The industrialisation of local agriculture - Jew’s Farm and Wilson’s Farm in East Ham

The origin of these farms is obscure. Jews Farm seemingly lay at the end of what had been called Harrow Lane (named after a local pub) and on John Rocque’s map of the London area in 1746 was Siblemeed Lane. (This is where East Avenue E12 today meets East Ham High Street North and Plashet Grove). This probably refers to a piece pf marshland called Sibley Mead bordering the river Roding, which was sold in 1839 as part of Lord Henniker’s East Ham estates after his death. Today’s Sibley Grove, immediately north of East Ham station, continues the name.

On the Rocque map no farm building is marked, but on the Chapman and Andre map of 1777 buildings have appeared at the end of Jews Farm Lane; this may have been the home of a Jewish farmer named in a document of the 1760s. The farm seems to have disappeared by the early 19^th century but Jews Farm Lane retained its name until it was renamed East Avenue in the 1890s.

On John Rocque’s map “London 10 miles round” 1746 Jews Farm Lane appears as Siblemeed Lane. No farm buildings are marked. Today’s High Street North & Plashet Grove meet at North End above.

By the mid-19^th century East Ham was well-established in vegetable production, growing peas, cucumbers and above all onions for the London market. One of the biggest producers by the 1840s was Thomas Circuit, an incomer to the area from Bedfordshire, who arrived in East Ham about 1840. Circuit rented a holding called Wilson’s Farm in Plashet Lane (today’s Plashet Grove, opposite Plashet Park) and farmland east of what is now High Street North, including the site of Jews Farm.

Circuit and his family lived in the Plashet Lane farmhouse but about 1845 he had already fitted out a building for drying and storing large quantities of onions. This was probably on the Jews Farm site where present day East Avenue meets Sibley Grove. Circuit may have moved to East Ham because he saw the potential for vegetable production to feed the metropolitan market and he contracted to supply Crosse and Blackwell’s Soho factories with onions for pickling. Constructing what became known as the onion sheds enabled him to begin mass production of skinned onions ready for pickling.

The sheds were built well away from the family farm, since they were clearly another example of the “noxious trades” in which both East and West Ham specialised. The site may also have been chosen because in the 1840s the construction of rail links through East Ham into Essex were being actively promoted through bills in parliament. The Jews Farm site was ideally placed next to the eventually constructed line, and at some stage between the 1850s and 1890 sidings were built to serve the onion sheds. This enabled onions to be brought in from Essex for skinning and then shipped on to Crosse and Blackwell’s central London pickling works.

Jews Farm onion sheds c.1890

At mid-century Circuit and his neighbours were still growing vegetables locally. The work was highly seasonal; the workforce on Circuit’s 147 acres of arable and marshland in 1851 was 30 men and boys and 9 women, but in the summer of 1850 Circuit had employed 600 workers, “pulling, carting and peeling onions for pickling”. Pulling and skinning the onions was said to be women’s work, with payment (several times a day) on a piece-work basis, Circuit’s wage bill being about £200 a week during the two-month season.

This seasonal work was insecure, and even during harvest periods was not guaranteed. In 1852 Circuit refused pea-picking work to a group of “mainly Irish” labourers, as he already had enough hands. This resulted in a violent confrontation, with crops damaged before the police arrived to disperse the crowd.

The location of Wilson’s Farm occupied by the Circuits as tenants in Plashet Lane/Grove (left side of map) and the onion sheds in Jews Farm Lane (top right) on the 25-inch OS map c.1895, showing the right of way across the railway tracks where Sarah Ann Merritt was killed.

Around 1860 Thomas Circuit, possibly foreseeing the need to move farming operations away from East Ham as housing development spread, acquired farmland at Rainham in Essex. When he died in 1865 his sons Thomas junior and John seem to have focussed their operations in Essex. Both brothers died young, leaving their property in a family trust, and by 1900 the trust owned or leased several farms in the Upminster and Rainham area.

 Even by the early 1870s John Cubis Circuit was employing 250 workers on the 775-acre Brick House Farm at Rainham. The family retained both Wilson’s Farm and the onion sheds in East Ham, probably under a manager, Thomas Meeks, who was mentioned in Thomas Circuit jnr.’s will as the foreman of “East End Farm” (probably the Circuits’ property in East Ham – Meeks’ home was next to East Ham station). The business was split at this point, with Thomas and John growing onions in Essex which were shipped to East Ham for skinning. The Circuits were able to farm on a much larger scale in rural Essex than in East Ham where land was already being bought up for housing development.  Their farms in Rainham and Upminster were also close to the London Tilbury & Southend Co’s. rail link back to East Ham, and towards the end of the century Essex-grown onions were being shipped by rail to the private siding at the Jews Farm onion works.

