Forest Gate

Forest Gate
Forest Gate  Forest Gate shown within Greater London
OS grid reference	TQ405855
London borough	Newham
Ceremonial county	Greater London
Region	London
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	LONDON
Postcode district	E7
Dialling code	020
Police	Metropolitan
Fire	London
Ambulance	London
EU Parliament	London
UK Parliament	West Ham
London Assembly	City and East
List of places: UK • England • London

Forest Gate is a residential area in the London Borough of Newham, 7 miles northeast of Charing Cross. It is bordered by Manor Park to the east and and to the west lies Stratford town centre. The northern half of the busy Green Street runs through it.

Woodgrange Road Forest Gate

History

Anglo-Saxon Bead found in Forest Gate in 1875 now in the Ashmolean Museum

Its name is derived from a southern gate of Epping Forest which once stretched continuously down from Epping to the main Roman Road (now Romford Road) linking Camulodunum to Londinium. Fragments of the forest remain throughout north east London and the heathland of Wanstead Flats, which borders Forest Gate, is an example. The Forest Gate led into Epping Forest and was erected to prevent cattle straying from the Forest into the High Road. It was located close to the Eagle & Child public house. It never was a toll gate and was demolished along with the keepers' cottage in 1881. An Anglo-Saxon jeweled bead was found in Forest Gate in 1875 during sewer construction behind the Princess Alice public house in the Sprowston Road area. The 'bead' is made of gold, garnet and blue glass dating to the late sixth or early seventh century with the workmanship suggesting that it belonged to a woman of wealth or high status such as a 'princess' and dates from the 6th - 7th centuries (500 - 699 AD). At this time Essex was an independent kingdom with a territory extending over Essex, Middlesex and London and half of Hertfordshire. Having been found as a single object, it is surmised that the bead was lost casually whilst travelling along the ancient Roman Road (now the Romford Road) rather than as a burial object, but this is by no means certain as there is a lack of detail about how it was recovered. Stylistically, the piece is said to relate to similar jewellery produced in Kent, which influenced designs in Essex. It is known that King Sledd of Essex married Ricula, the sister of King Æthelberht of Kent in about 580 AD. The piece was acquired by Sir John Evans and was presented to the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford by Sir Arthur Evans in 1909.

The area remained rural until the 19th century. From the 18th century a number of wealthy city dwellers had large country houses in the area and many of them were Quakers, the best known of these were the families of Gurney, Fry and Lester.

In 1890 a fire at the Forest Gate Industrial School in Forest Lane, occupied by children belonging to the Whitechapel Union, killed 26 children between the ages of 7 and 12 years old.

Forest Gate formed part of the County Borough of West Ham since its creation (initially as a municipal borough) in 1886. The county borough was abolished to form part of the present-day London Borough of Newham in 1965.

Newham has the second highest percentage of Muslims in Britain at 24.3% and Forest Gate reflects this with 23.4% stating their religion as Islam in the 2001 census, many have their roots in Pakistan and mostly follow the Sunni Deobandi or the Salafi tradition.

Residential areas

The Woodgrange Estate Conservation Area is a residential area with predominantly double-fronted Victorian three and four bedroomed houses built between 1887 and 1892 by developer Thomas Corbett and sons who went on to oversee the construction of more than 1,100 houses to exploit the transport links provided by one of the first Essex lines, opened by Eastern Counties Railway in 1839, running through Forest Gate in 1840. Corbett paid £40,000 for land associated with Woodgrange Farm, Essex, in 1877, which was formerly used as a market garden serving London. The Woodgrange Estate consists of four roads from north to south: Hampton Road; Osborne Road; Claremont Road and Windsor Road, all of which link to Woodgrange Road to the west. There are blocks of council flats at the western end of Claremont and Windsor roads built on the site of houses damaged during bombing in World War II. Nearby Godwin Junior School in Forest Gate recently picked up a British Council’s International School Award.^{[citation needed]}

Woodgrange Estate Conservation Area

To the north of the railway running through Forest Gate is the "village" with terraced streets named for the Oxford Martyrs (including Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer) running up to the open spaces of Wanstead Flats.

Leisure

Wanstead Flats at Forest Gate

Forest Gate also houses West Ham Park, providing a place for sports to be played and to the north Forest Gate borders Wanstead Flats, which has numerous football pitches and areas set aside for bio-diversity and walking. Amongst the many teams playing on the flats is Sunday League football team Senrab FC. Based in Forest Gate Senrab operates fifteen teams for age groups ranging from 5 to 17 years old and has produced a number of players who have gone on to successful professional careers, including: John Terry (who gave an undisclosed sum to keep the club running in April 2011); Sol Campbell; Jermain Defoe; Ledley King; Bobby Zamora; and Paul Konchesky. A number of professional coaches also started out at Senrab, most notably Dario Gradi, Ray Wilkins and Alan Curbishley.

