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The London County Council's housing work was administered by the Housing and Public Health Committee. The Valuer, with the Valuation Department, was responsible for the acquisition of property and maintenance and management of the Council's dwellings.

Charles Goad began his career in 1869 by working as a surveyor for Canadian Railway Companies. He saw the potential of drawing up plans of towns and villages that showed the construction of buildings in order to assist fire insurance companies. On returning to England he began publishing a similar series and also began similar series for parts of Europe, South Africa, the Middle East and the West Indies. His first London plan seems to have been published in 1885 and the last revisions were made in 1970 when the company ceased to produce fire insurance plans.

The London County Council's housing work was administered by the Housing and Public Health Committee. The Valuer, with the Valuation Department, was responsible for the acquisition of property and maintenance and management of the Council's dwellings.

The principles underlying the rating and valuation system of London were the same as those for the rest of England and Wales, but minor differences did exist. A notable feature of rating and valuation leglislation had been the attempt to secure greater uniformity between the capital and the rest of the country. Thus the system of quinquennial valuation lists, which operated in London under the Valuation (Metropolis) Act 1869, was applied to the rest of England and Wales by the Rating and Valuation Act of 1925.

Since 1870 valuation lists were compiled every five years. The first step in their formation was for the rating authority - after 1899 the rating authorities within the London County Council area comprised the 28 metropolitan boroughs, the City of London and the Inner and Middle Temples, 31 in all - to obtain a return from occupiers of the particulars of hereditaments they occupied. The gross and rateable values of these properties were then forwarded to the local assessment committees who heard objections to the valuations and revised the lists as they saw fit. Appeals against the findings of the committees were heard at quarter sessions and special assessment sessions. A strict procedural timetable was laid down by the Valuation (Metropolis) Act, 1869, as the valuation list came into force on the 6 April of the following year.

Alterations in the value of hereditaments during the quinquennial period were entered into one of two other lists:-

(1) A supplemental list compiled annually by each rating authority, containing all changes during the preceeding twelve months.

(2) A provisional list made at any time the value of hereditaments increased or decreased.

The Local Government Act, 1948, transferred the task of preparing the valuation lists to the Commissioners of Inland Revenue.

In 1948 the poor law, after an existence of almost 350 years, was abolished. Those among the poor whose financial needs were not met by national insurance were given material help by the National Assistance Board. Local authorities were delegated some responsibilities by the Board, for example the provision of reception centres for the temporary accommodation of vagrants and persons without a settled way of life. In addition the National Assistance Act, 1948, required local authorities to make residential provision for the blind, disabled, elderly and infirm. However, under the Act these services were not to be provided free as a kind of official charity. Persons receiving help were to pay according to their means, even if their means were no more than a retirement pension. The Council's responsibilities in all this related therefore to the provision of establishments of various kinds. At the end of the Second World War there were public assistance institutions (formerly the old workhouses), casual wards (where tramps were put up for the night), three lodging houses, and, left over from wartime activities, the rest centres and rest homes. The Welfare Department was responsible for the organisation and management of the various residential homes, temporary homes and institutions for the assistance of the poor.

In 1948 the poor law, after an existence of almost 350 years, was abolished. Those among the poor whose financial needs were not met by national insurance were given material help by the National Assistance Board. Local authorities were delegated some responsibilities by the Board, for example the provision of reception centres for the temporary accommodation of vagrants and persons without a settled way of life. In addition the National Assistance Act, 1948, required local authorities to make residential provision for the blind, disabled, elderly and infirm. However, under the Act these services were not to be provided free as a kind of official charity. Persons receiving help were to pay according to their means, even if their means were no more than a retirement pension. The Council's responsibilities in all this related therefore to the provision of establishments of various kinds. At the end of the Second World War there were public assistance institutions (formerly the old workhouses), casual wards (where tramps were put up for the night), three lodging houses, and, left over from wartime activities, the rest centres and rest homes. The Welfare Department was responsible for the organisation and management of the various residential homes, temporary homes and institutions for the assistance of the poor.

The Council's welfare service for the blind included the keeping of a register of all blind persons, home-visiting, social and handicraft clubs, the teaching of handicrafts and the sale of the finished products. In 1942 a placement service was introduced finding employment for blind persons. In 1950 a non-residential rehabilitation course for the newly blind was started to help them to re-establish themselves and overcome their disability. This proved so successful that in 1959 it was extended into a full-time three month course.