 Thomas Circuit jnr. died in 1868, leaving his property in a family trust managed by his brother John and an East Ham farming neighbour Jabez Abbott. As early as 1870 the farm was producing 12,000 bushels of onions a year (well over 300 tonnes) exclusively for Crosse and Blackwell, whose annual output was already two million jars.

  

The farm occupied by the Circuits in Plashet Grove near the corner with East Ham High Street. Here called Circuit’s farm, elsewhere it is referred to as Wilson’s Farm, referring to the landowner. Copy of a watercolour map by Alfred Stokes late C19th, courtesy LB Newham Archive.

John Circuit died in 1876 and the livestock and equipment of Wilson’s Farm (including the onion sheds) were eventually put up for sale in 1883. At that time one of the two onion sheds on the Jews farm site had six floors and the other had three. This was even by local standards a massive operation, and had converted agriculture in East Ham into an industry. Interestingly the 1883 sale also included ploughs, harrows, waggons and “seven powerful horses” suggesting that agricultural production had continued alongside the onion skinning operation, and indeed the fields north of Plashet Lane were part of the farm. They were bought in 1889 and were subsequently developed into Plashet Park.

 This industrial site reflected the conditions prevalent in many factories of the time. In August 1874 an inquest was held on Sarah Ann Merritt, a 16 year-old onion skinner, who had been killed crossing the railway next to the farm. She and many others of the 400 strong work-force were forced by the lack of adequate and clean toilet facilities to cross the line and use a secluded lane on the other side of the railway between East Ham and Barking stations. In summing up the coroner was scathing about “the disgraceful character of the sanitary arrangements” at the farm, and required the Inspector of Health to make an inspection.

Plashet Grove c.1910, showing the entrance to Wilson’s Farm, occupied by the Circuit family while farming in East Ham. Plashet Park is on the left.

 

In response Henry Swann, the works manager, wrote to the papers with a copy of the report by the Health Inspector, who had found not just three closets as the coroner had said, but as many as seven, all clean but unused by the workers then in the plant. Clearly some work had been done before the inspector’s arrival.

 By 1890 onions were no longer grown locally and the works was supplied from estates at Rainham managed by Swann and Thompson. This company was closely associated with the Circuit family, being part owned by Henry Swann, the manager of the Jews Farm sheds and Thomas Thomson, one of John Circuit’s trustees. Although the Crosse and Blackwell name was displayed on the sheds it was Swann and Thompson which ran the operation on contract.

 Conditions at the works were appalling. Girls and women worked up to 15 hours a day skinning onions. They breathed noxious chemicals and lung-burning fumes in unventilated sheds, and eye and skin infections, as well as respiratory and reproductive illnesses were common. Many became permanently disabled with no compensation from their employer.

Crosse & Blackwell advertisement late 19^th century

The work remained seasonal, as it had been in Circuit’s time, and in the summer months onion skinning was, like hop-picking, seen as a means for east London women to earn extra money. Some east enders had been coming every season for nearly 50 years. The women workers ranged in age from 16 to 70 and over, and the younger and quicker workers were able to earn about 12s. a week.  This is equivalent to c.£49 a week today, at a time when a skilled tradesman could expect to earn 12s. a day. Child care and rent took half the women’s wages, leaving just over 6s. for food and all other expenditure. In the summer of 1890 wages were cut; for peeling the equivalent of 9 kg of white onions the women were receiving 6d-8½d, so that many were earning only 1s. for a 15-hour day which began at 6am and lasted well into the evening.

Discontent among the women workers grew, and when on the afternoon of 30 July 1890 some of them were docked pay for alleged bad work the women walked out the following day. They demanded an 8-hour day, a minimum wage and improved working conditions. These were a reflection of the demands made by the unionised workers at the nearby Beckton gas works and in the London docks the previous year. Will Thorne, founder of the National Union of Gas Workers’ and General Labourers, wrote in his autobiography “Towards the end of 1889 the spirit of the ‘New Unionism’ was flaming across the country, here, there and everywhere. Workers were rising for improvements in their wages and conditions; often unorganised, downtrodden, they took action without planning ahead; sheer desperation drove them to striking revolt, and with their striking came organisation”.

 

By the late 1880s a siding had been built into the farm (visible just below the number 237), enabling the product to be dispatched quickly across London to the main plant in Soho, where the pickle was made.

This clearly had an impact on the women at Jews Farm. As Thorne said, “in the public-houses, factories, and works in Canning Town, Barking, East and West Ham every one was talking about the union”. Thorne described the successful conclusion of the gas workers’ action as a milestone in trade union history, but it was also notable for the engagement of Karl Marx’s youngest daughter Eleanor in the emergent “New Unionism”, and her key role in organising women workers. The East Ham onion skinners’ strike was to play a small part in Eleanor’s pioneering work with women trade unionists.

