Woodgrange Farm and the growth of modern Forest Gate

Mark Gorman (@Flatshistorian) continues his series on the agricultural lands that dominated the pre-suburban Forest Gate. In this article he examines the history of Woodgrange farm, the longest surviving farm on the edge of Wanstead Flats.

Although only its name survives today in the names of a road, an estate, a school and a medical practice, Woodgrange was the longest surviving farm on the edge of Wanstead Flats. Its name means the farm in the wood, and it may have been established when, after the Norman Conquest large areas of the manor of West Ham appear to have been cleared for agriculture.   

This reflected the growing importance of the London market for food production, which was to dominate the agricultural economy of the area round Wanstead Flats until the nineteenth century. 

A charter of 1189 confirmed the donation of Woodgrange to the abbey of Stratford Langthorne, which held it until the dissolution by Henry VIII in 1538. Both the Abbey and the later owners of Woodgrange manor claimed the right of grazing sheep between Woodgrange and Walthamstow, on what is now Wanstead Flats.

Woodgrange Farm appears on a mid-18^th century map of the estate holdings which were later owned by the Pelly family.

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Woodgrange Farm land south of the Romford road (“The Highway”) on 'A map of Plaistow Ward taken by Ino. Iames 1742'. Upton Lane is on the right of the map. Possibly Stark House was an earlier dwelling than the 19^th century farmhouse just to the north. (London Borough of Newham Archive).

The map shows Woodgrange Farm, or fields which were part of the farm, on the south side of the road to Romford, land belonging to “Mr Chaynie”. Two buildings are also shown, labelled Stark House, which may have been an earlier farmhouse replaced by the one a few hundred metres north in the 19^th century.   

One hundred years later the sale of Woodgrange Farm in 1845 included one lot of 24 acres of “very valuable garden ground” called Margery Hall, which may refer to this piece of land. In the early nineteenth century Woodgrange Farm, along with much of the built property in Forest Gate, was owned by John Pickering Peacock. 

His tenant Samuel Winmill was a member of one of several farming families in the area (the Plaxtons and the Lakes being others – see Cann Hall Farm and Aldersbrook Farm articles, earlier in this series). When Winmill died in 1827 the farm consisted of 110 acres (of which nearly half was sown with potatoes). The rest was sown to wheat and rye (which supplied the Truman, Hanbury and Buxton Brewery) together with the usual complement of five cows, probably kept for domestic consumption.

All the crops, together with a substantial amount of farm equipment and “20 powerful cart horses”, were put up for sale, pointing to a significant commercial operation. Winmill’s successor at Woodgrange Farm believed that the farm business had been severely undermined by thefts, and indeed that Winmill had been bankrupted by them.

While Peacock retained ownership of the valuable freehold land, the new tenant was Richard Gregory, from a long-established Spitalfields family with aspirations to join the gentry. Gregory was a potato wholesaler at Spitalfields market who “in the course of a few years had become the first in the trade”, earning a large fortune in the process. 

This enabled him to invest in local agriculture and become a country gentleman, and in the 1841 census he was living at Woodgrange with three small children and 4 or 5 servants (though he also appears to have maintained his home in Spitalfields, presumably to be close to his main business).

The farm also made him significant profits; the potato crop alone could yield 13 tons a day in summer, which would have sold for up to 50 shillings a ton in the Spitalfields wholesale market (August 1838 prices). When he died Gregory left his family over £100,000 (worth over £7 million today). Even though Gregory died in 1843 the farm for a number of years was known as Gregory’s, and what became Woodgrange Road as Gregory’s Lane. 

By the mid-nineteenth century Woodgrange was a little over 200 acres in size, and like most of the neighbouring farms, continued to comprise mainly market gardens. It extended from Stratford Green in the west to the East Ham parish boundary (modern day Balmoral Road) with the farm buildings located to the east of what is now Woodgrange Road.

 Woodgrange Farm on the Ordnance Survey 25-inch map 1863-67. Forest Gate station is on the left; the farm was situated south of what is now Hampton Road.

In July 1845 Woodgrange Farm was auctioned off as part of John Pickering Peacock’s estate. The farm was described as having “a farm residence, extensive farming buildings, in stabling, cow-houses, barns, wheelwrights’ and smiths’ shops and shed”. The potential of the estate as building land was emphasised in the sale advertisement, a sign of the rapid changes that were about to come in Forest Gate. By that time the farm was let to William Adams, a locally born farmer who was still at Woodgrange for the 1851 census.

Samuel Gurney bought the estate in 1845 and the 1852 tithe apportionment map shows that William Adams was his tenant for nearly the whole of Woodgrange Farm, including the fields east and west of modern day Woodgrange Road (Gravel Pit Field to the west, and White Horse Field south and east of the farm). 

