THE ROAD TO JEREMY’S FERRY Waltham Forest Oral History Workshop Waltham Forest Memories February 2003 Free The Road to Jeremy’s Ferry Oral history of “Leyton Gateway” Lea Bridge Road First published as web edition 2003 Compiled by and ” Waltham Forest Oral History Workshop Short extracts may be quoted, but no part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, stored or otherwise used without prior consent of WFOHW. Waltham Forest Oral History Workshop c/o Vestry House Museum Vestry Road London E17 9NH [email protected] www.wforalhistory.org.uk 2 CONTENTS FOREWORD PART ONE Methodology and critique PART TWO Oral Testimony 1. Early Recollections 2. Home Life 3. Shops and Shopping 4. Social Life 5. Health and Childcare 6. Work 7. Lea Bridge Gas Works PART THREE History 1. Livelihoods - agriculture and horticulture - trade and manufacture - industry 2. The Marshes - description - jurisdiction - roads, lanes and watercourses - crossing the river 3. Great Houses and Their Occupants 4. The Development of Local Government - the poor - crime and punishment - municipal parks and open spaces - highway building and maintenance - housing - health 5. Religion - Anglicanism - Roman Catholicism - Protestant nonconformity 6. Schooling - Leyton Free School - Leyton National School - Board schools - Academies 7. Summary of Tonkins' Wragg/Lea Bridge Turnpike PART FOUR Postscript Appendix Bibliography 3 Foreword Crossing the River The present crossing of the river at Lea Bridge was known as Lockbridge as early as 14867, when the river was still tidal at Leyton, as it apparently was until at least the sixteenth century and foot and horse traffic were crossing to Hackney by Lockbridge and by the adjoining ford to Clapton. This was the busiest crossing, though there was another at Temple Mills leading to Homerton and Hackney Wick. In 1551 it is reported that Lockbridge was broken down and that Lord Wentworth, lord of the manor of Hackney, ought to repair it sufficiently for foot traffic, and in 1594 it is described as being among “the most useful bridges in Middlesex”. In 1646 the ford was still called Lockbridge. A wooden causeway led from Blackbridge (which crossed the Shortlands sewer west of Hemstall Green) over the marsh to Lockbridge. This causeway was built or repaired by Sir George Monoux (d 1544) and repaired again by Lady Laxton probably about 1580 when it was reported in ruins. When it was again dangerously decayed in 1611-13 no-one undertook repairs and the county also disclaimed responsibility for them and by 1694 only ruins remained. These were still visible in the nineteenth century. Lockbridge was replaced by a ferry known as Hackney or Jeremy’s Ferry. This and a smaller one, Smith’s Ferry, a little to the north, are shown on maps of 1747-8. Both ferries belonged to the lord of the manor of Hackney. The maps show two tracks to Jeremy’s Ferry. One, Water Lane, led south from Marsh Street, Walthamstow, joined on the way by another lane from Low Hall. Water Lane crossed Walthamstow Marsh. Traces of it remained in the nineteenth century. The second track, from Leyton, led north-west from the bottom of Marsh Lane across Leyton Marsh. No way to the ferry is shown from Hemstall Green, so there wasn’t even a track from Hemstall Green to the Lea where now Lea Bridge Road runs. The track must have fallen into disuse with the collapse of Lockbridge. Under the terms of the Lea Bridge Turnpike Act 1757 the old route by Hemstall Green and Blackbridge was however restored. Thus a link was made to the Middlesex and Essex Turnpike road at Eagle Pond, Snaresbrook so road traffic could journey easily to Clapton. Jeremy’s Ferry was closed and the nearby ford destroyed. Lea Bridge was built, with a road across the marsh by Hemstall Green to Markhouse Lane; and Butterfield lane and Broad Lane were widened. 4 PART ONE Methodology and critique Stage One The designation of the area as the “Gateway Regeneration Area” provided the framework for this study; the community worker employed by the project introduced me to Sheila Fernandes, churchwarden of Emmanuel Church, Lea Bridge Road. I contacted The Lighthouse Methodist Church in Markhouse Road, which resulted in two more interviews. Attempts to contact other local religious and ethnic communities drew blanks. The testimony of elderly people connected even if tenuously, to Emmanuel Church and the Lighthouse became the backbone of this study. Important exceptions are Carol Brooks and her two aunts. In this industrial area, the primacy of work emerged very early , and I took the opportunity to get detailed testimony from some of my respondents who like Mrs Roberts otherwise had very little to say. I was glad to bring into the light of day an invaluable oral record of the Lea Bridge Gas Works. The Works was a small, independent