In the aftermath of the Beckton strike and during another local action against exploitative employment practices at Silver’s Gutta Percha works Eleanor set up the first women’s branch of the gas workers’ union, which was admitted as the Silvertown branch in October 1889. When the women walked out at Jews Farm the following summer Eleanor immediately became involved with the strikers and under her influence many of the 400-strong onion skinners joined the Barking branch of the Gas Workers’ union.

As the strike began Eleanor addressed a meeting of 200 in a field next to East Ham station, talking of the need to organise a picket, and perhaps mindful of the recent strike at Silver’s works, counselled against attacking any blackleg labour that was brought in. At the conclusion of the meeting the women marched to East Ham town hall behind a makeshift banner made out a shawl tied between two sticks and decorated with a bunch of onions.

350 women signed up to the gas-workers’ union, and a strike committee and a collection for funds were established. During the week-long strike the union was therefore able to offer small amounts of pay to members, though this usually amounted to a little over a shilling each.

 

Headline in Barking, East Ham & Ilford Advertiser, Upton Park and Dagenham Gazette 2 August 1890

Eleanor was also active in promoting support for the onion skinners both from the general public (through letters to the newspapers) and among other workers in the area. On the first weekend of the strike she was in Ponders End, Enfield addressing gas workers on the need to support the strike, and to end petty jealousies between workers. She emphasised the importance of union membership for both men and women, and declared that young women should demand to see their lovers’ paid-up union membership cards.

Prejudice against women workers and divisions amongst trade unionists between skilled and unskilled workers could, as Eleanor correctly saw undermine strike action. This had happened at Silver’s works in the autumn of 1889, when the Amalgamated Engineers’ Society decided unilaterally to return to work, leaving the other strikers with little choice but to follow suit.

In face of the onion skinners’ action Henry Swann, still the factory “superintendent”, initially refused to negotiate, claiming that rates had not been changed and denying that he had refused to meet the strikers. However he quickly offered a small pay rise, and finally free beer for all. These were refused, and as the railway siding filled with wagons laden with over 30 tons of onions in the summer heat pressure grew for a settlement. Having made an increased offer, again refused, Swann finally agreed the workers’ terms, and after nearly a week on strike the women returned.

Eleanor Marx-Aveling

 Despite this victory labour relations at the works continued to be problematic. In July 1895 another strike was called and 200 women walked out, again because Swann & Thompson had cut wages. There is no record of how this strike ended, nor of the date when the works finally closed, though Swann & Thompson were still growing onions for market at Rainham in 1898, so possibly they were still running the East Ham works at that time.

The Circuit farms at Rainham and Upminster were finally sold by the family trustees in 1909. In an echo of the move from East Ham in the 1860s the estate was advertised as suitable for building development and included several acres of “unrestricted factory land”. Urban development was moving further out into Essex in the first decades of the new century.

The urbanisation of rural Essex was preceded two decades earlier by housing development in East Ham. The financial return on agricultural production was no match for the gains to be made by mass house building., and in 1893 the farmland immediately north of East Ham station was divided into 99 plots and let for building on very cheap terms. 

  

Land was for sale in the roads leading to Jews Farm. West Ham and South Essex Mail, 8 July 1893

By 1899 the first “villas” had been built in Shakespeare Crescent, which today covers the area where Jews Farm had stood, while in 1901 the London Tilbury & Southend Railway Co. stopped the right of way across the railway at Jews Farm (where Sarah Anne Merritt had met her untimely death 30 years earlier) and built a footbridge, so this probably marks the time by which the onion sheds had disappeared and housing development begun on the site.

East Ham station c.1893 looking east. The onion sheds are just visible in the distance, the line of trees marking Jews Farm Lane. A sign in the left foreground announces building plots to let. (LBN Archive).

Wilson’s Farm survived longer, continuing first as a working farm and later in the 1900s as a depot for a carter contracted to East Ham Council, until it was finally demolished in the early 1920s to make way for the first girls’ school to be built on the Plashet Grove site.

 

A footbridge now crosses the District & C2C Line from Sibley Grove to Southend Road, replacing the foot crossing where Sarah Ann Merritt was killed in 1874

In April 1899 Jews Farm Lane, known locally as “Skinny Lane” because of the onion skinning sheds there, became the much more respectable East Avenue, named after Joseph East, a local councillor and first chairman of East Ham Urban District Council. The farm-factory also disappeared in the face of relentless urban development.

