STRATFORD LANGTHORNE
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.
[Handbook to The Environs of London : James Thorne 1876]
Church Records:
- St. John the Evangelist, The Broadway
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, 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
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