The Parish Church of St Mary Magdalene is over 800 years old and its churchyard is one of the largest in Britain. The church is still used but since 1977 the churchyard has been managed to protect its wildlife. The WREN Conservation Group played an active part in establishing aspects of the churchyard for the benefit of wildlife and visitors. This included the creation of hedges and a plaque in the churchyard commemorates this.

Nowadays, the Group is not active here, but instead the Newham Conservation Volunteers (NCV) do work from time to time as part of their programme.

David Franklin, who was sixth former studying Biology at East Ham Boys Grammar in 1972/3, has written to the Wren Group to give some background to the early ecology work in St Mary's Church. He says that the then Head of Biology Stephen Forrester, then close to retiring, used the "captive" sixth formers to do some of the background investigation of the Flora & Fauna. He feels that Stephen was never really credited as being one of the moving forces in the establishment of the Nature Reserve.

The area near to the church is kept tidy for the benefit of worshippers, wedding guests and photographers

A list of Plants found in St Mary's Churchyard, East Ham

This list was made during an initial survey of the site on 30th June 1977 by Paul Ferris.

The sequence of plants in the list follows the order and nomenclature of Clapham, Tutin and Warburg (1962), and the page numbers which refer to a particular species are indicated by 'CTW'