Crosse and Blackwell were to return to the area decades after the Jews Farm site closed down, though this time it was for a sweet rather than savoury product. In the 1920s the company acquired James Keiller & Son (of Dundee marmalade fame). Keiller's had opened a factory in 1878 at Tay Wharf Silvertown, and production continued there under Crosse and Blackwell ownership until the 1980s.

The 1974 strike at Crosse & Blackwell in Silvertown, reported by the Stratford Express

 It was here at Silvertown that in 1974 a curious repetition of the Jews Farm dispute occurred. 300 women at the works went on strike to demand that increased production line speeds were matched by increased bonuses. As in 1890 with union support the women won an hourly pay increase. It was not a long-lasting success however, as Crosse & Blackwell were already winding down the works and moving production to Scotland. The Silvertown works closed in 1985.

The farms of Wanstead Flats and Forest Gate – introduction

Local author and regular blog contributor, Mark Gorman, has undertaken extensive research on pre-suburban Forest Gate and surrounding areas. In doing so, he has produced an impressive account of the farms that dominated the locality, their produce, workforces and markets, between the eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. 

We will run a series of articles focussing on the history of these farms, whose legacies survive today in the names of roads and geographic areas in and around Forest Gate. In this opening chapter, Mark provides an introduction to farming in the locality. Subsequent, more detailed, articles on some of the farms will appear regularly on this blog over the coming months.

The farms of Wanstead Flats and Forest Gate – introduction

Forest Gate and Wanstead Flats today show very few signs of their rural past, but before the development of the housing which now surround the Flats the area around the open spaces of the common was dotted with fields and farms. Meanwhile modern Forest Gate developed out of a small hamlet surrounded by farms. This past which now seems so remote is in fact surprisingly recent; the last farm-house on the Flats was demolished in 1963 (even though by then it had become a petrol filling station on Aldersbrook Road), and traces of these farms can still be found in the area today.

 Over the coming months we will take a look at some of the farms which existed around Wanstead Flats and Forest Gate, focussing particularly on their later history in the 19^th century as urbanisation began to spread, first slowly and by the 1870s in a wave which eventually swept away nearly all traces of the area’s rural past. We’ll visit Cann Hall, west of the Flats towards Leytonstone, the two Aldersbrook Farms, Hamfrith Farm and Woodgrange Farm, both south of the Flats in Forest Gate, Plashet Hall Farm on the highway between Stratford and Ilford, and two smaller farms or smallholdings, Druitt’s Farm on Wanstead Flats near the City of London cemetery, and Rabbits Farm on Romford Road.

 We’ll go over to East Ham to Jews Farm, an agricultural enterprise which became a local agro-industry over the course of the later 19^th century, and played a minor role in the growth of women’s trade unionism.  We’ll also take a look at the history of a farmworker community centred around a group of tenements known collectively as “Irish Row” which stood on what is now Romford Road.

 Agriculture in the area

From the Anglo-Saxon period, and perhaps even earlier, the southern part of Epping Forest was an area of agricultural production, both through grazing animals and growing crops. Over centuries in the parishes of the southern forest land was cleared and fields formed. Much of the production was for local consumption, but as time went on and London began to grow, the importance of commercial agriculture grew. This part of south-west Essex was close enough to London to be a prime provider of produce for the ever-growing metropolitan market. 

Chapman and Andre’s map of Essex (1777) showing some of the local farms. Hamfrith Farm is incorrectly named “Wood Grage” (Woodgrange). The actual Woodgrange Farm is unnamed, south of the Eagle & Child. “Kan Hall” & the first Aldersbrook Farm are also marked, as is Jews farm in East Ham.

Until the late 1600s Londoners' diest were meat and bread based; fruit and vegetables were not widely eaten. It was therefore not until the mid-18th century that market gardens began to be significant in local farming, though potatoes had been a staple crop of the local farmers in the West Ham parish for centuries. The parish was said to be one of the poorest near London. One farmer, writing probaly in the late 17th - early 18th century, complained that although "the planting of Potatoes ... sometimes helps us to pay our REnts and that not once in three years". He believed that the closeness to London actually undermined the local economy.

As London expanded, this began to change. The stimulus of the metropolitan market caused local farmers in both East and West Ham to begin to grow market garden produce on a commercail scale. Already in the 1750s potatoes and turnips were imporatnt local crops. In 1974-5 about 450 acress were sown with potatoes and a further 120 acres with cabbages and other vegetables, representing in all over half the arable area of the parish. Daniel Lysosn described the area and its importance for the London food market in "The Environs of London", published in 1796 -

 

“In proportion as this great town has increased in population and opulence, the demand for every species of garden luxury has increased also; and, from time to time, fields have in consequence been converted into garden-ground, till a considerable proportion of the land within a few miles of London became occupied for that purpose. The culture of garden-ground is principally confined to those parishes which lie within a moderate distance of the river, on account of the convenience of water-carriage for manure, which, since the prodigious increase of carriages, as well of hackney and stage coaches as of those kept by private families, is procured in great abundance from the London stables”.

