalled the end of her active political life.

One of a series of postcards produced by
the WSPU, of their organisers and leaders (undated)

1911 - census, the family were living at 490 Barking Road. (see photo, below).

490 Barking Road, today

Minnie was not present on the night of the census, but her husband and younger son, Jack were. She could either have been away from home campaigning for the suffragettes, or possibly have been confined to hospital with the cancer that she contracted that year. After the operation, she went to Brighton for a time, for convalescence.

1911 - recovery from cancer

One of the surviving letters in the archives, suggests that she had recovered from the cancer operation by August that year. The letter and text are shown, below.

Recovery from operation letter

From: C d Mountford,

22 Elmhurst Ave,

Forest Gate,

August

My dear Mrs Baldock,

I am so pleased to hear the operation was successful. I have just received the news from Mr Balcock, who ??? is is pleased to think you are on the road to recovery.

What a brick you are, dear. I wish I had your courage.

You will be sorry to hear that I have been laid up with any old comp0laint and still i8n bed, so will not be able to come to see you tomorrow, but will come as soon as I can.

How we have all prayed and thought of you. My sister sends her love and hopes to see you soon.

I have to go out tomorrow so will be able to come and see you very soon.

And that God may soon restore you to perfect health is the sincerest prayer.

Yours very sincerely,

C d Mountford

1911 - evidence of reputation of effective trade union organiser and promoter of women's rights at work.

Two remarkable letters survive in the archives testifying to Minnie Baldock's reputation as fearless and effective organiser around Women's rights. The first is from J Hopkins, of Tower Hamlets Road, Forest Gate, the parent of a laundry worker at the Forest Gate Sanitary Steam Laundry in Upton Lane (see photos, below). In it, s/he explains the parental concern for the daughter, the author of the second letter, below. The two letters make pretty grim reading of conditions in the laundry, at the time.

Women's Union organiser - Forest Gate steam laundry (1)

Letter, from the parent, accompanying letter, of "a laundry girl", below

33 Tower Hamlets Road

Forest Gate

18 August 1911

Dear madame,

The reason my daughter is writing the enclosed letter to you is this. Yesterday I was discussing with a friend the conditions under which laundry girls worked and on them not being able to get anyone to take up their cause. The remark he made was you want a lady like Mrs Baldock to take it up, if she could not, I have no doubt she would be able to let you know of someone who would. I asked for your address, but he could not give it to me. He told me if I wrote to Mansfield House, no doubt it would find you.

If you could in any way help the laundry girls, I would be very thankful indeed. I am sending you my name and address, which for the moment I am asking you to keep private, for we know if it reaches the firm, who it is agitating, it means being discharged at once.

Trusting I am not taking a liberty in writing to you.

Yours respectfully

J Hopkins

Trade Union organiser - Forest Gate steam laundry (2)

Above and below, letter from "a laundry girl" asking for Minnie's help in organising the women to fight the dreadful conditions at the Forest Gate Sanitary Steam laundry, Upton Lane

15/8/11

Dear Madam,

I am writing to ask you if you can help us laundry girls of West Ham get more money and fairness to all. Most of the girls are willing to do something, but they are unable to as they have no leader or anyone to speak for them, so I thought of you, who I know would help us if it were possible.

The girls from other laundries say they will do something when "The Forest Gate Steam Laundry of Upton Lane" start because that is the largest and I thought I would be doing no harm in writing to ask you to help us.

Our grievance is we want more money. In one laundry there is a class of girls called Packers and because they are a little more refined, they are allowed every privilege, they do the easiest work, they work in the coolest part of the building, they are allowed a week's holiday and paid for it and at the end of the year they are given a Christmas Box, while the girls in the machine room who are in the steam all day long (most of whom only earn 5/- (ed: 25p today) a week, the rate of 1d per hour (ed: 1d = less than half a penny). They have to do there (sic) dirty work and if they ask for a day off (that means they are the loser) they are refused and if they take it off they get the sack, or else a lecture.

Why should there be so much difference made when we are all working girls(?) Other factories have come out and got what they want, why can't we(?).

We have not our grievances before our mistress yet because nobody seems to have the courage enough. I thought if they heard someone who could put things in a proper manner, they would find the courage to speak up for there (sic) rights.

I hope you will excuse me writing. Thanking you in the hope of you being able to send someone to help us.

Yours,

a laundry girl

1902 photograph of the Forest Gate Sanitary Steam
Laundry, Upton Lane - to which the letters, above, refer

Forest Gate artists, Eric Dawson's depiction of
the laundry, which eventually closed in 1964.It
was located between Studley and Whyteville Roads.
The site is now occupied by a fuel service station

1913 - Minnie with her husband, Harry, moved to Southampton - the home town of her mother. She later moved to Poole in Dorset

Postcard of Minnie holding a baby girl. On
the reverse, handwritten in pencil:
"Two suffragettes come to wish you a happy
time this Xmas and always.
Lucy Minnie Baldock. Her name Millicent
Mary Lucy Baldock" c 1916.

The photograph above seems likely to be Minnie and her grand-daughter, Millicent. Ancestry records show that a Millicent Mary Lucy Baldock was born on 14 October 1915 in Southampton. This is the only person of that name recorded in Ancestry's 2 billion records. The location accords with what we know of Minnie moving to her mother's home town soon after leaving West Ham.

Presumably Millicent was the daughter of one of Minnie's sons, Harry or Jack. She married George Ernest Pomery in 1939 and died in Swindon in 1986. Whether she ever knew the part her grandmother played in the women's suffrage movement is unknown.

1954 - died in Poole, aged 90. National Probate Records show:

Lucy Minnie Baldock of 73 Lake Road, Hamworthy, Poole, widow, died 10 December 1954. her estate was valued at £1,810 8/8d. The executor was Emily Clark, spinster

Evidence from Jean Bodie who knew her towards the end of her life, as recorded in comments in this blog (see here), suggest that she was feared by local youngsters, because of the long black dresses she wore and they thought her to be a witch. Sarah Downing, who has also written to this blog (see above) was one of her great grand-daughters. She believed that Minnie left her land to the Local Labour Party.

Minnie, aged 90

2011 - Poole museum, produce a short video, celebrating her active political life (see here)

Still from Poole Museum's video of Minnie

The congregation and pastors of Woodgrange Methodist church, together with the national hierarchy of the Methodist tradition have been working, for about 5 years, on redevelopment plans for the site. These are at an advanced stage and subject to pre-planning consultation.

Architect view of how the new development
would fit in to Woodgrange Road - nb, this
assumes the proposals for 39a-49a -
opposite - go ahead as approved

The existing buildings, although only about 60 years old, are looking tired and unfit for purpose, so the Methodists have appointed a series of external professionals to help them re-develop their physical position within the local community.

They held two consultation sessions - totalling eight hours - within the church premises, over a cold February weekend. We went along, and this is what we found.

The consultation event was fronted by Alaistair Watson of Broadchurch Asset Management - about whom, more much later.

The proposal is to knock down the existing church and supporting buildings and replace them by a new church and around 33 flats. The consultation leaflet said that the proposed development will provide:

a new high quality visible church on the northern side of the site
variety of community spaces
around 33 new homes
retail accommodation

and that "The site has been designated as suitable for residential-led mixed use development (enabling the Church) in the Borough's Local Plan."

Bird's eye view of how the proposed
development would appear

Mr Watson promised copies of the display boards on show at the consultation event to share with readers of this blog. He has failed to honour this commitment, despite repeated reminders and requests. As and when he chooses to do so, we will happily update this post and add them to it.

Only about 25 people had attended the consultation event half way through its opening hours, so few members of the local community will have had much of a chance to see what is proposed for one of the focal points of the local community.

The original Methodist church, built at the
conclusion of construction of the Woodgrange
estate - in the early 1890's. The new proposals
seek a similarly dominating tower/spire

In summary, the church's physical position on the footprint of the existing site will be switched from abutting ClaremontRoad, to being adjacent to Osborne Road. The church will have a tall spire/tower - as the original church on the site had, before it was bombed during WW2. The spire, itself, would be dominated by a huge cross.

This literally towers over other buildings in the area, and may now be deemed out of character - even with the taller residential apartment buildings planned for the opposite side of Woodgrange Road (see here).

The original church, in ruins,
following bombing during WW2

The church, itself, will occupy about 50% of the land on the site - the other 50% will be devoted to housing. Mr Watson was frank - 'it is the sale of the flats that will pay for the rebuilding of the church'. But, the proposals only anticipate that 6 of the proposed flats will be for 'social housing'. The other 27 would be for sale.

The consultation leaflet stated that further information about the proposed development could be found here. At the time of writing, this website offered no more information than the leaflet available at the consultation event, other than the information that "The site will be developed by Pigeon Investment Management."

Pigeon's website: www.pigeon.co.uk says:

Pigeon was established in 2008 and has assembled a management team with extensive knowledge of the regional property markets and a powerful combination of business and property skills.

Pigeon manages commercial and residential property on behalf of its investors with a projected end value of over £250m and is currently promoting land for over 15,000 dwellings for its land partners.

Herein lies a potential problem for both the developers (Pigeon and Broadchurch) and for would-be Newham Labour Mayoral hopeful Cllr Rokhsana Fiaz. Cllr Fiaz, in her manifesto for mayor plan, aims to get 50% of new-build homes in Newham under council ownership and let at fair rents.

The church, today, occupying space the
developers propose is used for 33 flats
- 80% for sale at market prices

Clearly both ambitions - the 80% flats for commercial sale proposals of the developers and 50% council-owned by the potential mayor - cannot be met, unless weasel words can be conjured up.

The rebuild proposals would see the church side of the development as a large multi-purpose space that could be used to host a number of community activities, and open up to make it an inviting facility for local community use.

The Grade 2 listed Peter Peri's sculpture, The Preacher, (see here for details), currently facing Woodgrange Road would be relocated to face the corner of Woodgrange and Osborne Roads in the new proposals.

Peter Peri's sculpture will be moved,
but remain as a significant feature of the
new church - under current proposals

There were a number of elderly members of the local congregation present at the consultation event and they are very keen on the proposals. "We pray every day for their success" we were told.

They were keen to point out that they do not want the new development to have walls or fences around it - both from a perspective of being welcoming to the local community, but also because they do not wish it to become a centre of anti-social behaviour (litter dumping, street drinking, needle discards etc).

Mr Watson said all concerned were working to what sounds like an incredibly ambitious time table. Planning permission within two-three months and project completion with about 18 months. The congregation would co-locate with the Manor Park Methodists for the duration.

Alaistair Watson and Broadchurch Asset Management

The consultation event was hosted by Mr Watson, in the name of Broadchurch Asset Management.

The company's name is a potentially misleading one, because in financial circles "Asset Management" companies are those who look after/invest large holdings of other people's money - like pension and sovereign wealth funds. Broadchurch is small beer - with almost no assets - either of its own, or apparently managing.

Alaistair Watson, 53, is the only current director of Broadchurch-am, which was established in 2013, and doesn't appear to have done much trading since. He has been involved with a string of other property companies (33 at the last count - though only currently active in 4) and has been involved with projects in Essex, the Isle of Wight (see ,here and here) and Suffolk, where he lives. He appears to be a bit of a vintage car enthusiast (see here).

Broadchurch, together with Pigeon, do, however, have plans for a significant development in Hadleigh in Suffolk - see here.

In 2005, under the name of Thamesgate Regeneration, Mr Watson managed a big and controversial development in East Tilbury. It attracted a fair bit of press coverage, not least from The Guardian, due to its plans to build a 14,000-home new town on greenbelt land.

Colonnade Holdings, another company managed Mr Watson, has run a few successful projects in the Isle of Wight over the last decade or so. But he and this company didn’t have a good time of it when developing a shopping centre in Basildon in 2009, according to three separate reports in the local paper (see here, here and here).

Some of the filth currently outside the
church. The congregation, and local
people want to see an end to this.
Mr Watson - please note

The congregation at Woodgrange Methodist church, and Forest Gate residents more generally, will be disappointed to hear that there were complaints were about filth, rubbish, graffiti and broken pavements in the area under development, causing accidents and discomfort, for which Mr Watson had to publicly apologise.

A timely post, as the media is awash with stories of Russian spies.

Newham Bookshop and the Wanstead Tap recently hosted a great evening of author John Davies talking about his recently published book, The Red Atlas (see footnote for details). We were delighted when he agreed to write an article about it - and its references to Forest Gate, in particular for this website.

In the article below, John tells the story of the book, in relation to East London.

At the foot of the article, there is a small section specifically commenting on Forest Gate, through the eyes of the cartographers. In all cases, it should be possible to increase the size of the map on your screen, by clicking on it - to follow the captions.

John writes:

Do you live in ОЛДЕРСБРУК, ФОРЕСТ-ГЕЙТ, МАНОР-ПАРК, УОНСТЕД or ЛЕИТОНСТОН?

If so, then during the Cold War, Uncle Joe (that’s Churchill’s ironic nickname for the Russian dictator Stalin) – and all his successors through to Gorbachev, certainly knew all about your district, your road, even your house.

For Aldersbrook, Forest Gate, Manor Park, Wanstead and Leytonstone (as we know them) were among the places featured in incredible detail in a series of maps created and maintained by the Red Army throughout the period from the end of the Second World War until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1992.

Forest Gate area, with Aldersbrook and
Manor Park named in Cyrillic. The
Central Line is labelled ‘метро’ (metro)
and Leyton station is marked with M,
unlike the stations on the other lines.

The four-sheet map of Greater London, for example, from which these extracts are taken, was compiled in 1980 and printed in 1985. It is at the scale of 1:25,000 (about 2½ inches to the mile, the same as the familiar Ordnance Survey Explorer maps), with a supplementary booklet listing nearly 400 ‘Important Objects’, a street index, a descriptive essay detailing the topography, climate, demographics, industry and economy of London, and a diagrammatic map of the Underground network.

Sheet 2, north-east London, is a large sheet of paper, measuring about 1 metre by 1.1 metres, printed in ten colours, covering an area from Blackfriars Bridge in the south-west corner, north up the Lea Valley to Enfield and east as far as Aveley and Upminster. The other three London sheets extend as far as Watford in the north-west, Weybridge in the south-west and beyond Orpington in the south-east.

Leytonstone and Wanstead. Both tube
stations marked M. The symbol indication
electrified railway is seen just north
of Leytonstone station, before the road bridge

Depicted on these maps is information not shown on British Ordnance Survey or commercial street atlases of the time, such as annotation indicating the width and surface material of highways, the European road number of major routes, the load-bearing capacity of bridges, the names and products of factories, the distinction between ‘metro’ lines and stations (ie the Underground) and national railway lines and stations, the distinction between electrified and non-electrified lines – and even in some cases showing on which side of the tracks the station building is located.

Part of the geographic diagram of
‘metro’ lines appended to the map,
showing also major roads named
as Forest Road, Woodford Avenue
and East Ham & Barking By-Pass

The maps use colour-coding to identify ‘Important Objects’ which are numbered and listed in the accompanying index. Objects of military significance are coloured green, governmental and administrative objects in purple and industrial, utilities or transportation in black.

The information is exceedingly well researched and few errors are found. One such error, presumably ‘lost in translation’ is object 263, coded purple, which is listed as ‘the residence of the queen and prime minister’ but is in fact Her Majesty’s Theatre, Haymarket in the West End.

Central London, showing River Thames in upper
case letters (indicating navigable river),
ticks along the embankment indicating vertical
sides suitable for mooring, arrows showing
direction of flow of river and direction of tide,
cross-hatching on railway bridge indicating
metal construction, tunnel running north from
Waterloo Bridge (the Kingsway tram subway)
and showing ‘metro’ stations. None of this
information appears on contemporary Ordnance
Survey maps. ‘Important objects’ are colour
coded and numbered, including 28 Charing
Cross station, 240 Treasury, 246 Ministry
of Defence, 263 (see story), 283 Greater
London Council, 351 HQ General Staff.

London was not the only British city mapped in this way; at least 100 other such maps are known, most of which are the larger scale of 1:10,000 (about six inches to the mile) and include such places of relative unimportance strategically as Gainsborough, Lincolnshire and Dunfermline, Fife.

The earliest known are 1950 maps of Milford Haven and Pembroke Dock, the latest is a map of Falmouth dated 1997 (after the demise of USSR). Some of the maps overlap, particularly in the industrial areas of Lancashire and West Yorkshire. In fact, Aveley and the Dartford Tunnel appear on the overlap of the London map and the 1:10,000 Thurrock map of 1977.

Other local maps include Southend-on-Sea (1985), Colchester (1975) and Luton, which was mapped in 1973 and again in 1986.

Debden showing the M11 labelled
as M11 and E112 (a Europe-wide
numbering system for major routes which
was not adopted in UK and which did
not appear on any British maps) and
also annotated as 11x2Ц – indicating
2 carriageways 11 meters wide with
concrete surface. Note also the contour
line with spot height 46 just west of the
railway. This ‘closed’ contour has ticks
indicating which side is lower, a useful
convention which is not used on British maps.

The maps are labelled Secret and were produced by VTU (the Military Topographic Directorate of the General Staff of the Soviet Army - Военно-Топографическое управление Генерального Штаба Советской Армии).

Their existence was unknown to Western military and only came to light in the shambolic circumstances after the collapse of USSR, thanks to exploits worthy of a John Le Carré spy novel; in some cases stocks of maps were sold as ‘waste paper’ to save the cost of destroying them; in other cases semi-official sources desperate for dollars clinched black market deals with eager American dealers.

This was in the early 1990s, the era before the ready availability of the kind of geo-information freely available today, such as online maps, street views and satellite images.

Commercial map makers in Britain wanting to produce and sell maps would have only three choices in deriving the necessary source information: do their own survey (time-consuming), use out-of-copyright Ordnance Survey maps (at least fifty years out-of-date), or pay licence fees to OS (expensive).

Dartford Tunnel as depicted on 1977
Thurrock 1:10,000 map and on 1985
London 1:25,000 map (south-east
sheet). The tunnel is annotated as
having a length of 1600 metres
on the earlier map.

The sudden influx of cheap, accurate, modern mapping looked like it would change all that. At the time OS was engaged in a long-running dispute with the AA over alleged copyright infringement (which it eventually won with a £20 million out-of-court settlement in March 2001) and was determined to avoid this potential undermining of its business model.

Thus, the OS declared that the Soviet mapping ‘is almost entirely an adaptation of Ordnance Survey Crown copyright material. It was produced without the permission of Ordnance Survey and thus it infringes Ordnance Survey's Crown copyright’ and went on to demand that anyone in possession of the maps hand them in and to threaten legal action against anyone importing or offering for sale or reproducing any part of the maps.

This statement, although not quite the truth, was sufficient to suppress any interest in the Soviet maps in UK until recently. In fact, although information derived from OS maps can be seen to contribute to the Soviet maps, OS is only one of many sources that were used. Others included satellite images, trade directories, railway timetables, tourist guides, street atlases, and observations by agents on the ground.

Forest Gate - in detail

Above is the Forest Gate detail of the Soviet map surveyed in 1980 and printed in 1985. By clicking on it, it should be possible to enlarge it for a closer view. If so, and you live in Forest Gate, you will probably be able to see your house marked - so, Uncle Joe really could have known where you lived!