In 1948 the poor law, after an existence of almost 350 years, was abolished. Those among the poor whose financial needs were not met by national insurance were given material help by the National Assistance Board. Local authorities were delegated some responsibilities by the Board, for example the provision of reception centres for the temporary accommodation of vagrants and persons without a settled way of life. In addition the National Assistance Act, 1948, required local authorities to make residential provision for the blind, disabled, elderly and infirm. However, under the Act these services were not to be provided free as a kind of official charity. Persons receiving help were to pay according to their means, even if their means were no more than a retirement pension. The Council's responsibilities in all this related therefore to the provision of establishments of various kinds. At the end of the Second World War there were public assistance institutions (formerly the old workhouses), three lodging houses, and, left over from wartime activities, the rest centres and rest homes. The Welfare Department was responsible for the organisation and management of the various residential homes, temporary homes and institutions for the assistance of the poor.

Casual wards provided temporary board and lodging for vagrants. After the war they were replaced by reception centres.

Haggerston Methodist Church was also known as Haggerston Mission Hall. It was established by Wesleyan Methodists at Hilcot Street as part of the Islington circuit. In 1900 it transferred to the Mildmay Park Circuit and then in 1905 to the London Central Mission Circuit. New premises were opened at Haggerston Road in 1932. The Church was transferred to the London Mission (Hackney and Clapton) Circuit in 1960.

King's Cross Methodist Mission, Charlotte Street was also known as Charlotte Street Methodist Church. It was built by the Wesleyan Methodist Association in 1841. Charlotte Street was re-named Carnegie Street in 1938. The Church was destroyed by a land mine in 1941 but the congregation continued to meet at Liberal Hall, 314 Caledonian Road. The church was transferred from the Hackney Circuit to the Tottenham Circuit, then to the Caledonian Road Circuit and finally the London Central Mission Circuit in 1956. The Church was dissolved in 1960 and the members transferred to King's Cross Central Mission.

Herne Hill Methodist Church, Railton Road was in the Metropolitan Borough of Lambeth in south London. It was not part of the London Central Mission Circuit. During the period covered by the records in this deposit it was part of the Brixton Circuit of the United Methodist Church.

The Hornsey Road Methodist Church was a Wesleyan Methodist foundation.

The Kentish Town circuit appears to have been formed after the division of the Great Queen Street Circuit in around 1866. It served churches in the Kentish Town and Camden area.

The Savoy Precinct was the site of the Savoy Hospital. It was an extra-parochial place which became constituted as a civil parish in 1866. It is now in the City of Westminster, on the corner of Savoy Street and Victoria Embankment.

Waterloo Bridge, designed by Rennie, was built by a private company which obtained an act of Parliament for that purpose in 1809. Work began in 1811 and the original intention was to use the name 'Strand Bridge'. The project was renamed 'Waterloo Bridge' in 1816, a year before it opened in 1817.

In 1878 it was acquired by the Metropolitan Board of Works and the existing tolls were abandoned. Structural defects were soon discovered and repaired, but in the 1920's, the bridge was declared unsafe. The London County Council replaced it with a design by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott which was erected 1939-1944.

Lower Richmond Road runs from Putney High Street in Putney to Rocks Lane in Barnes Common.

Under the London Government Act of 1899 the Civil Parish of Putney became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Wandsworth. A metropolitan borough was a subdivision of the London County Council, which was itself further divided into civil parishes. A civil parish was responsible for certain local administrative functions such as rating and local amenities.

The Greater London Council (GLC) was established in 1963, replacing the London County Council (LCC) and various metropolitan boroughs. The LCC had been responsible for education, but the GLC was not. Therefore, the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) was founded as the education authority for the 12 inner London boroughs. The 20 outer London boroughs were responsible for education in their area. The GLC was abolished in 1986 but the ILEA was not abolished until 1990.

The Baptist Memorial Chapel at Twickenham Green was founded in 1852. It is part of the Thames Valley District of the London Baptist Association.

