Celebration of 150th anniversary of West Ham Park’s opening

Background

Surviving documents relating to the parklands date from the mid-sixteenth century. By 1670, Rooke Hall, later renamed Upton House, was the main house dominating the area.

In 1762, physician and botanist Dr. John Fothergill bought the house (see here for details), enlarged the grounds, built extensive greenhouses, and planted them with rare and exotic botanical species from around the world.

Dr John Fothergill

Unfortunately, 260 years later, the Corporation of London has decided to tear down the last of the greenhouses and cover the area with housing.

Fothergill’s botanical gardens were second only to Kew in importance in England. He recorded the details of his plants in records that survive in the British library and commissioned paintings and drawings, many of Catherine the Great of Russia acquired on his death. They languish, untended, in a small botanical museum on the outskirts of St Petersburg.

Although the greenhouses have gone and the paintings are inaccessible, at least one of Fothergill’s specimens remains in the park—the Gingko Biloba tree (pictured), which he is believed to have planted there in 1763.

Fothergill's Gingko Biloba tree

Upton House was renamed Ham House in the 1780s and eventually acquired by Quaker banker and philanthropist Samuel Gurney in 1812 (see here for details), where he resided for the rest of his life. When he retired from banking in the 1840s, he dedicated his efforts to philanthropy and local land acquisition, and in a piecemeal fashion, he purchased over 30% of the land that is now recognised as Forest Gate.

Samuel Gurney

Gurney’s older sister, prison reformer Elizabeth Fry’s (see here for details) household fell on hard times in the 1820s. Samuel allowed them to live in a house named the Cedars on the edge of his landholding from 1829 until 1844. That house later became a Territorial Army barracks and local headquarters.

Elizabeth Fry

Soon after Gurney died in 1856, his own immediate family faced financial difficulties following the collapse of the bank he once led. His grandson, John, set about disposing of some of the land Gurney had accumulated, which in many ways led to the growth of Forest Gate as the Victorian commuter suburb it largely remains today.

Ham House in its grounds, before demolition in 1872

John Gurney was keen that the 77 acres of his grandfather’s immediate estate should become a public park. He valued it at £25,000 and offered to sell it at half its valuation if local people contributed the other half towards its sale price. A fund was launched to find the money, led by one-time Gurney employee and administrator Gustav Pagenstecher (see here for details). 

Gustav Pagenstecher

The then local authority was unwilling to contribute, and only £2,500 was raised from immediate local sources. Pagenstecher turned his fundraising attention to the Corporation of London, which was already interested in acquiring Epping Forest, including Wanstead Flats, for public use (see here for details).

The Friend, a Quaker publication dated 1 April 1873, explains the Corporation’s interest. It noted, “No parish in London has expanded more rapidly than West Ham. It has seen an increase in population of more than 60% over the last 10 years.”

Gurney and Pagenstecher feared that developers would have bought the land and turned it into housing if it had not become a public park.

The Corporation contributed £10,000 towards purchasing the Park, which was to be open to the public “in perpetuity … at its own expense” from its opening in July 1874. The corporation has run and managed it ever since. Pagenstecher maintained a keen interest and was deputy chairman of its board of trustees from its establishment as a park until he died in 1916. He wrote the first history of the park.

Elements of the history of the park

One of the first things the Corporation did during the acquisition was demolishing Ham House and leaving some of its remnants as a cairn near the park’s main entrance (see photo).

Ham House, before its demolition in 1872

 

 

 

The cairn near the main entrance to the park, all that remains of the house today

The park has many fine features today, including a delightful ornamental garden, children’s play area, bandstands, a café, and pitches and greens for many sports. It is a Grade 11 listed park.

It has often attracted large attendances for special events. The Godwin school diary of 10 September 1895, for example, noted: “The attendance (at school) was good this morning, but owing to the visit of the Lord Mayor and Corporation to West Ham Park, it was greatly affected in the afternoon.”

Entrance to the park, 1907

An Edwardian postcard of the formally laid out park

Another significant turnout was recorded for the Civil Defence Ceremony of Remembrance on 26 September 1943 – see photo below.

Civil Defence ceremony in the park, 1943

Sport has always featured prominently in the park, and Pagenstecher ensured it was well catered for, as indicated in his memoirs:

I’ve always been an enthusiast for cricket. On the Park Management Committee, I used to endeavour to ensure that portions of the Park should be laid out as cricket pitches. I was secretary of Upton Park Cricket Club which dates back as far as 1854 (ed: i.e. some 20 years before the land was formally adopted as public parkland).

