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A well-preserved Edwardian estate surrounded by open land on the south side of Wanstead. The present name dates from the sixteenth
century and refers to alders growing beside a tributary of the River Roding. Before this it was called Nakedhall – an
allusion to the exposed position of the manor. The dynasty that owned Wanstead House steadily acquired and altered the farmland
of Aldersbrook from 1786 onwards, knocking down its manor house, selling land to the Corporation of London for use as a cemetery
and auctioning building plots from 1899. The plots’ conditions of sale included clauses stipulating that the properties
be relatively expensive, especially on the edges of the estate where the £500 detached houses had views over Wanstead Park
and Flats. These sold to professional persons, while the £300 semis and terraces on the main streets went to lower middle
class occupiers, usually renting rather than buying. More than a thousand homes were built by 1910 and the variety of developers,
combined with the rapidly changing architectural fashions of the time, resulted in a miscellany of styles. Some properties
that were bombed in the Second World War were rebuilt almost indistinguishably from their predecessors. In the 1960s council
housing replaced the children’s home and isolation hospital that had stood on Aldersbrook’s western and eastern
sides, respectively. On the south side of Aldersbrook Road, Heatherwood Close juts into Wanstead Flats where Aldersbrook Farm
used to stand.
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