The first organised congregationalism in the area covered by the Southern Province (the area south of the River Thames) was the Surrey Mission formed in 1797 by James Bowden of Tooting, established to organise the visits of ministers to villages with the object of teaching the Gospel. The mission was not however purely congregational and increasingly there was a need for the development of organised congregationalism in its own right.

The Surrey Congregational Union was formed in 1863 'to promote the union and efficiency of the churches, and the spread of evangelical religion, to advance the principals of Nonconformity and to uphold and enlarge civil and religious freedom'. Main work was aiding smaller churches and fostering new congregations in the districts. It included the London geographical area of the ancient county of Surrey up to River Thames. With the extension of the London Congregational Union, churches belonged to both Unions until 1946 when a line of demarcation was agreed and the London Union was extended south. The Surrey Union formed part of the Southern Province of the Congregational Union of England and Wales.

In 1972 the United Reformed Church (URC) was formed following the union of the Presbyterian Church of England and the Congregational Church of England and Wales. The URC is divided into 13 Synods or Provinces and throughout England, Scotland and Wales there are around 1750 URC congregations served by some 1100 ministers, both men and women. The Church is governed through democratic Councils. The Synods give practical help to churches in legal and property matters, encourage training, discuss matters of faith and policy and provide links to Assembly. Each has a Moderator who is a minister with a pastoral and leadership ministry within each Synod Province. The Southern Province Trust was formed in 1981. In 2003, the Registered Office for the Southern Province was based at the Synod Office, Croydon and covered 7 districts and 181 churches.

This collection consists of a large number of planning applications relating to buildings in north Middlesex. They were submitted over nearly a century and kept by the planning departments of Finchley, Friern Barnet and Hendon, and after 1965, by the London Borough of Barnet.

Whenever someone wished to build a new property or make alterations to an existing building they had to submit copies of plans of the scheme to the relevant local authority for approval. This collection is made up entirely of these plans and any other documents that were submitted at the time.

The period covered by the applications, the end of the nineteenth century to the 1980s was one that saw huge changes in the areas around London. Middlesex, to the north of the capital, had been a largely rural county with few small towns during the reign of Queen Victoria, but it developed over a short period in the first decades of the new century into a sprawling suburban environment. Farms and isolated villas had, by the 1930s, given way to new roads, housing and light industry.

Wesleyan Methodists first met in 1886 in a house in College Road, Kensal Rise. A tin chapel opened in 1887 in Hiley Road, replaced by a brick chapel in 1900 at the corner of Chamberlayne Wood Road and Ladysmith Road (later Wrentham Avenue), near Kensal Rise railway station. Attendance in 1903 was 330 for morning service and 568 for evening service. The Chapel was sold to the Roman Catholic Church in 1977, although the Methodists continued to meet in an adjacent hall. In 2006 the hall hosted a temporary advice and support centre following a tornado strike on Chamberlayne Road.

From: 'Willesden: Protestant nonconformity', A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 7: Acton, Chiswick, Ealing and Brentford, West Twyford, Willesden (1982), pp. 242-246.

There were three Congregational Churches in Dalston: at Middleton Road, Pownall Road and Shrubland Road. The Shrubland Road chapel was founded in 1878.

Harrow Presbyterian Church was founded in Station Road, Greenhill, in 1902; services were held in a hall until Trinity Presbyterian Church, built by W. Gilbert Scott in the Gothic style, was opened in 1906.

Saint Mark's Presbyterian Church was founded in 1834, although a permanent church was not built until 1850. This was destroyed by enemy action in 1944. A new church was built in 1953 on Ashburnham Place, off South Street, Greenwich. The church entered into a partnership with the West Greenwich Methodist Church in 1969 and later merged with the Methodist, Congregationalist and Church of Christ churches in Greenwich to form the Greenwich United Church.

The George Street Congregational Church was situated on London Road, Croydon. When the Congregational Church merged with the Presbyterian Church in 1972 it became the East Croydon United Reformed Church, Addiscombe Grove.

In 1866 the London Congregational Union established the South London Mission on New Kent Road at Elephant and Castle. In 1905 they rebuilt the Mission and renamed it the Crossway Central Mission. This was demolished in the 1960s to make way for a housing estate, but the mission was rebuilt nearby as Crossway Church. By the time the church was completed in 1973 the Congregationalists had merged with the Prebyterians to become the United Reformed Church.