Football

West Ham Park is perhaps better known for its unusual football heritage. From 1866, eight years before the grounds were formally designated a park, it hosted Upton Park FC, a club with a couple of unique achievements. It was one of the fifteen clubs competing for the inaugural FA Cup trophy in 1871 and has the distinction of hosting the competition’s first-ever goal, when Upton Park went 1-0 down in the 11^th minute of the game (eventually losing 3-1) to Clapham Rovers, on 11 November that year.

Crest of Upton Park FC

As we approach the 2024 Paris Olympics, Upton Park’s second great claim to football fame comes into view. The club represented GB in the 1900 Paris Olympics and emerged victorious gold medal winners! There is no GB team at this year’s Olympics, so Upton Park’s record as victorious UK footballing Olympians in Paris cannot be matched this summer.

Logo of 2nd Olympiad - Paris 1900

The local area has boasted the strange quirk of having Upton Park FC playing at West Ham Park, while West Ham FC played at Upton Park!

What a hotbed of football this small area of Forest Gate was at the turn of the 19^th/20^th centuries. Just a couple hundred yards from West Ham Park is the Old Spotted Dog ground, home to Clapton FC, who boast several impressive achievements. In 1890, they became the first English football team to play in Europe (beating a Belgian X1 7-0) and competed in six (winning five) FA Amateur Cup finals between 1903 and 1928.

John Fothergill (1712-1780): Quaker, physician, philanthropist and botanist

John Fothergill was one of the earliest prominent Quakers to make Forest Gate both his home and a place of national significance.

He was born in Wensleydale, Yorkshire, in 1712, and, after an apprenticeship as an apothecary, studied medicine in Edinburgh.

After graduating, he moved to London and practised at St Thomas', on the south bank. He worked with the poor, often without pay, and at times subsidised wholesome food for his patients.

Ham House, as Fothergill renamed Rooke Hall
 - its grounds were to become West Ham
Park just over a century after Fothergill acquired it

He was a doctor in advance of his time, successfully treating what is now known as diphtheria, tuberculosis, migraine and influenza and introducing innovative methods to cure sore throats. He was a strong advocate of immunisation as a means of preventing smallpox, many years before it became accepted medical practice.

His reputation grew rapidly and he began to attract many of the rich and famous as his patients; among them, John Wesley, founder of Methodism and novelist Fanny Burney. As Fothergill himself put it: "I climbed on the backs of the poor to the pockets of the rich."

Such became his fame, that Fothergill had his portrait painted by Hogarth (see below).

Fothergill, by Hogarth

By 1774 he had the largest physician's practice in London, was said to work up to 20 hours a day and was reputed to earn the truly phenomenal sum of £5,000 per year (£700,000 in today's terms).

His medical fame and fortune provided him with an income to pursue his other - wide-ranging - interests, with notable effect.

Fothergill's first purchase of note came when he was fifty, and it was to become the foundation of his formidable non-medical reputation.

He bought Rooke Hall in 1762. This was a small estate of 30 acres that had belonged to the Rooke family for a century, from 1566. It then passed through the hands of Sir Robert Smyth and his descendants until it was purchased by Admiral Elliott. It was from Elliott that Fothergill purchased the property.

Fothergill extended and developed the house and grounds considerably - doubling its footprint to 60 acres. He renamed it Ham House. On his death it was sold, enlarged yet again, and soon became the property of the Gurneys (see here) and later West Ham Park.

It was, however, what Fothergill did with the property that made his stay there so significant. He was a keen botanist. He laid the enlarged lands out as flower gardens, surrounded by shrubberies, with a wilderness beyond. A watercourse ran through the land and the banks were planted with exotic shrubs.

Gilbert Stuart's portrait of John Fothergill (1712 - 1780)

Cartographers, Chapman and Andre, writing in 1777, described the grounds thus:

A winding canal, in the figure of a crescent, divided the garden into two ... occasionally opening on ... rare, exotic shrubs ... A glass door from the house gave an entrance into a suite of hot ... and green houses, nearly 260 feet in extent, containing upwards of 3,400 distinct species of exotics ... and in the open grounds ... nearly 3,000 distinct species of plants and shrubs.

Five years later, Sir Joseph Banks - botanist, president of the Royal Society for 41 years and advisor to George 111 on the establishment of Kew Gardens - said of the estate:

In my opinion no other garden in Europe, royal or of a subject, had so many scarce and valuable plants. It was second only to Kew in attracting visitors from overseas.

