Sound of The Walnut Tree Leytonstone on a Sunday night

I sit at a table at the very back of my local Spoons. I have my notebook, the latest copy of London Archaeologist and Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. I check the football results on my phone and scroll the Apple News feed. I actually feel a bit rough and have spent the day in bed but I often use the pub as therapy – both physical and psychological. I’m trying not to get annoyed by the couple at the next table playing clips of awful Euro techno on their phones but shoot them a few glares. They stop for all of five minutes before carrying on. This is a lesson in acceptance. I try to place their language but fail which often means it’s either Portuguese or Hungarian. Then I embrace the cacophony that had broken out around me, a phone call through the speaker, someone’s playing games, a fella is spinning yarns stood over a table, music through phone speaker. I can’t even see what I’m typing anymore on the blogging app. I haven’t even listened back to the recording but it’s of the here and now.

Walnut Tree Leytonstone

This is a throwback to the early days of this blog when I would post photos from a booth from the Spoons on Farringdon Road 2004-05 excited by the possibilities that this new medium offered.

Beneath Our Footsteps – Compiler Exhibition in Leytonstone

Beneath Our Footsteps - John Rogers, Brigitte Hart and Compiler at No.1 Church Lane Leytonstone

Back in August 2024 I collaborated with Compiler and sound artist Brigitte Hart on a walk along Leytonstone’s buried river Philley Brook (Fillebrook, Filly Brook) as part of their project Beneath Our Footsteps where local people engaged with the idea of the river. The walk and the project were a fascinating project and a great new way to highlight the presence of our lost river.
An exhibition over four days took place at No.1 Church Lane Leytonstone that brought together some of the work generated by the project.

Beneath Our Footsteps exhibition by Compiler at No.1 Church Lane
Beneath Our Footsteps exhibition by Compiler at No.1 Church Lane Leytonstone
Beneath Our Footsteps exhibition by Compiler at No.1 Church Lane Leytonstone
Digital map of the buried river Philley Brook (Fillebrook) in Leytonstone
Text by Brigitte Hart
Text by Brigitte Hart
Sound work by Brigitte Hart
Sound work by Brigitte Hart containing recordings of the Philley Brook
Sound work by Brigitte Hart
Old maps of the Philley Brook at No.1 Church Lane Leytonstone
Beneath Our Footsteps exhibition by Compiler at No.1 Church Lane Leytonstone
Beneath Our Footsteps exhibition by Compiler at No.1 Church Lane Leytonstone
Found objects near the Leytonstone source of the Philley Brook
Found objects near the Leytonstone source of the Philley Brook
Near the Leytonstone source of the Philley Brook
Near the Leytonstone source of the Philley Brook
Private view Saturday 8th February 2025, Beneath Our Footsteps exhibition by Compiler at No.1 Church Lane Leytonstone
Private view Saturday 8th February 2025

Pub Chat – talking walking at Filly Brook, Leytonstone

Episode 3 of Pub Chat finds me having a pint at the brilliant Filly Brook, Leytonstone. This is obviously my favourite ‘pub’ name in the world (Filly Brook isn’t strictly a pub, more of a tap room) being named after Leytonstone’s lost river that gurgles beneath the street just yards away. In fact, Weston’s map of the Philley Brook / Filly Brook from this very blog is framed on the wall inside. The beer’s great as well. On this occasion I was supping a collaboration between Filly Brook and Pretty Decent Beer Co., Connections Pale Ale, in celebration of the month-long cultural festival hosted by Filly Brook with £1 from every pint being donated to charity.

Filly Brook Leytonstone

John Smith and the Leytonstone Road Protests in NLR

M11 Link Road, Leytonstone

There’s an excellent blog on the New Left Review website by David Anderson about the films of Leytonstone artist John Smith and the M11 Link Road protests of the early 90s.

“The Link Road protest nevertheless attracted a broad church of supporters, engaging them in a project that, as the Aufheben group put it, aimed not just to stop ‘this one road’ but to create ‘a climate of autonomy, disobedience and resistance’. This included not only local residents and veterans of other road protests, but also a substantial number of artists living in and around Claremont Road. Their presence contributed to a year-long ‘festival’. Throughout 1994, the street was blocked to cars and turned into a public outdoor living room, just as protesters were busy burrowing underneath the houses’ actual living rooms, constructing a fortress that would be difficult for police and bailiffs to dismantle …

The result was, according to McCreery, a space with ‘no formal social organization’ in which ‘every moment of every day amounted to a political act’. Even if he doubts how much ‘radical French theory’ the protesters were actually reading, their activities ‘probably amounted to the most complete expression of situationist techniques ever seen in Britain’.”

https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/kill-the-spiders

Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema returns at Good Shepherd Studios

Good Shepherd Studios Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema
photo by Jake Green

Great night on Wednesday as Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema returned with a screening of What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day? at the wonderful Good Shepherd Studios. Paul Kelly’s brilliant film was in the first programme that I put together for a film night at the Leytonstone Festival in 2007 at the Heathcote Arms alongside shorts by Ian Bourn and John Smith. This led to the launch of Leytonstone Film Club in 2008 (name changed to Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema). Wednesday’s screening was the first of a regular programme of films at Good Shepherd Studios.

