Sometimes quests come to you unexpectedly. I was looking for the source of the Mar Dyke on Google Map and spotted a heritage marker in a field near the village of Bulphan in Essex. Zooming in on the map to see what artefact or building was to be found, it simply read ‘Easternmost Point of Greater London’. I had to go and see what was there.
The journey to the eastern edge of Greater London starts on the Romford to Upminster Overground line (to be renamed the Liberty line) and then goes along St Mary’s Lane to Thames Chase Community Forest, crosses the M25 to St Mary Magdalene in North Ockendon then picks up Fen Lane to the border of Greater London on the banks of the Mar Dyke, in the London Borough of Havering.
One evening a friend sent me a photo of a church with the caption, ‘Why is there a cow on this church?’ On closer inspection the cow looked like a bull with horns, which would be just as odd. I immediately thought of the cult of Mithras and the overlap with Christianity. But even so why was it displayed on the eastern apex of a church roof, even if that church was in a place called Hornchurch.
The St. Andrew’s Church website just added to the sense of mystery: “At the East end of the roof is a bull’s head statue, which is a unique feature to find on a church. However, in 1222 the first written reference to the church mentions the monasterium cornutum or horned church at Havering. There are numerous legends and theories to explain the existence of the horns, but the truth remains obscure. In 1610 the horns were thought to have been made of lead but when they were repaired in 1824 they were found to be made of copper. In 1999 the copper horns were stolen from the bull’ s head. They were never recovered and new horns replaced them in 2001.”
The only solution was to strike out on foot to see what could be discovered on the ground. So the other week I caught the Elizabeth Line to Romford and walked down to the Roman Hornchurch Road and met Roxanne in St Andrew’s Churchyard to investigate.
St. Andrew’s Hornchurch
From St. Andrew’s we strolled up to the windmill at Upminster, which Rox told me had only recently re-acquired its sails. Naturally I thought of Don Quixote and how he saw a field of windmills as a hoard of giants and charged them on his donkey. It might also be a good metaphor for my practice of walking. The other significant location on the old Roman road that I wanted to visit was St. Leonard’s Church where the Revd. William Derham made the first accurate calculation of the speed of sound from the church tower in 1709. A Fellow of the Royal Society and contemporary of Sir Isaac Newton, Derham sounds like quite a character to have found himself in what would have been a fairly sleepy Essex village.
St. Andrew’s churchyard, Hornchurch
Roxanne departed and I continued to the medieval tithe barn, which dates from 1450 and now houses the brilliantly named Museum of Nostalgia. Sadly it was closed the day I visited. Crossing back over the Ingrebourne Valley, I encountered the odd isolated stretch of the London Overground which connects Romford to Upminster via Emerson Park along a single track. An information board in St. Andrew’s Park informed me that this cutting was carved out by the Anglian ice sheet around 450,000 years ago ‘marking the maximum southerly extent of the ice sheet during the whole of the Ice Age’ making it ‘one of the most important Ice Age sites in Britain.’
Upminster windmill
My circuit was completed by returning to the heart of Hornchurch around the Queen’s theatre. Firstly I admired Fairkytes Hall, a mid-18th century house whose former occupants included Joseph Fry (son of Elizabeth Fry the prison reformer) a member of the influential Quaker family famous for chocolate and banking. And finally Langtons House, an even finer 18th century pile with gardens laid out to plans created by Humphrey Repton. The only way to round off such a glorious perambulation around Hornchurch and Upminster was to catch the train from Emerson Park along the single track back to Romford.
Massive thanks to Roxanne Maguire for inspiring and instigating this walk
My walk along the River Rom started on the edge of Hainault Forest following a section of the London Loop to our first sighting of the Rom near Carter Lane. This is where I’d initially encountered the Rom, on walks over Dog Kennel Hill, and up the avenue of Redwoods to Havering-atte-Bower. I’d wondered about its course, suspecting its passage to the Thames would not be an easy one as it traversed Romford and industrial Dagenham.
We pass through the streets that lead to Collier Row and down North Street to Romford Town Centre and Romford Market. Leaving the town centre we follow the Rom through a series of parks, Grenfell and The Chase where it becomes the boundary between the London Boroughs of Havering and Barking and Dagenham. In its lower reaches the Rom becomes the Beam River before it runs through the site of the Ford motor works at Dagenham.
