Woodford, Essex
| Woodford | |
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 Woodford
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| Woodford shown within Greater London | |
| OS grid reference | TQ405915 |
| • Charing Cross | 9.5 mi (15.3 km) SW |
| London borough | |
| Ceremonial county | Greater London |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | WOODFORD GREEN |
| Postcode district | IG8, E18 |
| Dialling code | 020 |
| Police | Metropolitan |
| Fire | London |
| Ambulance | London |
| EU Parliament | London |
| UK Parliament | |
| London Assembly | |
Woodford is a suburban town of North East London, England, occupying the north-western part of the London Borough of Redbridge. Woodford is served by London Underground's Central Line. It is located 9.5 miles (15.3 km) northeast of Charing Cross and is divided into the neighbourhoods of Woodford Green, Woodford Bridge and South Woodford. In the Middle Ages it was a string of agrarian villages surrounded by Epping Forest in the county of Essex. From about 1700 onwards, however, it became a place of residence for moneyed people who had business in London. As part of the suburban growth of London at the turn of the 20th century, Woodford significantly increased in population, becoming a municipal borough with neighbouring Wanstead in 1937 and has formed part of Greater London since 1965.
Woodford appears in the 1086 Domesday Book as Wdefort, although its earliest recorded use is earlier in 1062 as Wudeford. The name is Old English and means 'ford in or by the wood'. The ford refers to a crossing of the River Roding, which was replaced with a bridge by 1238; this led to the renaming of part of the district as Woodford Bridge by 1805. Similarly, part of the district gained the contemporary name of Woodford Green by 1883.
The beginnings of Woodford can be traced to a medieval settlement which developed around the ford. Woodford was never a single village, rather it was a collection of hamlets, and has retained to some extent its portmanteau nature. London has been central to Woodford's development. The easy access to Epping Forest, a large forest near London where members of the royal family traditionally hunted has made it attractive to Londoners since the Fifteenth Century, when wealthy Londoners started to build mansions there. As a consequence, many of the recorded inhabitants would have been servants, and there is even evidence of Africans ('negroes') living in Woodford in the eighteenth century. In fact the domestic servants and wealthy Londoners may have quickly outnumbered the remnant of the local, original rural folk.
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Wikipedia