An appreciation of Forest Gate artist Eric Dawson

Last year's Newham Heritage Week paid a rare local tribute to Forest Gate artist, Eric Dawson, by displaying some of his original works at The Gate, and elsewhere in Newham.

Eric Dawson in his late 80's 

These paintings are normally hidden from public view, in the stack of the reference library and archives. Many of the paintings are specifically of our local area and we felt that they deserved a more permanent public viewing.

Last train leaving Forest Gate station

We are grateful to Newham Library service, to whom Eric donated many of the paintings and to Eric and his family for being able to present them. It should be made very clear that the paintings are the copyright of Newham and Eric's family, who we are sure will be glad that they can be shared with a wider public than who normally has access to them.

Sunday evening in Upton Lane

Eric was born in Forest Gate in 1918, and was educated at West Ham Secondary school and West Ham School of Art. On the outbreak of war in 1939 he joined the armed forces, serving for almost five years.

Sunday School anniversary, Woodgrange
 Baptist church, early 1930's

After the war he joined Carlton Artists as a designer - six years later moving into women's magazines, first as Art Director of Homes and Gardens and later as Art Director to the Women's Own Group.

Woolworth's in Green Street

He later moved back to press and TV advertising, finally freelancing and working for a range of top-ranking agencies and high street companies.

Looking Back

On retirement, in 1988, he began to bring some of the memories of his earlier life back, with a series of watercolor paintings, exhibiting at the National Army Museum, Epping Forest District Museum - where he lived latterly - and about 20 other locations around London.

Grandfather and Eric Dawson, in the kitchen

Eric donated 42 paintings to Newham Council about a decade ago, all under the theme Growing up in East London 1918 -1939. To celebrate the donation, Newham Council published his memoir Looking Back, in 2006, which basically provided a commentary to the donated paintings.

The house Eric Dawson
 was born, 6 Beauchamp Road

Eric was born at the very end of World War 1, but never knew his father, who died following a gas attack in the trenches.

Children watching Dawson's fish van
 leaving Beauchamp Road for their
 shop in Woodgrange Road

The Introduction to Looking Back says of it:

He evokes a comfortable but nor really wealthy Forest Gate of close-knit families and helpful neighbours. There are some chain stores on the busier streets, but every neighbourhood has its small privately-owned shops - butcher, grocer, sweet shop, boot and shoe repairer, oil shop - providing  necessities on a daily basis.

Coffee stall by Forest Gate clock

Sunday schools and Temperance meetings attracted large audiences and it was not unusual for a cinema to seat 3,000 people. At home, evening parties included poetry recitals and songs around the piano. He described families travelling on the criss-cross of local railway lines to spend holidays at seaside resorts where the lodgings were modest, but the home cooking superb.

Horswills were builders in Green Street

Eric described his Forest Gate origins at the start of his memoir, thus:

In 1890, two brothers, joining an accelerating movement away from the overcrowded eastern districts of the City of London, left Bow for Forest Gate. They brought adjoining houses in Beauchamp Road, leasehold for around £200 each. The elder brother was my grandfather, William Robert Buck, the other my great uncle, Arthur. Both were recently married. ...

Grandfather with Eric Dawson

In the early days of the 1920's it seemed as if every other road in Forest Gate was lined with shops. The main thoroughfares, heavy with traffic, much of it still horse-drawn, contained the larger establishments - Woolworth's, The Penny Bazaar, Home and Colonial, the Co-op. Lots of dress shops, haberdashers and milliners, Freeman, Hardy and Willis (shoes), Montague Burton, 'the tailor of taste'.

Dolls' hospital, by Forest Gate station

The back streets provided the daily necessities of the local inhabitants. Just around the corner from us in St George's Road, a group of such local shops existed ...

Kenner -tailor of taste, 36 - 38 Upton Lane,
 painted in 1998

Within five minutes walk was West Ham Park. Here we sped our scooters along smooth asphalt paths, and in the summer learned to play cricket (underarm bowling) in the shades of the leafy chestnut trees. The flower gardens splendidly maintained by the City of London Corporation, were patrolled by stern park keepers, with whistles. Close by was Upton Lane school, which all the family at various times attended. ...

Two Sikh men, by the Gurney
 memorial in West Ham Park

Further north, along Upton Lane, occupying a whole block, was the Forest Gate Sanitary Steam Laundry. The establishment ejected vast clouds of steam across Upton Lane; at night the dramatic effect was enhanced by powerful but flickering arc lights illuminating work areas. Sounds of heavy machinery rent the air, occasionally interspersed with women's voices, raised in song, a truly Wagnerian manifestation. ...

