Whipps Cross - Forest House

Forest House

The Forest House estate lay to the south of Whipps Cross Road and west of James Lane. It has its origins in a lease of land granted by the Abbot of Stratford Langthorne Abbey in 1492. Forrest House had been built by 1568 and was rebuilt before 1625. In 1658, George Goring, 1st Earl of Norwich acquired the estate by marriage. His second son, Charles, Lord Goring, enlarged the estate and is buried in Leyton Parish Church. Ownership of Forest House passed to Sir Henry Capell who sold it to James Houblon in 1682, who immediately started to build a new house on the site in the English Baroque style with a Doric porch. Houblon was a wealthy City merchant of Huguenot descent, whose sons John and Abraham were born at Forest House. In 1703, the estate was sold to Sir Gilbert Heathcote, the last Lord Mayor of London to ride on horeseback at the Lord Mayor's Show. The estate was sold to the Bosenquet family in 1743, and it remained in their hands until 1889, when it was sold to the West Ham Board of Guardians who established a work house there. During World War I, the work house infirmary was used to treat wounded soldiers and this became Whipps Cross Hospital in 1917. In that year, it was visited by King George V and Queen Mary. The mansion itself became a ward for male mental patients. It was finally demolished in 1964 and only part of the garden wall (thought to date from 1641) remains.