St John the Evangelist
The Broadway
Stratford
Baptisms 1834-1939
Marriages 1844-1960
Burials 1835-1912,1915,1922: ERO
Baptisms 1939- date
Marriages 1960- date: Not deposited
Christ Church
High St
Baptisms 1851-1956
Marriages 1855-1960: ERO
Holy Trinity
Oxford Rd
Baptisms 1888-1941
Marriages 1920-1941: ERO
St Aidan
Ward Rd
Baptisms 1900-1940: ERO
St Mark
Windmill Lane
Baptisms 1892-1903
Records with St. Paul Stratford
St Paul
Maryland Rd
Baptisms 1860- date
Marriages 1866- date: Not deposited
St Stephen
Cedars Rd
Baptisms 1918-1936
Records with St. John's Stratford
St Francis of Assisi
(Roman Catholic)
Grove Crescent Rd
Baptisms 1770-1812
Marriages 1805-1853: ERO (copies)
All originals 1770- date: Not deposited
St Patrick
(Roman Catholic)
Lett Rd
Formed 1897
Closed 1945
Congregational Chapel
(Brickfields Chapel)
Baptisms 1774-1838
Burials 1784-1840
Burials 1845-1854: PRO
Latter Day Saints
Assembly Hall
Maryland Rd
All records ?-1918: SLC
Methodist Chapel
West Ham Lane
Marriages 1937-1948 : ERO
Primitive Methodist Chapel
Henniker Rd
Baptisms 1865-1959: ERO
Wesleyan Methodist Chapel
Baptisms 1838-1880
Marriages 1891-1941: ERO
Stratford, or Stratford Langthorne, Essex, extends from Bow Bridge for 1½ miles along the Romford road, and for a considerable distance along the roads to Low Leyton and Leytonstone.
The Broadway is 3½ miles from Whitechapel church.
There are three stations on the Great Eastern Railway, Stratford Central, Stratford Bridge, and Forest Gate.
Stratford Langthorne is a ward of West Ham parish, and had 23,286 inhabitants in 1871 - since greatly increased.
Stratford has become a considerable manufacturing district.
Much of the land is low and marshy, and being well provided with railway facilities, and the navigable Lea on one side of it affording ready access to the Thames and docks, it has become the home of many factories which find difficulty in obtaining sites so near to London.
Besides the old-established cornmills, distilleries, breweries, chemical and dye-works by the Lea, there are now extensive engineering establishments, printworks, jute spinning mills, manufactories of vestas and matches, printing ink, aniline colour, varnish, soap and candle factories, oil, grease, creosote, bone-boiling, paraffin, coprolite, nitro-phosphate, guano, and other artificial manure and gas and tar works, and a variety more of an equally unfragrant character.
But at the northern end of the town, from the Broadway, where the roads diverge, there are still green spaces, roads lined with trees, and good private residences.
The town itself has little that is attractive, beyond the churches, the Town Hall, and the factories for those who feel an interest in them. Of old, Stratford was regarded as a part of West Ham, but it has long outgrown the mother parish, which lies on one side in quiet obscurity.
Stratford Langthorne Abbey, for monks of the Cistercian order, was founded in 1135 by William de Montfichet, and endowed with the manor of West Ham and other estates in the county.
The abbey stood in the marshes, on a branch of the Lea known as the Abbey Creek, or Sea river Channel, about ½ mile south of Stratford Broadway.
Stratford Church (St. John) was erected in 1834, from the designs of Mr. Blore, on what was the village Green, at the parting of the roads to Romford and Leytonstone.
It is a large and commodious structure, of Suffolk brick and Bath stone, E.E. in style, with a tower and short spire. It cost £23,000 but has no great architectural merit.
Originally a chapel-of-ease to West Ham, it was made a district church in 1844 and a parochial vicarage in 1868.
In front of the church is a granite obelisk, 40 ft. high, with a drinking fountain, designed by Mr. J. Bell, erected in 1861, as a memorial of the late Samuel Gurney, by his fellow parishioners.
Christ Church, in the High Street, close to the Main Drainage Works, is a respectable Dec. building, of hammered stone, with a good tower and spire, also of stone. Obs. near it the Local Board School, a cheerful looking and good building.
St. Paul, Maryland Road, is a rather fanciful fabric of various coloured bricks, erected in 1865 from the designs of Mr. E. B. Keeling.
There are also churches at Forest Gate and Stratford New Town, but they do not call for particular notice.
The Roman Catholics have a chapel, dedicated to St. Vincent de Paul, a neat Italian building erected in 1868, in Grove, Crescent Road; and a Convent of Jesus Mary, Park House, in the Grove.
The Congregational Church, Grove Crescent Road, is a large and costly classical Italian edifice, erected a few years since, from the designs of Mr. Rd. Plumbe. The front has a lofty portico of six composite columns with very ornate capitals, and pediment, and on the rt. a campanile tower.