Barkingside in the 19th century was a green and pleasant place - almost entirely farmland, with just a scattering of houses and shops along the High Street.
On the corner of Mossford Green, beside the old forge, stood a village inn: the Mossford Arms.
It had been the vicarage for Trinity Church in 1851, but by 1861 L Ingram had turned it into an inn.
After an upgrade in 1872, it changed use again, becoming the police station house.
Forty years earlier, the Bow Street Horse Patrol had ridden across the area, armed with cutlass and pistol to enforce the law, but they had since been replaced by the Metropolitan Police - a shift from full-bearded, beer-drinking “patrollers” to the clean-shaven, tea-drinking constables of a new era.
As an offshoot of Ilford police station, it raises the question: why did such a small hamlet, with a population of only a few thousand, need its own station?
The first mention of policing in Barkingside dates to 1864, when a sergeant and eight constables were based there, though without holding cells they remained under Ilford’s inspector.
By 1885 the station was described as an “old inn… slightly adapted for police purposes”, and its well was notoriously polluted by sewage - not the most appealing posting.
By then it fell within K Division, and by 1901 had grown to house 20 constables and two inspectors - a surprisingly large presence.
Patrolling could be dangerous. Constables on night duty across isolated farms sometimes carried pistols.
Inspector Thomas Simmons went unarmed on a bleak January evening in 1885 and paid with his life, shot dead near Romford after challenging a gang attempting to rob a farm.
There were lighter - if chaotic - moments too.
Riots broke out following the British relief of Mafeking in 1900, when a long siege in the Boer War was lifted.
Celebrations in Ilford turned unruly, with crowds determined to light fires in the Broadway, no doubt fuelled by drink.
Control slipped, and a local gas lamplighter later woke in Dr Shimeld’s surgery, having been knocked unconscious by a police truncheon.
And then there was perhaps the most absurd crime of all.
At Fairlop Fair one July, a constable paid a boy to mind his horse while he patrolled the stalls.
On his return, both boy and horse had vanished without trace. A hard lesson - and one he likely never forgot.
- Jef Page is chair of Ilford Historical Society (ilfordhistoricalsociety.weebly.com).
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