Forest Gate Steam Laundry, Upton Lane

On the far side of West Ham Park was a large house called The Cedars, once the home of the Gurney family (ed: Elizabeth Fry, principally). It was now used by the local Territorials and by the British legion, the ex-servicemen's club ... Outside The Cedars several horse brakes were drawn up, decorated all over with flowers and favours and were filling up with excited children, the atmosphere distinctly of the knees-up variety. ...

Intermission, Broadway Theatre, Stratford

Looking Back - Growing up in East London (1918 - 1939) by Eric Dawson, published by Newham Council 2006, £7.99

Edwardian Forest Gate - a photographic essay (1) - street life

The Edwardian era (1901 - 1910) was a fascinating one - wedged between the end of Victorian Britain and the outbreak of World War 1. Locally, it saw the first reversal of population growth, after a century of continuous expansion (numbers fell from 60,892 in 1901 to 51,071 by the time of the census a decade later).

The decade co-incided with an early boom in the post card trade; and the many survivors enable us to paint a vivid street and social portrait of the district, perhaps for the first time.

In this, the first of two posts, we reproduce a number of Edwardian postcards showing Forest Gate streets, a little over a century ago. They are presented, somewhat unimaginatively, in alphabetical order. 

For a flavour of life in and around these streets at the time, we would refer you to three previous posts on this blog, taken from a 1907 publication, by social commentators, Howarth and Wilson, in their book: West Ham - a study in industrial problems.

The posts refer to the three then local authority districts:

Forest Gate Ward
Park Ward
Upton Ward

In the second post in this "photographic essay" of Edwardian Forest Gate, we will reproduce postcards illustration recreation and entertainment, religion, education, transport and politics of the time.

Street life in Edwardian Forest Gate

See how your road has changed over the last century - absence of traffic and litter and abundance of healthy trees are among the most obvious differences between now and then.

Atherton Road - 1910

Broadway (with fire station and ladder
 in front of what is now the semi-
dilapidated dentist) - 1904

Broadway - 1908

Capel Road - 1906

Chestnut Avenue - 1908

Chestnut Avenue - 1910

Claremont Road - c 1910

Dames Road - 1906

Earlham Grove - c 1910

Ham Park Road (163) - 1905

Hampton Road - c 1901

Osborne Road - c 1907

Romford Road - 1904

Romford Road - 1904

Romford Road (with Congregational
 church) - 1905

Sebert Road - 1908

Upton Lane - 1910

Upton Lane, corner of Whyteville Road,
 1902 - old steam laundry, on site of
 what is now petrol station

Windsor Road - 1908

Woodford Road - 1904

Woodgrange Road - 1903

Woodgrange Road - 1907

If you have copies of Edwardian postcards of other Forest Gate streets you'd like to share, we'd be delighted to revive them and add them to those above. Just let us know, via the contact points, shown on this site.

The story of St Angela's school

Forest Gate's growing mid-nineteenth century population was added to by an influx of Irish economic refugees, fleeing the potato famine (see here for examples).

The then Strafford Catholic priest, James McCoin was on the look-out for help in educating Catholic children, as a counterweight to the CofE and Non-Conformist education provided by local charity schools (see here, for  details of these schools and early formal education in Forest Gate).

In February 1862 he invited a party of four Ursuline nuns from Belgium to visit the Upton area (the more developed part of Forest Gate, at this time). The Ursuline order was one largely committed to education and had been seeking a base in England for at least a decade. They had previously sought bases elsewhere, including in Walthamstow - but to no avail.

Following their visit to Forest Gate, they acquired a semi-detached house with a large garden in Upton Lane, then described as "in the country village of Upton". They bought the adjoining house the following year, which together, in the St Angela's story, became known as "The Old House".

Some of St Angela's pupils, pre 1887,
 when school uniform first introduced

The pair of these houses appears to have been built almost two centuries earlier, in 1684, although few details of their earlier history seem to remain.

Unfortunately, neither does there appear to be any surviving images of the properties, prior to very extensive later alterations by the Ursulines. The houses were, initially, to be the nuns' convent. The four original nuns were soon  joined by four more.

On 28 May 1862 Mother Agatha and Mother Victoire began to teach in two cottages in Sun Row, as Green Street was known.  The following year the nuns had the stables in the convent converted into a school - a big improvement on Sun Row - and moved the teaching there.

First assembly hall, 1889 - 1914

The nuns continued to commission building in 1872. The first wing included a study hall (later library) - see photo, with classrooms and a dormitory above. Boarders moved in, leaving the dozen or so day pupils in The Old House.

