ALDBOROUGH HATCH

Aldborough (or Aldbury) Hatch, Essex, 2 miles north by east from the Ilford Station of the Great Eastern Railway, a hamlet and ecclesiastical district of Barking: population 430.

In 1852 Hainault Forest was disafforested, and an area of 1870 acres at Aldborough was allotted to the Crown. This was converted into a farm. "Upwards of 100,000 trees, oak, hornbeam, and the like," were cut down, the land was drained and made arable, model buildings of the most formal type were erected, and long rigid rectangular roads formed, without a field-path, and with scarcely a tree to relieve the dreary uniformity: and thus what, though level, was a wild and matchless woodland waste has been transformed into one of the most uninviting and wearisome tracts around London. The sum of £42,000 was expended, and the farm is let at a rental of £4,000; the annual product of the trees, etc., before the ground was disafforested, was about £500.

For the use of the inhabitants of the reclaimed forest land, the Government built in 1863, a little south of Aldborough Gate, an elegant little church, St. Peter's, decorative in character: architect, Mr. A. Ashpitel.

[Handbook to The Environs of London : James Thorne 1876]

St. Peter's Church
From a digital photograph by Dave Wild

Church Records:

• St. Peter
  Baptisms, Marriages & Burials 1863- date : Not deposited
  Baptisms 1863-1868, (Bishops Transcripts) : ERO
• St. James (Private Chapel)
  Built 1862. Demolished 1933 : Records with St. Peter
  Marriages 1888-1930 : Published in Cockney Ancestor No. 21