 In apparent contradiction of this account Thomas Milne’s Land Use Map of 1800 showed that the area around Forest Gate was still mainly arable, and the Flats were surrounded to the west and south by meadows and fields of grain crops. According to Milne it was only south of the main road to Ilford that market gardens were appearing. Unfortunately his map does not cover East Ham where more market gardens may have been located (see map).  Given Lyson’s comments above it is possible that Milne underestimated the extent of local market gardens.

Potatoes and the growth of London

Notwithstanding Milne's map. much evidence points to the increasing emphasis on growing vegetables for the metropolitan market. Three factors played a role in the growth of commercial market gardening locally. Free draining soil, the availability of a ready supply of manure and the proximity of "an insatiable market for produce" were key reasons for the success of commercail vegetable production. Indeed such was the importance of the potato crop on the land around Forest Gate at this time that Plashet Hall, a large mansion built by the Greenhill family on the corner of Plashet Lane (now Katherine Road) and the main road to Romford, became known as Potato Hall, even appearing with this name on an early Ordnance Survey map, and the name survived at least until the 1870s.

Thomas Milne’s Land Use Map (1800): Forest Gate was mainly arable fields (yellow); market gardens (blue) were appearing south of Romford Road. Upton was mainly large houses with parks (pink).

Athough the Greenhills were pioneers of commercial potato production, after 1800 other local producers were also growing potato crops and sending them into Spitalfields market (the main destination for Essex vegetable crops) for sale. The proximity of the metropolitan market meant that produce could be sent in daily, the carts leaving overnight to arrive at Spitalfields by early morning. The need for the manure meant that the returning carts were loaded at collection points (such as the Truman brewery in Mile End Road) and brought back to be spread on the fields immediately. 

The opening of the Eastern Counties Railway in 1838 meant that crops could be moved into London even more quickly and cheaply, but this soon proved to be a double-edged sword for local market gardens As a commentator in the 1850s pointed out, "distant counties now compete with all these gardens and gardeners, being able to do so by the railway facilities. Peas, asparagus, new potatoes are thus brought, to the advantage of the London consumers, if not of the suburban growers." Indeed, when the Great Eastern railway (successor company to the Eastern Counties) opened a wholesale fruit and vegetable market in Stratford in October 1879 the dealers who set up there were all from East Anglia, with none locally based.

Part of Forest Gate and the road to Ilford and Romford on the Ordnance Survey first edition map, possibly a draft from the 1790s. Plashet Hall ia marked as "Potatoe [sic] Hall". Irish Row was probably among the dwellings west of Potatoe Hall on the Romford road.

 

 

 

 

In the 1840s local potato crops were affected by the same disease as in Ireland, but unlike the Irish situation potato blight locally did not impact on the profitability of local farming. With the huge metropolitan market on their doorstep farmers were able to adapt to both growing conditions and market demand by diversifying into other vegetable crops. When blight struck the potato crop at Woodgrange Farm in the 1840s the whole crop was sold at a heavy loss, but this was recouped when the land was ploughed and replanted with cabbages. From the early years of the century the high quality of the "Imperial East Ham Cabbage" variety meant that it was sold by seedsmen across the country. Local growers sold cabbages into the London markets in large quantities. Peas and onions were also grown extensively.

 Farmers and their workers

Until the mid-19th century farming in the Forest gate area was a profitable business. Most farms were rented by tenants, who made a good living supplying the nearby metropolitan market. A few families farmed in the area over several decades, and names such as Adams, Lake, Greenhill and Circuit reappear consistently. James Adams, who died in 1832, had farmed in Plaistow, and from 1843 his son, William, was the tenant at Woodgrange Farm, which, which tigether with Plashet Hall Farm  gave him an estae of over 800 acres and a workforce of 116 men by the early 1860s. The lakes farmed at Cann Hall and Aldersbrook, while the Greenhill family had extensive lands across Forest gate and East Ham, including both Hamfrith and Plashet Hall Farm before the family's finacial difficulties foreced the sale of their properties in the 1830s-40s. Thomas Circuit farmed extensive market gardens in East ham, specialising in onion production, a business eventually taken over by Crosse and Blackwell.

