As well as its residential areas, the district includes farmland, woodland and recreational facilities such as Fairlop Waters and Redbridge Sports Centre.

One of the songs sung at the fair (which started in 1725) was called "Come, come, my boys", in which one verse states:[5] To Hainault Forest Queen Anne did ride,And saw the old oak standing by her side,And as she looked at it from bottom to top,She said to her Court, it should be at Fairlop.In the late 18th century, a society of archers - The Hainault Foresters - under the patronage of the Earl Tylney of Wanstead House met under the Fairlop Oak.

A large reading desk and pulpit (once taller) can be found at St Pancras New Church, central London, which was built in 1820.

[6] The fair was started in July 1725, by Daniel Day (1683-1767), an eccentric and philanthropic pump and block maker (marine engineer) from Wapping.

He wished to make the day a pleasant one for his tenants, friends and employees at Wapping so organised a trip to the Fairlop Oak, where a meal of beans and bacon was served.

By the middle of the eighteenth century, the annual excursion to Fairlop had become one of London's most popular entertainments, with a hundred thousand people being drawn through Ilford to the fair in the forest.

In 1851, there was an Act of Parliament permitting the enclosure of Hainault Forest, the large majority of which was quickly destroyed and turned into farmland.

To avoid the roads as far as possible he had a boat built - nicknamed the Fairlop Frigate - on which he travelled on the Thames downstream from Wapping, and then up the River Roding to Ilford.

Historically, it didn't form any subdivision of its own, but it was the northernmost settlement of the large parish of Ilford, in the Becontree hundred of Essex.