There are a few points of particular interest. This section of the map is clearly dominated by Wansted Flats; but the area is marked Aldersbrook. This is confusing to the casual viewer, but apparently quite common for map makers to do - they often label blank spaces according to the nearest housing development.

It is interesting, though without explanation, that the two sections of the Flats adjacent to Centre Road (see below) are predominantly shaded white, whereas the sections near Dames Road and north of Cann Hall Road are predominantly pale brown. There are no obvious explanations for this. The lakes/ponds, tree clusters and banking by Alexandra Lake are all well and accurately marked.

The two other largish areas without a light brown background are the cemeteries - Manor Park with a mixture of white and green (for grass) backgrounds, the West Ham and Jewish cemeteries with simply a white background - indicating no large grass areas.

Just south of the West Ham/Jewish cemeteries is a cluster of buildings, with a name. The word is "hospital", from the days (accurate when the map was plotted) that what is now Gladys Dimson House, was then Newham Maternity Hospital.

The road markings are strange. Romford Road (the A118) is quite clearly the most important, strategic and busy road covered by this section of the map, but it is given a lower status - by colour - than both Leytonstone and Aldersbrook Roads. We have no logical explanation for this.

Other roads, clearly marked, in the Cyrillic script are: Earlham Grove, Forest Lane, Odessa Road, Ramsey Road, Cann Hall Road, Dames Road, Capel Road, Cranmer Road, Sebert Road, Godwin Road, Ridley Road, Windsor Road, Katherine Road and Sherrard Road.

Centre Road is wrongly marked as Blake Hall Road, with the map maker, wrongly assuming that Centre Road was simply a continuation of Blake Hall.

In terms of the Woodgrange estate, it is interesting that Windsor Road is shown as wider than the other lateral roads, and is the only one of the four of them to be named. Equally strange, Richmond Road is marked, rather than Balmoral as the road at right angles to the lateral roads on the estate. Strategically, Balmoral is more important, as it offers a through road in and out of the estate, and Richmond doesn't. Quite why Richmond and not Balmoral was marked is not obvious

What, at first sight, appear to be the railway arches along the Goblin line, are not the arches, but railway embankments.

Towards the top right hand of the map is a wiggly line. This is the 15 metre contour line. There is a 13 metre spot height indicated on Aldersbrook Road and a 14 metre mark on Capel Road.

Happy map-gazing!

Footnote: John Davies lives in Woodford Green and is co-author of Red Atlas: How the Soviet Union Secretly Mapped the World http://redatlasbook.com/ recently published by University of Chicago Press and available online or at The Newham Bookshop. John can be contacted at author@redatlasbook.com

Newham Council became the first in the country to publish a ratings scheme for residential lettings agencies, last autumn - with agents being awarded from zero to five stars, depending on their performance.

Below, we produce their verdict on the 28 Forest Gate agents they reviewed - and have comments on some that they haven't. The ratings scheme exists to complement the licensing scheme the council operates for private sector landlords in the borough, and covered recently by this site, here.

The agency scheme judges the companies according to which agents failed to: refund renters deposits, failed to pass on rental income to landlords, charged unreasonable fees or failed to address complaints.

4 stars for Romford Road's Century 21

70,000 Newham households are in the private rented sector - so a majority of local residents will have an interest in the results of the scheme's publication.

Newham's scheme is supported by major organisations with not-for-profit housing interests, such as Shelter, Peabody and Generation Rent - the campaigning body.

A brief summary of what lettings' agency practices are likely to attract what ratings would be:

0 stars - The agent would have attracted a relevant criminal conviction within the last five years. Newham has not award zero stars to any local agent, a fact we consider towards the end of this article.

1 star - Compliance failure with a local code of conduct, or receipt of a caution of inappropriate behaviour over the last two years.

2 stars - The agent has not been receipt of any compliance failure notice for a period of two years.

3 stars - The agent is a fully complaint business, with no recent failures or convictions.

3 stars at C&S of Romford Road
- and while there, why not book
a holiday?

4 stars - The agent is a fully compliant business and a member of at least one relevant professional body.

5 stars - A fully complaint business with no tenants' fees, or one which provides a credit ratings service for tenants.

No Forest Gate agency has achieved five stars. East Ham's McDowell's became the first in the borough to do so - coinciding with the publication of the scheme in October last year.

159 lettings agents are covered by the Newham scheme over the whole borough, including 28 in Forest Gate, of which:

3 (2%) in total - 0 in Forest Gate (0%) - have 5 stars

44 (30%) in total - 3 in Forest Gate (11%) - have 4 stars

79 (52%) in total - 20 in Forest Gate (74%) - have 3 stars

8 (5%) in total - 1 in Forest Gate (4%) - have 2 stars

17 (11%) in total - 3 in Forest Gate (12%) - have 1 star

0 (0%) in total - 0 in Forest Gate (0%) - have 0 stars

9 (6%) in total - 1 in Forest Gate (4%) - are pending a rating figure

The agents below are rated in alphabetical order within each star category

**** stars Forest Gate lettings agents

Century 21 - 450 Romford Road

Sparemove - 9 Railways Station Bridge, Woodgrange Road

Your Move - 176-7, Forest Lane

4 Stars - Your Move

*** stars Forest Gate lettings agents

Agha Properties/The Best Properties - 482 Katherine Road

Beautiful Estates - 438 Katherine Road

4 stars for Beautiful Estates

C+S Property - 520 Romford Road

CMS Homes - 503 Katherine Road -

Hamar Property Services - 299 Romford Road

Key 2 Key - 120 Upton Lane

3 for Key to Key

Knightsbridge Estates - 179 Forest Lane

Let, Sell, Property - 34 Green Street

Mak Property - 95 Woodgrange Road

Marvel Estates - 367 Katherine Road

Nest Property - 414 Katherine Road
Patrap Property Co - 202b Green Street
Phase Property Services - 89 Upton Lane

Phase Property Services - 89 Upton Lane

Remax (now called MasterClass Properties)- 471 Romford Road

3 stars for Remax of Romford Road - now rebranded MasterClass properties

Saji Property Services - 196 Shrewsbury Road

Spencers - 70 Woodgrange Road

Stirling and Co - 29 Upton Lane

TS Property Services - 449 Katherine Road

Whites - 521 Katherine Road

Wilkinson's - 78 Woodgrange Road

** stars Forest Gate lettings agents

Ace Property Services-Citygate House, 246 Romford Road

A not so ace 2 stars for Ace Property Services

* star Forest Gate lettings agents

Godefred Property- 130 Upton Lane

Londinium - 400 Romford Road

Just 1 star for Londinium

M + M property- 501 Katherine Road

Big National names, elsewhere in Newham

Bairstow Eves (Stratford)- 4 stars

Haart (East Ham and Stratford) - 4 stars

Keatons (Stratford)- 4 stars

Century 21 (Stratford) - 2 stars

Foxton's (Stratford) - 1 star

A lowly one star for Straford's
"top end of the market" Foxton's

Old Friends

Newham Council has been a little coy in some of its categorisations.

According to the criteria for each star, listed at the top of this article, lettings agents with relevant criminal convictions related to their business within the last five years, should be awarded zero stars under the scheme. Yet the council lists no agents with zero stars in its published details.

But, as we showed in our recent feature on local criminal landlords (see here for details), the council has successfully prosecuted three local lettings agents over the last year, for relevant offences. None, however, has been listed as having zero stars in the register that the council is proud to promote as challenging and innovative. The council has fudged the issue.

Filtons - despite criminal convictions,
listed as "status pending"

Filton's - 190 High Street, Stratford and SM Properties468, Katherine Road, are both of which are listed as status "pending inspection". Barclays Estates of Upton Lane - isn't listed at all in the council's register.

The zero ratings these agencies should have been awarded would clearly have been very bad for business for them; surely, the whole purpose of the register. The council's fudge, however, has meant that they can continue trading, apparently untarnished by a poor agency rating.

Filton's is a lettings agent, which is currently advertising 20 properties on its website - the vast majority in Newham. The company clearly has a cavalier attitude to its business and social responsibilities. To quote its website:

We are an estate and property management group run by some of the most disruptive minds in the industry ... We .. play hard, without the bureaucracy (ed: like abiding by Housing legislation, apparently). ... We don't do uppity suits and fake smiles. That's why we're turning the industry upside down ... And we're pushing boundaries for clients with new revenue streams, managed short lets and award winning marketing .

The company's intolerance of the niceties of the law got them into trouble on 7 June 2017, when they were fined £5,000 for a failure to display accurately display their letting fees on their premises, as required by consumer protection law.

As we said in our article on Forest Gate's criminal landlords:

Any would-be tenant considering using Filton's is advised to search its Facebook presence. Its services are rated by 10 people - seven of them giving the firm only one star out of five.

SM Properties was fined £4,000 on 13 September 2017 for a failure to display its letting fees appropriately, within its premises.

Painful convictions for Katherine
Road's SM properties, but Newham
coyly leaves it as an agency "pending"
inspection, rather than giving it the
zero stars, as its classification
criteria state it should have

Barclays Estatesof 86 Upton Lane has been fined three times, following convictions instituted by the Council, but is not listed as even existing in the council's lettings agency register - see photo below as evidence to the contrary.

Above - Barclays Estates signage before

the prosecutions, below, after prosecutions

This week marks the fifth anniversary of the E7-NowAndThen blog, during which time we have published a little over 200 articles, on a ratio of about 1:2 - Now:Then. This article is a brief review of the past, with some pointers to the future direction of the blog.

First, the stats. The site has had just short of half a million visitors and now attracts an average of well over 400 hits a day. The complementary twitter account @E7_NowAndThen has a little under 1700 followers and is happy to re-tweet anything interesting about E7.

The articles receiving most hits, unsurprisingly, are those that have been live longest. The most popular tend to be about the "Now" rather than the "Then", and at the pleasure seeking end of the scale of topics covered.

The five year top five hits have been:

Forest Gate good (and not so good) pub guide, past and present (2013) - here

Forest Tavern in good pub guides

Forest Gate pub guide (2014) - here

Upper Cut Club, part 1 - the rise (2013) - here

Billy Walker's Upper Cut club

Fires guts famous gym (2013) - here

Kenny Johnson and the Lotus Club (2014) - here

Kenny Johnson's Lotus Club

The most visited post published over the last twelve months have been:

Criminal Landlords of Forest Gate, named and shamed - here

Bryan Forbes recalls his local origins - here

Bryan Forbes goes back to school in Forest Gate

Redevelopment plans for Woodgrange Road Methodist church - here

Woodgrange Methodist church,
redevelopment proposals

Dames Road disaster - here

Survivor's tale - Forest Gate Industrial school - here.

The Criminal Landlords post received the fastest hit rate in the shortest period of time on the blog - racking up over 2,000 hits in its first week live.

Some of our most successful, and satisfying, posts (particularly the Dames Road disaster and Survivor's tale, above) have been when we have been contacted by witnesses or descendants of participants of significant events and have been able to shed a new light on an older story, and added to the depth of understanding and authenticity of local events of historic importance.

Charles Hipkins, survivor of the Forest
Gate Industrial school fire,
1890 - what he did next

Similarly, over the last couple of years, we have been able to produce ground-breaking biographies of a number of local people - adding to our, and other historians', understanding of them as individuals - by pulling material, some very local, together in ways never previously done. So, we have added to the appreciation of a number of people normally confined to footnotes in more general histories.

We are particularly pleased to have been able to achieve this with Frank FitzGerald, Irish patriot and father of one of the country's recent taoiseachs (Garret) - see here, anarchist and some-time William Morris associate, Charles Mowbray - see here. These were largely put together by local historian, @Flatshistorian, Mark Gorman. Most recently our biography/timeline on local suffragette, Minnie Baldock, did precisely this as well (see here).

Charles Mowbray and Minnie Baldock

For the future, we will be looking to build on some of these historic successes.

So - next week's post will continue the survivor's tale tradition, by telling the story of one of the witnesses of the bombing of the Princess Alice, in 1941 - the still very much alive John Muskett.

We are now working in collaboration with outside bodies, contributing to, and delivering, larger and more ambitious projects.

The first of these is a film, to which we have contributed, Archibald Cameron Corbett, the man and the houses, about the developer behind the Woodgrange Estate and the Forest Gate clock/horse trough, outside the railway station. This fascinating hour-long, professionally produced, film will be showing at the Gate library on Woodgrange Road on Thursday 26 April, at 8pm - free of charge. To ensure entry, please book in advance. (see poster, below)

Archibald Corbett film - the Gate
Thurs 26 April 8pm - free!

Another collaboration project is with the family of William Edward Wright. He was a prominent Forest Gate-based photographer working in the latter years of Victoria's reign and throughout Edward V11's. He had eight studio branches in total, including two in Forest Gate.

We will be publishing a blog about the man in a few weeks, and hope to put on an exhibition about the man and his works, in co-operation with his family, later in the year, in Forest Gate and elsewhere, . This follows the collaboration we had last year with Paul Romaine, in putting on his exhibition on The Upper Cut, as part of Newham's Heritage Week. See here for subsequent post on this blog.

Wright, the photographer - blog and possible exhibition pending!

We have written extensively about bike building and pleasure in Forest Gate at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries (here, here and here). We are working with Boneshaker magazine to publish lengthy, and to them and us an important, article on this significant industry and leisure activity locally - later in the summer.

Boneshaker - to feature cycling in Forest
Gate at turn on 19th/20th centuries

Layers of London is a lottery-funded history initiative sponsored by the Institute of Historical Research at University College, London.

Theirs is a three year project which aims to display London history via a digitised map foundation, so that visitors can - by clicking on a pointer on the modern map - access the history of that spot and events that took place in or around it. It will also be possible to see how the immediate area has changed over time, by examining different era maps of the locality and "drilling" though them.

Our features on local street histories (e.g Capel, Sebert Dames, Woodford Roads and Earlham Grove), written by local historian, Peter Williams, will be particularly valuable for this initiative.

We will be contributing to this project and by the time it is officially launched in June it will be possible to access over 100 aspects of Forest Gate history on it.

Layers of London - web pages under
construction - should have over 100
Forest Gate entries, when launched in June

As far as the "Now" aspect of the website is concerned, we will continue to cover major planning and development activities affecting Forest Gate, and offer the opportunities for people to engage in a discussion on the proposal. A good example of this would be our article on the development plans for 39 -49 Woodgrange Road (see here), which has had almost 4,000 hits and attracted over 40 comments in the two years since it was first posted.

We will also dig out E7 angles on Newham-wide, or national surveys and statistics - often being able to throw up major talking points - as our regular food hygiene surveys and recent surveys of crooked landlords and lettings agencies have.

We are always open to receiving contributory posts, or suggestions of areas to research and publish - subject to legal and decency considerations.

Thank you for supporting this blog over the last five years. We hope you can join us in looking forward to the next five!

One of the delights of running this website is that sometimes articles can prompt replies and memories that can add colour and flavour to our understanding of the past.

One such correspondence was provoked by our article on the history of the Princess Alice (see here for details). Reader, John Muskett was in the pub the night of the bombing. We are posting this article on the 77th anniversary of the bomb - 20 April 1941.

This is his story:

I was guided to your web site and was sad to hear that The Princess Alice is no more.

I was actually in the Princess Alice at the time of the bombing and wanted to show my eldest son something about it.

Princess Alice pub in the 1930's - pre bombing

The Landlord at that time was Mr Albert Smith. His wife, Violet, was my mother's sister. I lived with my maternal grandparents, - as my mother had died a year or so before. Another aunt lived with us, but our house had been bombed and we were, homeless at that time. We lived, temporarily in the pub for a while, until we were rehoused.

John Muskett - whose memories are retold
here, at about the time of the bombing in 1941

The cellars of the Princess Alice were very extensive, at least they were as far as a 5 1/2 year old was concerned. One of them rather resembled a hospital ward, being surrounded by beds. My aunt and uncle giving any passing serviceman without somewhere to go, a bed for the night. I was down there we were when the bombing happened.

Bomb site, where the pub
once stood - after April 1941

The Head Barman also lived in the pub and had been in the cinema - see photo of bombed Queen's cinema, below - on which the bomb actually dropped, the fall-out from the explosion hit mainly the front of the Alice - opposite.

Queen's Cinema, Romford Road, in the 1930's,
opposite the Princess Alice and between
Barclays Bank and what was the Odeon
Cinema and is now the Minaj-ul-Quran mosque

I remember the head barman being asked how many people he thought may have been in there, by a fireman leaning on a felling axe.

That was something that must have impressed itself on me as I cannot think why my memory of that particular incident should be so clear after all these years.

I also remember the next morning when we had to pick our way over all the bricks and rubble to get out and I picked up the top of a soda syphon which I had for a great many years afterwards.

Queen's Cinema, completely destroyed by a
parachute mine on the day the Alice was struck
by what John says was collateral damage.

The death of the man you mentioned (ed: killed while out walking his dog) has always served to remind me just how simple decisions and luck can make a difference to life and death.

He was the dentist who lived next door and came in to us for shelter when there was an air raid (ed: according to the West Ham register of the WW2 civilian dead register, this looks like it would have been Herbert Emile Kaye, aged about 60 of 1 Woodgrange Road). On the night of the bomb, he chose to come just when the bomb exploded, and he was still in the street when he was hit.

The Sunday Express describing the dramatic
night of bombing that saw the end of
the Queen's cinema and destruction of the
Alice, April 1941

I was told that he was blown through the flaps in the pavement where the beer would have been lowered into the cellar, and was found in the cellar next to the one we were in. How true that was I cannot say.

Some years later - I think maybe in the 70's or 80's - there was a report in one of the evening papers that the ghost of the dentist had been seen in the Princess Alice. When I told my aunt, she said he was looking for her, as she had paid a deposit for some new dentures and never had either the dentures or her deposit returned!

There is just one question I would like to ask you if I may. I know I went to school while I was there, although not for any great time. It was a small school, in possibly a couple of houses in one of the streets close to the pub.

It was certainly within walking distance and run by nuns. Quite why I went there I do not know, as we were not Catholics. I assume that it is no longer there but would appreciate it if you could confirm that for me.

(Ed: I'm afraid we cannot help you with an answer to your question, John. It sounds as if the sisters may have been some that stayed in Forest Gate after St Angela's school evacuated to Norfolk. John seems to think the school may have been in the Earlham Grove/Norwich Road area. Perhaps one of our readers can assist, and post a comment, below?).

I still have a small card inscribed, To dear little John from the Sisters.

The card from the Sisters to John - 1941

As you will no doubt have realised, I am now in my eighties and, like so many older people, I so often think back to the times past. I find myself constantly surprised by the trivial little memories that come to mind.

I was probably only living at the Princess Alice for about 4 or 5 months and yet one of the things that made a great impression on my mind was a visit to Wanstead Flats where I saw the Fire Brigade practising. I saw the rainbow in the jet from their hose and how it disappeared into the ground when the water was shut off! Why should that have made such an impression?

