The Stonebridge Brook in Tottenham

I received this brilliant email from Barry Parker with information about the Stonebridge Brook around Culvert Road and Seven Sisters Road.

“As a child I lived in Greenfield Road,N 15.

The area where Culvert Road met Seven Sisters Road would flood when there was heavy rain in Hornsey. This flooded houses in Culvert Road, Durnford Street, Seven Sisters Road…..
It was a poor area and the Tottenham Council didn’t want to pay for new drainage. My father Robert (Bob) Parker and his friend Fred Boringer ( ex Mayor of Tottenham) mounted a campaign to make the council take action.
It included an article on the back page of the Daily Mirror, my father standing as an independent  candidate in the local election, letters to the rich and famous. As a child I was a stamp collector and I had envelopes from Prince Philip, 10 Downing Street…….
In the end they were successful. Later I remember Culvert Road having large concrete pipes laid.
My aunt lived at 3 Culvert Road and Mygrandfather lived at 607 Seven Sisters Roadthe tobacconists(on the corner of Culvert Road.) When the excavations took place they found that the original culvert was made of wood.
This all happened in the 1950s. I was born in 1946 and the campaigning happened when I was in the Junior School. I think I was about 11 when the work took place.
I always thought that Stonebridge Brook ran into the railway land rather than on Stonebridge Road. The flooding of Culvert road ended  along Seven Sisters Road.at the entrance to Elizabeth Road.
I hope you find this interesting. Feel free to use this in any way you wish. Unfortunately I no longer live in London but in York. 
Yours Barry Parker”

Is this the Only Road in the City of London?

In a recent video I repeated a statement I’d been told by a Freeman of the City of London, and somebody who’d worked in the Lord Mayor’s office. He’d declared that there are ‘no roads in the City of London’. In the comments of that video several people countered that in fact the lower section of Goswell Road was inside the City and therefore rendered that statement factually incorrect.

So I set off on a stroll down the length of Goswell Road, starting at the Angel Islington, to explore the story of the road itself and find the point at which it crossed the border into the Square Mile. It was a fascinating journey into the past of this storied thoroughfare. As to whether in fact it is the City’s only ‘Road’ is ever so slightly inconclusive as can be seen in the comments, with recent boundary changes bringing the Golden Lane Estate into the City of London, and the question of whether the City of London Police or the Metropolitan Police have jurisdiction over the road itself.

The City of London continues to be a source of endless curiosity.

Trip to Norwich for the launch of W.G Sebald’s Shadows of Reality

Royal Arcade Norwich

Writing starts with a photograph, W.G Sebald said on a German TV arts magazine programme about the publication of his book The Emigrants. This clip was played under the looming 15th Century timbered roof of the Dragon Hall in Norwich on Wednesday at the launch of Shadows of Reality – A Catalogue of W.G. Sebald’s Photographic Materials
(Eds. Clive Scott & Nick Warr). The event also marked what would have been Sebald’s 80th birthday, in the city where he worked for much of his life and made his home. I decided to make the trip to Norwich to attend the event, meeting a friend there who had been taught German literature by ‘Max’ Sebald at UEA in the 1980’s. My walk from the station to meet Duncan passed through the Art Nouveau Royal Arcade, built in 1899. Such arcades are intimately connected with strolling poets, flâneurs, through an association with Baudelaire and described at length by German philosopher and theorist Walter Benjamin in The Arcades Project. Sebald was himself a notable strolling poet and would have passed through the Royal Arcade on many occasions.

Swan Yard Norwich
Swan Yard

Duncan and I looped round the narrow medieval streets of Norwich in the hours before the event at the National Centre for Writing at Dragon Hall. Along with a group of Sebald’s former students, Duncan had reprised the Austerlitz walk from Liverpool Street to Alderney Road in Stepney that I’d filmed with artist Bob and Roberta Smith in 2019 using notes provided by Iain Sinclair, who’d been taken on the walk by poet Stephen Watts. It was Watts who’d led W.G Sebald on those original Austerlitz research walks through the East End. The UEA alumni walk of Max’s former students was carried out on the 18th May 2024, the day that would’ve been Sebald’s 80th birthday. There’s an account of the walk on the University of East Anglia website, where W.G Sebald taught for thirty years.

The Music House, King Street, Norwich
The Music House, King Street, Norwich

With still some time to kill we admired the exterior of the Music House in King Street, the oldest house in Norwich, built in the 12th Century.

