There
has been a bow (or arched) bridge over the River Lea at the village
of Stratford since medieval times. According to local legend, Maud,
wife of Henry I, donated money for the first building of a stone bow
bridge over the Lea at the spot after "she herself had been well
washed in the water". More prosaically, it is likely that she commissioned
the bridge after hearing of the number of lives lost trying to cross
the river at this point. The bridge as it is depicted above has had
many repairs done to it over the intervening centuries, but it is likely
that many portions of it remain from the original structure.
The
parish church at Stratford le Bow was for many centuries a chapel of
ease to the mother church of Stepney.
In 1719 it became a parish church in its own right.