Sir Joshua Reynolds' portrait
of Sir Joseph Banks

He was able to stock his greenhouses and garden with unusual plants by paying plant hunters and sailors to bring back specimens of botanic interest from their voyages in the Americas, Far East and Africa.

Such was his influence on botanists of the day, he had species of plants named after him - for example Fothergill's Geranium and Fothergill's Lily.

Fothergill.  Although devoted to his botanic collection, was too busy with his medicine, which funded it, to devote much time to cultivating it.

He was rarely at Ham House, but paid 15 gardeners to tend his impressive collection. He was not just a collector, but a recorder and cataloguer of his stock A very detailed catalogue of it survives in the British Library (see below).

Above - the opening plate of the
catalogue of Fothergill's collection.
Below, the first page of the
detailed description of each plant

He also employed four artists, full-time, to make drawings, in vellum of each plant in full bloom. Below is a rare, surviving, black and white print of one of the Fothergill collection. 

Cortex Winteranus - one of the
thousands of drawings of Fothergill's
collection, painted on velum

The 18th century was the golden age of botanical drawings, and Fothergill engaged some of the finest artists to help him capture the images, including George Ehret (1708 - 1770) and John Miller (1715 - 1792). Below are surviving examples of their work, in full colour.

As for the Fothergill collection; it was sold on his death, along with his house and plant collection. Bizarrely, the prints were bought by Catherine the Great of Russia (1729 - 1796) - see photo, below. She was a keen horticulturalist and had had medical encounters with Dr Fothergill, so was well aware of him and his works.

Catherine The Great (1729 - 1796)
 bought Fothergill's botanical prints
and took them to Russia

The collection of 2,000 prints are now believed to be housed in the Komarov Botanical Institute, St Petersburg, part of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

They have never been shown in public and attempts to view them have been thwarted. It would be a fine gesture if the Corporation of London and St Petersburg's municipal authority could jointly mount an exhibition of this magnificent and historic collection.

The Komarov Botanical Institute,
St Petersburg - present home
to the Fothergill collection

As with the other Quaker polymath dignitaries who have lived in Upton over the years, Fothergill had a wide range of interesting pursuits. In addition to his innovative medical practice and - literally and metaphorically - ground-breaking botanical work, he played a full part in civic society.

He, for example, advocated the proper registration of births and deaths, sixty years before the national register was established and promoted the use of public baths, as a health measure a century before they became popular.

He was subsequently elected Fellow of the Society of Antiquities in 1753, and the Royal Society, a decade later.

The front plate on the first volume
of Fothergill's collected works

Like a fellow future Quaker resident of Ham House, Samuel Gurney, he was an active prison reformer. Just as Gurney had supported his sister, Elizabeth Fry, in the cause, so, a generation earlier Fothergill provided support to John Howard - after whom today's prison reform pressure group is named. Fothergill worked with Howard to try to get programmes of employment for ex-prisoners in order to facilitate their rehabilitation - quite a novel idea at the time.

Again, just as Gurney had become active in public affairs (education, campaigning against capital punishment, slavery etc), so too - in the previous century - had Fothergill. He was the founder of Ackworth public school, in Pontefract, Yorkshire. It was co-educational from its foundation and offered free education to poor Quaker children.  It survives today as one of only eight Quaker schools in Britain. 

Indeed one of the school's four houses remains named after him.

Ackworth school, today

Fothergill had close associations with pre-independence America,  and worked, to no avail, with Benjamin Franklin trying to prevent the succession of the American colonies in 1776, having been elected a member of the American Philosophical Society six years previously.

An illustration Fothergill sent to
Philadelphia, to help illustrate
a lecture on anatomy there.

On Fothergill's death, in 1780, the house and gardens were sold up and the plant stock dispersed. The garden and greenhouses, however, together with many of the trees survived Fothergill's tenure in the property.

The greenhouse function has continued until the present day. For almost a century and a half the Corporation has used them as a nursery, producing plants and shrubs for prestigious Mansion House events.

Until now, that is ... the Corporation has recently decided to "out-source" the function and bring to an end almost two and a half centuries of botanical pride and excellence to a small corner of Forest Gate. The Park Management Committee and Corporation of London are currently considering alternative uses for the space occupied by the now redundant green houses and nursery.

And so another bit of Upton's great history (like the Old Spotted Dog pub and Clapton FC) is facing extinction from those with cash signs in their eyes and minimal regard for local heritage.

