London Borough of Newham: History
The borough was formed on 1 April 1965 under the London Government Act 1963, as a borough of the newly formed Greater London. It broadly covered the areas of the county borough of East Ham and the county borough of West Ham that were abolished by the same act. These in turn were successors to the ancient civil and ecclesiastical parishes of East Ham and West Ham. Green Street and Boundary Road mark the former boundary between the two.
North Woolwich also became part of the borough (previously part of the Metropolitan Borough of Woolwich, the majority of which lay south of the River Thames), as did a small area around Gallions Reach west of the River Roding which had previously been part of the Municipal Borough of Barking. East Ham, West Ham and Barking had all historically been part of the county of Essex, whilst Woolwich had been part of Kent prior to becoming part of the County of London in 1889. Newham was devised for the borough as an entirely new name.
The area of the modern borough was at one time occupied by a manor (an estate or landholding with certain legal responsibilities) called 'Ham'. The name comes from Old English hamm and means 'a dry area of land between rivers or marshland', referring to the location of the settlement within boundaries formed by the rivers Lea, Thames and Roding and their marshes.
The first known written use of the term, as 'Hamme', is in an Anglo-Saxon charter of 958, in which King Edgar granted the area to Ealdorman Athelstan. The territory was undivided at that time. A subsequent charter of 1037 describes a transfer of land which has been identified with East Ham, indicating that the division of the territory occurred between 958 and 1037.
The Domesday Book shows landholdings divided further, and by the end of the 12th century these manors were being served, singly or in groups of manors, by the familiar ancient parishes of West Ham, East Ham and Little Ilford (now also known as Manor Park), with some areas by the Roding a part of Barking, and the area now known as North Woolwich attached to Woolwich. The earliest recorded use of the name West Ham, Westhamma, comes in 1186, and East Ham, Estham, is recorded in 1204.
The boundary between West and East Ham was drawn from the now lost Hamfrith Waste and Hamfrith Wood in the north (then the southernmost parts of Epping Forest which extended as far south as the Romford Road at that time), along Green Street down to the small, also lost, natural harbour known as Ham Creek. Ham Creek was filled-in in the nineteenth century, but the small residual head of the creek still formed the boundary between the two areas into the late 20th century, when what remained was also filled in.
The formation of the modern borough in 1965 saw the merger of West and East Ham, together with North Woolwich and Barking west of the River Roding. Little Ilford had become part of East Ham as part of earlier local government reorganisations.
The prosperity of the area increased due to the construction of Bow Bridge, the only bridge over the Lea, and the creation of Stratford Langthorne Abbey.