Prior to being bombed out and going to live at the Princess Alice we went there to see the wonderful new thing called television. The room was duly darkened and the television set switched on but, to everyone's disappointment, nothing came on.

Uncle Bert, who was not renowned for his patience, fiddled with all sorts of knobs at the back in vain and finally all attempts were given up. Later, when the evening papers were delivered, it was discovered that all television broadcasts were discontinued for the duration of the war! The television, having been salvaged from the Princess Alice, was, strangely enough, the set on which I eventually saw my first ever television show when broadcasts began after the war.

I hope that the ramblings of an old man have been of some interest to you and remain,

Yours faithfully,

John Muskett.

The origins of our district's name are fairly obvious and well known - the details, less so. In this article we attempt to piece together sometimes conflicting historic accounts to provide a likely, and perhaps controversial, version of the full story behind "the gate".

The Forest Gate was located roughly between what is now the Lord Lister clinic and the former Eagle and Child pub (now Woodgrange pharmacy) on Woodgrange Road.

Position of "the gate" today

There was no metalled road during its lifetime, simply a track - and "the gate", was principally an attempt to prevent cattle straying from "The Forest of Essex" (the lower part of which is what we now know as Wanstead Flats) on to the meadows and orchards of the Woodgrange, or on to the main Colchester to London (now Romford) Road.

Forest Gate's earliest appearance, by name, in surviving records, appears to be in the mid seventeenth century, in the West Ham burial register, which refer to the internment of Martha Jordon, from "the house of William Hare of fforest gate ... Monday ye 9th of April 1655".

The next surviving reference seems to be almost 40 years later, in 1693, when officers of "His Majesty's Forest of Essex" were:

To suffer William Hopkins to enclose two acres near Wood Grange gate, within the said forest, and also give him licence to erect a dwelling house thereupon.

Eighteenth century maps appear to confirm the existence of "the gate".

The Survey Map of John Rocque (see below for an extract), published in 1746, somewhat confusingly calls Woodgrange Road, "The White Gate", and William Hopkins property between Woodgrange Farm and The Eagle and Child pub is labelled "The Red Gate", but the location of the forest gate does snot seem to be indicated!

The Forest Gate section of John
Rocque's 1746 map of Essex

Andre and Chapman's map (see below for a small detail), published some thirty years later, seems to show "the gate", close to the Eagle and Child pub.

Abstract from Andre and Chapman's map, 1777

A local family historian has discovered that "three tenements on the north side of the Eagle and Child in Epping Forest" were insured with Sun Fire Insurance, in 1837, by a Robert Clayworth, who was a poultry farmer of Whitechapel. It looks therefore, as if the area adjacent to "the gate" was farmed by poultry keepers, who sold their stock in the City's Leadenhall Market.

Martin Wallace, in his history of St Mark's church, published in 1986, says that the original gate was replaced in 1851 by the Lord of Woodgrange manor, who erected a new five-bar gate, together with a keeper's cottage - known as Forest House.

The present article reproduces 6 drawings of "the gate" and its surrounds, but only the last of them shows the five-barred gate. The others illustrate the earlier, rickety ,older, and perhaps, original one.

The Forest Gate (undated) - clearly
a popular subject for local artists

Twentieth century commentators (see below) assert that it was not a toll-gate, and this version has become the received wisdom since. But the evidence, published in a facsimilie of its original form for the first time here, seems to dispute this claim.

The 1851 census, for example (see extracts below) describes a 68 year-old Robert Baker, born in Dagenham , to be living at "Forest Gate Toll House" and as being a "toll keeper". Why the use of the word "toll" twice in this contemporaneous census entry if "the gate" in question were not a toll-gate?

1851 census transcript: Forest Gate Toll House, Robert Baker, Head, married, 68, Toll Keeper (born) Essex, Dagenham. Also Mary Baker, wife, married, 66, Essex

Martin Wallace does not paint a very sympathetic picture of Baker, describing him as:

Being famous locally for his association with footpads, highwaymen, gypsies and poachers, who used barbaric traps to catch their prey.

According to Victoria County History of Essex (1986):

(We) and several other authorities doubt if the Forest Gate was ever a toll gate. ... A draft Ordnance Survey about the same time (1851) places a "toll gate" across the road at that point. It is possible that, with the development of the neighbourhood tolls may have been temporarily charged for the upkeep of what became Woodgrange Road until the Local Board (ed: predecessor to West Ham Council) took over the highways (ed: probably in the 1870's).

This would make complete sense - charging travellers for the use of a half decent road to and from the forest before there was a formal publicly funded mechanism for paying for the maintenance of public highways.

The 1851 pen and ink drawing, below, is titled "Ye olde toll gate" - a strange name for a contemporary to give his work if "the gate" were not, in fact, a toll-gate.

1851 pen and ink drawing of "Ye Olde Toll Gate"

Another sketch of the old gate,
in a slightly worse condition

Another, undated, high resolution
view - this time looking south

John Spencer Curwen (see here for details) wrote, in his recollections of life in Forest Gate and Upton, that:

I do not remember the gate ever being closed. It was set back against the wall of the cottage, but anyone who wished to could have closed it.

In my childhood (ed: the 1850's), when we dropped by, the woman in charge would come to the door and catch the penny we tossed her.

This extract does not prove "the gate" was a toll-gate, but why else would a passer-by throw money at a person standing next to it?

Unfortunately, Ordnance Survey maps of the period are not very illuminating.

The 1863 OS map of Forest Gate and district appears to be cut off just feet from where "the gate" was located - and so can't settle any controversy. A larger scale, 6" map, indicates what is now Woodgrange Road ran to the Eagle and Child, and not beyond suggesting that although not formally a "toll road", tolls were collected by the toll-gate keeper to pay for the upkeep of Woodgrange Road, from Romford road, to the pub.

The next event in "the gate's" history, for which records remain, is the earliest (only?) surviving photograph of it. The occasion was a visit of Princess Louise (Victoria's 6th child and 4th daughter) through the district around 1876, on her way to a charitable event in Essex.

The only (?) surviving photo of "the gate" location
- unfortunately it is open!, c 1876

The photo was taken before the Eagle and Child pub was re-fashioned, in 1896. The old pub is at the back of the photo and the building attached to it, in the foreground, was a butcher's shop - see below.

The gate is clearly open, but would have stretched from post, on the roadway, to the left of the photo to the lamp-post on the right.

Describing the scene twenty years later, in September 1896, the Forest Gate Weekly News wrote:

Only some twenty years ago the Eagle and Child was the hostelry of the district; its gardens, with summer houses and statuary were much sought out for rest and refreshments by persons passing by, or strolling through the forest.

1879 sketch of toll-gate house, with the
unmodernised Eagle and Child pub behind.
"The gate" unfortunately is not in view.

The paper gave credence to the existence of a toll-gate, in the same article, writing:

There are still (1896) residents among us who can remember the old gate and the little toll booth (ed: our emphasis) by which alone from this part of the country, communication was had with the Forest from the high road, from Ilford to London ... it was necessary first to pay the gate keeper, who eked out his slender honorarium by the sale of cakes, nuts and ginger beer.

On the south side of the gate there were but a few houses then, one occupied by Mr Castell (see below) and another by Mr Baker (ed: what relationship, if any, this person had to the Robert Baker, above, is not clear) on the east side, and some small cottages on the west side, were all the buildings that were near the gate.

The Mr Castell the Weekly News refers to appears in the 1881 census as George Castell, a 45 year old dairyman, living at Sunny Villa ("Mr Baker" does not appear living nearby in these census returns). Doubtless, George Castell supplied, if not owned, the butcher's shop, featured in the banner photograph of "the gate", above, and probably herded his cattle on Wanstead Flats.

George Castell lived with his wife and seven children in the house in 1881. In the next census, a decade later, he was described as "retired" and was living at 62 Capel Road.

The Weekly Newsreported in 1896 that the houses that the Baker and Castell families lived in were still standing, but by now "they are hidden by the sight of the shop fronts that were added to them years later "- rather as those further down Woodgrange Road are today.

So, the Weekly News, writing of the 1870's mentioned a toll-gate, but also writing of the 1870's, an old West Ham resident, Major Sharp Hume penned a vivid description of his recollections of "the gate" and its surroundings, in Notes and Queries thirty years later (see the facsimile reproduction, below).

Notes and Queries 9 August 1890

The highlighted sections clearly mention "the gate", but not as a toll-gate, suggesting, perhaps that the West Ham Board had by then taken over responsibility for the road and no longer charged travellers for using it.

It could be deduced from the above that perhaps the tolls were no longer charged from the late 1870's - as some with recollections of the early years of the decade recall the tolls, and those remembering the later years of the decade don't.

The 1896 Weekly News'article, above, acknowledged that no written history of "the gate" was in existence, even then, but referred to surviving oral history accounts of events in its past:

From time to time, imposing, even royal cavalcades, principally hunting parties, or visitors to Wanstead House (ed: see here for details of the House's history) passed through the gate and imperfect records of their pageants were handed down from generation to generation of gate-keepers, but for want of a local historian to reduce them to writing, much that would otherwise be entertaining reading would be lost to us.

Step forward Katharine Fry, daughter of prison reformer, Elizabeth and long-time resident of Forest Gate. Over a number of decades she collected fragments of local history, which Gustav Pagenstecher (see here for details) pulled together and published as a History of the parishes of East and West Ham in 1888. This fairly detailed book, however, has precious little to say about "the gate", after the area in which they both lived was named. Quoting the relevant part in its entirety, they say:

The hamlet situated beyond the highway, known as Forest Gate ...used in its former years to consist of only two or three gentlemen's houses and the little wooden hut occupied by the keeper of the "gate to the Forest", which was generally shut, to prevent cattle straying from Wanstead Flats to the High Road.

And, that's it! E7-NowAndThen's verdict on their history of the area of their residence: poor show!

A more distant sketch of the toll house,
Eagle and Child, with a clear view
of the five bar gate, on the left

Most commentators and historians agree that "the gate" was demolished sometime between 1881 and 1883. This is just three or four years after the Corporation of London took over responsibility for Wanstead Flats and after the West Ham Local Board would have taken over responsibility for the upkeep of Woodgrange and Woodford Roads. The proximity of these events is probably not coincidental.

Within fifteen years the sands of time, however, had blown over much local memory of "the gate", with the Weekly Newscommenting :"of its ultimate fate, we have no information."

A decade later, writing in the authoritative Essex Review, John Avery asserted that:

The old gate house at the corner of Forest Street (ed: now Brooking Road) was never a toll-house, but the residence of the keeper of the gate, which was placed across the road to prevent cattle straying off the Flats on to the highway.

And that has become the accepted version of the story: a forest gate, but not a toll-gate.

A crude chronology of "the story" of "the gate" would be, that nineteenth century witnesses declared the gate to be a toll-gate, and twentieth century "experts" dismissed the observations as fanciful. Perhaps revisionism is in order today, and we go back to believing the contemporary witnesses.

Cows on the Flats in 20th century

Piecing the evidence together, the following seems at least to be a plausible account of "the gate's" history.

A gate was in existence, on what is now Woodgrange Road from, at latest, the mid seventeenth century. It was there to keep cattle straying off what we now know as Wanstead Flats on to nearby arable and orchard land, and the main London to Colchester road.

It could well have been erected by the Lord of Woodgrange Manor to protect his crops from animal damage. He may well have charged a toll for the grazing animals to pass through the gate, on their way to market in central London, by way of recompense for the damage their hooves would have done to the road he maintained, en route to Smithfield.

Forest Gate began to develop as a settlement of some importance from the 1840's. This would have brought an increase of passenger traffic along Woodgrange Road, into Leyton and further points north. The old gate clearly, as illustrated by some of the sketches in this article, suffered from disrepair .

In 1851 Samuel Gurney (see here) bought the Hamfrith estate, including the "lordship of Woodgrange Manor" (see above)and immediately erected a new main gate with the side, five bar, one, referred to above. He also appears to have built a gate-keeper's house - whose occupants would assist both foot and carriage passengers, while still preventing stray cattle wandering.

The gate-keeper, gate and road would all have required maintenance, A toll was charged, to cover, or at least contribute to, the costs of the upkeep of the road, gate and keeper.

When the West Ham Board took over the upkeep of the road, they would have abolished the toll, and made the toll-keeper redundant, but kept "the gate" to keep the cattle at bay. This, however was removed in the early 1880's, as it would have become a serious impediment to the increased volume of traffic.

Cattle subsequently resumed their wanders from the Flats down what was by then Woodgrange Road (see photo), as they would for the next century, until an outbreak of BSE finally stopped cattle grazing on Wanstead Flats in the 1998.

Cows wandering down Woodford Road,
from grazing on Wanstead Flats, in the 1990's

Footnote: We are deeply indebted to local post-card collector and photographer, Tony Morrison, for the use of some his high resolution images to illustrate this article. We hope to be working with Tony to provide other images from his fine collection in future articles on this blog.

We were contacted a while ago by Chris Roach, the Great Granddaughter of prominent Victorian and Edwardian Forest Gate photographer, William Edward Wright. Together, we have put together this article on the interesting life and work of this local entrepreneur and innovative photographer. He opened eight photographic studios in Forest Gate and west Essex in the thirty years between 1880 and 1910, and later, a further studio in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex.

Below, we examine his life and works, amply illustrated by many of them.

A short biography

William Edward Wright was born in Poplar in 1852, the son of a "colour maker". By 1861 he was living in High Street, Stratford, and given his occupation, his father probably worked in one of the then "stinky industries", based in what is now the Olympic Park.

A decade later, William was an 18-year old "head of household", living on The Broadway, Stratford, in "fancy sales" (small decorative gift items). He married Sarah, two years later.

In 1881 (aged 29) he was living at 3 Somerset Terrace in Godwin Road and had two sons. He was, by now, listed as a photographer. It is not clear where he was working then, or for whom, but a year later (1882) a Kelly's trade directory shows his premises to be a short distance away, at 1 Sebert Road, Forest Gate.

(Confusingly, there was another W Wright, photographer working in this area at about this time - he had studios in Stratford and Hackney. This may be the reason that "our" William Wright insisted in having "Edward" in the name of all his work.)

The 1891 census indicates that the family had relocated to also live in the Sebert Road premises (see contemporary photograph). By now there were three sons in the family, and it was prosperous enough to employ a domestic servant.

Sebert Road premises, today

The Sebert Road premises was spacious and has been used, over the years, for a number of light industrial purposes, including for a while - after the Wrights left - at the turn of the twentieth century, as a cycle manufacturers (see photo).

Wright's Sebert Road studio was a cycle
factory soon after his departure

W.E. Wright was clearly on the up, as a photographer. By a 1896 he had moved business premises to the better located 65 Woodgrange Road - on the, by now prosperous, Forest Gate high street, just a couple of doors from the railway station. Wright had also opened up other branches of his photographer's in Leyton and Walthamstow (see advert from the Forest Gate Weekly News of 1896).

Advert for Wright's expanding business
in 1896 edition of Forest Gate Weekly News

The studio/shop's sign in Woodgrange Road can be seen on the undated photo, below. This building was bombed during WW2 and is now the site of a Halal butcher (see recent photo, also below).

Woodgrange Road in the 1890's, with the
train station in the centre left. Wright's
studio was immediately after the awning on
the left. A close up, below, just picks out
the lettering on the shop front - in an excellent
position next to the railway station.

65 Woodgrange Road branch, today. Wright's
studio was bombed during WW2, to be replaced
by these rather dreary buildings

The family were living above the Woodgrange Road at the time of the 1901 census. All three sons were, by now, "photographic assistants", and their income clearly helped family finances enough to enable them to employ a cook, in addition to their general "domestic servant".

Although only 59 William, had retired by 1911, and with his wife, Sarah had moved to Cambridge Road, Southend. They retained the services of a domestic servant.

Despite the fact that William and Sarah had retired to Essex, trade directories indicate that his Woodgrange Road studio was still operating, presumably under the management of one of his sons, until at least 1922. His great-grand daughter believes the shop - despite WW2 bombing - remained with the family until the 1980's. (We would be delighted to hear from any reader who has recollections of the premises in its latter days in family hands).

William and Sarah had three sons and the youngest - Charles, blog collaborator, Chris' grandfather - became a reconnaissance photographer during WW1, going up in biplanes taking photos on glass plates.

See below for some of the photos taken by he and his colleagues at the time.

The most spectacular (the German fleet, having surrendered, being escorted along the River Forth), was probably not his, however. The actual photographer of them is not totally clear, from surviving records.

German fleet being escorted along the River
Forth on Armistice day 1918. The Forth
Bridge can be seen in the distance. A bi-plane
and a couple of air balloons are in harness
to accompany the surrendered fleet.

Ariel photo of the fleet in convoy

Reconnaissance photography, probably
taken in training of a bi-plane dropping a torpedo

Theoretically Charles shouldn't have kept these photos as they were "classified", but his desire to retain them as souvenirs is understandable! His son, Alan, later sent copies of them and others to the RAF Museum at Hendon and at least one of them can now be seen on display.

After WW2 Charles, grandfather of co-blogger Chris, went into a related work area - optics. His son, Alan, followed him as an optician in Hamlet Court Road, Westcliff, the area to which William moved after WW1 and where he established his last studio.

The coming of box brownie cameras and home photography meant people no longer used photographic studios to the same degree. They have subsequently diminished in number, and with their demise, the Wright family's involvement as professional photographers.

What follows are small collections of William Edward Wright's work as a photographer, interspersed with details of the locations of his studios and some of the styles that he adopted and captured.

A fine portfolio of transport photos

The family loved to travel in style and the Wrights certainly captured that in photography. Many of those below feature members of his own family - including the wheelbarrow one!

Studio openings, according to directories and census records

1882 - 1 Sebert Road (Kelly's)

Back and front of earliest surviving photo - Number 4 - from Serbert Road studio - approx 1882

1891 - 1-3 Sebert Road (Census)

1896 - 65 Woodgrange Road (Forest Gate Weekly News), also 223 Hoe St, Walthamstow and 254 High Road, Leyton (Forest Gate Weekly News)

Back of a Woodgrange Road photo

Back of a Leyton studio photo

Front and back of a Walthamstow studio photo

After 1906 - local branches were established in Pembroke Road, Seven Kings and at 31 Cranbrook Road, Ilford, as well as in South Street, Romford.

Six studios feature on the
back of this photo of young child

Later, a branch was opened at 162 Hamlet Court Road, Westcliff-on-Sea.

From 1912 - the 65 Woodgrange Rd branch has "and Sons" in the name

1922 - 65 Woodgrange Road still in business

1929 - 162 Hamlet Court Rd, Westcliffe (has "and Sons" in the name)

The Hamlet Court Rd, Westcliffe branch
in the 1950's, after it had been taken over
by his grandson, who was by now an optician.
The family joke was what would now be
called 'nominative determinism' -
an optician called CE Wright!

CDV photography

Most of William Wright's surviving commercial photographs are what are technically known as CDVs - from the French Carte de Visite - or visiting card. They often become available on EBay.

The photos are of a fairly standard size - approximately 4.25" x 2.5". It was usual for the photographer to stamp his name, or that of the studio on the front frame of the photos, and give details of the firm, or its other branches on the back - see examples shown here.

