The Other East End – Pudding Mill & Bow

A walk from the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park through the medieval settlement of Bow

This walk starts near the London Stadium afer an amble down from Leytonstone. The Olympic Park was busier than my last visit while still deep in lockdown in early May. Now cyclists and joggers buzzed in all directions, families enjoyed the playgrounds by the banks of the City Mill River. I passed the East Bank development, with construction now seemingly back in full swing, and crossed the Greenway to Pudding Mill Lane.

The development around Pudding Mill is still in skeletal form at best with much of the site still blank plots where once a range of industries thrived. Cooks Lane takes on to Stratford High Street and the Bow Flyover. Crossing the River Lea we find ourselves on Bow Road, over the border by Bow Church. There’s an interesting historic building at 223 Bow Road which turned out to be a 17th Century shop.
We then go through Bow Arts Alley to Grove Hall Park, once a Victorian private Asylum that features in Charles Dickens Nicholas Nickleby. The walk then goes back past Bow Church and along Bow High Street to St. Leonard’s Priory, an 11th Century Nunnery. From here we go down St. Leonard’s Street to Bruce Road and to Kingsley Hall in Powis Road. Kingsley Hall is where Mahatma Gandhi stayed when visiting Britain in 1931. He would take morning walks along the Sewerbank (Greenway) to Stratford and through Plaistow and West Ham. Following the A12 Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road we find Bromley Hall, an early Tudor Manor House built in around 1485 and believed to be the oldest brick house in London.

This is where the video ends.

Bow

St. Thomas’s Creek Stratford

Off camera I doubled back along the A12 then crossed the Lea Navigation to Three Mills and back along past evening fishermen, beneath the road barely noticing and along the Hackney Cut. I then picked up the course of the Old River Lea around the back of the Olympic Stadium and a return to the Park. I chatted to a charming couple who watch my YouTube videos as we walked through the sunset to Leyton. A great end to a memorable stroll.

What’s Happening Here? Olympic Park survey

Pudding Mill Lane

 Pudding Mill Lane

The no-show of a herb forager for a walk around Pudding Mill Lane gave me the opportunity to log developments around the site as part of my on-going obsession with the Olympic zone. It appears as if not a great deal has changed around Pudding Mill Lane over the last five years or so other than the appearance of this signage on stone surfaces. ‘What’s Happening Here?’ seems to capture the mood perfectly.

Pudding Mill Lane

“Pudding Mill Lane is one of the five new neighbourhoods being created as part of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. In total, 33,000 new homes will be created on or around the Park by 2036.

Over the two Pudding Mill sites (including this one at Pudding Mill Lane) we’ll be creating:

  • 1,500 new homes
  • 36,000 sqm of employment space
  • A nursery
  • A health centre
  • Community spaces.”

https://www.queenelizabetholympicpark.co.uk/

IMG_2668

UCL East

UCL East – East Bank Stratford

 East Bank / Stratford Waterfront

Heading back towards the Olympic Stadium the hoardings have gone up around the East Bank development. Here’s the official description of East Bank:

“East Bank is a new powerhouse for innovation, creativity and learning on Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. It is a unique collaboration between world-leading universities, arts and culture institution that opens up opportunities for everyone who visits, lives and works in east London.”

It’s divided into two sections – UCL East (pictured above), and Stratford Waterside which will contain:

  • Sadler’s Wells East, a 550-seat theatre and hip hop academy
  • UAL London College of Fashion campus for 6,500 students
  • V&A East a new museum at Stratford Waterfront  (V&A will also have space at Here East)
  • The Smithsonian Institution will have presence on the site in partnership with the V&A
  • ‘State of the art’ BBC music studios

Olympic Park

Waterden Road

Last night walking through the Olympic Park towards the London Stadium along Middlesex Way the footpath was closed – a regular feature in the Park since it opened after the Olympics. The ‘What’s Happening Here’ signage explained that this was due to changes to the road layout that will connect the South of the park to Waterden Road – presumably as a consequence of the developments around East Bank and Pudding Mill Lane. This potentially means a significant increase in traffic cutting through the park from the West disecting the parkland leaving the area between Waterden Road and the Eastway as the last remaining open space in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (see map below). And I believe the area marked as Hopkins’ Field is earmarked for housing development (although that could be incorrect).

London Olympic Park Map

“© OpenStreetMap contributors” https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright

London Olympic Park

“© OpenStreetMap contributors” https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright

Pudding Mill Lane, Sugar House Lane & IKEA City

Pudding Mill Lane

I hadn’t been back to Pudding Mill Lane on the edge of Stratford for at least a year and the area around Sugar House Lane for around 2, so I was keen to see what was happening there now.

Pudding Mill Lane Station is all slick and new, seemingly fully completed and you can now exit without walking through a tight tunnel of plastic fencing, although construction around the station appears to be still at an early stage of development.

 Marshgate Lane Stratford P1040006

The Lost River

Marshgate Business Centre is still intact – a final reminder of the old industrial Stratford. Digging out copies of ‘Your Park’ from 2007 & 2008, the glossy pamphlets that were dropped through our doors in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics, there is an update in September 2007 about the relocation of newts from the Pudding Mill River before the river can be drained. It was ultimately filled in and I believe the Olympic Stadium was built on the site.

City Mill River

It is also curious to note that on a ‘Walk the Olympic Park’ map published in July 2007 the section of the City Mill River where it crosses Marshgate Lane is marked as the St Thomas Creek. The most detailed description I’ve found of the network of rivers that branch off from the River Lea once it passes through Leyton, is in a 1936 publication celebrating the 50th anniversary of the formation of the Borough of West Ham. ‘Fifty Years a Borough’ published by the County Borough Council West Ham, makes no mention of the St Thomas Creek, so it raises the question of where the Olympic Park cartographers got the name from.

 Danes Yard Stratford

The Ikea City

Crossing Stratford High Street I pass down Sugar House Lane into a vast building site. The former light industrial zone has been flattened to the ground. Diggers move back and forth flattening the muddy earth creating a blank slate from which the property development arm of flatpack furniture retail giant IKEA can build what has been dubbed as ‘IKEA City’. So far the only visible sign of what’s to come is a peculiar wicker-looking sculpture rising into the sky from Danes Yard. The rest of Strand East will consist of 1,200 new homes, workspaces and a designer hotel. Insert your own jokes here about allen keys and flatpack construction nightmares. One of the many security guards on site told me the ground preparation work will continue for another year before a 3 year building period.

Strand East Stratford London P1040102

Three Mills

I cross an iron bridge onto Three Mills Island where the Bow Creek, River Lea and Three Mills Wall River meet – an auspicious spot. Three Mills Studios continues to form a vital function in the London production sector and over recent years has been the location for Tim Burton animations, Big Brother, 28 Days Later, among others. In the week that London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced his intention to make London the most film-friendly city in the world the future of Three Mills must surely look bright.

Three Mills Island London P1040162

The Prescott Channel

The sunset attempts to crack through the hard cloud shell and signals that it’s time to head home. The path along the edge of Three Mills Green gives a final cross-section view of the Strand East site, the only two standing structures a late Victorian brick building and a tall chimney on the West of Sugar House Lane. The Prescott Channel branches off from the Three Mills Wall River at the far end of Three Mills Green and what appear to be geese make a noisy crash landing on the waterway startling a bunch of gently drifting ducks.