After the first live date at the wonderful Wanstead Tap on 25th May sold out, we’ve added a second date on 26th May 2021. This event is in collaboration with Newham Bookshop and I’ll be signing copies of my book, This Other London – adventures in the overlooked city on the night.
I’ve been mildly obsessed with the former London Olympic Athletes’ Village at Stratford for a number of years now – 10 or more, since I witnessed it rising from the cleared land on the eastern edge of the old Stratford industrial zone. Railway yards, a deep freeze meat storage facility, and Europe’s largest tenant run housing co-op were deleted from the map to make way from these York stone slabs plonked on the once toxic marshes. The Knights Templar owned corn mills on the Lea down here, their presence recorded in the name of Temple Mills Lane, which was the approach I chose for my latest survey of what is known as East Village E20.
My relationship with this area has evolved over the intervening years. I’ve written about the zone in my second book (yet to be published), watching it closely. More everyday dynamics forced a different engagement when it became a favourite destination of my youngest son who enjoyed the combination of great gelato, outdoor pool tables and a climbing wall. I had to park my cynicism over the question of ownership and allocation of previously state-owned assets when getting a strawberry cheesecake ice-cream for a 9-year old child and running over the artificial grass mounds sculpted from tunnelings from the Channel tunnel works to create a landscape of curiosity. It became a place, a place where people lived and worked.
In this video I was keen to leave any polemic or opinion to one side and merely carry out a survey of the terrain. A logging of new streets and buildings. Check in on roads I’d walked down when they were brand new. Feel the wind being whipped up by the new tower blocks. It was an interesting experience.
A walk along Wapping High Street exploring the Thames foreshore and the history of the old London docks along Wapping which stretches far back into the history of the city. We walk down Wapping Old Stairs, one of the ancient rights of way for Thames Watermen where they could access their boats to row people across the Thames.
We look at the Town of Ramsgate and Prospect of Whitby pubs – both dating from the 1500’s, walk down the Pelican Stairs and New Crane stairs to walk along the banks of the River Thames. Our walk ends at Shadwell Basin.
Books mentioned:
London Walks by Tom Pock (1974)
The Lure and Lore of London’s River by A.G Linney (1932)
Wonderful London (1926)
Related Links:
Secrets of the City with Iain Sinclair – walking through Wapping and Limehouse
London Overground documentary
filmed in December 2020
The river rises on St George’s Fields, now the park around the Imperial War Museum. From here it follows Brook Drive to Elephant and Castle. We walk along Newington Causeway to Borough High Street and pick up the echoes of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales which references this spot at the start of the pilgrimage. Our walk then follows the course of the river along Long Lane, past the Kipling Estate and the end of Bermondsey Street. Bermondsey Square sits on the site of Bermondsey Abbey, once one of the most important ecclesiastical institutions in Europe. The river is said to flow along Abbey Street which was once navigable as far as the Abbey.
We then follow the Neckinger across Druid Street and Jamaica Road to an area that was once known as Jacob’s Island. Mill Street takes us to St Saviour’s Wharf where the Neckinger makes its confluence with the Thames.
This video was filmed in December 2020
In the course of my hunt for the lost rivers of Walthamstow I came across this paragraph in the Victoria County History:
“Higham Hill sewer flowed from Chapel End across Blackhorse Lane to Dagenham brook. The brook flowed south to Leyton, joined by Moor ditch from Markhouse common. Most of Moor ditch was piped in the 1880s. Parts of the Higham Hill sewer, Dagenham brook, and Blackmarsh sewer west of the brook ( Its continuation in Leyton was known as Shortlands sewer), were diverted or filled in when the flood relief channel was built in 1950–60.”
And it was also marked on the 1840 map of Walthamstow. There was another lost river of Walthamstow to be staked out on foot.
I headed out on a sunny Friday afternoon, along Hoe Street and into Forest Road, which is shown as Clay Street on the 1777 Map of Essex at this point. The quest would start at the Water House, now the William Morris Gallery, as the 1777 map shows a watercourse flowing West from the moat in what is now Lloyd Park, in a more or less straight line to the River Lea. Comments on the Walthamstow lost river video (the Philley Brook) had mentioned a river flowing beneath Winns Avenue in Walthamstow. This aligned with the route of the stream rising in the Water House moat. However, descriptions of the course of the Higham Hill Brook and 19th Century maps place the source as Higham Hill Common, further north, but not so distant as to rule out a relationship (as discovered with the multiple sources of the Philley Brook / Fillebrook).
I headed in the direction of Priory Court, the shape of the road seeming to mirror the contours of the river on old maps. The assumption being that the river must cut through the post-war council estate and pass either through, or around Higham Hill Common Allotments. There were no massive indicators here, but on Higham Hill Road the point where the subterranean stream crosses was apparent. This also aligned with the site of Walthamstow Avenue FC’s Green Pond Road ground, now a housing estate. A former resident of the area, Robert, confirmed in a comment on the YouTube video that the river indeed flowed beneath the pitch: “which is why it had a reputation for poor drainage and matches always being postponed during late December and January. Also knew an old lady from my time attending At Andrews church who lived on Green Pond farm which is where the football ground and dairy were built on and she told me of her childhood playing by the brook in the 1920’s.”
From this point to the confluence with the Dagenham Brook the route was fairly clear – the walk taking me down Higham Street (where a footbridge is marked on an old map), and into Chamberlain Place. The river then passes through a huge new housing development, Blackhorse Yard, which includes plans to include the re-surfaced stream in the design. A rare example of daylighting in London.
Luckily for me the Higham Hill Brook meets the Dagenham Brook in the Forest Industrial Estate near two breweries so I was able to celebrate the successful conclusion to the walk with some fresh beer from Signature Brew.