The CDV form of photography was popularised during the American Civil War (1860's), as the photos were easier to take than previous, earlier methods of photography. The subjects in the early CDVs still needed to stay still for a considerable length of exposure time in the early photos. Their popularity soon spread to Europe, in what became the beginnings of mass photography.

Initially CDVs were rather stilted, posed head and shoulder shots of their subjects, because of the length of exposure times required and the lack of inventiveness of the early photographers. By Wright's time, however, photographers could be more adventurous, with full length body poses, props, group shots and other gimmicks, to make them appear more interesting and alive.

Although many survive, unfortunately few still have the name of the subject on them, and none of Wright's business records would appear to have survived, to assist the process of identifying them. Some photographers dated their photos - but Wright did not, although some pencil markings on the back of some of his (presumably by one-time owners, or subjects) help.

The majority of the photographs illustrated towards the end of this post are CDVs.

More fashion-conscious people than us may also be able to date the CDVs with reference to the clothes worn by the subjects.

Other Wright photography

William Wright, of course, produced more than simple, high turnover, CDVs, and some of his output has a wider significance. Unsurprisingly he produced a number of innovative photographs of members of his family - reproduced and annotated by his great grand-daughter, Chris, see below. He clearly liked to own and ride impressive vehicles! (see above).

Wright also adopted the CDV style with items, such as postcards. See below one he took of Godwin school pupils, in the 1880's. It is unlikely that he would have got the kind of sales from photos like this that school photographers get today - but doubtless it was a useful money maker (lots of potential sales from one shot).

School photo of Godwin school from 1880's -
the back of the photo suggests that it was
one of his early photos and one owner of it has
kindly noted (in pencil) that it was of Godwin
school. - see below A rare little local find!

Another example of multi-sales group photography is to be seen in the undated one of local nurses, below. Unfortunately, although we know the shot was taken by the Wright studios, locally, we don't not know which hospital it relates to. The old maternity hospital on Forest Lane must, at least be a possibility.

A Wright photo of nurses. It could well have
been those employed at the maternity
hospital on Forest Lane.

The photo, below of the Black Sateens may have been another such photograph, or possibly a publicity shot for a vaudeville act. Unfortunately, we have no further information about either the photograph, of the Sateens.

A Wright photograph of The Black Sateens
- a vaudeville or musical act, perhaps?

Group family photography

William Edward right also branched out into group family photography, of which weddings were perhaps the most regular and lucrative.

The wedding photo immediately below was given to this website by someone who saw it dumped in a local fly tip, recently! It is large - 12" x 10" inches - and the group pose is great. But the back-drop, with pylons and a railway and bridge is hardly the ideal setting for such an occasion!

A splendid Wright wedding photo, rather
spoiled by the railway bridge in the background.
Perhaps taken in the studio yard at Sebert Road?

A christening. Note insert at top right
hand corner - presumably a significant family
member who was unable to be present on the day

An unknown vicar's wedding

The hats have it!

More commercial photography

In many descriptions of the work of Wright's studios he is described as an architectural photographer. Unfortunately no examples of this seem to have survived - or at least have not found their way to the family collection. Any sightings or offers would be gratefully received!

Other of his work was put to interesting uses, like the etching of the new Tower Bridge, under construction, below. It was used by the London Illustrated News, from a photograph of Wright's, in the 1890's, when newspapers were unable to reproduce actual photographs.

An photo-etching based on an impressive
photo of Wright's on the construction of Tower
Bridge, published by the prestigious Illustrated
London News. These photo etches were used at the
time immediately before newspapers had the
technology to reproduce photographs - in the 1890's

William Wright was undoubtedly a photographic innovator in his day - he was made Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society - and a successful businessman, judging by the numbers of branches of his studios he established. He and Sarah spent their last years in Torquay. Although he died, aged 79 - perhaps fittingly in West Ham - in 1931. He was probably visiting a local friend or relative at the time.

Soldier photos

W Edward Wright's active time as a photographer covered both the Boer and First World wars. Then, as now, it was common for departing servicemen to have studio photos taken - often in uniform - as reminders, and unspoken of potential last images, for the families left behind. A fair number of these survive, a selection is shown below. Unfortunately, few have names - we have added them, where they are available.

A Boer War soldier,
photo taken in Leyton

A Scottish regiment WW1 soldier
and sailor, photo taken in Forest Gate

Wedding photo of soldier groom
and bride, taken in Forest Gate c 1915

WW1 soldier, photo
taken in Forest Gate

Private ECW Constable
- taken in Forest Gate

Sergeant and companion -
photo taken in Forest Gate

Lance Corporal, with wife (?) and child

WW1 photo of soldier,
taken in Forest Gate

The good and the great

As a photographer of some distinction, Wright was called upon to take photos of a number of dignitaries. Scant details of some of them survive, but they may well be recognised by visitors to this site.

Unknown mayor (1)

Unknown mayor (2)

Mrs Abednego Bishop, c 1901 of
76 Cranmer Road. Mayoress
of West Ham 1900 -1901

Unknown cleric - nb this would be
a later photo, as Wright is now
styled as a Fellow of the
Royal Photographic Society

Rev Cyril Ley, St Stephens church,
Upton Park, dated 1922

Mr and Mrs Burt - later
Forest Gate studio portrait

Alfred John Hill (1862 - 1927) -
Chief Mechanical Engineer,
Stratford GNER works

Interesting occupations

A coachman - Forest Gate

A scholar - Forest Gate

Two housemaids

A nursemaid with child -
interesting that it is the servant with
the child and not a parent - see below, also

Family portraits

A large number of these survive, today: what follows is a selection of the more interesting Forest Gate ones.

Cute kids

A speciality for as long as photography has existed - and Wright was no exception in producing these. Again - literally dozens to choose from, but here is a selection of the more interesting Forest Gate ones.

More challenging adult photos

Some of the subjects clearly presented a problem for the Wright family is showing them in their best light, as some of the following perhaps indicate!

Footnote Thanks to William's great-grand daughter, Chris Roach for sharing some of the images with us. Should any visitor to this blog have more information about William and his photography - particularly the subjects of the anonymous ones here - she and I would be delighted to hear from you.

We hope to be able to mount an exhibition of the work of William Edward Wright in Forest Gate later this year.

E7-NowAndThen asked Jane Williams of a recently established local charity aimed at supporting young mums in desperate straits to tell us a little of the charity's background and record. It has achieved the unwanted status of being a success in an arena that should never exist. Please offer The Magpie Project your fullest support, however you can.

This is their story.

E7 is a place of increasing extremes. Houses selling for pushing £1m sit cheek by jowl with houses in multiple occupancy and bed and breakfast hostels where families live in appalling conditions - without access to the basic amenities of a safe, clean kitchen or bathroom.

'Gentrification' of the area has seen families unable to afford increasing rents being forced in to worse and worse living conditions. Newham also holds the unsavoury honour of being London's top borough, in terms of families in temporary accommodation.

As with most inequality and poverty, women and children tend to suffer first and most and longest. A recent Society Guardian investigation revealed that towards the end of 2017 there were at least 26,152 under-fives in temporary accommodation in England alone, 2,341 of them living in B&Bs.

Newham's own housing department accommodated 1,996 under-fives in temporary accommodation in December 2017.

Please don't stop reading. This is not an article running down E7 - on the contrary, this is a love letter to Newham in general, and Forest Gate in particular.

A simple idea

The idea behind the Magpie Project was simple. Those mums living in the dire circumstances of temporary accommodation, hostels, refuges or sofa surfing - were simply not getting to our local children's centres with their under-fives.

We worked with Kay Rowe Nursery and Children's Centre (one of our best early years providers, rated 'excellent' by Ofsted) to make sure that every child had the chance of benefiting from children's centres. So, for mothers whose lives are too complicated, those who don't have the bus fare, those who don't have the information, or feel too low or judged to engage - we wanted to come up with something.

We allow a space for joy, celebration
and play in what can be an exhausting
week. Mums love the "family feel" of the project

We set up a simple play and stay, offering a friendly, non-judgemental, non-threatening space for mums to come with their under-fives.

We want to be a place where mums can get tea, coffee and chat to others in the same situation. Somehwre their children could play, have a healthy snack and lunch. We pay the bus fare, and while mums are with us - we bring in professionals from housing, immigration, health, employment and domestic violence services to help them begin to address the issues affecting their lives.

It was nerve-wracking back in June 2017, when we opened for the first time.

Volunteers and professionals sat in the room and waited for mums and children to come. Eight months, and 127 mums later - we get more than 20 families every time we open the door and an average of three new families a week come to us for help. So, we kinow we are on to something.

Community power

But what has been utterly astonishing is how YOU, Forest Gate and Newham, have taken these families to your hearts. What has been utterly extraordinary is that - the moment we started to talk about this - the vast majority of you responded with; "What can I do?".

And you did - do, in so many ways. You volunteered to run the stay and play, to make soup, to donate printing, clothes, to paint faces, to bake cakes, to run errands, to deliver leaflets, to donate baby equipment, toiletries, nappies and so much more - to come and share your skills and passions with our families at workshops.

More of you came forward with ideas for fundraising and a desire to give money.

Local charity, Community Links, helped gain our first funding. Aston Mansfield (Durning Hall) gave us a room for free and helped us with training and capacity building.

One mum and her eight month old
lived in this B&B room on Romford Rd
for six months. No place to play,
to eat, to learn to crawl - continually
wiping mould off the walls. What
upsets us is that we were paying this
landlord out of the public purse.
We supported her to get rehoused - she
is now in a nicer (still temporary) home.

East Edge Sisters and Forest Gate WI fundraise for us. Woodgrange Market cake stal, veg stall and Anagram Antiques have all supported through donations and raffle prizes - and the wonderful Jeff and Andi at Number 8 Emporium have designed and sell a range of jewellery, just for us.

The support and love that Forest Gate and Newham families have extended to our own most vulnerable families and under-fives has been extra-ordinary and truly humbling to witness.

Only just beginning

And it goes on. There are plans afoot for a first anniversary fund-raiser, a summer extravaganza and, of course, a deepening and widening of the help we give to the homeless under-fives.

There are more than 1994 under-fives in Newham with no stable home. We have only seen 150 of them. So, our work is only beginning.

With community support like this - we hope they will be in safe hands.

Success story

Below is just one example of the kind of situations the women we are working with face, in an effort to provide the simplest of needs for their children.

When D came to us in June 2017. She was living with her four children on the sofa of a friend. She had no recourse to public funds and was surviving on £37 a week from Newham Social Services. Her children were hungry and she was in extreme destitution.

We supported her, first practically by supply emergency funds through South West Ham Children’s Fund, and food bank referrals, getting hold of clothes, food, and equipment for her.

We then supported her to challenge the level of support she was receiving, through the recently retired ex Councillor Dianne Walls.

Shelter took on her case, as she was moved into temporary accommodation of her own.

She then had her case taken on by London Black Women’s Project and in February 2018 her indefinite leave to remain in the UK was granted. With the help of the family support worker that we introduced her to, at the local children’s centre, she has now applied for all benefits due to her.

She is actively seeking work, through agencies, in residential care homes. D and her four children have been rehoused in Manor Park.

We cannot claim credit for these outcomes but we did support, enable, inform, connect and walk with D while she solved her own family’s issues.

She is now a founder member of our steering committee, she has introduced volunteers and other families to the project. She is a beacon of hope for the mums who are still in difficult situations.

Magpie Project in numbers

The sheer number of mums coming
to us exceeded all our expectations.
We also had not expected to
find so many families "sofa-surfing"
actually homeless and being
put up by friends - sometimes
even kindly strangers.

You have provided

· 50 volunteers (6 trustees, 24 on the day, 5 researchers, 6 fundraisers, 9 other)
· Close to £7,000 in community fundraising
· 22 buggies
· Thousands of nappies
· Hundreds of beautiful baby clothes.

We have helped

· 149 under fives
· 127 mothers
· 7 families rehomed in to more suitable accommodation through Shelter
· 4 families’ level of Section 17 support challenged and improved
· 2 families’ NRPF decision reversed with the help of The Unity Project.
· 5 families received their indefinite leave to remain.

How you can help

Funding

· Give regularly
· Fundraise for us

Donating

· Donate good quality toddler clothes
· We always need toiletries, sanitary items and oyster cards.

Volunteering

· Do you have skills you can share – either on the day or at other times:

· Treasury skills,
· Pick up and drop offs.
· Cooking soup.

Awareness

· Spread the word in person or on social media.
· Talk about homelessness to everyone who will listen!

Politico

· Look into policies on housing
· Consider housing, childcare, early years education and domestic violence policies when voting.

Contact

Support under-fives in temporary accommodation in Newham:

Registered Charity Number: 1176267

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/themagpieproject

Keep in touch: Sign up for our e-newsletter:

t http://eepurl.com.dgjgzb

www.themagpieproject.com

twitter, facebook, instagram: @themagpieprojectUK

Saturday 26 May will see Barry's Meat Market, the mainstay of Woodgrange Road's retail offer, close its doors for the last time - but other portals are opening soon!

As a thank you present to his loyal local customers, Barry will have a marquee at the back of the shop on the day, with a barbecue and drinks for them, between noon and 5pm. You are welcome!

Barry's - end of an era on 26 May 2018

The closure is a prelude to the redevelopment of the shops and flats above 39a - 49a Woodgrange Road, to make way for the construction of 77 new flats on the site - and the opening of a large Lidl supermarket (see here, for details).

Three of the shops on the terrace have already moved south down the road (Khan, the halal butcher, Medinah's dry cleaners and Fancy Curtains), and the painted-over windows suggests that Gregg's has already sold its last local sausage roll.

Barry's is migrating too - but to the 21st century and the web! More of that later.

Barry, as his customers will remember him
- a cheery face in his butcher's overalls

Barry Parsons was born in Walthamstow in 1969 and opened his first butcher's shop on Woodgrange Road, with family help, as a youngster in 1985. It was in a small shop, next to Santander (in what later became Fancy Curtains), which had originally been opened as part of the family business in 1982. Due to family illness it closed temporarily in 1984 until Barry stepped in, the following year.

His dad, a bus driver, and granddad, a butcher, opened the first in the line of family shops (the title family butcher's always seems somewhat sinister!)in Lea Bridge Road in 1970. The name above the door was Parson's - and it remained so until about five years ago. The shop was later moved to Walthamstow High Street, and it is today run by Barry's cousin and trades under the name of Norfolk's.

Barry arranging the carcasses
in the cold store room. Five star
rated for food hygiene and cleanliness

Barry's older brother, Jeff, meanwhile opened his own butcher's, the Cookery, in Stoke Newington High Street, 40 years ago - where he is still in business with it. Barry started working with Jeff and after three years, branched out on his own, to his first Woodgrange Road shop - 41b, in 1985. Three years later he moved to his very familiar corner shop.

Barry's opening, initially trading
under the family name of Parsons

And, of course, he's seen many changes, over the years. When he started there were seven butcher's on the street, including a Dewhurst's an AA Fisher's and a Manor Farm Foods. Since that time the shop has faced many challenges: the rise of supermarkets and pre-packed meat, the impact of convenience and take-away food, the emergence of halal competition locally and the rise of vegetarianism - all of which have hit the traditional butcher's trade.

Early shop displays at Barry's - above and below

One of his biggest challenges, however, came from an unexpected source; Thames Water. Readers will remember when the land outside his shop was dug up for almost three years, as major work was undertaken on the main pipes and sewerage systems below. This hit his trade badly, as customers found difficulty in accessing the shop - and others simply assumed it had closed. Sales dropped by about 60% during the works and it took Barry many months to extract compensation from Thames Water for the damage it had done to his trade.

Barry's has survived, because he has moved with the times. A look inside his shop shows that the stock caters for the meat tastes of most of the local nationalities who have settled locally; and his staff, ethnically, almost mirror the community they serve. His motto is - listen to your customers, and give them what they want - in short, the cornerstone to all successful retailing.

It's a hard life as a butcher. Barry, who now lives in Waltham Abbey, is up five days a week at 3a.m. to get to Smithfield for 4, each day. He's back at his shop, fully loaded up with meat between 5.30 and 6 each morning. It's then cutting and preparing time, before doors open at 9.

It's usually 6.30pm before the shop is cleaned up and ready to close for the night. Work "in the office" then begins for Barry, as he begins making his orders for the following day and balancing the books, before he can shut down for the night, and grab 4 hours sleep, before the schedule begins again.

When a bad accident to his arm kept him away from his shop, about three years ago, Barry began experimenting with new business models - and that has prepared him well for his future in the trade.

Above and below - Barry and staff at
work in the preparation cold rooms,
at the back of the shop

He has had little choice but to move his business from Woodgrange Road on, as his lease has been run down, and the freeholders have sold the row of shops and premises behind them for redevelopment. He has tried to maintain a local presence - making an unsuccessful bid to take over another shop on Woodgrange Road, and has also acquired premises further up - near the fish supermarket, to redevelop as a butchers'. Difficulties with the planners - now resolved - however, have meant that it would be 18 months before he could trade from there.

So - the business models he learned from his time away from the butcher's block have come in very handy. He started and developed a wholesale meat business, working with a chain of Lithuanian butchers, which is prospering.

This augers well for the future. He also started, by way of an experiment, a high end, on-line, butcher's shop.

This has been revamped, and will be relaunched as The Luxury Meat Box Co (www.TheLuxuryMeatBoxCompany.co.uk) in June. He will also be continuing to operate - on-line - as Barry's Meat Market (www.BarrysMeatMarket.co.uk), where he will offer a four day a week delivery service to Forest Gate, and his local customer catchment area.

The Luxury Meat Box Company - reading
and waiting for your on-line orders

Barry's on-line will be available from Tuesday 29 May - there will not be a day of lost trading, after the physical shop closes! The company's website even has the feel of Barry's shop about it - with the signage and colouring.

Barry's will offer next day (Tuesday - Friday) delivery, free of charge (subject to a £15 minimum order) to the Forest Gate area. It will sell the same range of stock currently available, in the shop, and customers will be able to order on-line from photos of items and an easy to access ordering system on the website. Enhancements to prepared-meat quality are being developed, as the stock will become gluten-free and contain no additives.

A seamless local service from Barry's.
Food delivered to your door from early next week!

The Luxury Meat Box Company will be aimed at the Ginger Pig, Borough Market- and other high-end butcher's chains' customer bases. Barry will be offering luxury products at affordable prices. The meat will be sourced from a range of farmers with whom he already has business dealings, together with existing Smithfield specialist suppliers.

There will be Rare Breed, Angus, English Longhorn and British White beef; free range Gloucester Old Spot pork; Salt Marsh Lamb and Packington's free range chickens, among other delights, available.

The meats will be dispatched four days per week, on the day of sourcing - with next day deliver, via DPD, guaranteed. It will be delivered in carefully- sourced containers and packed in ice that will keep the meat cold for four days, from despatch. The service will be nationwide - and delivery will be free for orders in excess of £60.

