The Forest Gate
was located roughly between what is now the Lord Lister clinic and the former
Eagle and Child pub (now Woodgrange pharmacy) on Woodgrange Road.
 |
| Position of "the gate" today |
There was no metalled road during its lifetime, simply a
track - and "the gate", was
principally an attempt to prevent cattle straying from "The Forest of
Essex" (the lower part of which is what we now know as Wanstead Flats) on
to the meadows and orchards of the Woodgrange, or on to the main Colchester to
London (now Romford) Road.
Forest Gate's earliest appearance, by name, in surviving records,
appears to be in the mid seventeenth century, in the West Ham burial register,
which refer to the internment of Martha Jordon, from "the house of William
Hare of fforest gate ... Monday ye 9th of April 1655".
The next surviving reference seems to be almost 40 years
later, in 1693, when officers of "His Majesty's Forest of Essex"
were:
To
suffer William Hopkins to enclose two acres near Wood Grange gate, within the
said forest, and also give him
licence to erect a dwelling house thereupon.
Eighteenth century maps appear to confirm the existence of "the
gate".
The Survey Map of John Rocque (see below for an extract),
published in 1746, somewhat confusingly calls Woodgrange Road, "The White Gate", and William Hopkins property between Woodgrange Farm and The Eagle and Child pub is labelled "The Red Gate", but the location of the forest gate does snot seem to be indicated!
 |
The Forest Gate section of John
Rocque's 1746 map of Essex |
Andre and Chapman's
map (see below for a small detail), published some thirty years later, seems
to show "the gate", close to the Eagle and Child pub.
 |
| Abstract from Andre and Chapman's map, 1777 |
A local family historian has discovered that "three tenements
on the north side of the Eagle and Child in Epping Forest" were insured
with Sun Fire Insurance, in 1837, by a Robert Clayworth, who was a poultry
farmer of Whitechapel. It looks therefore, as if the area adjacent to "the
gate" was farmed by poultry keepers, who sold their stock in the City's
Leadenhall Market.
Martin Wallace, in his history of St Mark's church,
published in 1986, says that the original gate was replaced in 1851 by the Lord
of Woodgrange manor, who erected a new five-bar gate, together with a keeper's
cottage - known as Forest House.
The present article reproduces 6 drawings of
"the gate" and its surrounds, but only the last of them shows the
five-barred gate. The others illustrate the
earlier, rickety ,older, and perhaps, original one.
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The Forest Gate (undated) - clearly
a popular subject for local artists |
Twentieth century commentators (see below) assert that it
was not a toll-gate, and this version has become the received wisdom
since. But the evidence, published in a
facsimilie of its original form for the first time here, seems to dispute this
claim.
The 1851 census, for example (see extracts below) describes
a 68 year-old Robert Baker, born in Dagenham , to be living at "Forest
Gate Toll House" and as being a "toll keeper". Why the use of
the word "toll" twice in this contemporaneous census entry if "the
gate" in question were not a toll-gate?
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| 1851 census transcript: Forest Gate Toll House, Robert Baker, Head, married, 68, Toll Keeper (born) Essex, Dagenham. Also Mary Baker, wife, married, 66, Essex |
Martin Wallace does not paint a very sympathetic picture of
Baker, describing him as:
Being famous locally for his
association with footpads, highwaymen, gypsies and poachers, who used barbaric
traps to catch their prey.
According to Victoria
County History of Essex (1986):
(We) and several other
authorities doubt if the Forest Gate was ever a toll gate. ... A draft Ordnance
Survey about the same time (1851) places a "toll gate" across the
road at that point. It is possible that, with the development of the
neighbourhood tolls may have been temporarily charged for the upkeep of what
became Woodgrange Road until the Local Board (ed: predecessor to West Ham
Council) took over the highways (ed:
probably in the 1870's).
This would make
complete sense - charging travellers for the use of a half decent road to and from the
forest before there was a formal publicly funded mechanism for paying for the
maintenance of public highways.
The 1851 pen and ink drawing, below, is titled "Ye olde
toll gate" - a strange name for a
contemporary to give his work if "the gate" were not, in fact, a toll-gate.
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| 1851 pen and ink drawing of "Ye Olde Toll Gate" |
John Spencer Curwen (see here for details) wrote, in his
recollections of life in Forest Gate and Upton, that:
I do not remember the gate ever
being closed. It was set back against the wall of the cottage, but anyone who
wished to could have closed it.