Adams also rented two fields north of Forest Lane, the splendidly named Jack Ass Field (between modern day Magpie Close and Forest Gate School) and “The Twenty-Seven Acres”, which Gurney subsequently sold to the Parish for what is now West Ham Cemetery. The farm continued to focus on vegetable production for the London market, not only potatoes but also peas, parsnips and rhubarb.

 

The farm was obviously profitable in the 1840s, as this advertisement indicates (although Woodgrange is misspelled). Chelmsford Chronicle, 19 February 1847

Nevertheless, the urbanisation of Forest Gate was gathering pace. Gurney clearly saw Woodgrange Farm as a development opportunity, and as early as 1846 was planning to build large houses along the main road to Ilford (today’s Romford Road).

By the early 1860s William Adams was no longer living at Woodgrange Farm, but at Plashet Hall. Presumably he still had the tenancy of Woodgrange Farm, and the census records him as farming 850 acres and employing 116 men. In 1871 there is no census entry for Woodgrange Farm itself. The farm foreman, 64 year-old James Hayes, was living at the Farm Lodge in Woodgrange Road, while John Garrett, the farm bailiff (either for Woodgrange Farm, or possibly by this time Plashet Hall Farm, William Adams’s residence), was living in a terrace house at 1 Suffolk Street. Farm workers were becoming suburban residents.

In the mid-1870s the Glasgow businessman Thomas Corbett bought the 110 acres of Woodgrange Farm which lay on the east side of Woodgrange Road between Romford Road and the Great Eastern Railway line. He paid the Gurney estate £400 per acre, £44,000 in all. In 1877 Corbett started building the Woodgrange estate, in the process obliterating all traces of the farm.  

In 1897 the Woodgrange Estate celebrated its twentieth anniversary, and a local newspaper commented on the changes to the area in that time

An effort to the imagination is required to realize the Forest Gate of twenty years ago. A stranger emerging at that time, into the Woodgrange Road, from the old wooden railway station would see market-gardens directly in front of him as far as the eye could reach, and on his way towards the Romford Road would have these same market gardens on his left hand and only a few private houses on his right. The population of Forest Gate, all told, at that time did not exceed 5,000. Now it is at least ten times that number. The houses on the Woodgrange Estate alone number 1,160 and account, probably, for a larger population than the whole of Forest Gate contained in 1877.

Woodgrange Farm disappeared under the new estate, the farmhouse building now lying under the gardens of 26 Hampton Road and 25 Osborne Road. Within two decades Forest Gate had been transformed out of all recognition.

 Woodgrange Farm’s owners and occupiers in the 18^th and 19^th centuries

Date	Owner	Occupier	Notes
1738	John Pickering		London merchant
c.1814	John Pickering Peacock	Samuel Winmill	JP’s Indirect descendant
1827	John Pickering Peacock	Richard Gregory	Winmill died 1827
1843	John Pickering Peacock	William Adams	Gregory d. 1843
1845	Samuel Gurney	William Adams	Peacock d. c. 1845
1856	John Gurney	William Adams	Samuel Gurney d.1856
c.1877	Thomas Corbett	Farm unoccupied	Sold by Gurney estate

Footnote 1. For more information on the Gurney family, the penultimate owners of Woodgrange farm, see here:http://www.e7-nowandthen.org/2017/12/samuel-gurney-1786-1856-forest-gates.html

Samuel Gurney

 Footnote 2. For more information on the Corbett family, last owners of the farm, and builders of the Woodgrange estate, see here: http://www.e7-nowandthen.org/2018/06/archibald-cameron-corbett-man-and-his.html

Archibald Cameron Corbett and the clock tower he donated to Forest Gate

 Footnote 3. Early years of the Woodgrange estate: http://www.e7-nowandthen.org/2013/06/the-woodgrange-estate-early-years.html

Woodgrange Manor House, 1861

 

The Woodgrange Estate - the early years

The history of 110 acres that comprise the Woodgrange Estate can be traced back to the middle ages and we will return to this at a later date.

The origins of the estate, itself, however begin in 1877, when Thomas Corbett purchased Woodgrange Farm and part of Hamfirth Wood from the Gurney family (prominent Quakers and bankers to whom we, again, will return in future) for £44,000. 

The land, at the time, was a market garden, on which stood a solitary home - Woodgrange Manor House, with its outbuildings, which could be dated back to 1594.

Woodgrange Manor House, as it was in 1861

Between 1877 and 1892 Corbett and his sons oversaw the construction of more than 1,160 houses on the land. It was a perfect site for commuters, being served by the Forest Gate train station, built by the Eastern Counties Railway company, in 1839. The population of Forest Gate at the time construction started was less than 5,000 - by the time it was finished it was about ten times that size.

Houses on the estate were sold on 99 year leases.  The Forest Gate Weekly recorded the attractiveness of the estate as having "the three great essentials to the average city man of easy access, reasonable rentals and a first class local market."