\qjThe Pilgrim Fathers' Memorial Church on Great Dover Street had a traditional origin in a congregation of Protestant Separatists who met in 1592 'in the house of Roger Rippon in Southwark.' It claimed with more likelihood descent from a congregation which existed in 1616, and from which some of the Pilgrim Fathers emigrated. The congregation moved to a chapel in the New Kent Road in 1863-1864, named the Southwark Park Congregational Church.

The Southwark Park Congregational Church was destroyed by enemy bombing during the Second World War. The Church was replaced by a new multi purpose building on Great Dover Street, the Pilgrim Church House.

Emmanuel Congregational Church was built in 1877 on Barry Road, East Dulwich. At first it was only a temporary iron structure but a stone church was constructed in 1891. The iron chapel was used as a Sunday School until 1989 when it was replaced by a hall. The Church was sold in 1972 when the Presbyterian and Congregational Churches merged to form the United Reformed Church. The hall was renovated and reopened as Christ Church in 1988.

Junction Road Congregational Church registered a temporary building in 1865 on the north side of Junction Road, Upper Holloway. In 1866-1867 a new church was built nearby on the corner of Tremlett Grove. In 1972 it was renamed as Junction Road United Reform Church, but was closed in 1978.

From: A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 8: Islington and Stoke Newington parishes (1985), pp. 101-115.

A Presbyterian congregation was first established in Wandsworth in 1871, worshipping in hired assembly rooms until their church was constructed in 1872, at Merton Road.

In 1946 the church amalgamated with Putney Presbyterian Church, Briar Walk, and became known as Putney and Wandsworth Presbyterian Church. The joint congregations worshipped at Briar Walk. In 1968 the spire was removed and the tower was capped off. At the same time, the manse which had stood next to the church was sold and replaced by a house in Fairdale Gardens.

In 1972 the church became known as Putney United Reformed Church following the union of the Congregational and Presbyterian denominations. The last service to be held took place in February 1996.

Saint Peter's Presbyterian Church, Upper Tooting, was founded in 1685. In 1972 it joined the United Reformed Church.

In 1887 the Plaistow Congregational Church on Balaam Street built a mission hall in Southern Road. In 1943, the members of Balaam Street and Southern Road united with Greengate as Plaistow Congregational Church.

Stratford Congregational Church originated in 1861, when the congregation of Brickfields Church started to plan a new church in the centre of Stratford to replace their own. Funds were raised and a site was bought in Grove Crescent Road, but in 1865 Brickfields Church withdrew from the scheme, thinking that the building committee was too ambitious. The committee continued under the leadership of William Settles, a City merchant living at Stork House, Ilford (now Romford) Road, and in 1866-1867 built a church seating 1,600 with ancillary rooms beneath. It cost £11,500, most of which was lent by Settles, interest free. His creation was nicknamed 'Settles' Folly', but at first it flourished. James Knaggs, the first minister (1869-1898), was a powerful figure, well-supported by prosperous local families like the Curwens and Boardmans. By the 1880s membership was about 600, with a Sunday school of 900, and new classrooms had been built. Missions were opened in Chapel Street (1885-1927) and Crownfield Road (1885-1891), and help was given to new churches elsewhere. At this period the church was keenly interested in politics, displaying Liberal sympathies yet opposing the growing Socialism of the East End. In the 1890s the membership began to decline, though for many years it remained among the highest in West Ham. By 1941, however, it had become so small that the main building was abandoned, all activities being transferred to the classrooms behind, approached from the Grove. In 1966 the membership was only 21. 'Settles' Folly' had been sold in 1948, became a furniture factory, was gutted by fire in 1952, and later demolished. It has been called a 'big monstrosity' of white and yellow brick with columned portico, a 115-ft. spire, and 'debased classical' detail. Inside were two galleries, one above the other.

Source: A History of the County of Essex: Volume 6 (1973), pp. 123-141.

