Medieval and Tudor Hugh de Balun was a property-owner in the area in the 12th century and belonged to the same family as
Hamelin de Balun. Known as
Balostret in the 1371
Calendar of Inquisitions Miscellaneous, Balaam Street is one of the oldest roads in Plaistow and is probably named after de Balun, though some argue its namesake is in fact a Walter Balame. When this abbey was
dissolved the manor was appropriated by the Crown, and granted to Sir
Roger Cholmeley in 1553. Plaistow is connected with the legend of notorious
highwayman Dick Turpin (born 1705; executed 1739). Several stories state that among Turpin's first crimes was the theft of two oxen from his employer, a Mr Giles of Plaistow, in 1730. Turpin is also alleged to have run a smuggling gang that operated between Plaistow and
Southend. despite it being a distance of only some . The Black Lion public house in the High Street is one of the oldest landmarks in Plaistow and is reputed to date back to at least 1742.
19th century Newly-appointed as pastor to a Congregationalist church in Plaistow,
John Curwen opened the Plaistow Public School in 1844. That year also saw Plaistow become a chapelry as well as an Anglican parish in its own right, split off from
All Saints Church, West Ham; Plaistow's
chapel of ease St Mary's became the new parish's church. Curwen also started a printing business in Plaistow in 1863. In the 1870s,
John Marius Wilson described it in his
Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales as a village, a chapelry and a ward in the Parish of West Ham in Essex. The population of the chapelry was recorded as 11,214 in 1861. Thorne recounts the changes to the old village of Plaistow, with the gentry, merchants and others of renown having gone and the occupations of the residents changed from agricultural and pastoral to manufacturing. In 1886 Plaistow became part of the new
County Borough of West Ham. The area gained several new Anglican churches in the second half of the 19th century –
St Philip's in 1860,
St Andrew's in 1868,
St Katherine's in 1891,
St Martin's in 1894 and
St Thomas's in 1898. Only St Martin's and St Andrew's survive; St Andrew's is mentioned in Thorne's work and, like its adjoining vicarage (1871), is a grade II
listed building. John Curwen's son, John Spencer Curwen (who founded the Stratford & East London Music Festival – the oldest English music festival – in 1882), published a paper called
“Old Plaistow” in 1891 describing houses of the area.
1900–1995 It was not until 1905 that Plaistow was connected to the telephone network, Opened in 1922, it is now a grade II listed building. Its ten Memorial Bells bear the names of more than 150 men who died in the fighting (the largest number of names on any set of bells in the world). The bells were cleaned and restored using a National Heritage Lottery grant between February and August 2011 as part of a larger restoration project. In 1921, the
YMCA opened Greengate House on Greengate Street. Now a grade II listed building, it was once used as an
Art college by the
University of East London and students included
Jake and Dinos Chapman. In 2010 the building was demolished but the grand and ornate façade was retained and modernised and a new block of flats built behind it. The area was heavily damaged during
the Blitz in the
Second World War. The Plaistow North area is largely made up of a local authority housing estate constructed in the 1960s on a bomb-damaged site. The estate used to include five 14-storey 1960s tower blocks but much has changed and the area has undergone a major redevelopment programme. The Black Lion public house was frequented by
West Ham United football players especially such as
Bobby Moore in the 1960s and '70s with several West Ham footballers spotted in the area since. In 1965 Plaistow became part of the new London Borough of Newham, formed when West Ham joined with the
County Borough of East Ham and small parts of
Barking and
Woolwich.
1995–present Just before the end of the 1990s a £92 million regeneration programme known as the Forest Gate and Plaistow SRB5 got under way, with the aim of renewing and revitalising neighbourhoods, creating jobs, building new homes and improving many existing ones. West Ham and Plaistow New Deal for Communities ("NDC"), part of a government programme designed to tackle social exclusion, community safety, unemployment and low educational attainment in areas of severe need throughout the country, was awarded £54.6 million to bring about improvements to the local area over a 10-year period to 2010, with the intention of improving the quality of life and providing more opportunities for residents in the West Ham and Plaistow area. In March 2010, the NDC set up Newham New Deal Partnership ("Newham NDP"), a
not-for-profit organisation, to continue providing community benefit to the NDC area and beyond, and continue the work carried out over the 10 years of the NDC Programme. Newham NDP works in partnership with the East London Business Alliance, East Thames Group, London Borough of Newham and One Housing Group to provide community benefits to the area either directly or in partnership with other stakeholders. In March 2011 the Memorial Community Church was awarded money by the Big Lottery Fund Reaching Communities programme, to improve community facilities there. On 10 December 2012, Plaistow South was named as one of fifty areas of England to share in a Big Lottery Scheme grant of £200 million. Plaistow South received £1 million to fund locally-designed projects to improve the area. In January 2013, councillors approved a new housing development of both private and affordable homes on the site of the old Plaistow Hospital. Construction began in March 2013 with completion of Phase 1 in 2015 and Phase 2 in 2016. == Governance ==