Barry now lives in Waltham Abbey and has taken over an industrial unit there, which is currently being converted into a customised, cold storage butcher's unit. All of the preparation of meat - collected from farms and Smithfield - will be undertaken and despatched from there. Work is still being undertaken on preparing this unit. Until then, Barry will take over a temporarily vacant premises at Smithfield for his preparation work.

Above: staff at work, cutting meat for
the customers, and below - impressive
display cabinets of prepared meat

Barry currently employs six staff - four of them will follow him into the new 21st century butchery business, leaving behind many happy memories of their time on Woodgrange Road - including one last fling, as on-watchers to a new movie. Three weeks before the shop closes, it shut for one additional day, to become a film set for a movie, staring Helen Mirren and Sir Ian McKellen.

Lights, camera, action: temporary rebranding,
for filming in early May, as Rastakovski's

The fascia board name was changed to Rastakovski, a Polish butcher' set at the turn of the 20th/21st centuries. The film, The Good Liar, will be released by Warner Brothers next year. Helen Mirren wasn't on the set of the day of shooting, but McKellen and Jim Carter (butler from Downton Abbey) were.

Ian McKellen and Jim Carter
awaiting the call for action

The film plot starts of simply: Ray Courtney (played by McKellen) meets a well-to-do widow, Betty McLeish (Mirren), with a view to conducting an on-line swindle. The intentions go awry when Courtney falls for McLeish, and the drama begins ...

As Barry says, the movie will be something to show his grandchildren and tell them of his times on Woodgrange Road.

So - farewell - and a swift hello to Barry, as he moves from the physical to the on-line local butcher!

The demonstrations outside Forest Gate police station in June 2017 protesting about the death of Edson da Costa, following police action, brought back memories of similar demonstrations over thirty years ago.

This is the first of a two part post recalling those times, often through the eyes of participants, or contemporary observers. We are almost wholly indebted to a long out-of-print booklet: Newham - the Forging of a Black Community for the contents of these articles. Full details of the publication can be found in the footnote.

A re-telling of these events from a generation ago makes for grim reading today. Some of the locations referred to in the story below now have different uses - indeed, the old Forest Gate police station, itself, is long gone - but the events surrounding them were truly dreadful, and barely credible thirty years later.

One or two of Newham's elder statesmen today emerge from this re-telling with considerable credit, notably former councillor Conor McCauley and current GLA member Unmesh Desai. They were pioneers for a better, anti-racist, borough, often swimming against the tide of considerable establishment bigotry and prejudice.

Unmesh Desia in 1980 - sporting
a very Che Guevara look

Unmesh Desai - today. In the 1970's
and 80's a leading figure in local fight
against racism in Newham

By way of background. According to the 1981 census 27% of Newham residents then lived in a household headed by someone of "New Commonwealth" background - about half of whom were Asian and a quarter Afro-Caribbean. The figure had been less than 1% in 1951.

The Asian community was largely concentrated around East Ham and Upton Park, while Afro-Caribbean residents mainly centred in, or around, Forest Gate.

The attractions of these areas to newcomers were, as ever, the presence of low skilled jobs and cheap, private sector, rented accommodation.

Work could be found in places like Ford's in Dagenham, some of the factories in the south of the borough, dependent on imports brought in through the still active local docks (such as Canning Town's Tate and Lyle) and the factories in and around the Lea Valley - subsequently closed to make way for the Olympic Park.

Newham Council in the 1970's and 80's operated a blatantly racist housing allocations policy. In 1975, for example, Cllr Bill Watts - sometime Housing chair - openly admitted that the Council had changed its housing allocation policy (via the points system) to avoid housing Asian families.

Bill Watts, one-time Newham
Labour deputy leader, admitted
to fixing the housing points
allocation system to
discriminate against Asian families

Largely excluded from council housing estates that dominated the south of the borough, newcomers drifted into often over-crowded private sector accommodation in the older Victorian properties that dominated the north of Newham - in places like Forest Gate.

Attempts by immigrant groups to establish houses of worship, temples, mosques and Gudwaras were often frustrated by hostile "host" communities and closed down by Newham Council for reasons of overcrowding, or a failure to gain planning permission.

Durning Hall - has a proud record of being
one of few places to welcome black and Asian
organisations, to organise against
racism during the 1970's

Hindus, at least, were offered a welcoming home in Durning Hall in the 1970's. The Hall's management committee extended their hospitality to hosting meetings of the Indian Association of East London, which attempted to organise demonstrations and petitions to MPs against the 1971 Immigration Act - when other bodies had refused them permission to rent their premises.

Above and below, two reports from Newham Recorder in the same edition, 1 April 1971. Top: vicar of St Barnabas church in Little Ilford claiming people who objected to them selling the premises to a Sikh organisation were doing so for racist reasons. Below: report claiming Newham North East Conservative club refused membership to an applicant on the grounds that he was Asian

Undeterred by the local bigotry (above)
local anti-racists march against the
Immigration Bill, in April 1971, following
organisation meeting in Durning Hall
(see above)

Durning Hall's hospitality, however, was the exception. Just a mile away, in February 1972, the landlord of the now-closed Three Rabbits pub in Manor Park (see photo, below) was referred to the then Race Relations Board for practicing a "colour bar".

Former Three Rabbits pub operated
a colour bar in the 1970's

Racial violence was never far away. In April 1971 a flaming plastic bottle was thrown through the front door window of a house in Forest Gate, where 10 Afro-Caribbean people lived. Forty minutes later, petrol was poured through the letter box of an Asian family in Manor Park.

Jerry Westall, The Community Relations Officer at Newham International Community (NIC) - the forerunner of what was to become the Community Relations Council - condemned the incidents and said they were the work of the (fascist) National Front.

Newham Recorder, reporting Jerry
Westall's suspension from work

He was promptly suspended from his post by the Community Relations Commission and criticised by the chair of the NIC (a Labour councillor) for making "irresponsible statements detrimental to race relations" and a report he had compiled into right wing extremism in Newham was suppressed.

Education proved another arena for racist tensions. Nationally, the government had decreed that 'no one school should have more than 30% of immigrants'. Because of the racial profile of parts of Newham, this meant that black and Asian students were almost being bussed around the borough, in order to comply. Black children were the prime victims. In October 1973 Newham's Director of Education reported that of the 200 children who had not been allocated school places, "137 were immigrants".

A 1971 survey by the East London West Indian Association found that 15% of black children in the borough were being placed in ESN schools.

Newham's attempts to deal with the discrimination were clumsy. In 1972 it sponsored John Freeman, head of Earlham Primary school, to go on a fact-finding mission to the Caribbean to find an explanation for his observation that "Asiatic people have a higher IQ than West Indians".

382 Katherine Road, today - what was the
hq of the anti-racist Newham Monitoring
Project in the 1980's

In the late 1970's, two schools in the south of Newham, Letharby (now Brampton) and Pretoria (now Eastlea) gained notoriety for "Paki-bashing" and "Nigger-bashing", and many incidents of racist violence were recorded.

The National Front (NF) recruited locally in workplaces and among football clubs. It boasted that at West Ham it had its largest newspaper sales. An NF member, who recruited outside Upton Park told Skin - a London Weekend Television programme:

We used to buy the kids a few drinks, wind them up and send them off to smash up a Paki's home. We just sat back. They did it all for us.

Local black activist, Kenny Pryce - see the second article in this series for his family's experiences - recalled:

A white kid at school took me to see West Ham one Saturday. It was a nightmare. There was a black player, Clyde Best, and there were so many songs about him, and people chanting "you're a dirty black bastard" and throwing bananas. I didn't watch the match, because I was so busy watching what was going on around me.

In the May 1974 local elections the NF polled 29% of the vote in Hudson ward and 25% in Canning Town - both in the south of the borough. In the general election, six months later, 5,000 Newham residents voted NF - the highest of any borough in the country.

The council was slow to respond. It was a closed, self-interested, body. In an article that may sound familiar to observers of Newham council's recent past, the London Journal, in May 1978 found decision making in Newham to be highly centralised, with little policy discussion and committee meetings held in private, with few public meetings. The article concluded:

The leading members felt, trustee-like, that having been elected, they had a mandate to rule as they judged best, and they brokered no challenge to their authority.

Racism was prevalent among many of the old guard in the Labour leadership.

One up-and-coming change agent was the then young Cllr Conor McCauley. In 1991 he described the atmosphere of the late 1970's within the old Labour establishment:

During one council meeting, (Cllr) Bert Taylor shouted up at Asians sitting in the public gallery 'Well, you can fuck off, back to Pakistan where you came from'. And at a local Labour party ward meeting a former mayor of Newham (and a magistrate) started talking about 'the coons', how they smelt, how he couldn't stand the smell of their cooking and how, if he had his own way, he would send them back to where they came from.

Recently retired ex-councillor Conor
McCauley remembers the bad old days of
a racist Newham Council

A young Asian community activist played a significant role in raising black and Asian consciousness at the time - and in organising resistance to the prevailing racist orthodoxies.

It was the present Newham Greater London Assembly Cllr, Unmesh Desai, of the Newham Monitoring Project. The role of that organisation - and others - in leading the anti-racist fight-back will be considered in the second article in this feature.

Here Unmesh is, providing the Newham context for which the anti-racist resistance was activated in the 1980's.

There were decaying dock areas with communities alienated from and neglected by the local council, but very proud of their working class heritage. As they saw the docks closing around them and the rise of middle class areas, many of them moved out to Essex, and beyond.

Those who remained were resentful, and inward looking: they came to believe, that despite all the evidence, that the council was bending over backwards for all the 'newcomers', who also happened to be black.

This is the second part of a post on racism in Forest Gate in the 1970's and 1980's - see the previous article for part one.

Gurdip Singh Chagger was murdered in Southall on 4 June 1976. A week later a demonstration was held in Stratford Town Hall by the pro-fascist Democratic National Party. It's leader, John Kingsley Read declared:

I have been told I cannot refer to coloured immigrants. So, you will forgive me if I refer to niggers, wogs and coons. As for the murder of one Asian youth in Southall last week. That was terribly unfortunate. One down, one million to go.

Read was charged with incitement to racial hatred. It took the jury just ten minutes to reach a 'not guilty' verdict, after they had been directed by Judge McKinnon, in his summary:

In this England of ours we are allowed to have our own views still. Thank goodness, and long may it last.

Read was, he said, was a man: "who had the guts to come forward in the past and stand up publicly for the things he believed in."

This was part of the local context for a series of dreadful racist incidents and the catalyst of effective and organised community opposition to them in Forest Gate, in the 1970's and 80's. What follows is that story.

Ten months after the murder of Chegger - on St George's Day 1977 - three Sikh brothers, Mohinder, Balvinder and Sukvinder Virk were repairing their car in front of their home in East Ham, when they were approached by five white youths, who had been drinking heavily and then began racially abusing and attacking them.

The Virk bothers resisted; there was a struggle and one of the white youths was stabbed. The Virk family called the police - but it was they who were arrested, refused bail and charged with grievous bodily harm.

Campaign leaflet, in
support of the Virk brothers

The white attackers were the prosecution's principal witnesses at the trial fifteen months later and when the Virk brothers' lawyer attempted to prove the racist nature of the original assault, by asking the white youths whether they were members of the National Front, the notorious Judge Argyle, presiding, ruled the question: "out of order".

The Virk brothers were found guilty and given sentences of between three months and seven years. In comparison, the killers of Chaggers - mentioned at the top of this feature - received only four years, for manslaughter.

The very different verdicts in the two cases caused outrage within much of the black and Asian communities. A number of "defence" groups were established - among them the Steering Committee of Asian Organisations and the Newham Defence Committee. Funds were raised and demonstrations organised.

The campaigns succeeded. The Appeal Court halved the Virk brothers' sentences, the following year - with the judge declaring them to be "law-abiding citizens". Police and judicial racism was now firmly on the agenda for black and Asian community groups.

Similar racist-inspired attacks, however, continued, including the murder of 10 year old Kennith Singh in Plaistow in April 1978 and 19 year old Narinder Singh Marway, on Green Street. Marway was racially abused, spat at and hit on the head with an iron bar. When the police arrived, it was Marway who was arrested, for "being in possession of an offensive weapon".

The former Forest Gate police
station, on Romford Road

The "offensive weapon" was his Karaa (the Sikh bangle) - a sacred symbol; to be carried by all adult Sikh men, throughout their adult lives, and with which they are cremated.

Angry demonstrations followed in support of Marway - but it was only when the matter was raised in the Indian parliament that the charge was dropped.

One of the most notorious racist killings at the time was of 29 year old Akhtar Ali Baig, who was savagely attacked on East Ham High street by a gang of skinhead boys and girls. 17 year old Paul Mullery pulled out a sheath knife and stabbed him in the heart, shouting "I've just gutted a Paki."

Newham Recorder reports of killing of Akhtar Ali Baig - report on centre (above) by current Newham Heritage activist, Colin Grainger!

The murder provoked outrage and lead to a spontaneous demonstration of about 150 black and Asian people outside the then Forest Gate police station.

The police refused to release any details of the murder, except declared it not to be racist - but simply a mugging. The youth took to the streets again - to the spot where Baig was murdered - and there were 16 arrests.

The Newham Youth Movement was formed around the attack and on 19 July 1980 an estimated 2,500 people marched through Newham in protest. The Newham Youth Movement's Bulletindescribed the response:

The tempo and the feelings of the youth were high. The march was planned to pass Forest Gate and West Ham police stations, and return to the murder spot.

On the way to the Forest Gate police station about six Asian youth were arrested. Due to the police's unreasonable behaviour, there was a sit-down protest outside Forest Gate police station. A delegation was sent inside to negotiate their release.

The release was promised and the march continued to West Ham Park and ended up at the original murder spot - where prayers were read from the Koran. A further 29 people were arrested during the march.

A second march - to demand the release of the arrested - was organised by the Newham Youth Movement. 5,000 attended and East Ham was brought to a standstill.

The Baig murder sparked new levels of anger and protest within the local Asian community, and beyond. Community activist, and now Greater London Authority member, Unmesh Desai, had this to say of it, a decade later:

As friend told me later, it was actually their mothers who got them all up early, and said: 'Come on, we've all got to go on the march.

Although there was a wave of anti-fascist activity at the time around the country, I distinctly remember the Akhtar Ali Baig march as the most angry, militant march I had been on.

The trial became the centre for demonstrations and press attention. Racism was the focus of the trial. James Parker and Paul Mullery were found guilty of murder. The police said that neither had shown any remorse.

Parker's bedroom, it emerged, was bedecked in Nazi and NF material and as Mullery left the court, he gave a Nazi salute, shouted 'Sieg Heil' and 'All for a fucking Paki'.

In the light of the overwhelming evidence, Judge Russell concluded that the killing was "clearly motivated by racial hatred". Obvious, perhaps, but some progress on earlier judicial observations and on the initial police response to the murder.

Organisations that had emerged to campaign around the Baig murder soon collapsed, due to inter-generational and other tensions. But the black and Asian communities were becoming politicised in ways and in places that some people found surprising at the time.

The Asian Women's Project, for example, emerged, campaigning for support for the often isolated women members - including the needs of Asian women refugees. Other issues were campaigned on. Writing in 1990, Gulshun Rehman, of the organisation commented:

The black women's movement was highlighting the whole use of the dangerous contraceptive Depo-Provera, and Behno-Ki-milan (ed: the Sisters Movement of Asian Women, established in 1979) got involved in picketing Forest Gate maternity hospital (ed: the former Industrial school, now Gladys Dimson court) on Forest Lane, over the use of the drug.

Gradually black and Asian anti-racist organisations coalesced around the issue of racial harassment and in 1980 formed the Newham Monitoring Project (NMP). It, at once, began compiling a dossier of cases, which it sent to local MP's (who were not always sympathetic), and established an advice centre in Forest Gate. It soon began to operate a 24/7 emergency help-line for black people experiencing racial violence and harassment, from 382 Katherine Road.

Moves were afoot elsewhere at this time, often spearheaded by many of the departing "old guard" of Newham council: messrs Wales, Corbett and Baike, and other still prominent figures like MP Steven Timms and recently retired Cllr Conor McCauley, to address some of the institutional racism that prevailed in the borough.

The story is long and meandering, but basically, old stager MP's like Reg Prentice and Arthur Lewis were de-selected and younger bloods like Tony Banks took on the Parliamentary role.

The old racist guard were swept from power at the town hall too, and gradually more progressive thoughts and policies - particularly around race - began to win through.

One notable litmus test of the change was when Newham became the first local authority in the country to evict a tenant for racial harassment - Rosina McDonnell - in 1984. One of the Canning Town housing officers at the time, involved in the eviction, was the future Tottenham MP, Bernie Grant.

McDonnell family evicted twice by Newham Council for racially harassing neighbours in 1984-85

Newham was under siege from the press and wider political establishment for being 'left wing extremists' and 'politically correct, gone mad' etc. Leading council members and senior officers resisted massive pressure and, in some cases, intimidation to back down, but stood firm.

Winds of change blowing through the Greater London Council, at County Hall, meant that for the first time groups such as the NMP were grant-aided, in an attempt to fight local racism.

382 Katherine Road, today. In the 1980's
hq of Newham Monitoring Project

This was not without difficulties for the NMP, who not only had to deal with racists outpourings and harassment, but also sectarian divisions from the left and some community organisations - often driven by jealousy at their prominence and successes.

Present GLA member,
Unmesh Desai, at the time
prominent in Newham
Monitoring Project

Strength of purpose and resolve prevailed at the NMP, as Unmesh Desai was later to reflect:

The NMP, we felt, should not seek bureaucratic answers to anti-racist issues ... it has always got to keep its sharp, campaigning fighting edge ... we learned in those early days that it is not white individuals who were the problem, but white society as a whole.

Tensions continued between the police and black youth, locally, throughout the 1970s and 80s. In the 70's the police used the Vagrancy Acts to pick up young black males "on suspicion" that they were about to commit a crime - the "sus" laws.

Herby Boudier, a Newham community worker in the 1980's gave an example:

In one particular case, in Upton Park Road, a 17 year old youth had just left the offices of the Renewal Project Programme (ed: a voluntary organisation supporting unemployed Afro-Caribbean youth, among other activities) to go to the careers office for an interview, when he was picked up and charged with 'sus'. The police evidence against him was that while standing at the bus stop he "appeared to dip into a woman's handbag". Yet neither the woman, nor any other witness was brought forward.

'Sus' was finally abolished in 1981, but another form of harassment soon replaced it. The police increasingly began to use Special Patrol Groups (SPGs) to target black areas, targeting black youth, almost at random.

The Ramsey case of 1983 gained particular notoriety. David Ramsey of First Avenue, Manor Park, was stopped and arrested for stealing the car he was driving. It was his own! He had been tracked by helicopter. His family home was forcibly entered by the SPG and 11 members of it arrested. They were taken to Forest Gate police station and charged with a number of offences - obstruction, assault etc - connected to their resistance.

The NMP worked with other, similar, bodies from other east-end local areas and held a press conference at the House of Commons, on police harassment of the black community. The NMP called for an inquiry into the case.

The Newham Recorder, which did not attend the press conference, responded by interviewing four black police officers at the Forest Gate station - who dutifully said there was no problem of racism at the station.

