Editing Forest Gate (section)

==History==
The first known record of the name 'Forest Gate' comes from the [[West Ham]] parish registers of the late 17th century<ref name="autogenerated1983">The London Encyclopaedia, 1983, edited by Weinreb and Hibbert</ref> and describes a gate placed across the modern Woodford Road to prevent cattle straying from the open [[Wanstead Flats]] area of [[Epping Forest]] onto the main [[Roman roads in Britannia|Roman road]] ([[Romford]] road) linking [[Camulodunum]] to [[Londinium]]. The gate was located close to the former Eagle & Child public house. It never was a toll gate and was demolished along with the keepers' cottage in 1881.
 
At the time of the gate's construction, the Forest and its mosaic of habitats (coppice woodland, common grazing and wood pasture) extended from [[Epping, Essex|Epping]] to the Romford Road where a coppice woodland called 'Hamfrith' (meaning the woodland belonging to the [[London Borough of Newham#Ham(me): Pre-partition origins|Ham]] area) Wood, which existed until around 1700,<ref name="autogenerated1983"/> formed the southernmost point.

An [[Anglo-Saxon]] jewelled bead was found in Forest Gate in 1875 during sewer construction behind the former Princess Alice public house in the Sprowston Road area. The 'bead' is made of gold, garnet and blue glass dating to the late sixth or early seventh century with the workmanship suggesting that it belonged to a woman of wealth or high status such as a 'princess' and dates from the 6th–7th centuries (500 – 699 AD). At this time [[Essex]] was an independent kingdom with a territory extending over Essex, Middlesex and London and half of Hertfordshire.  Having been found as a single object, it is surmised that the bead was lost casually whilst travelling along the ancient Roman road (now the Romford Road) rather than as a burial object, but this is by no means certain as there is a lack of detail about how it was recovered.{{Citation needed|date=December 2017}} Stylistically, the piece is said to relate to similar jewellery produced in [[Kent]], which influenced designs in Essex. It is known that King [[Sledd of Essex]] married [[Ricula]], the sister of King [[Æthelberht of Kent]] in about 580 AD. The piece was acquired by [[Sir John Evans]] and was presented to the [[Ashmolean Museum]] in Oxford by [[Sir Arthur Evans]] in 1909.

The area remained rural until the 19th century. From the 18th century a number of wealthy city dwellers had large country houses in the area and many of them were [[Quakers]]; the best known of these were the families of Gurney, Fry and Lester. As the population expanded, new churches were built in the area, such as [[Emmanuel Church, Forest Gate|Emmanuel]] (1852) and its mission church [[St Mark's Church, Forest Gate|St Mark's]] (1893-1898).

In 1890 a fire at the Forest Gate Industrial School in Forest Lane, occupied by children belonging to the Whitechapel Union, killed 26 boys between the ages of 7 and 12 years old.

Forest Gate formed part of the [[County Borough of West Ham]] since its creation (initially as a municipal borough) in 1886. The county borough was abolished to form part of the present-day London Borough of Newham in 1965.

Local history blog ''E7 Now and Then'' details other Forest Gate history.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.e7-nowandthen.org |title=E7 Now & Then |publisher=E7-nowandthen.org |access-date=23 May 2019}}</ref> An [[ethnographic study]] of the neighbourhood by researcher Dr Joy White, ''Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City'', was published in 2020 by [[Repeater Books]].<ref>{{Cite web |title=Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City |url=https://repeaterbooks.com/product/terraformed-young-black-lives-in-the-inner-city/ |access-date=2022-03-03 |website=Repeater Books |language=en-GB}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Review – Terraformed: Young Black Lives in the Inner City by Joy White |url=https://www.redpepper.org.uk/review-terraformed-young-black-lives-in-the-inner-city-by-joy-white/ |access-date=2022-03-03 |language=en-US}}</ref>

Newham has the second highest percentage of [[Islam in the United Kingdom|Muslims in Britain]] at 24.3% and Forest Gate reflects this with 23.4% stating their religion as [[Islam]] in the 2001 census. Many have their [[British Bangladeshis|roots in Bangladesh]] and [[British Pakistanis|Pakistan]] and most follow the [[Deobandi|Sunni Deobandi]] or the [[Salafi]] tradition.