PLAISTOW

Plaistow, Essex, a village and ecclesiastical district of West Ham parish, and a Station on the London and Southend Railway, 1 mile east of West Ham, 4½ miles east of Whitechapel church: pop. 6699 (Plaistow St Mary, 3448; St. Andrew, 3251). But this is exclusive of the new district in the Plaistow Marshes, Canning Town, and Victoria Docks ("London over the border"), which in 1871 had 7874 inhabitants.

The old village of Plaistow, lying loosely along North Street, the Broadway, Balaam Street, and Greengate, with roomy old houses and large gardens, tree-girt and surrounded with green though level fields, secluded, quiet, rural, was in the last and early part of the present century a favourite place of abode with sedate merchants and citizens of credit and renown. Pelleys, Morleys, Gurneys, Frys, Howards, Sturges, Hoares, Martins, Schroders, dwelt within it or on its borders. There was a Friends' Meeting House before there was a church, and Mrs. Fry, Joseph John, and Samuel Gurney, the Howards, and the Sturges were among the regular worshippers and frequent ministrants. The Independents and other dissenters were strongly represented, and the village had altogether a staid and somewhat of a puritanic aspect. Apart from the requirements of the wealthier residents, the occupations of the inhabitants were mainly agricultural and pastoral.

Entirely changed is the old village now. Unpleasant manufactures, driven from the capital, have settled down in the Marshes. The great Metropolitan Sewer, in the form of a huge grass-covered embankment, has been carried across the level, and through the village. The construction of the sewer, the opening of the railway, and the proximity of great manufacturing establishments caused a large influx of the labouring classes. The gentry migrated. The handsome old mansions have been pulled down, suffered to go to decay, or diverted to other uses, and the grounds built over. The trees have been felled; the fields, changed into streets which lead nowhere, are left unfinished and fragmentary, and lined with mean little tenements, which, dirty, frail, and gardenless, look as though cast in a mould -and that a bad one- and warped and cracked whilst drying in the sun. The Friends' Meeting House is transformed into a School Board school; the Congregational Chapel into "The Tonic Sol-Fa Press" -with a steam-pipe puffing out all day its unmelodious key-note; and the great house in the Broadway is depressed into a " Destitute Children's Home." One compensation Plaistow has: though Mr. Gurney's stately house has disappeared, his still handsome park has been happily secured as a free public park forever.

West Ham Park lies just outside Plaistow village, and Plaistow people have the readiest access to it.

The Church of St. Mary, built in 1830, is a small brick edifice of the Gothic then in vogue. St. Andrew's, built in 1870, from the designs of Mr. J. Brooks, is another brick church, but of an altogether different type. Large, unusually lofty, cruciform, it promises to be an imposing edifice; but left as it is incomplete, it can hardly be considered satisfactory, however much it may be in keeping with its surroundings. The new Congregational Chapel in Balaam Street is a very ecclesiastical looking building.

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

Church Records:

• St. Mary the Virgin, St. Mary's Rd
  Baptisms 1830-1968, Marriages 1845-1977, Burials 1830-1972 : ERO
  Baptisms 1968- date, Marriages 1977- date : Not deposited
• St. Andrew, Barking Rd
  Baptisms 1870-1968, Marriages 1872-1974 : ERO
• St. Katharine, Chapman Rd
  Built 1891. Demolished 1965
• St. Martin, Boundary Rd
  Baptisms 1898-1901 and all Marriages : with St. Andrew
  Baptisms 1901-1911 & 1914-1943 : ERO
• St. Philip (and St. James), Whitewell Rd
  Baptisms 1903-1972, Marriages 1974-1983 : ERO
  Burials - allotted area at the East London Cemetery, Plaistow
  Baptisms 1972- date, Marriages 1983- date : Not deposited
• Congregational Chapel
  Baptisms 1833-1837 : PRO
• Independent Chapel, Swanscombe St
  Baptisms 1860-1882 : LMA
• Methodist Chapel, Pelly Rd / Harold Rd / High St
  Baptisms 1897-1947 : NEW
• Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, High St
  Marriages 1899-1940 : ERO