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Billet Road
Furze House Farm. ‘Furze’ House refers to the gorse. Furze House Farm House, 1839-40 with modest later extensions.
These fields of wheat and potatoes lying at the northern apex of Barking and Dagenham are the only remaining productive farmland in the Borough and are the last remnant of an agricultural landscape, which predominated until the 1920s. The fields slope gently down to a drainage ditch on the Redbridge boundary overlooking open countryside and producing wheat and potatoes once the dominant produce in Barking.
In the early nineteenth century this land lay within Hainault Forest and It was only after the removal of the forest's legal protection in 1851 that the area became a farm.
Some of the forest survives still in several old oak trees; five stand north of the farmhouse and two others mark a former hedgerow that ran from the farmhouse garden to Billet Road.
Today, there are four large arable fields with discontinuous hedgerows. wild plants that still grow among the crops
The neatly trimmed hedge along Billet Road does not offer many opportunities for birds but several of the young oaks are being left to grow. The ditch running on the north-west edge of the site supports grasses and brambles rather than wetland vegetation, although there are a few clumps of soft rush. The access track to the farmhouse from Billet Road is lined with a neatly trimmed hawthorn hedge on either side and to the east of it lies a small field of rough grassland.
College Row Road
Wellgate community farm
Coal post south of the road in the grounds of Sungate House
Colliers Row
Reference to charcoal burners cottages in Marks gate
Former school building
Oaks in the field opposite the farm house remains of the forest
Wheat and potatoes only farm in Barking
Drainage ditch on the Redbridge boundary
Land used to be in Hainault Forest
Marks Gate
This was one of the entry points to Hainault Forest. Hatches or gates here, the boundary marked with hedges and rows of stones.
Stone coffin with grave goods dug up in 1936.
Gobions was the name od the local manor also known as Uphavering. Collier Row Common had a manor called Great Gobions on tone side and another called just Gobions on the other side. In 1670 there were 56 houses and five inns. Commons enclosed in 1814
‘Collier Row referred to a row of charcoal burners' cottages that lay alongside the road at Marks Gate. Marked thus on the earliest Ordnance Survey map. ‘CoIyers rewe’ 1440, ‘Colyers Rowe’ mid-15th century, ‘Colley row 1694 - that is row of houses occupied by charcoal burners. Middle English ‘collier’ and ‘rewe’ or ‘rowe’.
Whalebone Lane
White's Farm. Overlooks farmland to the south-east. Until the final disafforestation in 1851 it lay at the edge of Hainault Forest, and the ancient boundary hedge of the Liberty of Havering atte Bower, which is the Borough boundary, runs along the eastern margin. There is a small horse-grazed pasture, an unmanaged grassy field, hedges and a pond.