Exploring the History of Plaistow & West Ham Park

Two suggestions in a recent Q&A video led to great East London day out.

I started with a walk from the Gurney obelisk on Stratford Broadway to the Black Lion pub in Plaistow to meet Tweedy Pubs, an 18th century coaching inn. It is indeed a great pub, an authentic London boozer as had been suggested with excellent cask ale. After our pint we started our stroll and Tweedy pointed out a couple of lost pubs – The Coach and Horses, and The Greyhound. I’d passed another lost pub on the way to the Black Lion, The Railway Tavern opposite Plaistow tube station. Tweedy talked about Plaistow resident Luke Howard who came up with the naming convention for clouds, although in the comments people are very keen to point out that Howard is claimed by Tottenham with a blue plaque to seal the association.

We then walked through Plaistow Park and discussed some of the history of Plaistow from Thomas Burke’s enthusiastic description of Plastovians in the 1920s to the grand houses that once marked this marshy lowland including homes of the Earl of Essex and the Duke of Cumberland. Our meander took us to the site of a former tramway garage just off Tunmarsh Lane. Then we parted company on Barking Road where I signed copies of my new publication The Black Path at Newham Bookshop.

John Rogers at Newham Bookshop
John Rogers Plaistow Park

From the bookshop I walked through the backstreets of Plaistow to West Ham Park where I delved into the history of this fantastic London park which is celebrating its 150 year anniversary this year. Once the home of Dr Fothergill at Ham House, it was bought by the Gurney family from Norwich in the 18th Century and then eventually purchased by the Corporation of London in 1874 to be preserved as a public park. The park keeper’s whistle ended my autumn stroll around Plaistow and West Ham Park and I made my way over the railway tracks and up Odessa Road for a pint in Leytonstone to round off a fantastic day.

Watch  @TweedyPubs video here

Autumn Walk on the Capital Ring

Walk 3 – Crystal Palace to Beckenham Place Park

About twenty years ago I collected the whole set of free Capital Ring leaflets from Thornhill Square Library in Islington. We used to go there for the ‘Stay and Play’ sessions in the basement and to use the Children’s Library. But as these things often transpire I didn’t actually use the maps until early March 2020 when I walked from Richmond Bridge to Horsenden Hill (Walks 7, 8 and part of 9). It was a great walk. I didn’t go back onto the Capital Ring until February 2023 when I did the glorious stroll from Crystal Palace to Streatham Common (Walk 4). So the other Sunday, with a light rain moistening the golden leaf-fall, seemed like the perfect time to make a run to London’s inner orbital walking trail.

Autumn trees in Beckenham on the Capital Ring

The Capital Ring is the kid sibling of the London Loop – 78 miles compared to the Loop’s 150 miles divided into 15 sections rather than 24. And a key point is that they’re much closer to Central London making each section much more accessible. The season seemed to beckon me back to Crystal Palace but to walk in the opposite direction towards Grove Park (Walk 3). With the leaflet as my guide I circuited Crystal Palace Park, paid homage to the dinosaurs before heading out along Penge High Street. I could barely have chosen a more perfect suburban autumn perambulation as the route drew me across Alexandra Park, down Old Farm Lane, traversing Cator Park where the Chaffinch Brook and the River Beck flow, before I ended my Capital Ring excursion on the heights of Beckenham Place Park with its grand manor house and views out over Kent and Surrey.

Beckenham Place Park - Capital Ring

How long will it be before I return to the Capital Ring, I have no idea. I still have a short section of the London Loop to complete, but there’s no hurry. The Thornhill Square leaflets on top of my bookshelf aren’t going anywhere and will wait patiently till I’m stuck for an idea for a walk and remember they’re up there looking down at me.

Islington’s Lost River and the source of the Walbrook

Islington the Watershed

It feels apt to be posting the blog on the day of the launch of my text, The Black Path, in the London Adventure series published by The Three Imposters. Walking the Philley Brook (Filly Brook, Fillebrook) with the brilliant Compilerzone in August that sound artist Brigitte Hart put me in touch with a friend who had pushed his cheese barrow along the length of the Black Path. What a great story. The conversation with Berto the Cheese Merchant turned to the matter of the Angel, and Berto mentioned Stephen Myers book, Walking on Water, which maps one source of the Walbrook rising in Islington and roughly following the course of City Road before making its confluence with the eastern branch of the Walbrook around Curtain Road. Berto placed the source outside the public toilets in White Conduit Street. Wow! This blog has its origins, twenty years ago, in that very terrain when I lived opposite the site of White Conduit House and became obsessed with the pleasure gardens of the area and their associated springs and wells. I had never come across any references to the Walbrook rising at the Angel, despite walking the City of London’s principal lost river twice. I had to explore further.

White Conduit House in 1820 from Old and New London
White Conduit House in 1820 from Old and New London
White Conduit House in 1827
White Conduit House in 1827
Site of White Conduit House Islington
Site of White Conduit House
White Conduit House Islington

Walking in London’s Wonderland

This walk follows the first section of the walk in Chapter 1 of my book This Other London which starts at the majestic Gunnersbury Park in West London. The Park was originally the grounds of Gunnersbury House, a Georgian mansion built for King George III’s aunt Princess Amelia. Today it’s home to Gunnersbury Museum and the house is open to the public.