What Have You Done Today Mervyn Day? Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema, Good Shepherd Studios
photo by Jake Green

It was a reminder of just how important a film Mervyn Day actually is. Shot in the Lower Lea Valley around Stratford, Bow, Hackney Wick and Canning Town in the summer of 2005, and set on the day the successful bid for the London Olympics was made, it captures a crucial moment in time in the history of London. I attended a screening at the Barbican when we first moved to Leytonstone in 2006 and wrote about the landscape of the film when I went in search of locations.

Paul Kelly and John Rogers, Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema, Good Shepherd Studios 12th April 2023. Photo by Jake Green
photo by Jake Green
photo by Timothy Fox

In the Q&A with Director Paul Kelly, we discussed his collaboration with the pop band St Etienne on this and other films and how they came to make a film about a part of London where few people outside the area ventured. I also asked Paul what the narrative of the film would have been had the Olympic bid been unsuccessful. That’s an interesting alternative history of London.

Paul Kelly and John Rogers - photo by Jake Green. Good Shepherd Studios Leytonstone 12th April 2023
Paul Kelly and John Rogers – photo by Jake Green

After a break of a few months, it was great to be back with Leytonstone Pop-Up Cinema. Thanks so much to Jake Green for giving us a new home at Good Shepherd and it was wonderful to see Stow Film Lounge running the projection. Also thanks to Jake for these fantastic photos.

What this space for the date of our next screening in May.

The Philley Brook / Fillebrook is lost no more

The Philley Brook / Fillebrook - Leytonstone's lost river
The Philley Brook / Fillebrook

It was great to get a really clear view of Leytonstone’s lost river, the Philley Brook (Fillebrook) down beside Auckland Road allotments at the weekend. I’d only previously caught glimpses of dark water through the weeds obscuring the culvert. But now with the undergrowth cleared away the river can be clearly seen flowing above ground. To my knowledge this is the only point where the Philley Brook can be seen, although it can be heard in a number of locations running beneath the streets of Leytonstone and Leyton (I didn’t really hear it in the upper Walthamstow reaches).

The Philley Brook / Fillebrook - Leytonstone's lost river which is prone to cause flooding in Leyton, Leytonstone and Waltamstow
The Philley Brook
The Philley Brook beside Auckland Road allotments Leyton
The Philley Brook goes back underground

Moments before this glorious sighting I’d bumped into Claire while filming a Q&A video for my YouTube channel. I mentioned that I felt I hadn’t resolved the question of where the Philley Brook (Fillebrook) made its confluence with the River Lea or if it merged with the Dagenham Brook first somewhere beneath the Eurostar railway sidings. Being a water professional, Claire recommended taking a look at the Environment Agency Long Term Flood Risk maps. And my word, what a revelation. The course of the buried rivers of the area is marked out in dark blue. Thank you Claire!

Flood Risk map Leyton
Flood Risk map Leyton - Philley Brook / Fillebrook

A New Wetlands for Leytonstone

Wanstead Flats wetlands

Taking a sunset stroll on Wanstead Flats this evening I stumbled upon this marvellous new Wetlands on the rough ground beside Harrow Road Playing Fields.

Wanstead Flats map

“© OpenStreetMap contributors” using data available under the Open Database Licence

It’s evident that the channels around the pond have been recently dug to form a network of ditches – a Leytonstone Wetlands, with the tall rushes rising around the edge of the waterscape, birds fleeting between the reeds and bushes. Previously the pond was lost in amongst the brambles, overgrown and hard to reach, choked by the undergrowth. This has now been cut back, opening out this new landscape.

Old map of Leytonstone

1863 Map of Leytonstone Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk/index.html

The pond can clearly be seen on this 1863 Map of Essex (published 1873) with what could be a channel or ditch leading to Harrow Lane (now Road). So this is a wonderful restoration of the historic landscape of the area. Wood House and Wood Cottage are also interesting features on this map.