Shadows of Reality event
W.G Sebald Shadows of Reality event, Norwich
W.G Sebald Shadows of Reality event, Norwich

As a writer of unclassifiable prose, Sebald drew heavily on photographic images and was notable for embedding them within the text in intriguing ways. The Shadows of Reality book collects Sebald’s photographic materials together into a single catalogue with commentary and presented in chronological order. Friends and former colleagues read from Sebald’s works, often in German – the language Sebald wrote in. The conclusion to the evening was its most impactful. An audio recording of W.G Sebald reading from the Emigrants in English at an event at UEA in the 90s that reverberated around the packed medieval hall. It was a poignant and magical event.

W.G. SEBALD: Shadows of Reality – is published by Boiler House Press

The event took place on 12th June 2024

Visit to the Marx Memorial Library

I was passing the Marx Memorial Library on Clerkenwell Green at lunchtime and realised that I’d never actually been inside. Not even as an eager Politics student in my youth. The papery smell in the reading room instantly transported me back through the years. It was intoxicating for a brief moment.

Reading Room, Marx Memorial Library, Clerkenwell Green
The worker of the future upsetting the economic chaos of the present by Jack Hastings

The Library was established on the 50th anniversary of Marx’s death in 1933, ‘with the aim of advancing education, knowledge and learning in the science of Marxism, the history of socialism and the working class movement’, at a time of book burnings in Nazi Germany. It had previously been the print house for Twentieth Century Press which was linked to William Morris and Eleanor Marx (Karl’s daughter). Morris’ contribution is recounted on information plaques around the walls. The fine 18th century building was constructed in 1737 as the Welsh Charity School.

Lenin Room, Marx Memorial Library, Clerkenwell Green
Lenin Room, Marx Memorial Library, Clerkenwell Green

The Lenin Room commemorates V.I Lenin’s presence working in the building between 1902-03 where he published several issues of the newspaper Iskra, which can still be found on the desk. Although this isn’t the exact room in which he worked. During this period Lenin lived nearby in Percy Circus – a plaque marks the building.

Lenin Room, Marx Memorial Library, Clerkenwell Green

The walls are plastered with various socialist and Soviet posters. The Bakers’ Union were having a meeting, so we unfortunately couldn’t see the hall nor the memorial garden to the British International Brigades who fought in the Spanish Civil War.
The Library holds over 55,000 books, pamphlets and periodicals, including some unique collections.

Picture of Karl Marx at the Marx Memorial Library, Clerkenwell Green

Related post – Clerkenwell Tales

Sniggs Alley & the Oldest Pub in England

“Every town on the multiverse has a part that is something like Ankh-Morpork’s Shades. It’s usually the oldest part, its lanes faithfully following the original tracks of medieval cows going down to the river, and they have names like Shambles, the Rookery, Sniggs Alley …”
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

A walk to find a location from best-selling author Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of books nestled in the Chilterns countryside close to where Pratchett grew up – and also my childhood home. Sniggs Alley is a place in Ankh-Morpork on the Discworld. It’s also an ancient footpath that runs from Loudwater to the village of Penn in Buckinghamshire. Our quest to find Sniggs Alley starts in High Wycombe and we walk along the A40 London Road to Loudwater before walking into the Chiltern Hills. We then turn towards Forty Green, near Beaconsfield, where Terry Pratchett grew up. At Lude Farm we pass the field where a B17 bomber crashed on 12 August 1944.

Sniggs Alley, Loudwater Buckinghamshire
Royal Standard of England, Forty Green

At Forty Green we stop for a pint on the Royal Standard of England, which is the oldest free house in England and has existed for over 900 years. The final part of the walk takes to Beaconsfield Library where Terry Pratchett spent much time reading and studying.

Pub Chat from the George, Wanstead

London Pub Chat – Old Traditions, Best Walks, Tube Problems etc.

Sunday chat over a pint in the historic George pub in Wanstead, East London. There’s been a pub on this site since at least 1716 (see the shot of a historic sign on the side of the pub) and it’s reported that Wetherspoons have put the lease up for sale. Read more here
While drinking a pint of Adnams Ghost Ship I answer some of your questions and generally chat about London. Some of the topics covered include:

  • Old London Traditions such as the Knollys Rose Ceremony
  • encounter with the magical walking elf
  • the proliferation of St Mary’s Churches along the Thames from Battersea to Rotherhithe
  • Soho in the 1950s and Iain Sinclair’s Pariah Genius
  • visits to North America and the Continent
  • Favourite tube stations
  • Problems on the Central Line
  • Hugenots in London
  • Roman London around Westminster
  • Best gig memory
  • What does it take to be a good Londoner