Plashet Park Congregational Church, Chester Road, Forest Gate, was founded in 1884, in a room in Crescent Road. Meetings were subsequently held in the public hall, Green Street, from 1884 until 1887, when a two-storeyed building (later used for classrooms) was erected in Chester Road, during the temporary pastorate of E. T. Egg. An iron building was added in 1890, a permanent church in 1895, and an institute in 1914. In 1925 the iron hall was gutted by fire. Its site was sold to the borough council for a chest clinic, and in 1926 a new hall, fronting on Katherine Road, was opened. In 1941 the church was badly damaged by bombing. It was reconstructed and re-opened in 1952. For most of its history the church has had a settled minister. In its earlier years it was one of the stronger nonconformist churches in the district, and it was still flourishing in the 1920s, with a membership of over 300, and a Sunday school of 600. In 1972, when the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches merged, it became the Plashet Park United Reformed Church.

Source: A History of the County of Essex: Volume 6 (1973), pp. 31-38.

The Congregational Chapel Building Society purchased an extensive site in Milton Road, South Hornsey, in 1851 and 1855, which was sold to Harecourt chapel, Islington, in 1859. Services and Sunday school began in 1860. An iron chapel seating 560 opened south of the school in 1867. Membership increased from 14 (1861) to 114 (1867). The chapel was declared independent of it parent foundation, Harecourt chapel, in 1872. A permanent chapel of red brick with stone dressings in Gothic style by John Sulman opened on a new site at the junction of Milton Road with Albion Grove in 1880 and was registered as the Raleigh Memorial Chapel in 1881. The Chapel accommodated 1,000 and contained a lecture hall seating 600, Sunday schools, and a library. The Chapel was damaged during the Second World War, and reopened in 1954.

Source: A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 8: Islington and Stoke Newington parishes (1985), pp. 211-215.

The Fulham Congregational Church, Dawes Road was opened in April 1887. It included a lecture room, school rooms and library.

The Deptford Congregational Church on Deptford High Street originated in a meeting house of 1702. This was rebuilt in 1756 and then was replaced by a large chapel in 1862. The church was closed in 1969.

Stockwell Green Congregational Church originated in Stockwell Green New Chapel, which was built as a Congregational chapel in 1798. The chapel was rebuilt in 1850 as the Stockwell Green Congregational Church. The church was active in providing charitable works for the local area, including the Stockwell Institute which ran day schools, a lecture and meeting hall, Sunday Schools, a Benevolent Society and a Coal Club.

The church became Stockwell Green United Reformed Church in 1972 when the Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches merged. In 1987 the church building was sold. The congregation moved 60 - 68, Stockwell Road in 1991.

The Trinity Presbyterian Church, Clapham Road, Lambeth, was formed in 1861. The church foundation stone was laid in 1862. However, it appears that the church was not in use after 1956.

Cricklewood Congregational Church, Chichele Road, was founded in 1885. It ran a mission hall on the Edgware Road between 1913 and 1933. In 1980 the church closed and became a mosque and Islamic centre.

Mitcham Congregational Church was founded in 1818 as the Zion [or Sion] Chapel. It was responsible for the local Sunday School which it converted into a British Day School in 1857.

George Whitefield (1714-1770), the famous evangelical preacher, obtained a lease of the site for his Chapel in Tottenham Court Road in 1756. Whitefield had been driven to seek a place where he would be free from the opposition encountered from the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields at the Long Acre Chapel where he had been a minister. The Chapel, built and probably designed by Matthew Pearce, was opened for public worship in 1756 and was enlarged in the winter of 1759 to 1760. Whitefield died in Boston, America in 1770 and his memorial sermon was preached in the Chapel by John Wesley.

When the original lease expired in 1827, the freehold was purchased by Trustees, who reconditioned the Chapel which was reopened for services in October 1831. In 1853 the burial ground which had been in use since 1756 with an interval of eight years, 1823-1831, was closed. There was a dispute when in 1856 the Reverend J.W. Richardson endeavoured to use part of it for building purposes, and owners of the graves applied for an injunction against the disturbance of the ground. However, in 1895 it was laid out and opened as a public garden.

In 1856 the Chapel was repaired, only to be almost wholly destroyed by fire in February 1857. The property was then bought up by the London Congregational Building Society who erected a new building designed by John Tarring. However, in 1889 the foundations began to give way, probably because of the numerous burials within the building which disturbed the filling to the pond underneath.

