Not far from the old hunting lodge there was another royal residence, known as Prygo, which was for a long time reserved for the use of widowed queens, but was given by Elizabeth to Sir John Grey, a relation of the ill-fated nine days' queen. After changing hands again and again, the historic relic, which might well have been bought for the nation, was sold for building material and pulled down, with the exception of one wing, which was later incorporated in a house built in 1852, that retains the quaint old name.
Leyton
The twin towns of Leyton and Leytonstone, the latter not long ago a mere hamlet of the former, are both named after the Lea, and were, half a century ago, charming villages, near to which were many fine old mansions, the homes of wealthy City merchants, who have since deserted them for the more fashionable western suburbs. Some few of these houses, notably those known as Etloe and Rockholt, though turned to other uses, still remain, and near to the latter have been found traces of ancient entrenchments, that have led some authorities to identify the site of Leyton with that of the Roman Durolitum. The churches of both towns are modern, but that of St. Mary at Leyton, in which is buried the celebrated antiquarian John Strype, who was vicar of the parish for sixty-eight years, retains the tower of an earlier building, and contains some interesting seventeenth and eighteenth century monuments, including two to members of the Hickes family, which were recently removed from the chancel and set up at the west end. There are also several noteworthy brasses on the walls with quaint inscriptions, such as that relating to Lady Mary Kingstone, who died in 1577, and a tablet to the memory of the famous printer William Bowyer, who passed away in 1777; and in the churchyard rest many celebrities, of whom the best known outside Leyton are the dramatist David Lewis, and the Master of the Rolls, Sir John Strange, who died, the former in 1700, the latter in 1754.
Stratford on the Lea, named after the ancient ford that was in use between it and Bow, the Stratford-atte-Bow of Chaucer, till the river was spanned by the bridge built by Matilda, wife of Henry I., that was taken down as recently as 1839, was originally only an outlying hamlet of West Ham, but it has of late years grown into a densely populated manufacturing centre, well provided with modern places of worship, but retaining, alas, not a trace of the beautiful Cistercian abbey, founded in the twelfth century, that was once the pride of the whole neighbourhood. It is very much the same with Great Ilford, named after a ford over the Roding, which, though not yet so large as Stratford, is already a thriving town, almost its only relic of the past being the hospital, that now belongs, with the estate on which it is built, to the Marquis of Salisbury, originally founded for the use of thirteen lepers who had been in the service of King Stephen, by Adliza, Abbess of Barking, and dedicated to the Virgin Mary and St. Thomas of Canterbury. Little Ilford, on the other hand, on the south-west side of its greater namesake, is still not much more than a village, though from it, too, nearly everything of antiquarian interest has been improved away. The beautiful old church was pulled down some fifty years ago, but, fortunately, in its modern successor are preserved a few of the ancient monuments, amongst which is especially noteworthy that to William Waldegrave and his wife, who died, the latter in 1595, the former in 1616.
A century ago West Ham was one of the most picturesque villages of Essex, with many charming old mansions belonging to the wealthy City merchants in its immediate vicinity, but it is now a densely populated town, with scarcely anything about it to recall the olden times. The much modernised church of All Saints, however, retains its original foundations, a Norman clerestory and an early English nave, with which, unfortunately, the modern brick chancel and aisles are quite out of character. Some of the ancient monuments have also been preserved, notably the fifteenth-century tomb of a certain Robert Rook, that of Sir Thomas Foot, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1650, and that of William Fawcett, who died in 1631.
Upton
Not far from West Ham is the village of Upton, and near to it are some fine old houses, including that known as The Cedars, once the home of the famous Mrs. Elizabeth Fry, the enthusiastic advocate of prison reform, who was the sister of Mr. Samuel Gurney, a true, kindred spirit, almost as well known for his disinterested work for the poor and oppressed. The latter lived in what was known as Ham House, which was pulled down soon after his death in 1856, and eighteen years later the park in which it used to stand was bought for the people, partly by the Gurney family and partly by the corporation of London.
East Ham is another town of rapid growth, the nucleus of which was not long ago a charming village, still in close touch with the long ago. In early Norman times it was a dependency of Westminster Abbey, and the much modernised parish church, dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene, retains portions of the ancient building that dated from about the eleventh century, whilst the old manor-house, now a farm, is still standing. There remains, however, a certain rural charm about the dependent hamlets of Flasket and Green Street, the former retaining an ancient mansion, in which Elizabeth Fry lived for many years before her removal to The Cedars, and the latter still priding itself on its ancient manor-house, now an agricultural training home for boys, that was once the seat of the noble Nevill family, to whom there is a good monument in the church. The home bears the inappropriate name of Anne Boleyn's Castle, because of a tradition, for which there is no historical information, that the ill-fated second wife of Henry VIII. was wooed in it, and, by a strange irony of fate, shut up in it later, to await the day of her execution, after her condemnation to death.
Barking Abbey