Thames Tributary River Roding - Little Ilford

Thames Tributary River Roding
The Roding continues to flow south

Post to the east Loxford
Post to the south Barking/Newham borders
Post to the west Little Ilford
Post to the north Great Ilford

Baxter Road
St Luke Church The church was begun in 1915 but not finished. In 1940 it was bombed and it was rebuilt for 1954. It is stone and red brick, designed by Edwin T. Dunn. In 1983 it church was re-orientated, placing the altar at the west end. It was burnt out by a bomb 1940 and was not reconsecrated until 1954. In 1982-3 the orientation was turned through 180 degrees, and offices, a kitchen and other rooms were built under the transepts.
St.Peter’s Mathoma Church. Also uses the buildings. Apparently St. Thomas the disciple went to India reaching the Malabar Coast in 52 A.D – and called Mar Thoma and was killed in Madras. He had founded seven congregations in Kerala and in the 6th century was joined by Persian Nestorians and in the 16th Catholic missionaries forced them to sign up with them. Not all did and demonstrations and confrontations followed. In the 19th they were helped by Anglicans. Mar Thoma Syrian Church is neither a Protestant church nor an orthodox church - It is oriental in worship and autonomous
Trinity Children’s Centre built on land leased to Barnardos by the church
Church Hall. The original church was built in 1903 and used as a church hall after the main church was complied in 1915. It was used again when the church was bombed. It has a shingled turret

Church Road
This was previously called Little Ilford Lane
All Nations Church in tin church. An Urdu fellowship Pentecostal movement congregation

Dersingham Road
Little Ilford Manor House, which was later known as Manor House farm, was near the junction of Dersingham Avenue and Church Road. It was demolished before 1901. It was probably 16th house with 18th alterations including an octagonal lantern on the roof

Dore Avenue
Little Ilford Park - this was the grounds of Little Ilford Manor House. It is made up of two older parks. The Little Ilford Recreation Ground was composed of land bought from J J Bethell in 1909 and Manor Park Recreation Ground the land for which was bought from Mr Watkins in 1912. They had been divided by Reynolds Avenue and were laid out as under the Unemployed Workmen's Act. The two had been joined together before the Second World War – a line of trees still marks the old boundaries. Some ground to the east was lost when the North Circular Road was built. The park contains a number of ornamental trees: an Oriental Hornbeam, Dombey’s Southern Beech and an olive. It is said to be the inspiration for the Small Faces ‘Itcheycoo Park’, because of the number of nettles.
"Webster’s Land" - Lt. Col. Webster left this land for the people of Manor Park – also called The Warren is a rough area running parallel to the North circular which is hidden by a line of cherry trees.

Grantham Road
Slum area and redeveloped by the council from 1960

Ilford Lane
Spittel Field. In the 18th Ilford Hospital, began to grant plots of land on building leases. Mark Gibbard, in 1771 was able to lease the whole hospital estate, on terms authorizing him to develop Spittel Field as a brickfield. Brickfields remained a feature of the area until the 20th along with market gardens
Clementswood Baptist Church. Built in 1927it had begun in 1903, nu a group of evangelists in Loxford Assembly Room and in 1906 the church was formally constituted as Kingston Road Tabernacle. A controversy arose over the 'new theology' and in 1907 the owner gave the church notice to quit. In 1908 an iron church was built here and later a permanent church, delayed by the First World War, while the old church became the Sunday school.
Recreation ground

Jack Cornwell Street
Commemorates the boy who stood on the burning deck. Got a Victoria Cross for gallantry at the Battle of Jutland 1916.

Kenneth Avenue
Recreation ground

Lawrence Avenue
Dersingham Primary School

Little Ilford
This was a Very small parish round the ford of the Roding made up of only 768 acres in the 19th and which later became part of East Ham. It is possible though that this is the original settlement of Ilford. It included the manor of Berengers which belonged to Barking abbey. In the 16th the two joined manor of Little Ilford.

Lowbrook Road
Nursery building. Built 1937 as a Domestic Science building. Single storey with a glazed lantern over the stair to the playground. Refurbishment by Tooley & Partnership in 1999

North Circular Road

Reynolds Avenue
Allotments

Uphall Road
Uphall. This is a site where it is thought a market existed in the 1st/2nd BC. It is shown as ‘Up Hall’ on the earliest Ordnance Survey maps and probably means that it is the higher manor house'. The Manor was granted to the King’s Goldsmith in 1454 and passed through a number of owners. In 1898 Harvey Harvey-George developed part of the areas as the Fairfield Housing Estate. Other parts, including the farmhouse, were bought by the chemical firm, Howards.
Uphall Camp. An Iron Age earthwork of the 1st or 2nd B.C and Roman finds have turned up here. In the 19th this was a rectangular bank a small section of which survives between what was Howard's chemical works and the houses in Baxter Road - the gardens are on the probable site of a defensive ditch. There appears to have been a village here with roundhouses, granaries and other buildings. There was also metal working debris – slag from an iron smithery and fragments of copper.
Lavender Mount. A conical mound here survived until 1960, when it was removed for extensions to the chemical works. It may have been a beacon-mound or a burial place. The word ‘Lavender’ may have come from a tenant of Uphall Farm.
Mill - a mill is recorded as on the manor of Uphall in 1634 and would have been in this area of the river. In the 1860s watercress was grown here
Uphall farmhouse. This was bombed in the Second World War and was demolished in 1952. It was a two storey brick building, possibly 18th.
Brickfield. In the early 19th there were several brickfields here. In 1812 prehistoric animal remains were found at a brickfield belonging to Mr. Thompson – which became known as the Ilford Mammoth. There were in fact 100 mammoths, and rhinoceros,
Howards & Sons, chemical manufacturers moved here from Stratford, in 1899, through a subsidiary Hopkin & Williams Ltd. Howards then built the Uphall Works, and over the next 15 years moved their whole output here. The First World War stimulated their production and in 1916 they began to make aspirin, previously a German monopoly. In 1919 a scientific research department was established and the firm began to make organic substances: solvents, plasticisers, and other chemicals. In 1932 they built an electric power station. The factory was bombed in 1940, when, James Howard, was killed, and many employees injured. Later in 1944 rocket bomb fell here the remains of which were used to make sulphate of iron. The Ether Plant at the works was described for its considerable historic interest Thorium Ltd was a sub company of Howard set up in 1915 to make thorium nitrate for gas mantles.
Uphall County Primary School. Opened in 1906, in a temporary building. A permanent building was opened in 1909. In 1931 the school was re-organized for juniors and infants.

Waltham Road
Slum area and redeveloped by the council from 1960

Windsor Road
198 home of Albert Mansbridge 1876-1952. 'Founder of the Worker's Educational Association, lived here’. Mansbridge was born in Gloucester and left school at 14 to become an office clerk .Gradually, through extension classes at King's College, London he qualified as a teacher. In addition to founding the WEA, he founded the National Central Library in 1916. Plaque erected 1967.


Sources
Osborne. Defending London

Comments

Anonymous said…
You mention a rocket bomb causing damage to Howard and Sons factory in 1944. I lived in the house known as Uphall Farm at the time.The house was owned by the Howards. The damage was done by a flying bomb called a V1 -- not by a rocket bomb,known as a V2. I can confirm this as I heard the V1 coming and heard its engine cut out before it crashed and exploded.

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