London Loop Sections 22 + 23 – Harold Wood to Rainham
The Ingrebourne River is a walk that’s often suggested in comments on my YouTube videos. It rises somewhere on South Weald Common and runs through the London Borough of Havering to the Thames at Rainham. The Romford Recorder reports that the “earliest mention comes in a charter of the boundaries of Upminster Hall manor from 1062, four years before William the Conqueror. There it’s called “Ingceburne” – probably the river of somebody called “Inga”
Setting out to walk the Ingrebourne the other week, I noticed that the London Loop sections 22 & 23 follow the course of the river from Harold Wood to Rainham. It’s a walk that would combine the revelations of a suburban river walk with the joys of the London Loop. And it was a walk that delivered on all points – parklands, riverscapes, pylons, country parks, pillboxes & tett turrets, an over-enthusiastic cow, and a beautiful sunset over Rainham.
Tett Turret on site of RAF Hornchurch
WW2 Pillbox on site of RAF Hornchurc
Music in this video from the YouTube Audio Library
Nevada City by Huma-Huma
Fresh Fallen Snow by Chris Haugen
Tupelo Train by Chris Haugen
Little Drunk, Quiet Floats by Puddle of Infinity
Pachabelly by Huma-Huma
Prompted by a comment on a previous YouTube video I headed out the other week in search of the remains of the “alate temple of the druids” identified by William Stukeley on Navestock Common in the early 18th Century.
The walk started at Harold Wood, then passed over Central Park Harold Hill and then across the beautiful Dagnam Park. From here I progressed to Noak Hill and up to Navestock Common – or what remains of it.
Here are some of the notes I found relating to Stukeley’s ‘Druid temple’:
“Another ancient earthwork, of which hardly any traces remain, was situated on Navestock Common, by the road from Ditchleys (in South Weald) to Princesgate, near the parish and hundred boundary. It was visited on several occasions in the 18th century by William Stukeley (1687-1765) who described it as an ‘alate temple’.” https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/essex/vol4/pp139-143#highlight-first
“In 1725 William Stukely came across a feature on Navestock Common which he described as a system of mounds and earthworks. He gave the site the name “alate temple of the druids” as part of the earthworks, according to Stukely, took the form of a wing (`ala’ is Latin for wing). E A Rudge reports seeing earthworks in Mason’s Plantation but their size and shape could not be deciphered as they were so overgrown. <1> OS plan card shows a copy of Stukely’s plan. <2> A member of the public (Mr Channon) had reported the flattening of mounds on the Mores Plantation. A site visit to confirm this was made by Havis and Medlycott (4/4/1992) who found that the brambles previously reported had been removed (1986 to 1991) revealing a series of earthwork banks surrounding a central circular mound. The central mound had been heavily quarried with a circle of trees interpreted as denoting the original edge of the mound. Havis suggests this represents a small motte and bailey or two adjoining baileys to the central motte. It is not clear whether this is the temple refered to by Stukely or if that is located at the western end of Mores wood. <4>” http://unlockingessex.essexcc.gov.uk/uep/custom_pages/monument_detail.asp?content_page_id=89&monument_id=2289&content_parents=48,61,63
A livestream from the end of my walk as I headed across Noak Hill back to Harold Wood after going in search of Stukeley’s ‘Druid enclosure’ on Navestock Common. The full edited video from this walk will be on my YouTube channel on 7th October (probably).
This time a week ago London was covered in snow – the ‘Beast from the East’ returned and plunged us back into the Ice Age (or so it felt, the hyperbole is justified). Looking out at my snow-drenched garden I had a strong urge to hit the high ground, walk head-long into a blizard, confront this beast face-to-face. So I got the tube to Grange Hill bound for Havering-atte-Bower.
I’d done a portion of this walk with Rick Pearson for his podcast, London’s Peaks, and at the time vowed to return, partly to capture this majestic route on video but also to see how the walk could be extended.
From the top of Grange Hill to Havering-atte-Bower (the highest point in the London Borough of Havering) follows most of Section 20 of the London Loop, which starts at Chigwell. I’d covered the Chigwell end with Rick and also about a decade ago for my radio show, so I cut that part out in favour of extending the walk at the other end.
As you would expect with the temperature below freezing there were very few people about, Hainault Forest virtually deserted. The climb into the foothills of Havering Country Park, wading through deep muddy puddles was tough but the reward more than adequate compensation. There’s an avenue of majestic Californian Redwood trees that runs though the top end of the wooded park that takes the breath away – it was an honour to be in their presence, these huge benign gods of the glade.
The snow started coming in horizontal when away from the cover of the Redwoods, the wind whipping it up off the Havering Hills. Edward the Confessor had his hunting lodge here, some say this is where the pious king died. Havering-atte-Bower feels like an ‘out-of-place artefact’, a hill village in London that would be more at home in the Chilterns.
I push on through the intensifying flurry, to Bedfords Park, losing my bearings in Bower Wood before crossing into Rise Park and out onto the A12 to catch a Route 66 bus home.