The Chapel was closed and services were carried out in a temporary iron structure until the new building was opened in November 1899. The new building included a chapel designed to seat 1,200 people, and beneath it Toplady Hall, named after the Reverend Augustus Toplady. On 25 March 1945 the Chapel was totally destroyed by bombing and was subsequently replaced by a new building which still remains on the site. The Whitefield Memorial Church is now the American Church in London. It is a non-denominational, evangelical church.

Plumstead Congregational Church was originally built as an iron and wood church in 1899 on freehold land at Viewland Road, Plumstead .

John Knox Presbyterian Church, on Stepney Way, Stepney, was founded in 1844. When the Congregational Church and the Presbyterian Church decided to amalgamate to form the new United Reformed Church in 1972, the John Knox Presbyterian Church merged with Stepney Meeting House which was also situated on Stepney Way. For a short while both buildings continued to be used for worship, but in 1976 the Stepney Meeting House building on the corner with Copley Street was sold to the John Cass Foundation for use as a school chapel.

Upper Clapton Congregational Church on Upper Clapton Road was founded in 1815. When the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches merged in 1972, it became Upper Clapton United Reformed Church.

Alexandra Park (Whitefield Memorial) Congregational Church was founded by Congregationalists who first met at the house of Doctor Mailer in Alexandra Park Road. Many, before moving to the new suburb, had worshipped at the Whitefield Tabernacle in Leonard Street, Finsbury. A building east of the corner with Albert Road was opened in 1907 and members of the Finsbury Tabernacle automatically became members of the new church, which at first was called Whitefield Tabernacle but was recertified as Alexandra Park Congregational Church in 1922. The church, of red brick with stone dressings, had seating for 550 in 1972. A two-storey brick hall was built on the north side in 1932 and a lower hall was added to the back in 1965.

From: A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 5: Hendon, Kingsbury, Great Stanmore, Little Stanmore, Edmonton Enfield, Monken Hadley, South Mimms, Tottenham (1976), pp. 356-364.

The Union Chapel was situated at the corner of Ravenna Road and Upper Richmond Road, Putney.

According to the Congregational Church Year Book 1971-1972, the Middleton Road Congregational Church, Dalston was founded in 1662.

The Congregational Church in Kentish Town was first founded in 1807 in Kentish Town Road. Membership grew rapidly and by the 1840s it was necessary to construct a larger building. The foundation stone of a new building on Kelly Street was laid in November 1847. The new chapel was opened on August 15th 1848. The first chapel was converted into a day school and Sunday School. The Church did not join the United Reformed Church in 1972 when the Congregational Church merged with the Presbyterian Church and remains the Kelly Street Congregational Church.

City Temple is a Free Church on the western edge of the City of London. The traditional date of the founding of the church is 1640. City Temple was built on Holborn Viaduct in 1874 and developed as a classic city-centre 'preaching station'. In the Second World War the Temple suffered bomb damage but was rebuilt and opened for worship in 1958. City Temple is a member of the UK Evangelical Alliance.

Haggerston Congregational Church was situated in Pownall Road.

Queen's Head Street School for Boys and Girls was founded by the London School Board in 1884. It was enlarged in 1892 and again in 1910, but was badly bombed during the Second World War. A new school was constructed on the same site, named the Tudor Secondary School. By 1964 this was renamed Islington Green Secondary School.

The municipal borough of West Ham, formed in 1886, was divided into four wards, with a council comprising 36 councillors and 12 aldermen. It became a county borough in 1889 under the Local Government Act, 1888. The number of wards was increased to 12 in 1899, and to 16 in 1922, when the council was also enlarged to 48 councillors and 16 aldermen. Of the chief officers taken over by the borough council from the local board in 1886 only the engineer, Lewis Angell, was serving full-time. His department included his nephew John Morley, and John Angell, probably his son. When Lewis Angell was dismissed in 1899, as described below, John Angell left also, but Morley succeeded his uncle, and served until 1924.

In 1888 the council carried out several building projects, having obtained powers to widen several main streets and to issue loan stock. A new public hall, opened in 1894, was built at Canning Town. The West Ham Corporation Act, 1893, provided at last for the town's sewage to be admitted to the northern outfall sewer. The necessary scheme was carried out in 1897-1901. By 1898 the council had also built two public libraries and a technical institute, had started building mental and smallpox hospitals, opened two recreation grounds, put in hand an electricity and tramway undertaking, and was planning public baths, council houses, and an isolation hospital.

