Place Name
This was, and remains, the main route across the former Stratford Marsh, now largely developed. The road name is a reference to the former abbey of Stratford Langthorne, also known as the Abbey of St Mary’s or West Ham Abbey as it lay within that parish. It was a Cistercian monastery founded in 1135 by William de Montfichet. At its height it owned 1,500 acres of surrounding land and beyond, and controlled over 20 manors throughout Essex. The Abbey was self-sufficient for its needs and wealthy besides, not least from the ecclesiastic mills grinding wheat for local bakers to supply bread to the City of London. De Montfichet’s legacy also granted the monks all his lordship of (West) Ham, 11 acres of meadow, two mills by the causeway of Stratford, his wood of Buckhurst and the tithe of his pannage (the right to release livestock in the wood to feed). As the abbey grew it developed its own industries workshops for brewing, shearing, weaving and tannery with farm buildings to service the extensive holdings and mills on the Bow Back Rivers. By the time of the Tudor age – and despite having survived regular flooding and been sacked during the Peasants’ Revolt – it was the fifth largest abbey in England. In 1538 it shut down by Henry VIII under his land grab against the Roman Catholic Church, the so-called Dissolution of the Monasteries. None of the abbey’s buildings remain, having been demolished shortly after its closure, and what stone remained on the site was sold in the late 18thCentury.