Newham Recorder denying racism among
Forest Gate police, in March 1983.
Probably not current prominent Guardian
journalist, Hugh Muir's, proudest "exclusive"

Site of the old Forest Gate police
station on Romford Road, today

Racial tensions escalated into fights and violent attacks at Little Ilford school in 1982. Matters came to a head in September when four scruffily dressed white men jumped out of a car, by the school, and swore at and racially abused some Asian children. The Asian lads feared a racist attack, and a fight broke out.

Police were called, and it transpired that the white men who had provoked the original incident were, in fact, plain clothes policemen, themselves! Eight Asian youth, some badly beaten, were taken to Forest Gate police station.

A Defence Committee was quickly formed and up-and-coming civil rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, was hired for the defence. A demonstration of at least 1,000 marched through Newham, as a National March Against Racism and Fascism on 24 September 1983.

Newham Recorder reports on anti-racist
demonstration, in support of the Newham 8

500 local school children staged a strike and attended The Old Bailey on the first day of the trial of The Newham 8, as the defendants became known. They maintained a daily presence, throughout the trial.

These were the first school strikes in Britain against racism and fascism. They gained considerable media attention.

1983, Newham school children on strike
outside the Old Bailey in support of the
Newham 8. Photo: David Hoffman

The trial lasted six weeks. Four of the defendants were found guilty of the more minor of the offences with which they were charged, and four were found not guilty.

The liberal press criticised the police for their failure to address racial violence, at the conclusion of the trail. But the lessons weren't heeded, as similar issues arose a year later, in the case of the Newham 7.

On 7 August 1984 a gang of white youths, driving around Newham in a car, committed a series of attacks on black people, seemingly at random. One assault involved a partially disabled Asian youth, who was taken by force to Wanstead Flats and attacked with a hammer.

Later that day a group of Asian youth went to the Duke of Edinburgh pub on the corner of Green Street and Plashet Grove. The pub has recently closed and is now a small parade of shops (see photo). It was at the time, though, a well-known meeting place for NF thugs.

Site of the former Duke of Edinburgh pub,
on junction of Plashet Grove and Green Street, today.
Now a small parade of mainly Asian shops - then
a drinking den of local National Front thugs

A fight broke out at the pub and an Asian youth was arrested on a number of violence-related charges. Six more Asian youths were arrested in the weeks that followed. Five of the youth were remanded in custody for seven weeks, and a writ of Habeas Corpus had to be issued to secure their release.

In contrast, three white youths were arrested as a result of the incident and were immediately released on bail.

As black and Asian youth began to organise around the fate of the Newham 7, a 16 year old black youth, Eustace Pryce died after being stabbed in the head outside the (also, now closed) Greengate pub, on Barking Road on 29 November. (see photo of the site, today - now a Tesco branch).

Newham Recorder reports arrests for
murder of Eustace Pryce, November 1984

Former Greengate pub on Barking Road
today - now a Tesco Express

The murder happened after a racially motivate fight outside the pub. Some plain clothes police officers witnessed the end of the fight, from the top of a passing bus. They promptly arrested Gerald Pryce - brother of the murdered Eustace - questioned him for several hours and charged him with affray - but did not pick up the killer.

The police eventually arrested Martin Newhouse, who was charged with murder.

The fates of Gerald Pryce and Newhouse, a month later, could not have displayed the racist bias of the judicial system more clearly. The killer was released on bail over Christmas "so that he could be with his family". The dead youth's brother, charged with affray, was refused bail over the holiday period! When Gerald Pryce was eventually given bail, his movements were restricted, to prevent him from visiting Newham, and his pregnant girlfriend.

A joint 'defence campaign' under the guidance of NMP was formed (see photo below), but racially motivated violence persisted in Newham - much of it orchestrated from the Duke of Edinburgh pub.

"Justice for the Pryce Family" march side
by side with the "Newham 7" campaign.
Photo: Andrew Wiard

Protest marches were held in Newham and beyond, to draw attention to the situation. One, on 27 April 1985, turned out in defence of Gerard Pryce and the Newham 7. It was due to pass Forest Gate police station, on its way to Plashet Park.

Newham Recorder reports on the
trail of the Newham 7 - May 1984

When the march reached the police station, police snatch squads charged into the crowd, pulling out Afro-Caribbean and Asian youth and violently assaulted them. Ten of the youth were bundled into the police station.

3,000 people refused to move from outside the police station until the 10 were released.

As dusk was falling police District Support Units (DSUs) from all over London descended on Forest Gate police station and the surrounding streets. Violence erupted and 34 further arrests were made. Local police officers later complained to the Newham Recorder that before the DSU charges on the demonstrators, local senior officers had forced them to "surrender the streets".

1985 - heavy handed action by the police
on a 1985 demonstartion in support of the
Pryce Family and Newham 7, outside
Plashet Park. Photo: John Sturrock

The trial of the Newham 7 began in May 1985 amid other intolerable abuses by the authorities. At lunch-break on the second day of the trial, one of the defendants, Parvaiz Khan, was racially abused and assaulted by a prison warder - for refusing to eat a pork pie, a forbidden food in the Islamic faith.

He returned to court with a swollen face, and the trail was adjourned for two days. This gained press coverage - not just in the UK, but in India and Pakistan too
.

As the trail reconvened, two police officers, waiting to give evidence, were found riffling through defence files and papers, and other officers were found to be colluding over evidence.

It emerged during the trial, that while racist thugs were plotting in the Duke of Edinburgh pub - unimpeded by the police - the police had informants working in the Wimpey bar opposite (now a betting shop - see photo), spying on Asian youth, who used it as a meeting place!

Paddy Power betting shop, today. In 1980's
a Wimpey Bar, where police had informers, spying
on local Asian youth. Near right in photo is site
of ex Duke of Edinbugh pub, a meeting point
for the National Front. Police weren't
interested in spying on them

Four of the Newham 7 were found guilty of affray and three were acquitted - but it was the police, whose actions were exposed who were found wanting in the court of public opinion.

As far as the Pryce killing was concerned, brother Gerald was not criminalised and killer Newhouse was sentenced to 4.5 years youth custody - for manslaughter.

The importance of these cases is the successful campaigns around them, in Newham and beyond - often focussing on dreadful behaviour of officers stationed at Forest Gate police station.

The campaigns shone a light on institutional racism - particularly within the criminal justice system - from which there has been a deliberate, if slow, rowing back since.

Footnote This post has been largely based on the publication: Newham - the Forging of a Black Community, published by the Newham Monitoring Project and the Campaign Against Racism and fascism, in 1991. It is sadly out of print. Though second hand copies occasionally become available. Similarly we are indebted to the publication for many of the illustrations in this post - where-ever possible, we have attempted to credit the original photographer

We have written extensively before about Forest Gate's Woodgrange estate and the builder behind it, Archibald Cameron Corbett (see here, here and here). Corbett was one of the most prolific house builders in late Victorian/Edwardian Britain and the Woodgrange estate was simply the first of seven large estates he was responsible for.

The young Corbett

Residents in one of his other estates, in Catford, last year secured Heritage Lottery funding to make an hour long documentary about the man and his houses - and fascinating it is, too. An early screening recently took place at the Gate library. An audience of around 80 enjoyed the viewing, which was rounded off with a Q&A with filmmaker, Ben Honeybone.

The film is now available for viewing on You Tube, and a link to it can be found in the footnotes, below. This article is a synopsis of it and is illustrated by screen grabs from it. The film was well researched and made by Ben, a professional BBC film producer, with Lucy Mangan, a Guardianjournalist, as its narrator.

At the end of the 19th century, Corbett was the biggest house builder in suburban London and he made a fortune from his ground-breaking, healthy estates he developed. Born in Scotland, he was, in turn, a property developer, MP and philanthropist, who finally bought large tracts of Scottish land and handed them over for public use and pleasure, long before the days of the National Trust, national parks and other such bodies.

He remains an elusive figure, however. Almost the only contemporary direct reference to him in, or near, any of the seven estates he built, is the water trough at the foot of Forest Gate's iconic clock (see below). He did not seek public recognition, or fame, and it is doubtful whether 1% of the estimated 40,000 residents currently living in his houses today will have heard of him.

His elusiveness just adds to the fascination.

The "empty" Forest Gate,
before Corbett started building

... and the drinking fountain and trough he
left Forest Gate - almost the only feature
with his name on it by any of his seven estates.

He was born in Glasgow on 23 May 1856 to the son of a prosperous trader, Thomas Corbett, and very strict Presbyterian mother, who had no time for frivolity and modern pleasures. He was named after his maternal grandfather, and was christened Archibald Cameron Corbett.

Corbett, getting older ...

He was largely educated at home. In the late 1860's the family moved from Glasgow to Clapham, in London. Aged 14, he went on a European tour that took in Rome and he was much affected by the classical architecture and sculptures that he saw. Some aspects of the Woodgrange estate may well have been influenced by this (see a future post on the estate's design).

In the late 1870's Thomas - Archibald's father - bought 110 acres of market garden in Forest Gate from the Gurney estate (see here), and began constructing a housing development named after the principal house on the land - Woodgrange.

Thomas died three years after the building started and Archibald and his older brother, Tom, took over the mantle. Tom soon lost interest and sold his share to Archibald.

By 1884 sales on the 700+ house Woodgrange estate were going so well, that Archie bought land further to the east, for another development. The following year became an MP for a constituency in his native Glasgow. He remained in the House of Commons for the next six elections and 25 years, until he was ennobled. Although he switched parties, he pursued the same interests throughout his membership of Parliament.

A cartoon of Corbett campaigning for Parliament -
he was doing a Scottish dance and splashing
out cash to those in attendance - in the days
when political bribery was taken
less seriously than today

He was firmly opposed to Irish Home Rule, probably influenced by his mother's Presbyterianism, which would also have accounted for his championing on Temperance. (the houses on the Woodgrange estate, like most of his others, had restrictive covenants on them prohibiting the sale of alcohol).

Corbett participating in a
Temperance meeting in Forest
Gate, as he was building
the Woodgrange estate

In other respects, however, he could considered to be very socially progressive. Against his own economic interests, he urged heavier taxation on property developers - for the sake of social equity; he was a fierce supporter of women's suffrage , when it was a minority pursuit, and a champion of shorter working hours for shop workers, proposing stiff regulation to enforce them.

Soon after entering Parliament he met, and later married, Alice Polson, daughter of the wealthy parents behind the famous Brown and Polson cornflower. The couple lived in Knightsbridge, close to Harrods, and had nine servants to look after them and their three subsequent children.

John and Alice Polson, Corbett's in-laws ...

... and the cornflour for which they were famous

and their daughter, Alice -
the later Mrs Corbett

The Woodgrange estate was completed in 1892 and he switched his attentions to developing the farm and estates he had purchased in Ilford - which at the time was a small county town.

First, in 1893, came the St Clements estate, just south of Ilford railway station and a year later construction began on the Grange estate, just north of the station. In 1897 work commenced on the Downshall estate - a little to the east, and finally to the Mayfield estate - next to Downshall, in 1899.

Ilford's Grange estate, today

These latter two estates were a couple of miles from the nearest railway station. So, Corbett - applying his formula of a successful estate: cheap land, good houses, appeal to aspiring middle class - set about ensuring the last bit of his jigsaw puzzle: securing handy overland trains station to the City.

This mix worked in Forest Gate: the Forest Gate station was his initial bait. By the time the Woodgrange estate had been completed, the old Little Ilford and Manor Park station had been enlarged, and renamed Manor Park (see here), complete with cheap "workmen's" fares to London, and Woodgrange Park and Wanstead Park stations had been opened on another line (see here), all convenient for the Woodgrange.

... and older ...

He now incentivised the Great Eastern Railway company to open two more stations east of Ilford - Seven Kings and Goodmayes - to accommodate his new estates. The maps below show the locations of the Corbett estates in the Ilford area before and after railway extensions.

The original Ilford station, that was
part of the local appeal for Corbett

The spread of Corbett's Ilford estates,
in relation to the sole local railway
station, when he started construction

... and Seven King's and Goodmayes
stations, whose construction he sponsored

Seven King's station ...

Goodmayes Farm, on which
the Mayfield estate was built ...

Floor layouts of houses
on the Mayfield estate

... and an advert for houses built
on the farm - the Mayfield estate

Details of the easy instalments
payments Corbett pioneered

The four Ilford estates were slightly different in character: Clementswood, mostly 3-bed houses, Grange, more double and triple fronted, Downshall , hundreds with two storey bay windows and Venetian blinds (see photos, below) and Mayfield.

Looking at the housing developments in Ilford at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries - and with the Corbett estates marked in red in the map, below - Corbett could, were he not so modest, have a good claim to be the founding father of modern suburban Ilford.

Indeed, the vice-chair of Ilford Town council, in 1902 said: "The impetus to Ilford was given by Mr Corbett". Despite this, there is barely the trace of his name or influence displayed anywhere in the town.

Ilford in 1900, with the Corbett estates
highlighted in red. Clear to see why Corbett
could be considered the father of modern Ilford

Corbett switched his estate building attention south of the river in 1896 and bought the St German's agricultural estate and began constructing the largest of his seven developments - the St German's estate, with 3,200 houses, in the Catford/Hither Green area.

He built solid middle class houses and sold them, leasehold, at cost price, on 99 year leases. The profit for Corbett in the deal was the 5% leasehold payment he got each year from them. At a time when 90% of British families lived in rented accommodation, Corbett played a key role in laying the foundations for what was later to become known as a "property owning democracy". He had a strong faith in the power of owner-occupation in establishing healthy communities.

Corbett's legacy was substantial. His houses were well built, to high specifications - the fact that only bomb damage has destroyed any of the 9,000 that he built, over a century later - is testimony to this.

... and older ...

The houses on all his estates were spacious, in low density developments, usually with parklands incorporated into, or nearby, them.

The Catford estate took longer to build than the others - but the same formula was at work - including the construction of improvements to local railway stations - to make the developments more attractive to that newly born breed, "commuters" - city workers who wanted to live in the leafier, healthier suburbs and travel to work.

Corbett's last great development began at the end of the 19th century. In 1899 he bought 330 acres of farmland in Eltham - quite near his Catford development - for £50,000 and began construction of the Eltham Park development, applying the same formula. So, the construction of Shooters Hill and Eltham Park railway station followed soon after - in 1908.

Shooters Hill and Eltham Park railway
station, built at Corbett's behest

This estate is more Edwardian-looking in style, hardly surprising since it was built almost totally during the reign of Edward V11.

Promotional brochure, marketing
both the Ilford Mayfield estate
and the Eltham Park one

In his personal life, Corbett bought a 6,500 acre estate, Rowallan, in Scotland for his family in 1901, but his wife died soon after, aged only 34. Archibald Cameron Corbett began to withdraw a little from housing construction, but as is often the case, put some of his time and much of his money into philanthropic endeavours.

Rowallan - the Ayrshire estate that
Corbett bought for the family

So, he bought 143 acres of land in Glasgow and turned it into Rouken Glen Park - which survives and in 2016 was awarded the accolade of "The UK's best Park". He later bought 15,000 acres of the Scottish highlands, Lochgoilhead, and endowed it as a "gift to the nation", before such gestures were common.

It is now called Ardgoil and has been incorporated into the Trossachs and Loch Lomond National Park.

Glaswegians enjoying Corbett's "gift"
to the nation, which was, naturally, alcohol-free

Film narrator, Lucy Mangan, commenting
from Ardgoil - Corbett's legacy to
the Scottish people

Corbett was awarded a peerage in 1911, as part of George V's coronation celebration, and became Lord Rowallan of Rowallan. He began to withdraw even more from public life. In 1915 he gave up his London mansion, to be a hostel for Belgian refugee families and retired to a Brown's hotel, in Mayfair - where he was to spend the remainder of his life.

... and old

He died on 19 March 1933.

The Corbett memorial, built
on his family estate in Scotland

Corbett's housing legacy was not as a pile 'em high, sell 'em cheap house builder. He saw good housing as a keystone to a better society. Although less dramatic, his estates are as socially innovative within the housing movement as the rather better promoted "model villages" of entrepreneurs, such as Lever , Cadbury and Titus Salt, and the grander garden suburbs such as Hampstead - on that they were build with the residents in mind, and not just the bank balance.

And the Woodgrange estate - the only one with Conservation Area status - proved to be the foundation of his impressive building legacy.

Footnotes

1: Archibald Cameron Corbett, the Man and his houses can be viewed, free of charge on You Tube, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_GdkNvDjKs&t=3040s The film lasts one hour.

2. We will follow this article with three others on the Woodgrange estate. The first will look at some of the important external architectural features in this conservation area. The second will examine some of the interior features that remain in some of the high spec buildings that survive on the estate. The third will look at the Woodgrange through the medium of two rare collections of mainly Edwardian postcards of the area. Watch this space!

This is the first of two articles celebrating the 70th birthday of the NHS, 5 July 2018 - recording the history of its largest local presence. The second article - to follow - will examine the state of NHS services in Forest Gate, today.

We have written before about the building on Forest Lane, which is now Gladys Dimson House, principally in its role as a Workhouse school (see here, here and here).

Originally an Industrial School, later a hospital
and now a housing block - Gladys Dimson
House - on Forest Lane.

This post celebrates its time as a hospital, and a key part of the NHS estate from its inception in 1948 until its closure as the Newham Maternity hospital, in 1985.

The building was constructed on land owned by Samuel Gurney (see here) in 1854 as a public institution. To mark the centenary of its establishment, as an Industrial school, the 1954 occupants, Forest Gate hospital, published a commemorative brochure and history.

In passing, the authors noted that during that century the building had had one major change of use, at least four titles and controlled by six public bodies. Sixty-four years later a further change of use and title and at least three more public bodies could be added to the list.

Our most recent article on the building (here) described how progressive Poor Law Guardians closed the school as a workhouse/industrial school in 1906, because of its unsuitability and moved the, by now named Poplar Training school, to Hutton, in Essex.

The Illustrated London News shows
the effects of the 1890 new year's
day fire on the Industrial school

The Forest Gate building was closed for two years, when its then owners, the Poplar Board of Guardians opened it as an annexe to their Workhouse, in 1908. They built additional accommodation there, for "sick paupers", at a cost of £8,000, and gradually the site took on its hospital role. They soon looked to close it down, and after some further alterations to the structure, sold the building to the West Ham Board of Guardians in 1911, for £41,000.

The West Ham Guardians decided the institution should be used for housing semi-sick and bed-ridden occupants of their other premises. It was designed to accommodate 600 occupants.

According to documents using language that would be totally unacceptable today, these consisted of:

Imbeciles: men, 62, women, 36. Epileptics (sane): men, 34, women, 36. Chronic bedridden: men, 75, women, 243. Sick: men, 50, women, 50. Maternity: women, 50.

It was re-opened in 1913 as the Forest Gate Sick Home. The official history notes that "the Great War and the "20's" saw little event of note under the new administration". Local folk lore has it that the institution was used as an isolation unit during the outbreak of Spanish Flu in 1919, which killed more people than WW1 combatants. We have been unable to find any surviving records that confirm this.

