Just watching the trailer for Forest Gate born Ben Drew/ Plan B’s film Ill Manors and noticed this shot of Wanstead Flats.
Following on from Mike Leigh’s use of the Empress Allotments in Another Year Wanstead is fast becoming the Hollywood of the East.
I was taking the kids for a walk over Wanstead Flats last Sunday to look at the remains of the anti-aircraft gun emplacement when we stumbled on this rusty old metal box poking through the grass.
The boys got excited thinking it was an arms stash – I’d just been telling them about the ‘stay-behind’ brigades which had excited their imaginations.
They were unimpressed by the concrete platform now overgrown with trees – I think they expected to find a rusty old canon. So I took them on to look at the barrage balloon posts again.
But my youngest got distracted by this tree that he thought could make a decent home if you ever needed to hide out in the park.
There’s a great article from the Wanstead Parklands Community Project about the wartime activity in the area.
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| Dusk over Wanstead Flats |
A wander across Wanstead Flats is my Boxing Day tradition. All four of us blew out the mid-winter feast on a walk up to Wanstead.
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| Bush Wood |
Crossing the North Circular is like reaching the sea – the gust of traffic noise blowing in like an ocean breeze, Wanstead perched on its shore like comfortable coastal retirement town.
Twilight walk across a frozen Wanstead Flats in east London on Boxing Day.
I almost literally stumbled upon these curious posts when walking back across Wanstead Flats the other week. I’m fairly certain that they were used to tether the barrage balloons that were part of the air defences based on the Flats during the Second World War. The foundations of the communications hut can still be seen in Long Wood.