Fothergill is still remembered in West Ham Park today, as a flower bed and rockery, named in his honour, survive - see extract from park map, below.

Footnote
Thanks to the Friends of West Ham Park, whose recent exhibition on Fothergill, in the park, has provided assistance with the contents of this article. Views in the article are should not be taken as theirs.

Samuel Gurney (1786 - 1856) - Forest Gate's most influential resident

We have written, in passing, frequently about Samuel Gurney - who has probably been Forest Gate's most influential (both locally and nationally) resident. And here we touched on his literal and metaphorical monumental legacy.

This article presents a biography of the man, himself.

He was born on 18 October 1786 in Earlham Hall, Norfolk. The buildings - see photo - now constitute part of the University of East Anglia.

Earlham Hall - the family seat - today,
 as part of the University of East Anglia

The Gurney family can be traced back to the Norman Conquest, when ancestors were given areas of Norfolk as part of William 1's English control and pacification process.

The family had lived in Earlham Hall, as tenants, for over half a century before Samuel was born. Sixteen years before his birth, they established a local Norfolk bank - Gurney's.

As Quakers, the family were denied access to many of the traditional routes of the sons of the rich and famous - university, the army, some professions etc - but not banking. Like the Jewish community, many members were almost forced into the looked-down upon (by the upper class) fields of commerce and banking in order to make a living.

In 1800, aged 14, the young Gurney was placed in the counting house of his brother-in-law, Joseph Fry, in St Mildred's Court, Poultry in the City. Joseph was married to Samuel's older sister, Elizabeth - the prison reformer.  The "favour" by Joseph to Samuel was later returned - see later.

Samuel Gurney (1786 - 1856)

In 1807 Gurney joined the firm of Richardson and Overend, which, over the course of the next few years, became the most significant retail bank in England.

The following year, Samuel married Elizabeth, daughter of James Sheppard of Ham House (which was to become the family seat and provide the grounds 65 years later for West Ham Park - see here). Samuel inherited and moved in to the property on the death of his father-in-law (in the days before the Married Women's Property Act) in 1812.

Samuel and Elizabeth had two children by the time they took possession of Ham House and set about making alterations to it, that made it a Georgian house of distinction. At the time it had about a dozen live-in servants.

Ham House, pre- destruction

In 1809 he borrowed money from his father and father-in-law and bought into the bank in which he was working and had it re-branded as Overend, Gurney and Co.

During the financial crisis of 1825 his bank lent money to a number of other London banks in temporary financial difficulties. For the next 30 years it was to be the largest discounting house in the world. Thus, Gurney became known as 'the bankers' banker' and many firms began to deposit money with his institution in preference to the Bank of England.

Having impressively stamped his mark on the banking world, Gurney devoted much of the rest of his life to his two main passions - land acquisition and disposal in Forest Gate and a variety of (even today) impressively liberal philanthropic endeavours.

Philanthropy

Chronologically, the philanthropic endeavours came first. They are worthy of - and have been recorded in - many histories. For brevity's sake, the more significant of them were:

• Supporting, financially, his sister Elizabeth, the prison reformer and brother-in-law Joseph Fry - who had kick started his career. The Frys were hit in the financial crises of the mid 1820's and were forced to sell their grand house in Plashet - now host to Plashet Park and the borough's registration offices. Gurney rented them Cedar House, next to his own home of Ham House, in Portway. (This later became home to the Territorial Army - ironically for a property owned by pacifist Quakers).

Elizabeth Fry - reading to
prisoners in Newgate Prison

• Supported another brother-in-law, Edward Buxton and his father Fowell Buxton - in the anti-slavery movement. He attended the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 - see picture (in National Portrait Gallery) - below, and was for a while chairman of the organisation.

Gurney, front row, far left at the 1840
 World Anti-Slavery Convention

• Played a significant part in helping to established the African state of Liberia, as a home for slaves freed from Europe and America. Such was his contribution to the establishment to the country, that he had a town named after him there.

• Was a staunch opponent of capital punishment; and was threatened with prosecution himself for refusing to prosecute a man who forged his signature, knowing that the result would be capital punishment for the offender.

• Was patron of two non-conformist British and Foreign Society Schools (see here for details) in Stratford: one for boys and another for girls. He left an annuity of £150 - c£15,000 today - for the future development of the two schools in his will. This passed to West Ham School Board, on its formation - and now rests with Newham Council.

•  Was the national treasurer for the non- conformist British and Foreign Schools Society from 1843, until his death in 1856. He left the Society £5,000 (c £500,000 today), on his death.

