London Borough of Waltham Forest

The London Borough of Waltham Forest (/ˈwɔːlθəm, ˈwɒl-/) is an outer London borough formed in 1965 from the merger of the Essex municipal boroughs of Leyton, Walthamstow and Chingford.

The borough's administrative headquarters are at Waltham Forest Town Hall, which before the merger of the boroughs, was called Walthamstow Town Hall. The population was 278,428 at the 2021 census. Waltham Forest borders five other London boroughs: Enfield to the north-west, Haringey to the west, Hackney to the south-west, Newham to the south-east and Redbridge to the east, as well as the Epping Forest District of Essex to the north.

The borough takes its name from the former Waltham Forest – an institution which managed deer in south-west Essex. Epping Forest is a remainder of the former Waltham Forest and forms the eastern and northern fringe of the borough. The River Lea lies to the west where its associated marshes and parkland form a green corridor which, along the reservoir-lined reaches, separates north and east London, and is the historic border between Middlesex and Essex.

Waltham Forest was one of the host boroughs of the London Olympics in 2012, with the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre and part of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park providing an ongoing legacy in the UK and London.

The borough took its name from the former Waltham Forest, an institution that managed deer in an area of south-west Essex that stretched eastwards from the River Lea and included large areas of agricultural land as well as the wooded areas subsequently known as Epping Forest and Hainault Forest. The name Waltham Forest was used in parallel with local woodland names, some of which have persisted.^{[citation needed]}

The first known use of the name Waltham Forest is 1205 (in Medieval Latin) as foresta nostra prope Waltham, and the use of the name persisted, until the end of the seventeenth century.

The area was in the territory of the Trinovantes tribe during the Iron Age and through the Roman period, when the tribal area was a unit of local government. It subsequently became part of the Kingdom of the East Saxons a unit which is likely to have its roots in the territory of the Trinovantes. After the Kingdom of Essex lost its independence, it evolved into the county of Essex.

The Domesday book of 1086 records four manors in the area, Chingford, Walthamstow, Higham and Leyton. At some point, before or after the Domesday survey these also became parishes, with Higham becoming part of the parish of Walthamstow. These parishes had largely stable borders from which those of the later Municipal Boroughs were derived, and these are the basis of our understanding of the extent of these local areas today.