Chingford Green
Chingford Green, Waltham Forest
The modern heart of Chingford, located south-west of the station
Chingford Green began life as a forest hamlet in the late 17th century and a weatherboarded cottage survives from this period on the Green Walk. Like much of Chingford, poor road connections with London deterred the gentry from establishing country retreats here until the late 18th century, when a handful of substantial houses appeared, for example west of the green at Mount Echo.
One of the country’s largest sets of staghound kennels operated at Kilgreana – also known as Chingford Lodge – from 1798 to 1806. The kennels are long gone but the house survives, divided into two properties, as part of a conservation area.
In the early 1840s local grandee Robert Boothby Heathcote commissioned Lewis Vulliamy to design the church of St Peter and St Paul, which replaced Chingford Mount’s All Saints as the parish church. Chingford Green’s secular ascendancy was assured by the opening of the station and the arrival of piped water in the 1870s.
Suburban housing filled much of the neighbourhood in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and the church was enlarged in 1903.
The Bull and Crown public house (formerly The Crown) was rebuilt in 1910 in French Second Empire style. Chingford town hall was built on the Ridgeway in 1929. No longer required by the borough of Waltham Forest, the town hall became the centrepiece of a residential scheme built by Fairview Homes in 2014. The Bull and Crown is currently a Prezzo restaurant.
The Chingford Green ward has a relatively elderly population, and 86 per cent of residents are white, according to the 2011 census (down from 93 per cent in 2001).
Postal district: E4
Population: 10,287 (2011 census)