WEST HAM

West Ham, Essex, a village lying to the east of Stratford on the road to Plaistow, and about ¾ mile from the Stratford Station of the Great Eastern Railway. The parish of West Ham is of great extent, stretching north and south from Wanstead and Leyton to the Thames, and east and west from East Ham to the river Lea. The Parish is divided into three wards, Church Street, Stratford-Langthorne, and Plaistow: the latter are treated under Plaistow and Stratford; the former, or West Ham proper, remains to be noticed here. The population of the parish was 62,919 in 1871; that or West Ham proper, 7928.

A century ago West Ham was a favourite residence of merchants and wealthy citizens, who in those days seem to have had quite a Dutch taste for low, moist, level districts. In the returns of the King's surveyor of houses and windows, 1762, the number of houses in West Ham parish was stated to be 700, of which "455 are mansions and 245 cottages." Whatever definition be given to mansions, this seems too liberal a proportion; but five or six years later, Morant, the historian of Essex, described West Ham as "the residence of several considerable merchants, dealers, and industrious artists". Now the wealthier merchants have their houses elsewhere, and the old mansions have for the most part been pulled down, divided, or diverted to other uses. West Ham is not now an attractive place. It has become the home of manufactures which have been driven from London and its immediate boundary, and the buildings and their surroundings, especially such as are to be found about the marshes, the railway, and the many branches of the Lea, are pleasing to none of the senses. Chemical works, varnish manufactories, match mills, candle factories, manure works, cocoa-nut fibre and leather-cloth factories, and distilleries, are on a large scale.

West Ham Church (All Saints) stands in the midst of the village, in a sort of broadway, two main streets running right and left of the wide churchyard. It is a large building, the basis ancient, but much of the fabric modern, and as a whole a poor patchwork-looking pile. It comprises an early nave, to which a common builder's brick aisle, with round-arched windows, has been added on the south, the Perpendicular north aisle remaining of stone; a modern chancel of red brick, and a good old Perpendicular west tower, 74 ft. high, in 3 stages, square, with a tall angle turret, and battlemented. The tower has a large west window of good Perpendicular details, and contains a peal of 10 bells.

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

All Saints Church
From a digital photograph by Dave Wild

Church Records:

• All Saints, Church St
  Baptisms 1653-1950, Marriages 1653-1945, &
  Burials 1653-1854,1864,1875,1876 : ERO
  Baptisms 1950- date, Marriages 1945- date : Not deposited
• All Saints Church for the Deaf and Dumb, East Rd
  Baptisms 1906- date : Records with All Saints, West Ham
• St. Jude, Stephens Rd
  Built 1898. Bombed 1941
• St. Matthew, Dyson Rd
  Baptisms 1896- date, Marriages 1897- date : Not deposited
• St. Thomas, Rokeby St
  Baptisms 1890-1948, Marriages 1891-1948 : ERO
• Primitive Methodist Chapel
  Marriages 1930-1940 : ERO
• St. John's Reformed Episcopal
  Marriages 1891-1911 : ERO