company from its founding in the 1860s until after the Second World War when it became part of the nationalised gas industry. The site at Seymour Road, Leyton, ceased to be staffed in the 1970s. At that time, members of the Industrial Society and the staff of Vestry House Museum interviewed a number of former employees and the Managing Director. The tapes have been stored at the Museum neither transcribed nor annotated until now. Stage Two I attended the afternoon tea club at Emmanuel Church to explain the nature of the project; and I explained it once again on being invited into people’s homes to do the interview itself. All respondents signed clearance notes, enabling Vestry House to store the tapes for public reference and use. Only one interviewee demurred so her material is embargoed for the maximum length of time of thirty years. This interview and its outcome is discussed below. Overall, I achieved interviews with eighteen people, spending at least two or three hours with each. Some recordings are three hours of tape, others one hour only, or occasionally a little less. I estimate the amount of recorded material to be something in the region of fifty hours. I transcribed each interview and sent a copy of the transcription to each interviewee. Retrospectively I think I should also have sent a copy of the tape itself. No interviewee asked for a copy tape, however. My approach was perhaps too vague and caused people to feel suspicious of my motives. By its preoccupation with indigenous elderly, too, the project set its own terms of reference which effectively excluded the possibility of including the non-Christian and non-English communities who have settled here more recently. The equipment used was a Marantz tape recorder, a Sony transcriber, Windows 95 computer software and an Aiwa tape recorder. Tapes were many and various, not always new one, of different lengths and makes. 5 Stage Three I edited the individual transcripts to make the narrative document, which forms the basis of the study as presented. It might have been more sensible and certainly less time- consuming to have made transcripts of the compilation tapes rather than every single individual tape, but I think the latter approach was the more honest one. I edited the tapes by re-recording into a subject/narrative form with a certainly useable but not very professional outcome. This annotated material is now held on six audio tapes, four of sixty minutes and two of ninety minutes duration which I used to produce a little more discussion at the afternoon club at Emmanuel where people made a very lively response to what they heard. On completion I gave a copy of the printed document to the group at Emmanuel to pass around and keep. I received very little feedback. The individual tapes and transcripts and clearance documentation, though not the compilation tape, were stored with VHM where they are now catalogued as part of the Waltham Forest Oral History Sound Archive. During the course of the project I was able to do some work at St Joseph’s School as part of their Curriculum History, using material on “flooding”, relating it to floods in Bangladesh at the time. These upper junior children were almost exclusively members of ethnic groups other than white UK; they took enthusiastically to asking family members for interviews as part of their history work on migration. I was unable to follow up early results as the teacher left and I felt under-resourced to continue. Throughout the period of interviewing, 1997-8, I was gathering background history of the area from secondary sources, mainly the Victoria County History; studying the social and ethical implications of oral history; and considering how this particular project might be taken forward and expanded in the future. Possibilities might include interviews with landowners, factory owners and managers, and other employers; an exploration of the coming of consumerism and the destruction or manipulation of value systems inimical to it. In the wider world, there are glimpses of the powerful people who lived in or owned property in Leyton and Walthamstow, such as most obviously, the Warner family. My line of questioning may have fed a pre-existing yearning for “it used to be lovely here”, so that I elicited a particular kind of response. But this very longing , as exemplified by Annie Hatley’s reminiscences, published in the 1950s, is an urban and suburban phenomenon. The oral testimony and background history both only go as far as the 1960s. I set out below a brief and subjective view of the later period. In 1964 the London Borough of Waltham Forest was created, locking together formally Walthamstow, Leyton and Chingford. The Gateway area thus officially became the focus of industrial development for three former independent boroughs.