The scale of these operations is illustrated by a description of William Adams' business in the 1860s. On his 850-acre Plashet Hall Farm he was employing 116 workers, with an annual wage bill of over £6,000. Adams' total outgoings, including wages, rent, rates and tithes, commissions to salesmen in the metropolitan wholesale markets and contracts to buy manure from large-scale stables, cowhouses and breweries in London amounted to £20,000 annually (well over £1 million today).

Adams was farming on an industrial scale, Each year production per acre was up to 70 tons of cabbages and greens, 12 to 20 tons of carrots and 8 to 12 tons of potatoes, followed by 10 to 14 tons of onions, and then by a further cropping of greens and cabbages. "As soon as one crop is off another is put in; the only respite is in the winter time, before the onion crop, when it is left bare for season frost. The land is being perpetaully robbed."

This intensity of cropping could only be sustained by abundant application of manure. 80 tons of dung per acre was a normal dressing, and the soil was drained and deep ploughed to enable the huge quanity of manure to work into the roots of the plants. The smell which must have hung over the area throughout the year can only be imagined. William Adams was also an innovator; like his neighbour Chamberlayne Hickman Lake at Cann Hall he experimented with steam ploughs. "The land about East Ham lies in large and open fields, and is admirably adapted for steam cultivation; and Mr Adams is on the point of introducing the steam plough. It will be almost the first introduction of it into the business of growing vegetables for the London market, to which it is nevertheless perfectly adapted". The Gardeners Chronicle could only describe these operations in industrial terms - "We do not suppose that there is a larger manufactory of food for London anywhere."

The first migrant workers

Potato growing also attracted the arrival of Forest Gate's first group of overseas migrants. By the late 18th century Irish migrants were coming to both East and West Ham to provide labour for potato growing. An estimate of when the first Irish workers and their families arrived is difficult to establish, though Irish migrants were living in the Forest gate area by the early 1780s. We know little of their circumstances, and sources such as vestry minutes and newspaper reports usually focussed only on the crime and disorder which they claimed was associated with Irish migrants. For example, it was reported in 1790 that a large body of men, who said they were Irish, had commited armed assaults in the parish. In 1810 the newspapers reported the sensational murder of John Bolding, the landlord of the eagle and Child after "a large body of Irish labourers" broke into the pub. Six were found guilty and three were executed for the crime.  

Despite what the newspapers thought, the Irish migrants formed the backbone of local agriculture from the late 1700s onwards. They were employed in numbers by the local farmers; in the 1820s John Greenhill at Hamfrith and Richard Gregory at Woodgrange Farm both had significant Irish workforces. Irish migration seems to have peaked around 1816, in the economic downturn that followed the ending of the Napoleonic Wars, and then again in 1831. 

The murder of John Bolding at the Eagle & Child 1810

 

Many of the migrant families were living in poverty, but received little sympathy  from the local parishes, who were mainly concerned about the impact on the Poor Rate. A meeting of West Ham vestry in February 1819 heard that numbers of "the poor" had been rapidly increasing in the parish since 1815, particularly during winter months and "that the great increase of the poor are, for the most part, of the Irish labourers, who in the summer season, go to different parts of the County [i.e. Essex] to Harvest Stock, Hop picking &c; and after these works are over, they return into this Parish, and are employed in the Neighbourhood for a few weeks in getting up Potatoes, and upon the finish of that Stock (about the beginning of November) they with their wives and families quarter themselves upon and are mainatined by the Parish until the next Spring and the scarcity of Employment has been such that very few get any Stock to ease the parish of the burthen of the maintenance of themselves and Families, and altho' the Workhouse has been greatly enlarged and improved it is still found very inadequate in size to the increasing number of poor who apply for admission."

Ten years later the vestry noted that the workhouse had over 200 inmates, "and also the out Door poor ... have been much increasing" and warned that the Poor Rate might have to be increased "if some means are not adopted to avoid the burthen of the Irish poor."

In 1833 the neighbouring parish of East Ham was said to be "overwhelmed with Irish poor", who it was claimed made up 3/4 of the local population.

The Poor Rate was paid by all owners and occupiers of property within the parish

 

Parliamentary acts in the 18th-early 19th century had given magistrates the power to return Scottish and Irish "vagrants" on application from the local overseers of the poor, and East Ham parish was said to be removing 50-60 "Irish vagrants" daily (a number which seems very high and is probaly greatly exaggerated), at a cost to the parish of £4-5. This was administered under a system of removal orders (known as passes) by which "vagrants" were sent to their home parish with a small cash amount. In 1833 a parliamentary select committee on Irish vagrants reported that the pass system was abused by Irish and Scottish migrants who applied for passes, then simply disappeared to another parish and later returned to claim further poor relief. As a result, another parliamentary act tightened the law, and migrants began to be sent back directly by ship.