School children, however, used the swimming baths at the site, which was attached to the laundry building, during WW1. These baths were subsequently filled in and the space was later used to house firstly a women's patients' handicraft centre and later an ante and post-natal clinic.

The swimming baths on the site, used
by local children during WW!, later built
over to become an ante and post natal clinic

Under the 1929 Local Government Act, which replaced Boards of Guardians with Public Assistance Committees, the sick home was transferred to West Ham Council and renamed the Forest Gate Hospital.

At the time of the transfer there were 500 beds for maternity, mental health and chronic sick cases. In 1931, as a temporary measure, an additional 200 beds were provided, to meet rising demand, at a cost of £17,000.

These additional beds were given to general use, but 75 of them were allocated to, what as recently as 1956, the authors of the history describe as "mental defectives coming under municipal care."

Hospital staff photo, 1936

Public institutions in the 1940's rapidly tried to disassociate themselves from the baggage and terminology of the old Poor Law/Workhouse traditions. In 1942, therefore, responsibility for the hospital was moved from the Public Assistance committee of the council to the Social Services committee, and two years later to the West Ham Public Health committee.

During WW2, most of the non-maternity patients were evacuated to South Ockenden, in Essex. And just as well. Much of the accommodation they had previously occupied was destroyed by bombing.

On 23 September 1940 a high explosive bomb fell just outside the north-east boundary wall, causing damage to the roof and windows of M block.

On the same day an anti-aircraft shell fell and exploded on the temporary kitchen, causing severe damage. This necessitated the evacuation of a further 25 patients.

Evidence of 1940 bomb damage

On the night of 2 October a further hit caused considerable damage to the boiler house - resulting in additional patient evacuations.

On 9 October, yet another high explosive bomb caused a large crater near the maternity block. The roadway was entirely demolished and the external wall of the children's ward badly damaged. More patients had to be moved out.

Two further bombs hit the hospital on 15/16 October, causing serious damage to the kitchen block. Until repairs could be conducted, the hospital was without heating or lighting. Further temporary transfers, away from the hospital were required.

Having overcome this serious three-week spate of bombings, the hospital escaped the rest of WW2 unscathed.

And so, to the establishment of the National Health Service on 5 July 1948.

In the year immediately prior to its foundation, the hospital, which was by now almost exclusively a maternity facility, witnessed the birth of 1,261 babies (including six sets of twins and one of triplets). And. astonishing as it is to us today, when many mothers are in and out of hospital within 24 hours, the average number of days "confinement" was 11.7 days for the mothers.

On the "appointed day" for transfer of responsibility of the hospital from West Ham council to the NHS, in 1948, it was moved under the wing of the "West Ham Group (no 9) Hospital Management Committee of the North-East Metropolitan Regional Hospital Management Board."

The building in a state of disrepair - between
its closure as a maternity hospital and its
opening as residential apartments

The NHS continued to develop the facility as a specialist maternity hospital. New wards were opened by 1950.

In the early 50's there were 102 designated maternity and 5 gynaecological beds at Forest Gate Maternity Hospital - making it the largest unit of its kind within its hospital group. The hospital became an approved centre for the training of midwives.

It was still not, however, exclusively a maternity hospital. By the mid 1950's the regional hospital board was still seeking alternative accommodation for what the centenary brochure charmingly described as the remaining "mental and mentally defective patients", as soon as suitable accommodation could be found.

Change is never far from occurring within the NHS, and the Forest Lane hospital was no exception. In 1974, the hospital, which by now had 116 beds and was called the Newham Maternity Hospital, became part of the Newham Health District, under the City and East London Area Health Authority (Teaching).

With the construction of Newham General Hospital, and maternity beds and a Special Baby Care unit within it, in 1985, the Forest Lane hospital - which by then was down to 106 beds - was deemed surplus to requirements, and was closed by the Newham Health Authority.

An oak sculpture of a nurse
in the grounds of Forest Lane
park recalls the history of
the building as a hospital

After closure, the back of the original Victorian main building was demolished and houses built on the site. In 1993 the rest of the building was demolished, apart from the front facade.

The Lodge survives as well as the facade of the original building, which is now an apartment complex. It is used for education and other community activities. Gladys Dimson House is one of the original maternity buildings, and has been converted into residential accommodation. By popular demand, most of the site was developed as Forest Lane Park, between 1991 and 1994.

Footnotes.

1. Few of the archives of the hospital survive, and many of those which do are closed, under the 100 year rule. Those which have survived and are accessible are to be found at the Royal London Hospital Archives, in Whitechapel.

2. Gladys Dimson was a Labour politician, and housing expert on the former Greater London Council. She died in 1999 and had no known connection with Newham or the buildings named after her.

In 2016 we published details of GP surgeries in E7, and how they were rated by their patients (see here). The article was based on the information supplied by the NHS's national website: NHS Choices.

This article updates the information and tracks significant developments, and extends its scope, by using the same website to assess the position of local dentists and pharmacies in Forest Gate, today.

E 7 - General Practitioners

There are 14 GP surgeries based in E7 today, as there were at the time of our earlier article (August 2016), although some of their names have been changed - mainly to "depersonalise" them, as the notion of surgeries being known by the name of the principal doctor is gradually eroding, and multi doctor partnerships are becoming the norm.

The list below presents the surgeries in alphabetical order, with former names included in brackets in their titles.

The number of patients registered to E7 GPs shot up by a remarkable 17% between these two snapshot looks at the data - from 77,265 to 90,630. But the number of GPs serving those surgeries rose by an even more impressive 30% - from 48 to 62 over the period.

So, the average number of patients per E7 registered GP has declined from 1 to 1,609 to 1 to 1,462 during that short time.

Within these figures there was a relative increase in the percentage of female GPs working in the surgeries, rising from 37% (18 of the total in 2016) to 42% (rising from 26 to 36 of the total today).

All local surgeries offer an electronic prescription service and on-line appointments.

E7's GP surgeries have a relatively low approval rating amongst their patents, compared to the national average, according to the figures supplied by NHS Choices, but they are improving.

In 2016, 12 of E7's 14 surgeries had below average figures for patients who would recommend their surgery to others. The only two surgeries who performed within the national average range for recommendations were Claremont Clinic and the Woodgrange Medical Practice - two of the area's larger practices.

The present survey indicates that four more local surgeries have joined them in having patients who would recommend them, within the mid rage of national figures. They are Abiola, Driver and Partners, Krishnamurthy's Practice and Shrewsbury Summit.

The three best local surgeries for patient recommendations are: Claremont (86.1% and rising), Woodgrange (84.3% and rising) and Abiola (72.4% and rising). The three worst are: Birchdale (44.3% and falling), Upton Lane (37% and falling) and Boleyn (26.5% and falling).

NHS Choices offers a patient-lead "Star rating" for each surgery locally. These ratings are based on a relatively small sample of patients writing in, and do not correlate very well with the recommendations rating - based on much larger samples of patient opinion.

For what it's worth, the top three star ratings of local surgeries are: Claremont, 4.5 (up from 4), Woodgrange, 4 (up from 3) and Shrewsbury Centre, 4 (up from 2). And the bottom four are: Driver and Partners and Westbury, both 2.5 (both down from 3), Summit, 1.5 (down from 2.5) and Boleyn, 1.5 (static).

Dr Abiola, 121 Woodgrange Road, E7 0EP. Tel: 020 8250 7550

Registered patients: 3,896 (2016: 3,761)

GPs in practice: 2 (1f, 1m)(2016: same)

72.4%of patients would recommend the practice - mid range, nationally. (2016: 62.5%, amongst the worst)

3.5 Star rating (2016: 4.5)

Birchdale Road Medical Centre, 2 Birchdale Rd, E7 8AR. Tel: 020 8472 1600

Registered patients: 3,237 (2016: 3,285)

GPs in practice: 2 (1f, 1m) (unchanged)

44.3% of patients would recommend the practice - amongst the worst, nationally. (2016: 56.6% and amongst the worst)

3 Star rating (2016: 2)

Boleyn Rd Practice, 162 Boleyn Rd, E7 9QJ. Tel: 020 8503 5656

Registered patients: 6,534 (2016: 7,226)

GPs in practice: 2 (2m) (unchanged)

26.5% of patients would recommend the practice - amongst the worst, nationally. (2016: 35%, and amongst the worst)

1.5 Star rating (2016: 1.5)

Boleyn Road Practice - lowest public rating in E7

Claremont Clinic, 459 - 463 Romford Rd, E7 8AB. Tel: 020 8522 0222

Registered patients: 9,800 (2016: 8,719)

GPs in practice: 5 (2f, 3m) (2016: 6 (3f, 3m))

86.1% of patients would recommend the practice - mid range, nationally. (2016: 79.4%, mid range)

4.5 Star rating (2016: 4.5)

Claremont Clinic - highest rating by patients

Driver and Partners, Little Lister Health Centre, 121 Woodgrange Rd, E7 0EP. Tel: 020 8250 7510

Registered patients: 6,151 (2016: 6,930)

GPs in practice: 6 (4f, 2m) (2016: 4 (2f, 2m))

69.6% of patients would recommend the practice - mid range, nationally. (2016: 66.1%, among the worst)

2.5 Star rating (2016: 3)

Driver and Partners, at the Lord Lister Clinic:
medium sized practice with mid range satisfaction rating

Krishnamurthy's Practice, East Ham Memorial Hospital, Shrewsbury Road, E7 8QR. Tel: 020 8250 6555

Registered patients: 2,043 (2016: 2,006)

GPs in practice: 2 (2m) (2016: same)

69.9% of patients would recommend the practice - mid range, nationally. (2016: 65.3%, amongst the worst)

3 Star rating (2016: 2)

Dr CM Patel, 2 Jepson Road, E7 8LZ. Tel: 020 8470 6429

Registered patients: 2,163 (2,112)

GPs in practice: 2 (1f, 1m) (2016: same)

60.8 % of patients would recommend the practice - amongst the worst, nationally. (2016: 62.1%, amongst the worst)

3 Star rating (2016: 3.5)

Sangam Surgery (previously Govind Bapna), 511 Katherine Road, E7 8DR. Tel: 0202 8472 7029

Registered patients: 11,161 (2016: 1,084)

GPs in practice: 3 (2f,1m) (2016: 1 (1m))

63.5%of patients would recommend the practice - amongst worst, nationally. (2016: 63.5 % and amongst the worst)

3 Star rating (2016: 2.5)

Shrewsbury Centre (previously Shrewsbury Road Surgery), Shrewsbury Rd, E7 8QP. Tel: 020 8586 5111

Registered patients: 13,682 (2016: 12,848)

GPs in practice: 8 (3f, 5m) (2016: 5 (2f, 3m))

68.9%of patients would recommend the practice - mid range, nationally (2016: 63.4%, amongst the worst)

4 Star rating (2016: 2)

The Summit Practice (previously A Yesufa), East Ham Memorial Building, Shrewsbury Road, E7 8QR. Tel: 020 8552 2299

Registered patients: 2,554 (2016: 2,417)

GPs in practice: 2 (2m), (2016: 1 (1m))

67.3 % of patients would recommend the practice - mid range, nationally. (2016: 62.9%, amongst worst)

1.5 Star rating (2016: 2.5)

Summit: Star rating down,
but recommendation rate up

Dr Swedan and Partner, Little Lister Health Centre, 121 Woodgrange Rd, E7 0EP. Tel: 020 8250 7530

Registered patients: 2,983 (2016: 3,121)

GPs in practice: 4 (2f, 2m) (2016: 3 (2f, 1m))

51.5 % of patients would recommend the practice - amongst the worst, nationally. (2016: 64.6%, amongst the worst)

3 Star rating (2016: 3.5)

Upton Lane Medical Centre (previously PD Shanker and Partners), 75 - 77 Upton Lane, E7 9PB. Tel: 020 8471 6912

Registered patients: 7,848 (2016: 7,240)

GPs in practice: 6 (3f, 3m) (2016: 4 (1f, 3m))

37 % of patients would recommend the practice - among the worst, nationally. (2016: 44.7%, amongst the worst)

3.5 Star rating (2016: 3)

New medical centre in Upton Lane,
with poor recommendation rating

Westbury Road Medical Practice (previously Dr DK Mahmud and Dr SW Rahman), 45, Westbury Rd, E7 8BU. Tel: 020 8472 4128

Registered patients: 4,172 (2016: 4,199)

GPs in practice: 4 (2f, 2m) (2016: 3 (1f, 2m))

66% of patients would recommend the practice - among the worst, nationally. (2016: 53.5%, amongst the worst)

2.5 Star rating (2016: 3)

Woodgrange Medical Practice, 40 Woodgrange Road, E7 0QH. Tel: 020 8221 3100/3128

Registered patients: 14,406 (2016: 12,317)

GPs in practice: 14 (5f, 9m) (2016: 11 (4f, 7m))

84.3 % of patients would recommend the practice - mid range, nationally. (2016 - 70.0%, mid range)

4 Star rating (2016: 3)

Woodgrange Medical Practice - large and popular

E7 Dentists

NHS Choices supplies details of local NHS dentists, but the information is less helpful than that supplied about General Practitioners. For example, there appears to be no requirement for dentist listed to indicate where or not they take new NHS patients - a rather serious flaw from an NHS site.

Below are details of the four E7 dentists appearing on the site (in alphabetical order), and the scant, relevant information provided about them. Only two (Forest and Woodgrange) indicate that they are currently accepting both adult and child new NHS patients.

Forest Dental Practice, 0208 552 1010, 76 Upton Lane.

This surgery has four dental practitioners and has a star rating of 4 (out of 5), based on 12 patient reviews.

Green Street Surgery, 0208 472 0504, 244 Green Street.

This surgery has four dental practitioners and has a star rating of 3, based on 2 patient reviews.

Katherine Road Dental Practice, 0208 470 2043, 394 Katherine Road.

This surgery has three dental practitioners and has a star rating of 4, based on 12 patient reviews.

Woodgrange Dental Practice, 0208 555 3336, 80 Woodgrange Road.

This surgery has four dental practitioners and has a star rating of 2.5, based on 7 patient reviews.

Woodgrange Dental Practice

E7 Pharmacies

There are nine E7 pharmacies recorded on the NHS Choices site, which provides useful live information on up-to-date opening hours and details of out-of hours services, for emergencies.

Beyond that, the site is pretty useless. No details are provided of qualified pharamcists at each surgery. A totally pointless customer star ratings system operates. The majority of the E7 units have not received a single rating, suggesting that even the chemists and their families do not take it seriously!

Pharmacies are required by the Department of Heath to conduct an annual patient/client survey and publish the results on the NHS Choices website. However, no guidance is given as to how they should be reported. Each pharmacy chooses its own method, usually highlighting aspects of the survey where they appear in the best light, or to simply publish the whole report, unsummarised.

The result is that no meaningful comparisons can be made, and as a communication to the public exercise, the unprescribed requirement is almost worthless.

Mansons, 0208 534 3212, 15 Woodgrange Road.

Mansons on Woodgrange Road

Mayors, 0208 472 9746, 45 Upton Lane.

Malchem, 0208 519 4126, 63 Woodgrange Road.

Malchem on Woodgrange Road

Shan, 0208 534 1775, 453, Romford Road.

Woodgrange Pharmacy, 0206 555 5660, 116-120 Woodgrange Road.

Sherman's 0208 534 2394, 100-102 Woodgrange Road.

Crailmay Pharmacy, 0208 472 2370, 70 Green Street.

Day Lewis, 0208 552 2603, 79 Upton Lane.

Akro Pharmacy, 0208 472 0461, 404 Katherine Road.

E7 Opticians

The NHS Choices website also covers local opticians, but other than providing details of phone numbers and opening times the site is useless. It has scarcely been updated since 2010 and there is only one review of services between the four local opticians featured.

Clearly, surveying the opticians has been abandoned. Some might argue that this is a short-sighted policy. Boom, boom!

Forest Gate Eye Clinic, 020 8181 9171, 47 Woodford Road.

Forest Gate Opticians, 0208 534 5170, 94 Woodgrange Road.

Pradip Patel, 020 8555 8834, 34 Woodgrange Road.

Pradip Patel's Optician on Woodgrange Road

Super Optical, 020 8472 0949, 5 St Stephen's Parade, Green Street. (the one with the rating!)

This site has previously featured manufacturing based in Forest Gate, notably bicycles and the many workshops in the area a hundred years ago. This article features a local company Bonallack’s that made bodies for vehicles, and then later spawned a car dealership surviving till 1990's. There may be a link - see below.

McDonald's now, Bonallack's then

A note on vehicle coach-building

Commercial vehicle building often involves two distinct phases, and often two different companies. A chassis and cab is built by one company say Ford or Volvo. Then the chassis/cab goes to a bodybuilder to say construct a furniture lorry or tipper truck.

Historically these bodybuilding companies often grew out of coach-building for horse drawn vehicles (building coaches), and to this day are sometimes referred to as coach builders. So, why should Bonallack's have chosen Forest Gate to establish themselves?

Previous articles on this site - see footnotes for details - have featured a very vibrant cycle-building cottage industry in Forest Gate in the late 1890's. As we have suggested, the "bike craze" may have tapered off around the turn of the century, and there would have been a ready pool of local, Forest Gate, labour capable of providing relevant skills to the still infant industry of commercial vehicle manufacture - in the days before production lines etc.

This article concerns a Forest Gate coach-builder Bonallack and Sons Ltd.

One of their vehicles from just before WW1,
made for a Forest Gate confectioner –
outside Bonallack’s premises in Cable
Street near Aldgate (Museum of London blog)

Bonallack’s is a very old established firm and features in the Victoria County History (VCH) for Essex.

Jacob Bonallack came from Cornwall to London in 1825 to build horse wagons, which became renowned for their quality and were exported all over the world. In 1846 he went into partnership with Joseph Briggs as coach makers and coach and cart wheelwrights, at Hanbury Field, Brick Lane, with a shop in John Street. In the 1850s he was making ‘staves and stays for vans and cart bodies’.

In 1870s he handed over running of the business to his grandsons William, John and Walter styled Bonallack and Sons Ltd., wheelwrights of 149 Cable Street (see here). Their connection to this part of East London appears to stem from them taking over in 1886 Stephen Gowar & Co., coach-builder, The Broadway, Stratford, a firm founded in 1839 (see here).

This is an Edwardian postcard image dating
from 1900-1905 of the old Stratford Town Hall.
To the right you can clearly see the premises
of Bonallack’s, Stratford Broadway. In 1905
Bonallack’s building was sold to the council
and used to substantially extend
Stratford fire station. This building survives,
now much modified. (Picture from collection
of postcards owned by Tony Morrison).

The left hand end of the Bonallack building in
2008, then with council offices above. The
appliance bays from the fire station are clearly
visible. It was a fire station 1906-1964. Top left
plaque says West Ham Fire Brigade station.

In 1905 Bonallack& Sons made the transition from horse drawn vehicles and built a factory in Nursery Lane, Forest Gate, to make motor vehicle bodies, and opened showrooms in Romford Road. The factory was transferred to Nevedon, Basildon in 1953, one of the post war new towns, and they were one of the first companies to relocate there (see here). Bonallack's survived until the early '90's as a subsidiary of James Booth Aluminium Ltd (see here).