Samuel Gurney in 1840

• Although a Quaker, he was non-sectarian in his approach to education. So, he also supported Church of England schools. In 1853 he donated land on the corner of Woodgrange Road and Forest Street to build Emmanuel (later St Saviours) National School.

• Toured Ireland in 1849 and made many donations to those affected by the Potato HUnger of that decade.

• Established the Poplar Hospital for Accidents in 1853, to look after injured dock workers, in the first instant.

• In 1856, his will gifted £800 - c £78,000 today - for the "maintenance and winding up of clocks in public places" in Forest Gate, including one to be erected on Forest Gate Congregational Church. Since 1860 the income has been given to West Ham, now Newham, Council.

Local land acquisition and disposal

Having inherited the area of what is now West Ham Park from his father-in-law in 1812, Gurney was quiet on the local land acquisition front until his effective retirement from his successful banking career.

His transactions and their subsequent disposals, however, have shaped the area, making what is recognisably Forest Gate, today.

in 1851 he bought the 131 acres of Hamfrith Farm/estate for £17,710 - c £2,250,000, at today's prices - from the Greenhill estate. This was roughly the area between Romford Road and Wanstead Flats, to the east of Woodgrange Road, as far as Station Road, Manor Park.

Two years later he bought the 200 acres of the Woodgrange farm - most of the Forest Gate area to the west of Woodgrange Road.

He also acquired about 250 acres in what was then Little Ilford (now Manor Park) and acquired the Lordship of the manors of Woodgrange and Hamfrith.

He promptly resold much of the land he had acquired, to become the West Ham and Jewish cemeteries, as well as the Industrial School on Forest Lane (see here and here, for details).

Ever the astute businessman, he clearly saw the development opportunities with the arrival of the railways into Forest Gate (see here); and in the short period  remaining in his life, began to package some of the land up, with a view to housing development resale.

So, from 1855, development started on the Gurney and Dames estates - to the west and north of Forest Gate station (see here, for details).

He died on 5 June 1856 and was buried in the Friends' burial grounds in Barking. He was survived by 9 children and 40 grandchildren. His oldest son died soon after and the estate subsequently transferred to his grandson, John.

Within 10 years, however, the bank that Samuel Gurney established and built became mired in severe financial difficulties, by diversifying into greedy, risky projects (sound familiar?) and faced bankruptcy. Many shareholders, including members of the Gurney family, lost fortunes and faced financial ruin.

It was this crash that spurred the rapid building boom in Forest Gate, as grandson John disposed of land and property in order to stabilise family finances.

Most notable among the disposals was the sale of the family home, in 1872, to become West Ham Park (see here), for a knocked down price of £15,000 - c £1.5 million, today.

The grounds of Ham House, before being
 turned into West Ham Park, in 1874

Also, in 1872, he sold most of the north side of what had been the Hamfrith estate to the British Land Company, which, in turn sold some to the Manor Park Cemetery Company (see here) and enabled the development of much of which in estate agents-speak is now known as "The Forest Gate Village".

Thomas Corbett acquired much of the south side of the Hamfrith estate and developed it into what is now the Woodgrange estate, between 1877 and 1892 (see here).

The period 1870 - 1890 saw the development of the western end of Forest Gate, from lands that had been part of the Gurney estate. This lead to the construction of Hamfrith, Atherton, Sprowston (see here), Norwich and Clova Roads,. as well as Earlham Grove (see here).

So, Quaker, banker, philanthropist, land-owner, Samuel Gurney stands as the man whose property dealings lay the foundations of Forest Gate, as we know it today.

He is most visibly remembered locally not in Forest Gate, but by the obelisk and drinking fountain in the grounds of St John's church, in Stratford. It is interesting that there should be a monument to a Quaker in the grounds of a prominent CofE church - but such was the regard in which he was held locally.

An 1861 drawing of the Gurney
memorial, soon after its erection

The monument is 40 feet high and made of granite. It was unveiled in 1861, having been designed by Gurney's fellow Norfolk-man, John Bell.

The inscription reads:

In remembrance of Samuel Gurney, who died on 5th of June 1856. Erected by his fellow parishioners and Friends (Quakers) 1861.

When the ear heard him, then it blessed him.

 (ed: this is a paraphrase from the Book of Job) 

One final point. Although the bank that Gurney turned into such a success bombed a decade after his death, its entrails survive as part of what is now Barclays Bank. If only he had been around in 2008 to offer them his counsel, prior to the banking crash of 2008.

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