In my childhood (ed: the 1850's),
when we dropped by, the woman in charge would come to the door and catch the
penny we tossed her.
This extract does not prove "the gate" was a toll-gate,
but why else would a passer-by throw money at a person standing next to it?
Unfortunately, Ordnance Survey maps of the period are not
very illuminating.
The 1863 OS map of Forest Gate and district appears to be cut
off just feet from where "the gate" was located - and so can't settle
any controversy. A larger scale, 6" map, indicates what is now Woodgrange
Road ran to the Eagle and Child, and not beyond suggesting that although not
formally a "toll road", tolls were collected by the toll-gate keeper
to pay for the upkeep of Woodgrange Road, from Romford road, to the pub.
The next event in "the gate's" history, for which
records remain, is the earliest (only?) surviving photograph of it. The
occasion was a visit of Princess Louise (Victoria's 6th child and 4th daughter)
through the district around 1876, on her way to a charitable event in Essex.
 |
The only (?) surviving photo of "the gate" location
- unfortunately it is open!, c 1876 |
The photo was taken before the Eagle and Child pub was
re-fashioned, in 1896. The old pub is at the back of the photo and the building
attached to it, in the foreground, was a butcher's shop - see below.
The gate is clearly open, but would have stretched from
post, on the roadway, to the left of the photo to the lamp-post on the right.
Describing the scene twenty years later, in September 1896,
the Forest Gate Weekly News wrote:
Only some twenty years ago the
Eagle and Child was the hostelry of the district; its gardens, with summer houses
and statuary were much sought out for rest and refreshments by persons passing
by, or strolling through the forest.
 |
1879 sketch of toll-gate house, with a row
of early cottages behind.
"The gate" unfortunately is not in view.
(nb - this caption amended on 14/05/18)
|
The paper gave credence to the existence of a toll-gate, in
the same article, writing:
There are still (1896) residents
among us who can remember the old gate and the little toll booth (ed: our
emphasis) by which alone from this part of the country, communication was had
with the Forest from the high road, from Ilford to London ... it was necessary first to pay the gate
keeper, who eked out his slender honorarium by the sale of cakes, nuts and
ginger beer.
On the south side of the gate
there were but a few houses then, one occupied by Mr Castell (see below) and
another by Mr Baker (ed: what relationship, if any, this person had to the
Robert Baker, above, is not clear) on the east side, and some small cottages on
the west side, were all the buildings that were near the gate.
The Mr Castell the Weekly
News refers to appears in the 1881 census as George Castell, a 45 year old
dairyman, living at Sunny Villa ("Mr Baker" does not appear living
nearby in these census returns). Doubtless, George Castell supplied, if not
owned, the butcher's shop, featured in the
banner photograph of "the gate", above, and probably herded
his cattle on Wanstead Flats.
George Castell lived with his wife and seven children in the
house in 1881. In the next census, a decade later, he was described as
"retired" and was living at 62 Capel Road.
The Weekly News
reported in 1896 that the houses that the Baker and Castell families lived in
were still standing, but by now "they are hidden by the sight of the shop
fronts that were added to them years later "- rather as those further down
Woodgrange Road are today.
So, the Weekly News,
writing of the 1870's mentioned a toll-gate, but also writing of the 1870's, an
old West Ham resident, Major Sharp Hume penned a vivid description of his
recollections of "the gate" and its surroundings, in Notes and Queries thirty years later (see
the facsimile reproduction, below).
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| Notes and Queries 9 August 1890 |
The highlighted sections clearly mention "the
gate", but not as a toll-gate, suggesting, perhaps that the West Ham Board
had by then taken over responsibility for the road and no longer charged
travellers for using it.
It could be deduced from the above that perhaps the tolls
were no longer charged from the late 1870's - as some with recollections of the
early years of the decade recall the tolls, and those remembering the later
years of the decade don't.
The 1896 Weekly News'
article, above, acknowledged that no written history of "the gate"
was in existence, even then, but referred to surviving oral history accounts of
events in its past:
From time to time, imposing, even
royal cavalcades, principally hunting parties, or visitors to Wanstead House
(ed: see here for details of the House's history) passed through the gate and
imperfect records of their pageants were handed down from generation to
generation of gate-keepers, but for want of a local historian to reduce them to
writing, much that would otherwise be entertaining reading would be lost to us.