Despite these draconian measures, there seem to have been very few cases of repatriation enforced by the local parishes. On occasion the Essex magistrates restrained the zeal of parish authorities to remove migrants, by applying a principle they called "moral settlement", where migrants could prove lengthy residence locally. Such a case was heard at Ilford petty sessions in 1829, when two Irish widows appealed against the attempt of West Ham parish officers to expel them. They said they had lived in the parish for 15 years, where both their husbands died, and had no family connections in Ireland. The magistrate, the redoubtable R.W.Hall Dare, declared that if the women could prove their local residence over 15 years they could claim moral settlement.

It was more common for magistrates to authorise specific cash sums of poor relief for local workers, which due to the seasonal nature of local farm work tended to spike in the winter months. Magistrates were not always sympathetic to claims, declaring profligacy in the summer months was the cause of penury in the winter, and often committing claimants and their families to the workhouse. 

Despite the claims of the parish authorities, there is little evidence of large numbers of migrants from Ireland arriving in East or West Ham after the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Even the famine years in the 1840s do not seem to have led to a significant increase in migrants locally, although nationally very large numbers arrived, particularly in the peak famine year of 1847. From 1845 the East Ham potato crops were affected by disease, which may help explain why there was not a larger influx of people fleeing famine in Ireland. 

"Irish Row"

From their first arrival, many Irish migrants were living in poor conditions, and many families lived in a group of houses collectively named as "Irish Row". This little hamlet clustered around the corner of the road to Ilford and Romford (now Romford Road), on the corner of what was then called Plashet Lane to the south, and is now Katherine Road. The earliest references to these tenements are from about 1811, and they were still in existence in the early 1890s. Occupied for most of this time predominantly by farm workers, Irish Row and its neighbouring tenements formed some of the poorest housing in the area, bringing into question the idea of pre-development Forest Gate as a rural idyll. A more detailed account of Irish Row will feature in a future blog.

Wages and poverty

 By the mid 19th century this rural way of life was increasingly impacted by urban development. A lifelong resident of East Ham recalled in the early 1930s that 50 years previously there had been market gardens on both sides of the road from the site of the future East Ham town hall to Manor Park. Yet housebuilding was gathering pace, and from the 1860s some farmers were beginning to relocate from the area.

Local farms needed significant labour to maintain the intensity of their production. It seems that rather than directly paying their whole workforce they employed a contract system, rather like that in operation on the local brickfields. Thus William Adams, whose labour bill varied between £70 a week in winter and nearly £200 a week in spring and summer, paid over the wages to foremen with whom he had contracted. These were either groups of men, working on a share basis, or where women and children were also employed, families could be working together. Probably households in Irish Row were working in this way. Thomas Circuit, who was growing onions for pickling at Jews Farm in East Ham employed 600 men, women and boys in pulling, carting and peeling onions for pickling during the summer months. His wage bill was £2OO weekly (about £12,000 today). Much of this work was done by women who were paid by the rod of ground (approximately 5 metres). During the harvest season Circuit was said to be making about 1500 different payments daily, as his employees received their wages three or four times a day.

 Farm worker wages in south-west Essex during the first half of the nineteenth century were probably higher than elsewhere in England. Local farm productivity seems to have been high, and market gardening yielded good profits. A gang of 20 workers on Woodgrange Farm in the 1830s could lift 12-13 tons of potatoes daily, earning 35/- (£1.15p) a week each, equivalent to the earnings of a skilled artisan. A carter on the same farm earned 18/- weekly. Towards the end of the following decade, a carter could be earning 25-28/- a week locally.

 However, work was seasonal and insecure, and even during harvest periods was not guaranteed. In 1852 Thomas Circuit refused pea-picking work to a group of “mainly Irish” labourers, as he already had enough hands. This resulted in a violent confrontation and damaged to crops before the police arrived to disperse the crowd. Competition between workers could also be intense. In 1830 Irish and Scottish workers at Woodgrange Farm were in dispute over the Scots’ proposal to plough up potatoes rather than dig them with spades. The confrontation ended with the prosecution of one of the Irishmen for assault.

 Some farm workers could provide for themselves from their own gardens or from rented allotments. In 1842 The Gardener’s Chronicle covering the South Essex Horticultural Show

reported that “Upwards of 30 prizes were awarded to Cottagers for fruit and vegetables, mostly grown on the allotments let out by S. Gurney, Esq., Upton: they thus receive a double reward, in the superior quality and abundant crop, and also the value of the prizes-varying in amount from 5s. to nearly 30s, each”. It was also common to allow “gleaning” of fields after a crop had been harvested, a practice which often shaded over into theft of crops.