The Romford Road showroom in Forest Gate survived well into the 1990's as a Leyland motor dealership, an enterprise separate from the commercial bodybuilder, but no doubt founded by another family member. Then that motor firm went bust and the garage was demolished. Forest Gate's McDonald's restaurant was built on the site. Sadly, we have been unable to source a photo of the garage. We would appreciate receiving one, should any reader have access to one.

Advert from around WW1. Note address in
bottom right hand corner (source: here).

To quote from a piece in Commercial Motor magazine, 18 March 1955, by BGBonallack, joint Managing Director, Bonallack and Sons Ltd:

As one of the oldest concerns of commercial body-builders still controlled by the founder family, Bonallack and Sons Ltd, find it most pleasant to be able to congratulate the Commercial Motor on having attained its 50th birthday.

To launch such a lusty infant on to the world in 1905 was a brave venture. Private motoring at that time was still largely a hobby of the eccentric rich, and commercial vehicles must have been very rare birds, indeed. When we look at the commanding position occupied by this journal in its own sphere today, it is fitting to pay tribute to the enterprise that started it.

We ourselves at that time were barely looking beyond the horse age. It is almost 50 years ago since the first motor body was built in our shops. One or two foremen - grey-haired men now, but lusty apprentices then - and some of our pensioners remember it. They will tell even today of the new problems that were faced then; and how "Mr Walter" (now our chairman, in his 84th year) spent hours in the shops deciding how every angle of the matter was to be approached.

The ancient trade, as practised by our founder, Jacob Bonallack, Cornishman, four generations ago, was in full flower around the first motor body. The wheelwrights were following their craft, striking double-handed with a full swing of the hammer on the ends of the unrimmed spokes. The blacksmiths were shrinking their white-hot steel tires on the ash of the felloes (see here, for source).

Ordnance Survey 1914, showing Nursery Lane,
the first turning on the right, travelling along
Upton Lane from Romford Road. Bonallack's may
well have occupied the long building
behind Sylvan Road.

The Nursery Lane factory (now lost under the Mother's Pride bread factory) even built an extraordinary fire engine based on a Rolls Royce car, for Borough Green and District Fire Brigade in Kent. This volunteer fire brigade bout a 1921 Silver Ghost from Lord Kelmsley, second hand, for £26 and Walter Bonallack converted it into a fire engine in 1938. Walter lived near Kelmsley.

A Rolls Royce Silver Ghost/Bonallack fire
appliance in the late 1930's (see here)

The famous toy maker, Matchbox (based across the borough boundary, in Hackney) even made a model of the Rolls Royce at 1:48 scale. Here is their version, numbered Y6 in Yesteryears collection:

In fact, it seems Bonallack's built a number of wooden bodies on various car chassis, what were termed shooting breaks - the archetype of the Woody was the Morris 1000 Traveller, with its wooden-framed body.

See this extract from British Woodies: From the 1920's to the 1950's (see here):

Footnotes

A. The author is a local historian, but also has also written extensively about the history of the fire service, including a book on West Ham Fire Brigade which ran the old Stratford fire station featured here. He also bought a second hand car from Bonallack’s in Forest Gate shortly before it went bust. The MG Maestro had serious defects and he went to Newham Trading Standards for redress without success as the company had disappeared by then.

B. References

1. Bonallack & Sons had a repair/body shop in Freshwater Road/Selinas Lane Dagenham, with Bonallack above the door. This would have been in the late '60's/early '70's (see here).

2. The story of the Borough Green Rolls is here

3. They built one modern fire engine, here

4. They also built several outside broadcast units for the BBC at Basildon, here

5. They seem to have built bodies for Riley cars in Forest Gate (here).

6. 1869 company restructure, here

7. Bonallack at Basildon built many ambulances for the British military based on Land Rovers, here

C. Previous hyper-linked articles on cycle workshops:

Forest Gate: hub of Victorian bike manufacturers

Bike building in Forest Gate

Cycling in Victorian Forest Gate
Forest Gate Cycling Club and life on the road at the end of the C19th

Kenney Jones, one- time drummer of The Small Faces, The Faces and The Who, last week returned to his east end roots and performed at the WansteadTap, where he discussed his autobiography, Let The Good Times Roll, with rock journalist Paolo Hewitt, in one of the Tap's great book collaborations with the Newham Bookshop. A most enjoyable evening, it was, too.

Above - the book.
Below - the signing

Kenney was born in Stepney, a couple of months after the NHS was established, and has come a long way since. His career as a rock musician, had Mod written through it, in much the same way as seaside rock has the name of the resort through it.

He now owns a Surrey polo club, hob-nobbing with the likes of Prince Charles on the pitch, and has swapped the Lambrettas for the Lambourghinis.

Kenney playing polo with his new mate
Prince Charles at his Hurtwood Park
polo club, in Surrey

His story - as told in his book, and elsewhere - is a fascinating one and owes some huge debts to Forest Gate. What follows is a recollection of some of those, and a consideration of his life and times in music and beyond.

Kenney - the second "e" was added to distinguish him from other entertainers with similar names in the 60's - is a self described "Stepney Herbert", who was gripped by music in his early teens, and ventured over to Forest Gate:

Local dance clubs offered another opportunity to hear great music. At weekends we would queue for venues such as the Lotus in Forest Gate (ed: Kenny Johnson's venue - see footnote) , which initially, played dance records before it began hosting bands.

While in the area, he came across the J60 Music Bar at 445 High Street North, Manor Park - long gone (see photo below, today). It was, in Jones' words "an Aladdin's cave" and was there he bought his first drum kit, aged 13.

He soon met Stan Lane, who introduced him to his brother, the later bassist, Ronnie, and in no time Kenney was dragging his drums from Stepney to Ronnie's house, at 385 Romford Road to practice, as they began to put a band together.

Kenney links up with Ronnie Lane and starts jamming at his house,

385 Romford Road

It wasn't long before the pair of them were back at the J60 to get a guitar for Ronnie (as he had switched from lead to bass) and ended up jamming in the shop with the Saturday boy, who turned out to be Steve Marriott - to the annoyance of the owner, who soon sacked Marriott for selling the bass to Lane at a cut price.

Ronnie and Kenney meet Steve Marriott (above), the Saturday boy at the J60 Music Bar (recent photo of its later reincarnation), 445 High Street North - and The Small Faces are born

Marriott had been brought up about half way between the J60 and Ronnie Lane's house, at 308 Strone Road. His dad, among other things, had a shell fish stall outside the Ruskin Arms - also on High Street North. The emerging musical trio linked up with the son of the pub's landlord - Jimmy Winston (aka Longwith) - who joined in, on keyboards, but more importantly offered practice space at the back room of the pub for the boys.

Left - 308 Strone Road, where Marriott
was brought up, right The Ruskin Arms,
where the Small Faces began practising seriously

The band gradually emerged and called themselves The Small Faces, because - well, they were all small - around 5'5" each. Winston was soon dropped and replaced by Ian McLagan - and the band took off, locally around 1965.

The opening of the Upper Cut club, on Woodgrange Road was a big occasion for Kenney Jones, both personally and professionally. He tells the story in the book:

My introduction to session work came about as a direct result of meeting Jan Osborne on 21 December 1966, following The Who's performance at the opening night of heavyweight boxer Billy Walker's The Upper Cut Club in Forest Gate, East London. My cousin, Roy, and I attended the gig, after which we met up back stage with Adrienne Posta and her friend Jan.

Jan later became his wife, for about a decade, and they had two children. Her father, Tony, also had a significant influence on the young Kenney. He was a prominent band leader of the day and taught Kenney how to read music, which became an intro for the young drummer to session music. He played this in parallel with his time with the bands. It extended his talents, repertoire and contacts greatly - and made not a little money on the side for him.

Small Faces - Kenney Jones in front, with the
big checks - just the way he liked it!

The Small Faces were by now making a considerable name for themselves locally and nationally and made a big impact on the Upper Cut within a couple of weeks of it opening - and on a second occasion during the club's year long existence (see press cuttings for the story).

Above - adverts for the Small Faces gigs at the Upper Cut, 6 January 1967 and 8 July, the same year. Below Stratford Express coverage of their gigs

The autobiography, itself, is Kenney's own slant on the familiar rock star tale of sex, drugs and rock and roll, complete with the touring excesses of scandalous bad boy behaviour. All the staple elements are there: bands breaking up over "musical differences", bands being ripped off by devious managers/agents/promoters, and the double standards of rockers who toured and played away, but who objected to their WAGS staying at home and playing away.

Kenney Jones performed for the three of the biggest bands of the 60's and 70's - The Small Faces, The Faces and The Who and has lived to tell the tale.

Familiar themes recur in his story. His attitude to money - let's call it careful. His relationship with lead singers (Marriott, Stewart and Daltry) - let's call it feisty. And his attitude to authority - let's call it challenging. Perhaps they are connected and help define the man.

Kenney - far right, with The Faces

He has looked after himself. As his book tells us, and he probably had cause to remind many, he was a distant relation of the Kary twins. He is also a survivor, probably because his excesses were less extreme than many of his contemporaries.

So, he has outlived the other members of the Small Faces (Steve Marriott died aged 44 in 1991, Ronnie Lane aged 51 in 1997 and Ian McLaganaged 69 in 2014).

Kenney in The Who, second right
and keeping close tabs on Roger Daltrey

He has also survived life as a drummer, an instrument notorious for the self-destruction of its musicians. Keith Moon, of The Who, died aged 32 in 1978 - to be replaced by Jones. John Bonham of Led Zepplin also died aged 32, in 1980. Cozy Powell of the Jeff Beck Group, Rainbow and Black Sabbath survived until 1998, when he died, aged 51 and Mitch Mitchell who played with the Jimi Hendrix Experience and with Georgie Fame went, aged 62 in 2008.

A Faces reunion in 1993, as a fund raiser for
Ronnie Lane (with stick, in centre) suffering from MS

Kenney Jones' survivor capacity extends beyond the music industry. He is a prostate cancer survivor and a keen supporter of charities associated with it.

He has enjoyed the good life outside of music, too. A helicopter and a fleet of smart cars is never far away from his Surrey polo club, which he admits is proving a drain on his £20m net worth. This, of course, enables him to mix within circles undreamed of in his Stepney roots. But he has never deserted or disowned them, and was happy to reminisce about his early life and times, at the Tap.

A recent photo, with ex Faces Ronnie
Wood and Rod Stewart at a fund raiser
for Protate Cancer research, at Kenney
Jones' Guildford polo club

So - a most enjoyable night was had at the 75 people lucky enough to be there (tickets sold out within 2 hours) on an occasion put on by the great local double act of Newham Bookshop and the Wanstead Tap - the entertainment highlight of E7 - now.

Kenney (right), a man at ease talking
about his East End roots to journalist Paolo
Hewitt, at the Wanstead Tap in July 2018

Kenney - left - having a drink
after his E7 show at the Tap

Footnotes:

1. Let The Good Times Roll, by Kenney Jones is published by Blink Publishing and retails at £20. Copies (some signed) can be obtained from Newham Bookshop - tel: , 745-747 Barking Road, or via their website: www.newhambooks.co.uk

2. Readers of this article may be interested in the following articles on this site, featuring themes mentioned in it:

The Newham Bookshop History

The Life and Times of Ronnie Lane

Kenny Johnson and the Lotus Club

Small Faces at the Upper Cut Club (1)

Small Faces at the Upper Cut Club (2)

Billy Walker recalls the Upper Cut club

by local historian, Mark Gorman - celebrating the 140th anniversary of the Epping Forest Act and highlighting the role of ordinary east Londoners in rescuing the forest from destruction.

140 years ago this month, on 8 August 1878, the Epping Forest Act was signed into law. This marked the culmination of nearly two decades of action to save Epping Forest from enclosure and destruction for housing, a struggle which had involved not only leading politicians and lawyers, as well as bodies like the City of London Corporation, but also popular protest by thousands of ordinary Londoners. In this story Forest Gate played a key role.

Up to the 1870's Forest Gate was still a small west Essex village, on the edge of Wanstead Flats, which marked Epping Forest’s southern boundary. The forest, once part of a great stretch of woodland across the county, was by this time just 6,000 acres in extent, between Epping in the north and Forest Gate in the south.

The “toll gate” in Forest Gate (pictured here c.1850)
marked the southern edge of Epping Forest.
The Lord Lister Health Centre is located here today.

Even this shrunken area of forest was under threat as the 19 Lords of the Manor, who were the forest landowners, began to see the financial gain to be made from enclosing and developing this open space on London’s doorstep. By the early 1870's Forest Gate was beginning to change, as suburban development spread outwards, driven by the coming of the railway, which had reached Forest Gate in 1844.

As houses covered more and more of London’s countryside, voices of alarm began to be raised. Maryland resident Sir Antonio Brady, a leading campaigner to save Epping Forest, called on ‘citizens of the East End, to protest against the encroachments on the forest, and to do battle with those who had filched from the people rights they had inherited from their ancestors.’

Such calls met a ready response among east Londoners, who saw Epping Forest as their space. On summer weekends and holidays thousands of East Enders came by train, ‘holiday van’ or on foot, to enjoy the green space of the forest, and Wanstead Flats was a favourite destination.


Thousands of east Londoners enjoyed Epping Forest, many coming in ‘holiday vans’ like this one picture in the 1850's.

The government was called on to legislate to stop the enclosure of London’s open spaces, and Epping Forest in particular was the focus of attention. But Gladstone’s Liberal administration dragged its feet, to the frustration and anger of Londoners. Matters came to a head in the summer of 1871, when Lord Cowley, the absentee landowner of Wanstead manor, instructed his agents to fence off Wanstead Flats, in preparation for clearance and house-building. Outrage boiled over in east London.

Protest meetings were held in Hackney, Shoreditch, Stratford and elsewhere, and a mass demonstration on Wanstead Flats was called for 8 July. At every meeting came calls not just for protest, but for destruction of the hated fences. At a meeting in Hackney one speaker wondered 'whether the fence would be in existence on Monday morning’. This remark was received with cries of ‘Down with it!’ and loud applause.

A crowd estimated at 30,000 descended on Wanstead Flats that day. The organisers of the protest, now fearful of the increasingly vocal calls for destruction of the fences on the Flats, adjourned the demonstration to the grounds of nearby West Ham Hall (now the site of Woodgrange School). They claimed that the military exercise taking place on the Flats that day meant that they couldn’t hold the meeting there.

But the demonstrators were having none of it. As soon as the first speaker began, there was a storm of hissing, and shouts of ‘to the Flats’, followed by the manhandling of the carts, from which the gentleman leaders were speaking, up Chestnut Avenue and onto the Flats.

The 8 July protest meeting began in the grounds
of West Ham Hall, pictured here in the 1890's.

The official meeting on the Flats agreed to petition the Queen over the forest enclosures, then the gentlemen leaders left, as did the large police detachment sent to guard the fences. Everything it seemed had passed off peacefully, until later that evening the mood changed.

A large section of the crowd began to demolish fences near the Foresters Arms pub, which then stood near the corner of Capel Road and Centre Road. This was land rented from Lord Cowley by John Gladding (after whom a road is Manor Park is named) which had been laid out for building.

The police, hastily recalled from Ilford, arrived to find 100s of metres of fencing reduced to matchwood. The police charged the crowd and managed to arrest one of them, A Whitechapel cabinetmaker named Henry Rennie. A pitched battle then took place, as the crowd tried unsuccessfully to rescue him. He was later prosecuted, but Gladding asked for a light punishment, and he was fined 5/- (25p), which was paid for him by one of the Forest Gate organisers of the meeting.

The Wanstead flats meeting marked a turning point in the open spaces campaign. The demonstration attracted nationwide news coverage, much of it highly critical of the government. A few days later the Prime Minister, William Gladstone, came to view the Flats, after which his administration rushed through the first of a series of acts on Epping Forest, prohibiting further enclosures while a Commission investigated.

‘Epping Forest in Danger’ appeared in the
Penny Illustrated Newspaper on 15 July 1871.
Overseen by the local Lord of the Manor, a
woodsman is cutting down ‘the rights of the people’,
the tree about to fall on a picnic party in the forest.
In the foreground John Bull vainly tries to awake
the slumbering law. A sign reminds readers that
there are royal rights over Epping Forest.

However, the campaign was just getting going. A pressure group called the Forest Fund, was established in Forest Gate, with local residents such as Charles Tanner, owner of West Ham hall, forming a key part of the committee. The secretary was William George Smith, a County Court Clerk lived in Odessa Road. Although now forgotten by history, Smith played a major role in the popular campaign for Epping Forest, working tirelessly over the next few years, organising petitions to parliament from east London vestries (the main units of local government before Councils) and lobbying MPs and voters during elections.

Newspaper advertisements in the 1874
General Election appealed to voters to elect
MPs who would campaign for Epping Forest
and other open spaces

In 1872 the Forest Fund organised a second demonstration on Wanstead Flats, timed to coincide with a further parliamentary debate on the future of Epping Forest. By this time the City of London Corporation had entered the fray, using their rights as Epping Forest commoners to bring legal action against the Lords of the Manor in the forest to stop enclosures. In doing so the City was seizing an opportunity to win popular support among Londoners. London’s government was increasingly seen as outdated for a modern city, and the City of London represented for many an undemocratic and unaccountable elite.

Their championing of forest preservation did win the City Corporation much popular support, though many were suspicious of its motives. One group of east London vestrymen laughed out loud when asked to sign a petition supporting the Corporation’s defence of ‘the weak’ against the forest landlords (though sign it they did). Nevertheless, a combination of the Corporation’s legal action and parliamentary action by radical London MPs finally led to the Epping Forest Act passed 140 years ago.

But they did so in an atmosphere of protest and direct action by ordinary Londoners, with a determined group of Forest Gate residents in the vanguard of the campaign.

So next time you are enjoying Wanstead Flats, remember that July day in 1871 when the crowd took matters literally into their own hands, and helped to shape the history of Epping Forest.

Street guide to E7 food hygiene ratings - 2018

Happy birthday, Newham Bookshop!

Minnie Baldock's active suffragette life in letters and photos

Redevelopment proposals for Woodgrange Methodist Church

Uncle Joe knew where you lived!

Forest Gate - in detail

The good, the bad and criminal of Forest Gate's Lettings Agents

Fifth anniversary round up - past and future

A survivor's tale - 1941 bombing of the Princess Alice

Tollgate or not Tollgate?

William Edward Wright - Forest Gate Edwardian photographer

The Magpie Project

Magpie Project in numbers

How you can help

Barry's Meat Market: as one door closes, two open!

Racism in Forest Gate in the 1970s and 1980s Part 1 - the scene is set, as the attacks begin

Racism in Forest Gate in the 1970s and 1980s Part 2 - the fight back begins

Archibald Cameron Corbett - the man and his houses -synopsis of film

NHS at 70 (1): History of the Forest Gate Maternity Hospital

NHS at 70 (2) - current state of services in E7

Bonallack's - coach-builders of Forest Gate

Kenney Jones in E7 - Now and Then!

“Save the Forest!” Forest Gate and the campaign for Epping Forest