Transport

Forest Gate railway station has services to London Liverpool Street via Stratford. It is in Travelcard Zone 3 on the Great Eastern Main Line, and was first opened in 1840, a year after the line was built, but closed in 1843, before re-opening after pressure from local residents on 31 May 1846. Other stations in the area include Wanstead Park railway station, which is on the Gospel Oak to Barking Line in Zone 3. Forest Gate will be linked by Crossrail, Europe's biggest construction project, to central and west London in 2018 and this will significantly improve rail services for local people.

Music

Forest Gate has various associations with music and acting: it was for many years the home of the Tonic Sol-fa College of John Curwen, which taught large numbers of people to play music without learning conventional notation. In December 1966 Jimi Hendrix wrote Purple Haze in the Upper Cut Club, owned by Douglas Bayle and George and Billy Walker, it had been opened by The Who, and had The Small Faces as the house band, for a while. It later became the Ace of Clubs in Woodgrange Road. The Newham Generals (D Double E & Footsie) are also from Forest Gate, and the video for their song 'Frontline' was filmed at Forest Gate railway station. Ben Drew aka Plan B (musician) grew up in Forest Gate and lived in Hampton Road on the Woodgrange Estate. Ill Manors (rendered as iLL Manors) is an upcoming British film written and directed by Ben Drew, starring Riz Ahmed, Nathalie Press and Dannielle Brent.

Sport

Forest Gate is home to Clapton Football Club and Senrab FC.

Notable people associated with Forest Gate

Business and politics

• Sam Alper - caravan designer and founder of Little Chef
• Tony Banks, Baron Stratford - Labour MP (Newham North West 1983 to 1997, West Ham 1997 to 2005)
• David Amess - Conservative MP (Basildon 1983 to 1997, Southend West 1997 onwards)
• Dawn Butler - Labour MP (Brent South 2005 to 2010)

Arts and entertainment

Footballers associated with Forest Gate include Alan Curbishley, former manager of West Ham United Football Club and Ted Fenton manager of West Ham between 1950 and 1961, Simon Royce, Jason Lee, Ken Brown, Linvoy Primus and Jay-Emmanuel Thomas, who currently plays for Arsenal FC.

Other sportsmen and women connected with Forest Gate include Lennox Lewis, heavyweight boxing champion, Molly Samuel , 7 times world karate champion. The cricketer Ronnie Bopara, sprinter Damien Greaves, and Olympic fencer Linda Strachan all are associated with the area.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was known to have lived in Forest Gate and weight trained at Wag Bennett's gymnasium in Romford Road before he achieved fame. Another is the actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, born in Forest Gate in July 1974, who has had significant roles in films such as American Gangster and Amistad.

Actors associated with the area include The Wire star Idris Elba, Terrence Hardiman, and Ricky Norwood. Dame Anna Neagle was born in the area in 1905, and has a road named after her off Dames Road.

As well as Jimi Hendrix, who is noted for composing "Purple Haze" in a club on Romford Road,^{[citation needed]} musicians from Forest Gate include biographer, composer and pianist Norman Charles Suckling, John Ashton and Kele Le Roc. Although born in Plaistow, Ronnie Lane of the Small Faces spent his childhood and early adulthood in Forest Gate, living at 385 Romford Road, while members Steve Marriott and Jimmy Winston lived nearby in Manor Park. Roy Carter, a rhythm guitarist with 70s hit funk band Heatwave, was raised in Forest Gate.

Many current British Hip Hop artists are associated with the area including Tempa T and Sarah Jezebel Deva. Two of the top-selling Grime artists are from Forest Gate; Kano, whose debut album 'Home Sweet Home' made number one in the urban charts, and rapper Plan B, whose song Raking the Dead refers to a friend who discovered a body on Wanstead Flats.

Artists from Forest Gate include Betsy Schneider, John Bowstead, Walter Westley Russell and Barry Windsor-Smith. Furthermore, Benjamin Zephaniah and John Hegley, both poets also hail from the area, as well as writer Mary Renault

Fashion designer Bubs Mahil runs Chiffons saree house in Green Street, Forest Gate and has made costumes for Bollywood diva Aishwarya Rai and her other high-profile clients include British Prime Minister Tony Blair — he wore her Nehru jacket in India — and his wife, Cherie Blair.

Other

• Elizabeth Fry - prison reformer
• Christopher Charles Dalliston - Dean of Newcastle
• Claude Scudamore Jarvis - General
• John Grahl - economist
• Jane Rebecca Yorke - the last person convicted under the Witchcraft Act of 1735.
• Joseph McCabe - writer and speaker on freethought
• Edward Whymper Climber, who married at Emmanuel Church, 1906
• Mark Stephens (solicitor) - Lawyer, Mediator, Writer & Broadcaster lived on the Woodgrange Estate and also on Capel Road

See also

• Forest Gate railway station
• London Borough of Newham
• Stratford
• 2 June 2006 Forest Gate raid