MOST PEOPLE in Forest Gate agree that their neck of the East London woods is now officially “on the map”. Indeed, since June, when a local man was shot in his home during a botched police raid, Forest Gate has hit the headlines alongside Stockwell, Dewsbury and Finsbury Park as a location synonymous with the War on Terror. But for locals, and those in the know, this is merely a distraction from the real success story of Forest Gate.

To begin with, Forest Gate was just that — a gate to a forest, Epping Forest in Essex. The gate stopped the cows escaping and had a few houses clustered round it. Today Forest Gate is a tight-knit multicultural community of 27,000 people, nestled between Stratford, home of the 2012 Olympics, and Wanstead, which, with its golf course and Waitrose, lies geographically and socially above Forest Gate, separated by the wild parkland of Wanstead Flats. But Forest Gate is no longer content to be the poor relation.

The area was first registered in the 1850s, when it was sold for property development, and a prosperous London suburb was purpose-built. The original six-bedroom villas, designed for middle-class families and their servants, continue to dominate the wide, leafy streets of the Woodgrange Estate conservation area. Today these large houses, still with servants’ quarters attached, fetch up to £

750,000. Residents are resolute that the Lansdown Road shooting will be the last chapter in the story of Forest Gate’s postwar decline, when the large Victorian houses that survived the bombing were broken up into flats and the area fell prey to old-school East End villains, according to Eve Trayler-Wilkinson, a local estate agent and third-generation resident, who says the recent shooting “ wouldn’t even have made the papers a few years ago”.

Dave Whittaker, regeneration officer for Newham council, agrees. His report on a major new redevelopment of the Victorian town centre states that, by the 1990s, Forest Gate’s status as a shopping centre had deteriorated more than any other town centre in East and southeast London. Forest Gate “looked and, indeed, was depressed and run down”. The area became known for prostitution, junk food outlets took the place of traditional East End pubs, and the cinema and nightclub, a famous haunt of EastEnders stars in the 1980s, both closed.

The turnaround in Forest Gate’s fortunes began with the new millennium. While prices east of the City were still lagging behind the London boom, canny investors snapped up properties in the Capel Road area on the edge of Wanstead Flats. Now the area has, perhaps inevitably, been dubbed “the village” by estate agents, and is home, according to Trayler-Wilkinson, to a bohemian mix of producers, writers, photographers and actors.

Large three-bed houses on Capel Road start at £370,000, rising to £600,000 for five bedrooms, while a smaller three-bed house on one of the side streets will set you back £310,000. Trayler-Wilkinson predicts that those will fetch £400,000 within a year. A two-bedroom flat in this area costs £230,000, but larger properties in the slightly shabbier area west of the station can be had for about £200,000. Average house prices in Newham are, at £213,000, considerably below the London average of £318,000, but Land Registry figures show that sales between April and June increased 11 per cent on the same period last year.

The £1.65 million town centre redevelopment is almost complete. Newham council and English Heritage (which initiated the scheme) persuaded shopkeepers along Woodgrange Road to ditch their “garish and decrepit” acrylic signs and replace them with classy co-ordinated shopfronts. Grey 1950s buildings put up in bomb craters have also been redecorated in cheerful colours, the streets have been repaved and jolly new streetlamps erected. The project won a Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors regeneration award, and the unusually emotive council report waxes lyrical about how local “despondency has turned to confidence”.

The Olympics and the promise of the Crossrail project are the icing on the cake. Connections to town are already everything commuters could wish. Stratford, with DLR and Jubilee and Central Line links, is four minutes away by train, and the next stop, after a further eight minutes, is Liverpool Street.

James Butler, of Wilkinson estate agents, moved to the area from Crouch End in North London, attracted by Forest Gate’s “electric undercurrent and buzz”. His partner commutes to Shepherds Bush in West London every morning in 45 minutes. Butler says the area is beginning to benefit from the wave of trendiness that emanates from Hoxton, which is where Forest Gaters still have to head for decent sashimi and cocktails, but things are looking up: locals boast about the new Greek restaurant and the Italian opening round the corner.

New housing developments are popping up everywhere: the old Forest Gate hospital and the former Post Office block have become flats, and several pubs and a church are heading the same way. The next redevelopment project on Dave Whittaker’s to-do list is Sprowston Mews, a tiny, muddy Dickensian alley off Woodgrange Road, which is to be transformed into a modern mews street. If the revamped street manages to retain even half its atmosphere , it could well become the coolest place to live in Forest Gate.

The travel connections and good housing stock are only half the story. Crucially the area retains the fabled East End community spirit. Eastenders rub along with middle-class incomers, the growing gay community and the local Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Eastern European, Afro-Caribbean, Chinese and Jewish groups. “People like the fact that people talk to you here,” says Trayler-Wilkinson. “The right people are starting to come here — people from Clapham who’d never heard of Forest Gate.” Forest Gate is indeed regaining its rightful place — on the map.

Wilkinson estate agents, 020-8555 7218
Forest Gate regeneration scheme, www.newham.gov.uk, 020-8430 2760

Times recommends

• Second homes: credit crunch casualty or money-spinner?
• How I built my own sliding house
• Top 10 incentives for house buyers