In 1897 the Socialists and some of the Progressives on the council formed a Labour group with a policy including, among other things, the establishment of a works department. At the election of 1898 this group, with 29 seats, won control. The new council proceeded vigorously with the schemes for the baths, council houses, hospitals, the electricity undertaking, tramways, and sewage disposal already started or planned. Its most controversial measure was to set up an independent works department, which brought it into collision with the aged borough engineer, Lewis Angell, who had held office for 32 years. He had already fought one successful battle against an independent works department. That had been set up in 1894, but its manager proved ineffective, and in 1896 Angell forced his resignation and annexed his department. In 1899, when the Labour council decided to re-establish the works department, Angell bitterly resisted the proposal and was dismissed. The works department, under a new manager, was given the task of building, by direct labour, the new isolation hospital at Plaistow.

In the period 1919-1940 the Council erected some 1,200 dwellings, mainly under slum clearance schemes, in which its record was second only to that of Bermondsey among the boroughs in Greater London. Two major engineering works were undertaken. Silvertown Way, by a viaduct and bridge, carried a new arterial road from Canning Town to the docks over railways and the dock entrance. In the north of the borough a joint scheme was carried out for widening High Street from Bow Bridge to Stratford Broadway, and, with the Lee conservancy board, for the improvement and flood relief of the river and its branches. Large indoor baths were built in Romford Road, open air baths at Canning Town, and a number of new schools.

The West Ham area was heavily bombed during the Second World War. This damage made it possible to undertake large-scale redevelopment, especially in the south of the borough, and between 1945 and 1965 the council built over 9,500 dwellings, of which 8,000 were permanent. Public buildings completed since 1945 included a new fire station, new municipal offices in the Grove, Stratford (1960), two libraries, a health centre, a junior training centre, and a youth centre, as well as several schools. Under the London Government Act, 1963, West Ham became part of the London borough of Newham.

From: 'West Ham: Local government and public services', A History of the County of Essex: Volume 6 (1973), pp. 96-112 (available online).

Watney, Combe, Reid and Co Ltd was formed in 1898 when a merger was negotiated between Watney and Co Ltd of the Stag Brewery, Pimlico; Combe and Co Ltd of the Wood Yard Brewery, Long Acre and Reid's Brewery Co Ltd, of the Griffin Brewery, Clerkenwell. Following the merger the company was the largest brewing concern in the United Kingdom, and was based at Watney's Stag Brewery in Pimlico.

The Stag Brewhouse and Brewery, Pimlico, was founded in 1636 by John Greene and his son Sir William Greene. In 1837 James Watney, a miller, bought a quarter share in the Stag Brewery, alongside John Elliot. From 1849 the firm was known as Elliot, Watney and Co. John Elliot withdrew from the business in 1850, remaining a partner in name only until 1858 when he retired. The firm became known as James Watney and Co. In 1885 Watney and Co Ltd was registered as a limited liability company.

Combe and Co Ltd was founded in 1722 by John Shackley in a former timber yard off Long Acre, London. In 1739 the business was acquired by William Gyfford who enlarged the premises, trading as Gyfford and Co. In 1787 the brewery was purchased by Harvey Christian Combe, a malt factor, but it was not until 1839 that the firm began to trade as Combe and Co. The Wood Yard Brewery closed in 1905 but the Combe family continued to take a major role in the management of Watney, Combe, Reid and Co Ltd.

In 1757 Richard Meux and Mungo Murray acquired the Jackson's Brewery in Mercer Street. When this was damaged in a major fire they constructed new premises at Liquorpond Street (now Clerkenwell Road). In 1793 Andrew Reid joined the business which became known as Meux, Reid and Co. In 1816 the Meux family left the business which changed its name to Reid and Co. The company was registered in 1888 as Reid's Brewery Co Ltd. On the merger with Watney and Combe it ceased to brew.

In 1956 Watney, Combe, Reid and Co Ltd decided that the Stag Brewery offered no further scope for expansion. Mann, Crossman and Paulin Ltd of Whitechapel was acquired to provide a new London brewery, and the company name was changed to Watney Mann Ltd.