Plaistow Road is a former Roman road.
Plaistow, as a name, is believed to come from Sir Hugh de Plaitz who, in 1065, married Philippa de Montfitchet, whose family owned the district. She is reputed to have named it the Manor of Plaiz. A stow was a place of assembly.
Daniel Defoe’s 1724 work, ’Tour of the Eastern Counties’ mentions Plaistow as a town in which there had been much new building as well as repairs to existing houses.
The London, Tilbury and Southend Railway line from Bow to Barking was constructed through the middle of the Parish of West Ham in 1858. The new line opened with stations at Bromley, Plaistow and East Ham.
James Thorne, in his 1876 ’Handbook to the Environs of London’ recounts the changes to the village of Plaistow, with the gentry and merchants having gone and the occupations of the residents changed from agricultural and pastoral to manufacturing.
In 1886 Plaistow became part of the new County Borough of West Ham.
The area was heavily damaged during the Second World War. Plaistow North is largely made up of a local authority housing estate constructed in the 1960s on a bomb-damaged site. The estate has again undergone a major redevelopment programme. In 2012, Plaistow South was named as one of fifty areas of England to share in a Big Lottery Scheme grant of £200M to fund locally-designed projects to improve the area.