Chingford Mount

Chingford Mount, Waltham Forest

The commanding height of Chingford, located on its western side

The parish church of All Saints was founded here in the twelfth century and some of the early stonework survives in the present structure, together with additions from the following three centuries. All Saints was later reded­i­cated to St Peter and St Paul but this name moved to the new church on Chingford Green when that was built in 1844.

Stoke Newington’s Abney Park Cemetery Company estab­lished Chingford Mount cemetery in 1884, on the site of Caroline Mount House in Old Church Road. The cemetery’s original chapel and lodges have not survived. The old church fell into ruin but Louisa Heathcote of Friday Hill paid for its restora­tion in 1930, when Chingford’s phenom­enal interwar growth increased the need for places of worship. One of the busiest builders in the area at this time was Reader Bros, which had begun in Hackney in the 1890s. Members of the Reader family lived in one of the company’s newly built houses on Wellington Avenue.

Parades of shops serve the local community but Chingford Mount is no longer a focus for the wider district.

Members of the Kray family are buried at Chingford Mount cemetery, including the notorious gangster twins Ronnie and Reggie.

Postal district: E4
Further reading: Josephine Boyle, Builders of Repute: The Story of Reader Bros, Suitable Press, 2002

* The picture of Chingford Old Church (All Saints) on this page is adapted from an original photograph, copyright Richard Dunn, at Geograph Britain and Ireland, made available under the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic Licence. Any subsequent reuse is hereby freely permitted under the terms of that licence.