Walthamstow

History

Walthamstow is recorded as Wilcumestowe ("the Place of Welcome") and in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Wilcumestou. The Domesday Book describes Wilcumestou as a manor owned by the Anglo-Saxon nobleman Earl Waltheof of Huntingdon and Northumbria before the Norman conquest of 1066. After the execution of Earl Waltheof, the property of the land passed to his wife, Countess Judith, also known as Judith of Lens, a niece of William the Conqueror. The Domesday Book records 36 villeins, 25 bordars and 4 slaves living in the manor in 1086. Alice, daughter of Earl Waltheof and Countess Judith, inherited Walthamstow. She married the Norman nobleman Ralph de Tosny or Toeni (also known as Raoul IV de Conches) in 1103. When her husband died, , Alice gave the church of Walthamstow to the Priors of the Holy Trinity based in Aldgate, London. King John stayed in Walthamstow for two nights in February 1208. In the 1660s Sir William Batten, Surveyor of the Navy, and his wife Elizabeth Woodcocke had a house in Wood Street where, according to Samuel Pepys, Batten lived "like a prince" and cultivated a vineyard. The Vestry House, now the Vestry House Museum, was used as the first town hall. The influential textile designer and craftsman William Morris was born in Walthamstow in 1834. The Georgian mansion where he lived as a teenager houses the William Morris Gallery. By 1870 Walthamstow had grown to the size of a small suburb and a new town hall was built in Orford Road from which affairs of the village were run. A new town hall designed by architect Philip Dalton Hepworth in the Nordic Classical style was built between 1938 and 1942. Until the late 19th century Walthamstow was largely rural, with a small village centre (now Walthamstow Village) and a number of large estates. The main…