We then walk along the ‘Golden Mile’ – a strip of the A4 Great West Road running through Brentford that from the 1920’s became an industrial centre for a number of household names and famous for its Art Deco architecture. Some of the companies based there included Smiths Crisps, Gillette, Currys, Beachams, and Firestone Tyres.

Our walk ends at the Gillette Building on Gillette Corner.

Secret Islington Walking Tour around Canonbury

This walk takes into a magical realm just off the hustle and bustle of Upper Street Islington as we take a walking tour around the streets of Canonbury. Ed Glinert described Canonbury as ‘The best preserved and most picturesque suburb in inner London’ (The London Compendium). In The London Nobody Knows, Geoffrey Fletcher wrote that to walk from Upper Street to Canonbury Square is to ‘move into an entirely different world’.

Here are some of the points of interest on the walk:
Highbury Corner
Upper Street
Compton Terrace
Union Chapel
Compton Terrace Gardens
Hope & Anchor
Canonbury Lane
Compton Avenue & Compton Arms
Canonbury Square
Estorick Collection
27b Canonbury Square – George Orwell
17a Canonbury Square – Evelyn Waugh
Canonbury Tower
Canonbury Place
The Canonbury Tavern
Willowbridge Road
New River Path
Marquess Estate
Caldy Walk
The Marquess Pub
Essex Road – Station, Carlton Cinema, South Library, The Old Queens Head, The Winchester
Cross Street
Dagmar Passage, Dagmar Terrace – Little Angel Theatre
St. Marys Church
Kings Head Theatre
St Marys Path
Colebrooke Row – Charles Lamb
Duncan Terrace – Douglas Adams
Regents Canal – Islington Tunnel
Noel Road – Joe Orton

George Orwell plaque, Canonbury Islington
Marquess Tavern Canonbury
Canonbury Tower Islington
Canonbury Tower

Further Reading:
Canonbury Tower and Canonbury House
Books: The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Series by Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams, Prick Up Your Ears by John Lahr, The Orton Diaries ed. John Lahr, Orton the Complete Plays by Joe Orton

Filmed June 2021

A stroll through the colourful story of Paddington

Paddington – more than just a station

My previous experience of Paddington was simply as a place of transit, passing through to catch the westbound train to Devon. But I knew there was more to this historic area than Brunel’s steam age dreams and a cute Peruvian bear with a thing for marmalade sandwiches. Turning to my bookshelf I was surprised to find a chapter on Paddington in Discovering London Villages by John Wittich (pub 1976). The book contains chapters on the more traditional London villages: Hampstead, Chelsea, Highgate, Greenwich etc. Places people associate with the saying that London is a city of villages. But I’d never heard Paddington mentioned in the same way. How wrong I was. Or it could be that John Wittich lived in St. Michael’s Street, Paddington, as I discovered via the YouTube comments on the video.

Paddington Station tracks
St Mary's churchyard Paddington
St Mary’s Churchyard
St Mary’s Churchyard
Paddington Green
Paddington Green

Another unlikely source of commentary came from Geoffrey Fletcher’s The London Nobody Knows (pub 1962), also a former Paddington resident. I always associate Fletcher with Islington, Clerkenwell and Camden and those streets around the Inns of Court. However Fletcher was enthusiastic about the charms of Paddington writing that, “I claim to write on it with authority, since I tramped nearly every inch of it when I lived in Gloucester Place and that reminds me of a characteristic London feature, the quick transition from a well-off to a seedy area at the drop of a hat. A single street becomes a sort of Mason-Dixon line of demarcation. You could spend a lifetime nosing round Paddington, and still make discoveries.”

Porchester Place Paddington
Porchester Place
Church Street Market Paddington

Fletcher paints a vivid scene, as well as one of his characteristic illustrations, of neighbourhood life around Star Street, Paddington. And despite the book being published in 1962, you can still feel the vibe that he described over sixty years ago. The plant pots are still on the windowsills as well.
It was Fletcher who guided me from St. Mary’s Churchyard and Paddington Green with its Cold War concrete Civil Defence Report and Control Centre to Church Street Market on the other side of Edgware Road where he once picked up an early Turner drawing for a fiver. An antiques market lined the street. You could browse the scattered buffet of furniture, rugs, artworks, and bric-a-brac at leisure free from the crush of Portobello Market. It’s a real gem. Although I didn’t find any bargain art treasures like Fletcher claims to have done.

Connaught Square Paddington
Connaught Square

I crossed over Edgware Road, back following John Wittich’s Paddington trail, particularly interested in the burial ground where Laurence Sterne had been buried, dug up by grave robbers, then re-buried. Wittich didn’t name the graveyard but someone posted the information about St George’s Fields in the comments, now a ziggurat style housing block but retaining some of the burial grounds and portions of the high double walls placed there to prevent resurrectionists lobbing corpses over.

Site of the Tyburn Tree
Site of the Tyburn Tree plaque

The walk had to end at the site of the Tyburn Tree after a visit to the Tyburn Shrine – an analogue of Paris’ Mount of Martyrs (Montmartre) at the Hill of Martyrs (Tyburn). Although a tree may well have been the original site of execution, the Tyburn Tree was a terrifying gallows that could hang twenty-four people at a time. A truly grim marker in the London landscape.