1867 Ordnance Survey

The estate was built during a time of great expansion of the West Ham area generally, of which it constituted part.  In 1851 the district had a population of a mere 19,000, mainly in small settlements. Forty years later this had soared to 267,000.  Around 30,000 houses were built in the period, to accommodate the dramatic growth.

Forest Gate Weekly of 9 July 1897 described the Woodgrange development:

An effort of imagination is required to realise the Forest Gate of twenty years ago. A stranger emerging at the time into Woodgrange Road from the old wooden railway station would see market gardens directly in front of him as far as the eye could reach, and on his way to Romford Road would have these same market gardens on his left and only a few private houses on his right.

All there was on the opposite side of Woodgrange Road were Mr Fisher's house, the block of which Dr Miller's house forms one, the Almshouses, the houses behind the shops now occupied by Mr Hussey and others and the Princess Alice. To this last named building, considerable additions have however, since been made.  There was not a single shop on this side of Woodgrange Road, so recently as ten years ago, or even less than that.

One of the unusual features of the estate, when developed, is that it was built under the supervision of a single leaseholder/developer (Corbett), which led to the unusual uniformity of design for such a large estate at this period. So, despite the repetitive house styles, Corbett was able to incorporate a number of minor features, that offered variety within a theme. 

These details included the use of different types of brick, iron front railings and gates and other ornamental ironwork, stucco and artificial decorative features.  One distinctive aspect was the glazed canopies, with their ornamental iron columns, which provided an architectural link to the railway stations at Forest Gate and Manor Park, which the Corbetts did much to foster.

Thomas Corbett was a non conformist Scot with a deep interest in social problems and mass housing.  He had already built houses in his native Glasgow - to replace some of the overcrowded tenement blocks, aimed at alleviating deprivation, before he became involved in Forest Gate. 

His non-conformist religious beliefs led him to designate the estate "dry", which explains why, to this day, it does not feature a public house, or retail alcohol outlet.

Deed of covenance 1879, between 
Thomas Corbett (signature included) 
and the Church Commissioners

He began planning and building as soon as he bought the land, but died in 1880, having overseen the construction of houses in Windsor, Claremont, Osborne and Hampton and Romford Roads, to the western side of Richmond Road. On his death, the task of completion fell to his son Cameron Archibald Corbett, who was in his 20's at the time. 

Archibald gradually left the management of the estate to Messrs Strachan, Kydd and Donald, while he pursued a political career, as an Liberal MP for Glasgow, until 1911, when he was created Baron Rowallan. He was succeeded to the barony by his son Thomas, who married Liberal Leader Jo Grimond's sister and was in turn succeeded by his son Archibald. 

This Archibald was best known for his second marriage being annulled in 1970 on the grounds that his wife, April Ashley, was transsexual and thus, under then current British law, a man.

Cameron, meanwhile, went on to become one of London's most prolific property developers, building other large estates in Ilford, Goodmayes, Seven Kings, Hither Green and Eltham.

The Woodgrange estate building was completed by 1892, having survived a house building recession in the mid 1880s.  The houses were sold, many on 99 year leases, to private buyers and some organisations such as the Church Commissioners. 

The larger houses, to the west, had servants' quarters attached, set back slightly from the main frontage. The Corbetts also attempted to landscape the villas, by providing traffic islands in Richmond Road planted with trees and front gardens with hedges and lime trees.  

Added to these, 50 street trees were planted in Balmoral Road.  Some of the shops on Woodgrange Road were also built as part of the development.

One of the larger houses, typically, would have cost £530 for a 99 year lease, with an annual ground rent of £8.80, and a typical smaller house would have fetched £330 for the lease, with a ground rent of £6.30 p.a.

Census returns suggest, unsurprisingly, that the estate was occupied by residents in business, or of one of the middle class professions (see here for details of residents of Claremont Road in 1881).

Corbett built the Woodgrange estate for very early middle class commuters and he recognised the importance of the railway to it, so he was responsible for securing new and improved road bridges over the railway, the rebuilding of Forest Gate station in the 1880s. 

This provided a ready means of access to the centre of London, via Liverpool Street and Moorgate, and at one time Fenchurch Street. As part of his service to commuters, Corbett negotiated with the Great Eastern Railway for special "workmen's fares" from Manor Park station, for those living on the eastern end of the estate.

Two of the eight cottages in Romford Road
 that predate the Woodgrange estate

 

During World War II, the south west corner of the estate was badly damaged by aerial bombing (about which, more in future episodes!), with houses in Windsor and Claremont Roads having to be demolished and cleared.  They were replaced in the 1950s by council houses and flats.  The Woodgrange Estate was designated a conservation area by Newham Council in 1976.

Thanks to Newham Planning Department and The Newham Story  for much of the information here.