Old Ford Road represents two separate ways from different points to the sometime passage across the Lee, one being from the west, the other from the south, which in meeting converged with a third from the north which is known now as Wick Lane, the communication with Hackney.
In ancient times the estuary of the river Lee extended as far as Hackney Wick, and during the period when the Romans were in Britain the marshes which lay above it and on either side were crossed in the direction of Leyton by a stone causeway of which portions have been found, but of any contemporary road leading to it no traces have been discovered, although Roman remains were unearthed in 1868 in the coal and goods yard attached to Old Ford Station. The probability is that there was no military highway of massive construction such as those found elsewhere, but a track formed by use which led through woods and over the open fields to the first fordable place on the river Lee or Lea, a name derived from the Saxon ’lygan’ meaning ’fast-flowing’. This route was followed for centuries, and varied only when the changes in the channels of the river affected the situation of the ford.
In the pre-Norman period, bands of Danish marauders sailed up the Lee as far as Hertford. There they built a fort to which they retired after being attacked and defeated by the Londoners. Alfred known as ’the Great’ was king of the West Saxons, and he, to prevent the return of the invaders’ shipping and their escape by the Thames, conceived the design of cutting channels in the river by which the waters would be lowered sufficiently to leave the vessels aground. The project was successful, and the Danes fled inland northwestward, and for long afterwards the country was free from such incursions. This work of Alfred, however, destroyed the navigation of the river, and although in the middle of the fifteenth century a plan was put forward to restore it, the troubles of the time prevented the proposal from being carried out.
A hundred years or so later, in 1571, an Act was passed for making a new cut or trench within ten years at the expense of the Lord Mayor, com’monalty and citizens of London in order to convey grain and provisions for the capital. The work was completed, and in 1767 the navigation was further improved, but the old river bed from which the water had been partially diverted between Stratford, Bow and Hackney Wick still remained. Two of the old channels are represented by the watercourses which can be seen at the present time undergoing alteration in connection with the widening of High Street, Stratford.
In the Norman period, the ford joined the manors of Stepney and Wanstead, for the latter extended to the Lee by a narrow strip of land which still bears the name of Wanstead Slip, although it has been included for many years in the district of Leyton. Both manors were then held by the Bishop of London, so the way eastwards from the city by Norton Folgate as far as the river Roding went over lands attached to St. Paul’s.
The position of the ford is to be located by the angle of Old Ford Road, a spot near to where the Northern Outfall sewer crosses the river.