Step forward Katharine Fry, daughter of prison reformer,
Elizabeth and long-time resident of Forest Gate. Over a number of decades she
collected fragments of local history, which Gustav Pagenstecher (see here for
details) pulled together and published as a History
of the parishes of East and West Ham in 1888. This fairly detailed book,
however, has precious little to say about "the gate", after the area
in which they both lived was named.
Quoting the relevant part in its entirety, they say:
The hamlet situated beyond the
highway, known as Forest Gate ...used in its former years to consist of only
two or three gentlemen's houses and the little wooden hut occupied by the keeper
of the "gate to the Forest", which was generally shut, to prevent
cattle straying from Wanstead Flats to the High Road.
And, that's it! E7-NowAndThen's verdict on their history of
the area of their residence: poor show!
 |
A more distant sketch of the toll house,
Eagle and Child, with a clear view
of the five bar gate, on the left |
Most commentators and historians agree that "the
gate" was demolished sometime between 1881 and 1883. This is just three or
four years after the Corporation of London took over responsibility for
Wanstead Flats and after the West Ham Local Board would have taken over
responsibility for the upkeep of Woodgrange and Woodford Roads. The proximity
of these events is probably not coincidental.
Within fifteen years the sands of time, however, had blown over much local memory of "the
gate", with the Weekly News
commenting :"of its ultimate fate, we have no information."
A decade later, writing in the authoritative Essex Review, John Avery asserted that:
The old gate house at the corner
of Forest Street (ed: now Brooking Road) was never a toll-house, but the
residence of the keeper of the gate, which was placed across the road to
prevent cattle straying off the Flats on to the highway.
And that has become the accepted version of the story: a forest gate, but
not a toll-gate.
A crude chronology of "the story" of "the gate" would be, that
nineteenth century witnesses declared the gate to be a toll-gate, and twentieth
century "experts" dismissed the observations as fanciful. Perhaps
revisionism is in order today, and we go back to believing the contemporary
witnesses.
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| Cows on the Flats in 20th century |
Piecing the evidence together, the following seems at least
to be a plausible account of "the gate's" history.
A gate was in existence, on what is now Woodgrange Road
from, at latest, the mid seventeenth century. It was there to keep cattle
straying off what we now know as Wanstead Flats on to nearby arable and orchard
land, and the main London to Colchester road.
It could well have been erected by the Lord of Woodgrange
Manor to protect his crops from animal damage. He may well have charged a toll
for the grazing animals to pass through the gate, on their way to market in
central London, by way of recompense for the damage their hooves would have
done to the road he maintained, en route to Smithfield.
Forest Gate began to develop as a settlement of some
importance from the 1840's. This would have brought an increase of passenger traffic
along Woodgrange Road, into Leyton and further points north. The old gate clearly,
as illustrated by some of the sketches in this article, suffered from disrepair
.
In 1851 Samuel Gurney (see here) bought the Hamfrith estate,
including the "lordship of Woodgrange Manor" (see above)and
immediately erected a new main gate with
the side, five bar, one, referred to above. He also appears to have built a
gate-keeper's house - whose occupants would assist both foot and carriage passengers,
while still preventing stray cattle wandering.
The gate-keeper, gate and road would all have required
maintenance, A toll was charged, to cover, or at least contribute to, the costs
of the upkeep of the road, gate and keeper.
When the West Ham Board
took over the upkeep of the road, they would have abolished the toll, and made
the toll-keeper redundant, but kept "the gate" to keep the cattle at
bay. This, however was removed in the early 1880's, as it would have become a
serious impediment to the increased volume of traffic.
Cattle subsequently resumed their wanders from the Flats down what was by then
Woodgrange Road (see photo), as they
would for the next century, until an outbreak of BSE finally stopped
cattle grazing on Wanstead Flats in the 1998.
 |
Cows wandering down Woodford Road,
from grazing on Wanstead Flats, in the 1990's |
Footnote: We are deeply indebted to local post-card collector and photographer, Tony Morrison, for the use of some his high resolution images to illustrate this article. We hope to be working with Tony to provide other images from his fine collection in future articles on this blog.
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