Final night of The George, Wanstead

Closing time for this popular local pub

Last night at midnight, Sunday 13th October, Time was called for the final time at The George, Wanstead, as a Wetherspoons pub. There was a sense of occasion from the time we arrived at 10pm. It was packed and stayed that way til midnight when drinks were no longer served. The George Orwell portrait went missing at some point. I wondered what would happen to the maps and paintings of Wanstead Park with the local history information. I ended many a Wanstead Park stroll in the George. And although the pub will re-open under new ownership it will be as part of a more upmarket chain which will price out many of the regulars who had a second home at The George, particularly the older people who could sit there for a few hours with unlimited tea refills for a pound, or enjoy a cheap meal. Wetherspoons get a lot of stick (mainly for their owner’s support for Brexit) but their pubs provide a valuable community resource which will be sorely missed in Wanstead. It felt like a true end of an era. And good luck getting a pint at midnight on a Sunday in Wanstead now.

The George Wanstead 13th October 2024
The George Wanstead 13th October 2024
The George Wanstead 13th October 2024
Site of the missing George Orwell portrait


Here’s some background on the pubs closure as a Spoons and it’s future as the George and Dragon

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

The Invention of Essex at Wanstead Book Festival

Tim Burrows and John Rogers at Wanstead Book Festival, Wanstead Library 29th September 2023. Photo by Giles Wilson.
photo by Giles Wilson

It was a real pleasure to have an onstage conversation with Tim Burrows on Friday evening, about his recently published book, The Invention of Essex. The event was part of the Wanstead Book Festival organised by Giles Wilson as part of the Wanstead Fringe Festival – a three week celebration of arts and culture that featured around 120 events.

Tim’s book takes beneath the veneer of TOWIE and all the litany of stereotypes that have been foisted upon this complex county that seems to been a bellwether location for how the nation feels about itself. The book is also a fascinating exploration of the topography of Essex, the ‘maligned marshes’ and the deadly Essex agues.

Welcome to New London - journeys and encounters in the post-Olympic city by John Rogers at Wanstead Fringe Festival 29th September 2023

It was also the first public appearance of my new book Welcome to New London – journeys and encounters in the post-Olympic city. I believe Wanstead Bookshop has a few copies left over from last night and Newham Bookshop should have some in stock from Monday.

Welcome to New London - journeys and encounters in the post-Olympic city by John Rogers at Wanstead Fringe Festival 29th September 2023

The book is also available to pre-order on Amazon and from other booksellers using the ISBN: 9781739539207

Roding Valley Edgelands Walk from Wanstead to Chigwell

Finding myself in Wanstead near the Roding at 3pm on a Sunday afternoon, I decided to head for Chigwell – a great place to end a walk in the dark. I would like to have had more daylight to go looking for the springs that gave Chigwell – or Cicca’s / King’s Well its name. But it wasn’t to be. In daylight hours Chigwell has been a place I’ve passed through, crossing the Roding Valley or heading up to Hainault Forest and Havering-atte-Bower. I’ve yet to find the time to dwell there hunting for the wells and springs. That feels like a summer pursuit.

I crossed the Roding and climbed the steps to Roding Lane South, the terminus point of the 366 bus route. There’s something so romantic about a single-decker in a layby at the end of a bus route. This is a road that has it all – not only the bus terminus but the river, the pylons rising from the throbbing substation, the private hospital opposite the pet cemetery, the listed Victorian pumping station, the industrial estate complete with transit bus depot. A limping lady who saw me filming came to tell me that one of the industrial units had been converted into temporary housing and she was sure the pylons were draining her energy.

Trebor Woodford

Trebor House 1956

The large blue building on Woodford Avenue opposite the Toby Carvery, always draws me in. A 50’s industrial building it’s almost perfect in its symmetry and form. I often feel a slight guilt in my admiration. The comments on the YouTube video banished any such guilt in focussing my attention on this functional building as people told me that it was originally the Trebor sweets factory – a legendary Willy Wonka-like location. Who didn’t grow up sucking on Trebor Refreshers and still partake of an Extra Strong Mint. I had no idea that Trebor had started life in East London, one of the founders in fact from Leytonstone – Sydney Herbert Marks. The original factory was in Katherine Road, Forest Gate and was destroyed by a German bomb in 1944.  This glorious building, Trebor House, was built in 1956 on the site of a bungalow as the Trebor HQ.

subway sign

subway woodford

I took the subway beneath Woodford Avenue and made my way along Roding Lane North towards Hospital Hill Wood where the water tower from the Victorian Claybury Asylum still dominates the summit. The light was starting to fade now. It’d been a wet and  gloomy day and the hopes of sunset from the highlands was dim. The strip of shops along the Green at Woodford Bridge were a welcoming sight but I couldn’t afford to linger, even with the second lock down looming and chances to sit in a cafe diminishing by the day.

Claybury Hall Chigwell old picture

Claybury Hall 1797

In Chigwell Road, Thurlby House sat back off the road remembering former glories from the end of the 18th Century when it was built, and through the 19th Century when its Doric columns were added. It became a Dr. Barnardo’s Home in the early 20th Century and a public library after the Second World War. It’s now private apartments.

The Three Jolly Wheelers sits right on the Essex border as you enter Chigwell. It feels like a border crossing. Dark woods lining the long road. You can imagine the scene in the inn in stagecoach days when a passage through the forest after dark would have been ill-advised. It did look cosy, but I was saving myself for a final Sunday pint in the Red Lion back at Leytonstone – itself an old coaching inn.

The 12-minute wait for a tube at Chigwell Station on the Central Line Loop offered time to absorb the walk. I didn’t get to properly explore Chigwell at my leisure once again but studying the map on the platform did introduce me to the Chigwell Brook, a tributary of the River Roding that I’d previously overlooked. But that will be a walk for another day.

