West Ham Park *

Site on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens, for Register Entry see https://www.historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list. The Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England was established in 1984 and was commonly called English Heritage. In April 2015 it split into 2 separate entities, Historic England (HE), which continues to champion and protect the historic environment, and the English Heritage Trust, whose role is to look after the 400+ historic sites and monuments owned by the state. HE manages the National Heritage List for England (NHLE) that includes over 400,000 items ranging from prehistoric monuments to office blocks, battlefields and parks, which benefit from legal protection.

Upton was a small hamlet first mentioned in the C13th but not greatly populated until the C17th when it became a ward in the parish of West Ham. Where West Ham Park is now sited, by 1566 there are records of a house known as Rooke Hall, owned by William Rookes, a benefactor of the parish of West Ham. His son, Robert has a monument in West Ham Church (q.v.) showing him in plate armour kneeling with his two wives, 4 sons and 3 daughters and an infant in swaddling clothes. In 1666 the house appears to have been sold to Sir Robert Smyth of Upton, who became a barrister and Alderman of the City of London, was High Sheriff of Essex in 1642 and a Justice for the County. An active Parliamentarian, he was knighted in 1660 and made a baronet in 1665; he was buried in West Ham Church in 1669, as were his son, Sir James Smyth, and grandson, also Sir Robert (d.1745). By that time the family had acquired 4 manors in East and West Ham, property that remained in the family until 1810 when the Pelly family purchased the estate. However the West Ham Park estate is likely to have been sold by the mid C18th, first to an Admiral Elliott who had planted cedars of Lebanon in his garden grown from cones. In 1762 the 12-hectare estate was purchased by Dr John Fothergill.

Dr Fothergill was a famous Quaker physician, among whose patients was John Wesley. He produced a number of papers on the treatment of diseases including a study of scarletina following a severe outbreak in 1747-8 that revolutionised its treatment. He was also a noted botanist, but his main interest was in plants with medicinal or food use, and he subsidised the scientific work of others, including the naturalist George Edwards who is also associated with West Ham. Although Fothergill may not have lived at West Ham Park, he enlarged the estate to slightly greater than the size of the present park and developed a botanic garden that was known all over Europe, described as 'second only to Kew'. A contemporary account described the garden: 'on the banks of a winding canal rare and exotic shrubs flourished. In the midst of winter, evergreens were clothed in full verdure, without exposure to the open air; a glass door from the house gave entrance to a suite of hot- and green-houses, nearly 260 feet in extent, containing upwards of 3,400 species of exotics, whose foliage was a perpetual verdure, and in the open ground in summer, nearly 3,000 species of plants and shrubs vied with the natives of Asia and Africa'. In 1774 in one of his hothouses he produced the first tea tree to flower in England, and a number of plants are named after him, such as the geranium Pelargonium Fothergilli and the lily Nerine Fothergilli. He employed collectors to bring him specimens from all over the world, and is said to have asked for payment for his medical treatment of seamen in the form of plants from their travels, once asking a sea captain to bring him '2 barrels of earth from Borneo taken from as many points as possible'. He also employed artists to draw new specimens and after his death some 2,000 of these artists' drawings were sold to the Empress of Russia. Too busy during the day, he is reputed to have visited his botanic garden in the evenings, inspecting his plants by lantern light. He died in 1780 and the contents of his garden were largely sold apart from some of the greenhouses and many of the trees; the sale took 3 days and some of the plants went to his friend Dr Lettson at Camberwell.

In 1787 the estate was sold to James Sheppard, father-in-law of the Quaker banker and philanthropist Samuel Gurney, who subsequently purchased it on Sheppard's death in 1812. The house was then known as Ham House, and from 1829-1844 became the home of Elizabeth Fry, Samuel Gurney's sister. Samuel Gurney died in 1856 and following the death 3 months later of his son, the estate passed to his grandson, John Gurney, who was living in Norfolk and had no wish to move to Upton. The OS map of 1867/8 shows the house with a landscaped garden and pond to the south and a formal garden in the north-east corner of the site. By the end of the 1860s the Gurney family wished to dispose of the property and its 32.4 hectares of land. A campaign to ensure that it was not built over and that it could be preserved for the public was instigated by Charles Tanner of the local Board of Health and a churchwarden of West Ham, supported by the Stratford Express. John Gurney expressed his willingness to sell the estate for £25,000 if it were to be used as a public park, offering to donate £5,000-6,000 towards this. Although this first campaign, and a second, were unsuccessful, with a strong lobby against the proposal, despite an offer by the Government to lend the required sum, a third effort was successful. This final campaign began in November 1872, supported by local clergy and dignitaries, and John Gurney not only renewed his offer of £25,000 but increased the amount of the Gurney family donation to £10,000. The remaining £15,000 proved hard to find but was eventually raised through public subscription, the City Corporation, an appeal to Quakers throughout the country, and private benefactors. The agent for the Gurney property in West Ham, Dr Pagenstecher, became secretary of the appeal to which he energetically applied himself.

The park was eventually conveyed to the Corporation of London in 1874, although it was not until 1878 that the City of London Open Spaces Act was passed to give the Corporation of London the power to acquire open spaces outside the City. The opening ceremony took place on 20 July 1874, with a Lord Mayor's procession accompanied by bands of the Volunteers from Bow Bridge to the park, the route decorated, and with triumphal arches erected at Bow Bridge, West Ham Lane and the park gates, where John Gurney handed the title deeds to the Lord Mayor. The park layout was completed by 1887 and was commemorated by the planting of an English oak, marked with a plaque. In 1872 Ham House had been demolished and a cairn of stones marks its site in the park; some of the formal gardens had been built over with two terraces of houses and their gardens. To the south-west of the former site of the house a refreshment house, bandstand, drinking fountain and urinal were erected, and the park also featured several lodges, including one with a thatched, ivy-covered roof. A short distance from the east entrance was an artificial mound, formerly a rabbit warren. Early C20th images of the park show a variety of seating from elaborate cast iron to rustic wooden benches, as well as carpet bedding and subtropical planting. In c.1920 a sunken garden was built with a pool at the centre partly surrounded by terraces of raised beds.

By 1970 a miniature golf course, cricket nets and a playground are shown on the OS Map and a pond had been reintroduced in the south-east corner. Today there are various sports and play facilities, a modern bandstand, a pavilion, a rose garden and pergola, and extensive formal gardens. A Rock Garden was created in 1994 near the site of the first rock garden that had been constructed here in 1765. Paths are lined with avenues of London planes, lime and horse chestnut trees, with a wide range of tree species in the formal gardens. The park is a good site for birds, which include nuthatches, tawny owls that have bred here, and occasional migrants.

West Ham Park was one of six parks in London achieving Local Favourite status in the UK's Favourite Parks 2022. In all 364 parks were nominated and over 30,000 votes were cast for cherished local green spaces. As well as winners in each of the home nations, those parks finishing in the top 20% of the public vote achieved 'Local Favourite' status, reflecting the love shown for them by their local communities.