East London walk in search of a mystery
I love ‘following the scent of a clue’, to borrow one of Gordon S. Maxwell’s types of topographical rambles as described in The Fringe of London (1925). And this was an incredibly enticing clue sent via an Instagram DM. TimeWandererChris asked me what I knew about the holy well in Valentines Park, Ilford. What?, I thought. On all my countless walks through Valentines Park, and the reading for those explorations, I’d neither come across references to a holy well nor seen anything that looked remotely like a holy well. Not even when presenting a radio show on Ilford with Nick Papadimitriou for Resonance fm in 2011. This would surely be a wild goose chase.
The resulting walk a couple of weeks ago, in the video above, proved to be a revelation.
Wonderful, I remember visiting the well in my early teens but had forgotten it ever existed until reading this and watching the video. I think a revisit is long overdue. Thanks for the reminder John
An excellent video, thanks! How often we wander around familiar territory – or not so familiar – and wander past interesting stuff.
And thanks for getting me onto “The Outer Circle”. I found an excellent online copy here:
https://archive.org/details/outercirclerambl00burk/mode/2up?view=theater
Interesting how Sherrick Green in the intro seems now only to exist as a memory, in Sherrick Green Road. I wonder if there are other clues thereabouts!
I did have a look around Sherrick Green Road a couple of years ago but couldn’t find anything else sadly. Even asked a few people but drew a blank