London’s Hidden Hamlet – Snaresbrook

A walk through the lost Hamlet of Snaresbrook on the edge of Epping Forest, now a part of the parish of Wanstead in the London Borough of Redbridge. We cross Leyton Flats to the Eagle Pond and look at the Eagle Pub (currently closed due to Coronavirus). Here we see a section of the Sayers Brook or Sayes Brook that gives Snaresbrook its name. We also see Snaresbrook Crown Court which was built in 1841 as the Infant Orphan Asylum. In the video I describe the building as Gothic, but my friend Andrew Stevens texted to correct me saying that it is in fact Jacobethan.
From here we walk along Woodford Road to look at the modernist wonder of Hermitage Court before walking down Eagle Lane to Falcon Close. I ponder upon the idea of Hauntology, a term first used by Jacques Derrida but popularised by cultural theorist Mark Fisher particularly in relation to music. Fisher spoke of “the failure of the 21st Century to really arrive” and now in the 21st Century we experience “culture floating free from time” . I wonder whether the modernist architecture of Hermitage Court is another example of a “lost future” that I feel a nostalgia for.

Snaresbrook Roding Valley
From Falcon Way we look at the Merchant Seaman’s Orphan Asylum on Hermon Hill built in 1861, then walk down Cranbourne Avenue to Elmcroft Avenue where we enter the Roding Valley Park. A comment on the YouTube video from Darren Clack mentions that this land occupies the old course of the Roding at some point in the past when the river took a more meandering route. We explore the wonderful parkland beside the North Circular Road and River Roding as far as Charlie Brown’s Roundabout and then turn up Chigwell Road to Hermon Hill. Our walk ends at Holy Trinity Church, South Woodford.

Related videos:
River Roding Walks https://bit.ly/2C7ovrR
Mark Fisher: The Slow Canellation of the Future https://youtu.be/aCgkLICTskQ

Filmed on 12th June 2020 during the Lockdown.

Sunday Walk – Wanstead Flats, North Circular and Hollow Ponds

Wanstead Flats

Wanstead Flats

The desire was stay local – within the gravitational field of home but still get in a decent walk. My instinct was to head to the far side of Wanstead Flats and take it from there.

The area of Wanstead Flats burnt so badly last summer gives off a glorious smell of resurgent wildflowers.

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The ragwort was alive with caterpillars of the cinnabar moth munching on its leaves, ingesting toxins to make themselves unpalatable to birds. Ragwort and the cinnabar caterpillar appear to have an interesting relationship that makes for a diverting spectacle on a summer stroll.

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I always have to pay homage to the barrage balloon posts and marvel at their continued survival.

Wanstead Park

Wanstead Park

After a stop at Aldersbrook Petrol Station for a Starbucks and Greggs donut – which has become one of my favourite Alan Partridge style treats – I head down Park Road and through Wanstead Park which looked as glorious as ever.

St Mary's Wanstead

The bells of St. Mary’s Wanstead tolled as I stood admiring the Borough of Redbridge’s only Grade 1 listed building. I’ve been told St. Mary’s has an interesting crypt that I’ve yet to visit but the interior of the church is a real gem of the East. The graveyard has burials dating back to the establishment of the original medieval church.

Wanstead War Memorial

Wanstead High Street

There’s clearly a Sunday Scene on Wanstead’s wonderful High Street and I bumped into my eldest son carrying a toy keyboard he’d just bought in a charity shop as he headed to a park bench with his mates. A gentleman approached who watches my YouTube videos to ask if I’d made one on the Wanstead Slip and told me of a relic of Wantead House that now resides in a back garden somewhere along Grove Road. It was great to hear his stories of old Leyton and Stratford.

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Snaresbrook – South Woodford

I decided against heading into the forest at Snaresbrook and carried on along the tree-lined road towards South Woodford stopping to take in the modernist glory of Hermitage Court.

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North Circular – South Woodford

Heading up Grove Hill at South Woodford I came to the Willow Path that crosses the North Circular. This seemed like an ideal location to take a selfie which I posted to Instagram as ‘North Circular Selfie’. I’ve been meaning to make a film of a walk round the North Circular (perhaps over two days rather than one long schlep) for some time but now wonder if documenting the walk with a series of selfies charting my gradual decline as the pollution takes its toll might work better.

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Carnarvon Road, South Woodford

Carnarvon Road, South Woodford has some incredible buildings. Firstly you’re greeted with what appears to be the back of some kind of industrial building – although I couldn’t locate the front. Then across the street is this beautiful modernist block that looks as though it may have an interesting former life.

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Epping Forest

I must have walked past this fine oak tree just off Epping New Road at South Woodford a hundred times without noticing this plaque commemorating the planting of the tree by the Lord Mayor of London in 1932 in celebration of the Jubilee of the opening of the forest.

North Circular

Waterworks Corner

At the Rodney Smith stone I decided to turn for home rather than push on through the forest. This of course brought me to one of my favourite London views, from the bridge back across the North Circular at Waterworks Corner. I took another ‘North Circular Selfie’, naturally.

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Walthamstow to the Whipps Cross Lido

I passed through the narrow strip of the forest that takes you behind the Waterworks and St. Peter’s Church emerging at the very tip of Lea Bridge Road. It’s interesting to note that the gate off Snaresbrook Road is labelled ‘Snaresbrook Lido’ and not ‘Whipps Cross Lido’ or ‘Leytonstone Lido’ as I’ve seen the swimming pool named elsewhere.

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The Hollow Ponds

The Hollow Ponds was the perfect place for the walk to end. I rested under an oak tree and nearly nodded off serenaded by the rustling of leaves in the early afternoon breeze.