Station Road:shops and other businesses
Station Road
Dr Alan White, a member of Chingford Historical Society's committee, has gathered together information on the shops and other businesses that have been in business on Station Road over the years. A spreadsheet with this information can be downloaded here. Alan explains more below.
Introduction
This Excel spreadsheet is the end product of archive research spanning 18 months. I would like to thank fellow members of the Chingford Historical Society and the staff of Waltham Forest Archives for their generous advice and assistance with its production. The aim has been to provide a resource that enables users to look-up occupants of properties on Station Road from the late 19th century through to 2025.
Various sources have been consulted in this research. They include:
1. The 1895 Chingford Rise Estate auction pamphlet.
2. The relevant 1891 and 1901 Census returns.
3. Various commercial directories covering the period 1906-1939 and then 1958-1983.
4. Chingford Urban District Council Rate Books for 1944, 1949, 1955 and 1960.
5. Goad maps for the period 1987-2003.
The occupier for each property is shown in roughly five-year intervals. The exact gap between each year shown has been dictated by the production, and survival, of sources. So for example, during WWII paper was rationed and commercial directories were not printed.
The data for the 2025 column was gathered by direct observation of the properties.
There are two worksheets – one for the even numbers on the north of Station Road and the other for the odd numbers on the south.
Property numbering and names
1. Prior to 1904 there was no unified property numbering system for Station Road.
2. On 14th June 1904 the Roads and Lighting Committee of Chingford Urban District Council (CUDC) resolved that the properties on the south side of Station Road should be renumbered ‘…as provided by Section 64 of the Town Improvement Clauses Act, 1847…’. (CUDC Roads and Lighting Committee Minutes Jan 1900-Jan 1909, C47 353/2, p 223.)
3. On 12th July 1904 the Committee resolved the same for the north side. (Minutes, p 228).
4. Station Buildings (current 86-98 Station Road) first appears in the 1924 Kelly’s Woodford directory.
5. When it was first built The Parade was called Binfield Terrace. Binfield Bird was a surveyor providing inflated property values for Jabez Balfour’s Liberator Building Society. It is called Binfield Terrace in the 1891 Census. Balfour’s companies collapsed in 1892 and prior to the 1895 sale of the Chingford Rise Estate properties the name was changed to The Parade.
Before the 1904 street number rationalisation by CUDC Binfield Terrace/The Parade was numbered 1-18 with number 18 being on the corner of Willow Street.
6. Station Road was known as Maddox Lane before the extension of the railway in 1878 from its original 1873 terminus near Bull Lane/Kings Road. The name change took some time to be applied to the whole of the road. For example in the 1901 Census “The Green” end of Station Road is still called Maddox Lane.
7. The earliest use of the name “Cart Lane” that I have found is 1935. Before then the road had no name. Or certainly none that is used in published maps and directories. It was probably originally one of many tracks that ran off of Maddox Lane across the open fields.
8. The buildings that currently constitute 15-47 Station Road (erected in the early to mid-1930s) obliterated the footprint of the properties that had earlier occupied the site. It has not proved possible to map the pre-1930 properties onto the post-1930s ones. These street numbers are therefore omitted from the spreadsheet until 1939.
9. When built, many properties on Station Road names. Before the introduction of the unified numbering system this was of course essential. Once the numbering system was introduced the names of many properties were either intentionally removed or obliterated in rebuilding work (for example when a residential property was converted to a business one).
The 1907 Chingford Directory is unique in that it shows both street number and the corresponding house name. This directory has functioned as a “Rosetta Stone” allowing the information in the Census returns (which showed only property names) and that in the other commercial directories (which showed only property numbers) to be matched up.
10. Connaught Avenue was originally Connaught Road.
11. Forest Approach was originally Forest View.