St Mary's Church, Church End E17

Waltham Forest - A brief history

The London Borough of Waltham Forest was created in 1965. The three Essex boroughs of Chingford, Walthamstow and Leyton were merged into Greater London. The new name reminds us that in earlier times this area was part of the great Royal Forest of Essex, known locally as Waltham Forest.

To the north and along most of the eastern boundary of the Borough fragments of this great forest survive today, now renamed Epping Forest and protected by the Epping Forest Act of 1878.

To the west runs the River Lea and the Lea Valley, which have been of importance locally and nationally for centuries. In the Dark Ages it was a navigable thoroughfare and transport route up which Alfred the Great sailed to defeat the Danes. It was a place of settlement with a ready source of food and power. Later it became a location for industry, much of it technologically advanced in its day, and today it is still of importance as a source of drinking water, recreation and wildlife. Much of the valley today lies within the Lee Valley Regional Park, created by Act of Parliament in 1966 as a leisure and recreational resource of local and regional importance.

Until the arrival of the railways in the mid 19th century the area covered by the borough was essentially rural in character, with a landscape of fields, forest and marshes. From Tudor times it became an increasingly attractive and convenient location for wealthy merchant families and officials to settle, and a number of their large houses still survive today. After 1850 the Victorian expansion of London, accelerated by the development of the railways, lead to Walthamstow and Leyton being rapidly transformed into residential suburbs of London, the population of the borough expanding dramatically during this period, from 9,823 in 1851, 22,754 in 1871, to 198,416 in 1901. For a while Chingford clung to its rural past and to its historic links with Waltham Abbey and Epping, but by the 1920’s and 30’s it too was developed for suburban housing, albeit at a much lower density.

Present day

Today the borough is largely residential with a diverse population of some 220,000 residents. It contains eleven Conservation Areas, over 100 Listed buildings, and over 140 locally listed buildings. Amongst the most noteworthy surviving buildings are the Queen Elizabeth hunting lodge at Chingford, the former home of William Morris in Walthamstow, and the former Essex County Cricket Pavilion in Leyton. Particularly noteworthy former residents of the area include Alfred Hitchcock, William Morris, Sir George Edwards, Johnny Dankworth and David Beckham.

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» View the conservation leaflets