|
Old Ford is an area in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets that is named after the natural ford which provided a crossing of the River Lea.
Historically, Old Ford was a cluster of houses and a mill, around the ford. It formed a part of the Ancient Parish of Stepney. Together with the rest of Bow, it separated from Stepney to become a (late formed) Ancient Parish of Bow in 1719. Ancient Parishes were, until the 19th century responsible for both civil and ecclesiastical local administration, after that there were divergent civil and ecclesiastical parish areas.
It expanded rapidly in the Victorian era into an outer suburb of London and was designated an independent Anglican parish in the mid-Victorian period, although civil administration has always been associated with Bow.
Victorian OS maps show an illustrative location of the, by then, former ford, which was just to the south of the Northern Outfall Sewer and immediately south of the confluence of the Lea and the Hackney Brook. The confluence is likely to have caused the Lea to eddy and slow, causing much alluvial material from both watercourses to be dropped at this point, which may have been the reason that fording the river was possible here. This may have been reinforced by the fact that the Lea's tidal head was in the vicinity.
Excavations have shown that in the Roman period, the ford lay a very short distance to the north of this point, immediately north of the Northern Outfall Sewer. The Romans dumped materials to improve the ford and at one time appear to have had a bridge over the Lea.
Evidence has been found of a late Roman settlement at Old Ford dating from the 4th and 5th centuries. Excavations in 2002-03 discovered a substantial 'ribbon' development along the line of the road, surrounded by fields. Near the river there was evidence for a cluster of wooden buildings dominated by a large open-ended barn. Large amounts of cattle bone were also discovered, suggesting butchery to supply the London market. The Lea was thought to be used to supply Roman London with agricultural products and pottery from Hertfordshire and the north. Old Ford was where the goods were transferred to continue their journey into London by wagon.
Old Ford, as the name suggests, was the ancient most downstream crossing point of the then unchannelised River Lea. At this time the Lea was a wide fast-flowing river and the tidal estuary stretched as far as Hackney Wick.
Two routes may have used the ford, both continuing through Essex and including Colchester amongst their destinations. Colchester[6] was where the Romans set up their initial capital for their occupation, and the road was upgraded to run from the area of London Bridge as one of the first paved Roman roads in Britain.
The routes using the ford were:
- A pre-Roman route that followed the modern Oxford Street and Old Street, through Bethnal Green to Old Ford and thence across a causeway through the marshes known as Wanstead Slip (now transferred to Leyton).
- The Roman Road that emerged from London's Wall at Aldgate and went via Stratford and Chelmsford to Colchester and beyond. Beyond the M25, much of this route is now known as the A12.
- After the bridge
In 1110, Matilda, wife of Henry I, reputedly took a tumble at the ford on her way to Barking Abbey and ordered a distinctively bow-shaped three-arched bridge to be built over the River Lea.
The building of the bridge at Bow did not leave Old Ford as a backwater and the ford continued to be well used, but it was in an isolated and rural area and the local population centre moved to Bow in the Middle Ages. Old Ford was the site of one of the many watermills in the area that supplied flour to the bakers of Stratforde-atte-Bow, and hence bread to the City. Due to their isolation, residents were given dispensation to worship in the chapel of ease at Stratforde-atte-Bow, later Bow Church, to save the often difficult journey to the parish church of St Dunstan's at Stepney.
A lock and weir now exist on the Lee Navigation near where the ford used to be. This lies at the end of 'Hackney Cut', an 18th-century artificial channel, and the natural channel (known as the Waterworks River) rejoins the channel below the lock.
n June 1648, during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, a Royalist force of some 500 to 600 men won a minor battle against the Tower Hamlets Militia at Bow Bridge and occupied Stratford for three days, before heading off along the old Roman Road to the Siege of Colchester. During that those three days they carefully guarded Bow Bridge and a number of local fords so that the Lea would secure their flank against attack from the City of London and the Tower Hamlets.
|