In 1874 Mass began to be said in the school, thus saving the local faithful a weekly trip to Stratford - and continued until the church of St Antony's was built a short distance down the road in Upton.

The chapel, as it was in 1884

In 1875 a boys school - St Bonaventure's - was opened a few yards away
In 1882 a new wing was started at St Angela's and included a chapel and more classrooms.

1884 convent building

As an aside, it is quite remarkable how an area such as Upton, for so long a home to wealthy Quakers (the Fothergills, Frys, Gurneys, Pellys, Listers  etc - see later posts for details and their full widespread impact), within two decades had become the centre of a thriving Catholic community - spawning two schools, a convent and a church.

Sporty boarders at St Angela's, post 1887,
 but pre 1900 - note cricket bats on far left of photo

This small strip of land provides, in microcosm, the traditional role of the East End: a host to successive waves of immigrants and other outsiders, with one community - usually seamlessly and peacefully - replacing another. The "displaced" communities, typically, move on, usually in a diversified way, to more established and often more affluent areas elsewhere.

An early pupil described arriving at the school:

My first sight of Forest Gate was when the train drew up at a wooden platform, backed by a hedge, which displayed a placard: 'Forest Gate'. There was nothing to be seen but trees and a country road. Only one house did we pass on the way to the convent, and everything was still and silent.

The school building, itself, was homelike ... there was nothing but a notice-board to indicate it was a school.

Boarders' study hall, built 1884

 The school soon became a success - by 1893 it had a roll of 229 - which was quickly replicated elsewhere. So, in 1892, four of its nuns moved to Wimbledon to establish a school there, and in 1899 the convent took charge of the parish school of SS Peter and Paul in Ilford for a decade or so, and supplied nun/teachers to it for almost half a century.

The convent, photo 1902

The Upton convent spawned another successful school in Brentwood in 1910 and others followed in Billericay, Palmers Green and Becontree.

St Angela's grotto, pre-1914

Success for St Angela's meant growth, locally, too. By 1899 it had grown further and took possession of another wing in St George's Road.

St Angela's assembly hall, pre-1914

Upton had a reputation for hosting fine gardens. Dr Fothergill's house (which later became West Ham Park - see later posts) being the most prominent. The convent, too, was noted for the splendour of its gardens.

Convent garden, 1910

Children's garden, 1922

The twentieth century continued to see growth and change for St Angela's. It appointed its first secular mistress - Miss Harrington - in 1903. The following year it became one of the first Roman Catholic schools in the country to gain recognition from the government's Board of Education.

First science laboratory, opened 1907

By 1921 the school had 700 pupils, when Mother Xavier, who first became headmistress in 1878, retired. Four years later the Rosary Chapel was built "in thanksgiving for protection in the world war". The boarding system was phased out from 1931 and the dormitories were converted to general school use and a dormitory for the sisters.

St Angela's prep school, 1914

Internal reforms within the Catholic church soon saw the convent's novice nuns being transferred to Westgate-on-Sea and the convent itself began sending out - and receiving - missionaries from Africa, Asia and South America.

With the onset of the second world war, the school and its pupils were evacuated to Thetford in Norfolk and Newquay in Cornwall and the "Old House" was used as a public shelter for local people during the hostilities.

St Angela's evacuees potato
 picking in Newquay during WW2

The 1944 Education Act meant big changes for the school; in conjunction with West and East Ham councils, it set about doubling its size. It became truly comprehensive for the first time (a status that was not officially confirmed until 1976) and attracted pupils from over 20 Catholic parishes, in the wider East London area.

Aerial view, 1953

With this growth, support and recognition came a greater "professionalism" of teaching at the school. The number of sisters who taught there declined considerably - to be replaced by lay qualified teachers, although nuns continued to hold non teaching roles in both the school and wider community.

By 1980 there were only about 20 nun/teachers at St Angela's.

On 16 March 1982 a fire swept the sisters' dormitory quarters on a day when the girls, or "Brownies" (so called because of the colour of their uniforms) were not present. The damage was substantial and many of the nuns had to be re-located during the extensive restoration process.

Tentacles spread into Ilford

In 1993 Delilah Smith was appointed the school's first lay head, and remained in post until 2009. During that time she picked up an OBE for her work and saw the number of sixth form pupils soar from 300 to 800, in a collaborative partnership with the near-by St Bonaventure's.

St Angela's continues to prosper today and is designated "Outstanding" by Ofsted.