Excellent article on Uphall Camp

Published: 12:58 AM March 10, 2009 Updated: 6:44 AM October 14, 2020

MARK Taylor s excellent article regarding Michael Foley s new book More Front Line Essex, brings to our attention Uphall Camp, that Prehistoric and, indeed, roman defensive site on the Roding s east bank. Redbridge is fortunate to have this remarkable s

MARK Taylor's excellent article regarding Michael Foley's new book More Front Line Essex, brings to our attention Uphall Camp, that Prehistoric and, indeed, roman defensive site on the Roding's east bank.

Redbridge is fortunate to have this remarkable site, now beneath houses, within the Borough's boundaries. It is a place which other London Borough's would give their right arms to call theirs - a spot redolent of our ancient history which more imaginative local authorities would have valued and preserved.

It was just within the territory of the Trinovantes, who ruled over much of what we call Essex and who spent many troubled years defending their homeland from the neighbouring Catuvellaunii, who held sway in what is now Hertfordshire and Middlesex and were to be a constant source of aggravation to both the Trinovantes and the Roman invaders.

There seems little doubt that Uphall was a strategically placed defensive site, possibly the site of many a skirmish between the two Celtic neighbours.

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The ford at what we call Ilford was more naturally defensible, but there was another riverside site further North, still in the Borough of Redbridge, later called Carswell and close to the BUPA Hospital, that for the same obvious reasons was occupied both by pre-Roman and Roman forces. Ilford, like Barking, has a wonderfully absorbing history.

Mark Taylor, in relation to the book, mentions that the war poet, Wilfred Owen, was for a time stationed at Hare Hall, Gidea Park. There was another poet, some would say a better one and one who, like Owen did not survive World War One - Edward Thomas, perhaps the greatest poet in the English language of the last century and to date, he, too, was stationed at Hare Hall, Gidea Park.