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Manor Park is a residential area of the London Borough of Newham in east London, England. The area is bordered by Ilford to the east, Forest Gate to the west, Wanstead to the north, and East Ham to the south.
It was originally a part of the hundred of Becontree, and part of the historic county of Essex. Since 1965, Manor Park has been part of the London Borough of Newham, a local government district of Greater London. The area forms the majority of the London E12 postcode district.
The area known as Manor Park is not formally defined, but is more or less coterminous with the Ancient Parish of Little Ilford. Romford Road, the Roman Road from Aldgate to Colchester, is the main east–west route through the area. This well-established coaching route linking the city with the towns of Essex was maintained by the Middlesex and Essex turnpike trust from 1721. The principal local road ran south from the Romford Road and the northern end was known in the 18th century and later as White Post Lane (now known as High Street North), from a post standing at its junction with Romford Road. The 'White Post' appears to have stood on the site of the Earl of Essex public house. A hamlet known as North End was located amongst fields that dominated this area.
By the middle of the next century, the rural scene had begun to change as the railways started to spread outwards from London, followed by the development of estates of suburban houses. There were three railway stations close by: Forest Gate which first opened in 1840, Manor Park which opened in 1873 and Woodgrange Park which opened in 1894. Tramways operated along the Romford Road.
The beginnings of development along the south of Romford Road took place in 1867, especially close to the junction of High Street North and the site of the future Earl of Essex public house. Behind terraces of workers' houses was an animal charcoal works, an unpleasant and noxious manufacturing process involving the carcasses of dead horses. Animal charcoal was used as a filter, particularly in the sugar industry. As the area became more built up such trades disappeared and the charcoal works had gone by the 1890s, replaced by a Board School (Salisbury junior mixed and infants) which opened in 1893.
Apart from four pairs of small semi-detached agricultural workers' houses, known as Ebor Cottages, the area to the north of Romford Road was ripe for development; the owners, the Gurney family, sold 110 acres of market garden land to Thomas Corbett in 1877. The Corbett family built the Woodgrange and Durham Road estates between 1877 and 1892. The Forest Gate Weekly recorded the attractiveness of the estate, it having "the three great essentials to the average city man of easy access, reasonable rentals and a first class local market."
By the 1890s, Forest Gate was an upmarket suburb for the aspiring middle class commuter, who could use the Eastern Counties Railway from Manor Park to travel to the city. The area around the junction of Manor Park and White Post Lane (later High Street North) became an important shopping and provisioning area for nearby residents who populated the new streets in the area. In 1898, 1,129 houses accommodated about 6,000 inhabitants were built in Little Ilford on the site of the old Manor Farm.
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