Back to Beckton

What drew me back to Beckton the other weekend? Lured me out to the windswept marshy Thames level at Gallions Reach. When I think of the places I explored for my book This Other London – there were a few that cast a strange enchantment over my psyche that I still haven’t been able to escape. Beckton was one of those locations. From remote marshland where Neolithic people laid down a trackway across its waterlogged ground, to the enormous gas works that became the location for Stanley Kubrick’s Vietnam epic Full Metal Jacket. And there was the Alp – Beckton Alps that I still hadn’t climbed.

“Ah, but there was a fondly remembered mountain down here, the Beckton Alp, with a fully functional ski lift and a log cabin coffee shop – until, when they were considering, in advance of the Olympics, an iconic Antony Gormley piece to dress the A13 corridor, they discovered that the conical manmade hillock was largely composed of arsenic from the demolished Beckton Gas Works.” Iain Sinclair, London Review of Books

Walking the historic town of Barnstaple

I’ve heard it said that Britain is a nation of towns rather than cities (or words to that effect). And Barnstaple would be the perfect example of just such a town. The county town of North Devon, sat on the banks of the River Taw with a rich history that stretches back to at least the 10th Century when it became one of Alfred the Great’s Burhs – the defensive settlements created as a bulwark against Viking raids. Once a prosperous trading hub with a charter to export wool from its town centre quay, you can sense it’s been hit hard by the pandemic with its fine High Street marked by boarded up shops and people sleeping in doorways.

Barnstaple Castle
Barnstaple Castle
Barnstaple Guildhall
Barnstaple Guildhall

The walk around the town starts on its medieval Long Bridge (it’s been improved over the years) and passes along the river front to the mighty Barnstaple motte and bailey castle. From here we wind up the narrow streets to Joy Street, once home to the author W.N.P. Barbellion whose Journal of a Disappointed Man caused a sensation when it was published in 1919 shortly before Barbellion’s death. We pay home to the Pannier Market and Butchers Row and take in the medieval quarter around the parish church before ending our walk at the clock tower.

Pie and Mash with Jake Green (and Roxanne)

A friend very kindly took me for Pie and Mash the other day at Leytonstone’s excellent Noted Eel and Pie shop at Harrow Green (widely regarded as London’s Best Pie and Mash shop). As we settled into the wooden benches of our window booth I realised that I was last sat in the very same spot last year talking to the brilliant photographer Jake Green about the culture of Pie and Mash (Jake’s an expert, I’ve only had it about 5 times and once was the launch of Jake’s book much to the shock of Roxanne the other day who grew up on Pie and Mash and had assumed I was a connoisseur), chicken shops, nostalgia and all that.

Roxanne Maguire at Noted Pie and Mash
John Rogers and Roxanne Maguire at Noted Pie and Mash Leytonstone

You can watch the full video of Jake’s Pie and Mash special to launch the new edition of his wonderful photo book of London’s surviving Pie and Mash shops which also contains a piece of writing by me, The Dead Pie Shop Trail.