 Thefts from farms

The regular newspaper reports of thefts from local farms, usually involving farm employees, also testify to the difficulty of surviving on wages alone. In the 1830s Richard Gregory of Woodgrange Farm claimed that it was a common practice for farm workers to steal items overnight and store or sell them in local inns (notably the Pigeons on the Romford highway). Twenty years later the thefts were continuing, despite harsh sentences for offenders. In 1853 James Ainsworth, an ostler at the Pigeons was sentenced to transportation for 14 years after being convicted of receiving a large consignment of oats stolen overnight from a barn at Woodgrange Farm. Produce was also stolen from farm waggons as they made their way into London in the early hours of the morning.

The Pigeons pub before 1885, showing farm carts with produce for the London market outside

 

Gregory and Adams both alleged that carters taking produce into London would stop at pubs along the way and sell items ranging from farm stock to the oats they had been given to feed their horses. Even manure had a value. In 1871 three workers from Plashet Hall Farm were convicted of stealing dung belonging to their employer at Truman’s brewery, each receiving one month’s hard labour. Gates and even sections of hedges were also taken, and thefts of growing crops were very common, a problem not just for large-scale farmers but also smallholders.  As we have seen some claimed that gleaning after harvests was a practice allowed by local farmers, and two “destitute-looking women” caught taking onions from a field in Gipsy Lane got off with a caution. Two months later one of William Adams’ employees was not so fortunate after stealing onions; he received a sentence of two months’ hard labour. 

 Poverty was undoubtedly a major factor in these thefts, many of which were of small quantities, probably to feed families. During the campaign against the Corn Laws in the 1840s evidence was produced from West Ham that “sober and industrious men” who were being paid the going rate for farm labour locally were only able to feed their families “the very refuse of potatoes, without meat or bread”.  Farm workers had little sympathy from employers like Gregory and Adams however. Gregory maintained that his neighbours were afraid to prosecute thieves for fear of having their homes set on fire or animals killed. He blamed the opening of a beer shop in Forest Gate for exacerbating the problem.  

Urbanisation and the end of farming 

By the mid-19th century this rural way of life was increasingly impacted by urban development. A lifelong resident of East Ham recalled in the early 1930s that 50 years previously there had been market gardens on both sides of the road from the site of the future East Ham town hall to Manor Park. Yet housebuilding was gathering pace, and from the 1860s some local farmers were beginnig to relocate from the area. Between 1861 and 1863 Thomas Circuit left his farm at  North End (near East Ham station) moved out to Rainham, In the next few years land round his farm in Jews Farm Lane (now East Avenue E12) was sold for building, although in a sign of the industrialisation of agriculture Crosse and Blackwell maintained Circuit’s picking sheds until the 1890s. William Adams’ son, also William, and his business partner sold up at Plashet Hall Farm and moved out to Dagenham in 1879, and Plashet Hall was never again a solely agricultural enterprise. Also in the 1870s the lands of Woodgrange and Hamfrith were sold for building, as was Cann Hall a decade later.

While many local farms were sold, operations on those that remained were increasingly curtailed. Market gardening continued, though on a much smaller scale than previously.

Census firgures and local directories from the 1840s to the 1860s  track the rise and decline of farming locally. Building development came to West Ham parish earlier than East Ham, so farms disappeared here some years before they did in the neighbouring parish. At mid-century, West Ham remained essentially a rural community. It contained 1,100 acres of arable (including market gardens), 2,600 acres of meadow and pasture, 8 acres of woodland, 62 acres of domestic gardnes and orchards and 82 acres of osiers and reeds. By 1905 only 127 acres of arable farmland remained, most of it east of Prince Regent Lane. The last market-garden at Plaistow is said to have closed in 1905, and in the same year the closure of some watercress beds near Temple Mills, suspected of spreading cholera was recommended.

East Ham was to follow this pattern a couple of decades later. In 1839 a local directory records 16 farms in East Ham, of which 5 were over 100 acres. This number remianed the same in 1863 and 7 were described as market gardens.

Census records of farm labourers tell a similar story. The number of male agricultural workers in East Ham rose from 266 in the 1841 census to 360 ten years later. By the early 1860s though, numbers had declined to 166, reflecting the decline of agriculture as urban development gathered pace.

Beddall's Farm, Newham's last working farm, in East Ham, Manor way, Beckton. Picture from 1970s, some years after the farm's closure. 

Although in the mid-1880s there were still 9 farmers in East Ham, the remaining holdings had largely disappeared by the eve of the first world war, though the last farm did not close until the 1960s. 

However, of the farms around Forest Gate, only Aldersbrook dairy herd could claim to retain any resemblance to a working farm after 1918. Over the course of no more than half a century a way of life that had existed since the first settlements of East and West Ham had disappeared.