Wanstead and Woodford

This selection of old photographs of Wanstead and Woodford portrays this pleasant area of Greater London over the last one hundred years. 'Waenstade' and 'Wudeford' were both established in Saxon times as settlements near the Great Forest of Essex, later called Epping Forest. In the Eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the area became popular with city merchants and businessmen who built themselves large houses, some of which still survive today. The two Boroughs of Wanstead and Woodford joined together in 1937 and were incorporated into the Borough of Redbridge in 1965. The history of these, still in places, rural boroughs can be traced in the photographs of this book which are all drawn from the Redbridge Local Studies Library Collection.