Marks Gate
This post is not finished, had not been checked or edited
Post to the north Hainault Forest Whalebone Lane
Post to the west not done
Billet Road
Furze House Farm. ‘Furze’ House refers to the gorse. 1839-40 with modest
later extensions.
Fields of wheat and potatoes lying at the northern
apex of Barking and Dagenham are the only remaining productive farmland in the
Borough and are the last remnant of an
agricultural landscape, which predominated until the 1920s. The fields slope gently down to a drainage
ditch on the Redbridge boundary overlooking open countryside and producing
wheat and potatoes once the dominant produce in Barking.
In the early 19th this land lay
within Hainault Forest and It was only after the removal of the forest's legal
protection in 1851 that the area became a farm.
Some of the forest survives in several old oak trees; five stand north of the farmhouse and two
others mark a former hedgerow that ran from the farmhouse garden to Billet
Road.
Four large arable fields
with discontinuous hedgerows. wild plants that still grow among the crops
Ditch running on the north-west edge
of the site supports grasses and brambles rather than wetland vegetation,
although there are a few clumps of soft rush.
Access track to the farmhouse
from Billet Road lined with hawthorn hedge on either side
and to the east a small field of rough grassland.
College Row Road
Wellgate community farm
Coal post south
of the road in the grounds of Sungate House
Colliers Row
Reference to charcoal burners cottages in Marks gate
Former school building
Oaks in the field opposite
the farm house remains of the forest
Wheat and potatoes only farm in Barking
Drainage ditch on the
Redbridge boundary
Land used to be in Hainault
Forest
Marks Gate
This was one of the entry
points to Hainault Forest. Hatches or gates here, the boundary marked with
hedges and rows of stones.
Stone coffin with grave
goods dug up in 1936.
Gobions was the name of the local manor also known as
Uphavering. Collier Row Common had a
manor called Great Gobions on tone side and another called just Gobions on the
other side. In 1670 there were 56 houses
and five inns. Commons enclosed in 1814
‘Collier Row referred to a row of charcoal burners'
cottages that lay alongside the road at Marks Gate. Marked thus on the earliest
Ordnance Survey map. ‘CoIyers rewe’ 1440, ‘Colyers Rowe’ mid-15th century,
‘Colley row 1694 - that is row of
houses occupied by charcoal burners. Middle English ‘collier’ and ‘rewe’ or
‘rowe’.
Whalebone Lane
White's Farm. Overlooks
farmland to the south-east. Until the final disafforestation in 1851 it lay at
the edge of Hainault Forest, and the ancient boundary hedge of the Liberty of
Havering atte Bower, which is the Borough boundary, runs along the eastern margin. There
is a small horse-grazed pasture, an unmanaged grassy field, hedges and a pond.
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