High Street 2012
10) MILE END Regent's Canal to tube station
At the Regent's Canal High Street 2012 crosses from E1 to E3. Most drivers would never notice the thread of water beneath [photo], and a bus shelter blocks most of the view for waiting bendy-riders. Instead this is a towpath level treat, where walkers squeeze beneath the low brick arch and pray they don't meet a speeding cyclist ting-tinging their way round the blind corner through the darkness. The local local, The New Globe, has scattered a handful of wooden tables down by the waterside, should patrons fancy a pint in sight of Mile End Lock. More likely, from what I saw, it's a secluded spot for mischievous youth to gather and set fire to things, not all of them smokeable.
The next bridge is unique. It's called the GreenBridge, even though from underneath it's definitely yellow[photo]. It was built at the millennium as part of a major regeneration project, designed to link the two halves of Mile End Park without the need to dodge through the busy traffic below. The 'green' name derives from the grass and shrubs planted all along the 25m-wide bridge, essentially an elevated extension of the park, and a proper local landmark. Except that the bridgetop trees have almost all died, the shrubs have mostly shrivelled and the grass has grown patchy and faded, so the GreenBridge really isn't very green any longer. Maybe the park's gardeners forgot to water it regularly, or maybe Tower Hamlets budget just couldn't maintain the original pristine landscape. Whatever, this drought-stricken span always seems overlooked and underused by local people... much like the rest of Mile End Park. It's a salutary warning to planners of the 2012 Olympic Park up the road that money can create an amazing public space but nothing can force people to use it.
Never mind. If you lot don't want to use the Green Bridge much, it means I can stand up here more often and enjoy the view in peace. To the west is the half of HS2012 along which I've already walked, with a cluster of City skyscrapers just visible through Queen Mary's campus past the octagonal tower of The Guardian Angels[photo]. Bit close that church, isn't it? To the east stretches the glorious vista of, erm, Mile End[photo]. A gorgeous view for connoisseurs of tower blocks and dual carriageway - one side all leafy and avenue-y, the other rather more built-up and retail. The considerable breadth of the road is immediately evident - trams and trolleybuses used to run all along here without upsetting the rest of the traffic.
The Green Bridge provides an illusory crossing place, a secluded vantage point, somewhere to stand and stare. We really don't have enough contours in this part of London, so any accessible elevation is duly welcome. But the one thing you won't see from up here is the bustling parade beneath the green-glazed parapets - home to a series of restaurants and food shops whose construction helped to fund the project in the first place. Alas, that's where all the people are - down below buying frozen peas rather than up top enjoying the view. Their loss.
four local sights » New Globe: It's a pub near a university. It's got to be full of students, n'est-ce pas? [photo] » Club E3: The building on the corner with Burdett Road is Club E3, formerly known as Purple (formerly known by lots of other now-defunct names, formerly the Royal Hotel), where local hedonists queue for RnB, funky house and Old School Garage.
» Mile End station: The station with the oh-so-convenient cross-platform interchange between the District and Central lines, currently looking a right mess because Metronet ripped all the tiles off and then went bust. [photo] » Onyx House: Piers Gough, designer of the Green Bridge, was also the architect of this two-tone office block opposite the station. Previously on this site an Odeon cinema, and before that a large mansion called Essex House (HQ of the Guild of Handicraft).
Your comments • I think the idea of the Green Bridge has been misunderstood. I thought the intention was to enable wildlife to travel further safely and thus ensure greater diversity and therefore a healthier population. A narrower bridge would have been offputing for Mr. Fox and friends. (Pedantic of Purley)
To read the remainder of my HS2012 journey, click here.
High Street 2012 11) BOW (west) Mile End tube to Bow Road tube
Beyond Mile End station, High Street 2012 changes somewhat. Up until now this has been a mostly retail street, with shops on either one side or the other almost all of the way along. No longer. From here onwards there's only the occasional parade of shops, and HS2012 has evolved instead into a neighbourhood where people live. You'd be hard pushed to spot a semi or anything detached - it's all flats, terraces, and terraces divided up into flats. But some of the terraces on the northern side of the road are rather splendid - all uniform Georgian with arched sash windows and parallel chimneypots [photo]. It's a bit of a hint that round the corner lies TredegarSquare, an impressively well-preserved white stucco quadrangle where E3's most well-to-do still reside. Welcome to leafy Bow.
The official changeover between Mile End Road and Bow Road comes in front of St Clement's Hospital (there's still a plaque on the wall proclaiming the edge of the Borough of Poplar, 1900). St Clement's started out as a workhouse 150 years ago before evolving into Bow Infirmary, then Bow Institution, and eventually a wholly psychiatric hospital. So full of depressed patients was the area that Mile End station had to have a Samaritans hotline installed on the westbound platform, at the "jumping" end closest to the oncoming trains. That telephone remains, if you know where to look, but the hospital closed down a couple of years ago. It's since been locked away to await redevelopment, and now a series of eerie empty towers loom through a screen of forbidding trees. Whatever the umpteen-acre site's fate (undoubtedly flats, it's always flats), I trust that the hospital's classical entrance and whitewashed front walls (with green and red shield insignia) will long remain. [photo]
Across at 39 Bow Road lived an unassuming man of the people, the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition in the early 1930s, the Right Honourable GeorgeLansbury MP. A lifelong campaigner for social justice, he fought tirelessly for pacifism, the suffragette movement and the rights of the working man. In 1921, as Mayor of London's most poverty-stricken borough, he led the Poplar Rates Revolt by diverting local taxes to the local poor. Thirty councillors were sent to prison for defying the courts, and council business had to be conducted from inside Brixton prison. One of those imprisoned was George's daughter-in-law Minnie, who died shortly afterwards from pneumonia. Bowler-hatted George became Labour leader almost by default, after the party's rout in the 1931 General Election had left no credible alternative. But his pacifist nature was at odds with the growing threat from Germany, and after four years he was replaced by his younger deputy Clement Attlee. Lansbury remained a popular and principled elder statesman right up to his death in 1940. Germany, alas, responded by flattening the family home a few months later.
At number 39 today there's a rather ordinary block of council housing, and a plaque, and a small stone memorial, and quite possibly a couple of spliff-smoking winos on the bench outside [photo]. George would no doubt approve, at least of the former. Daughter-in-law Minnie is remembered up the road at Electric House, where a recently restored memorial clock gleams proudly above a betting shop [photo]. But you're probably most aware of Mr Lansbury's legacy through his grand-daughter Angela, the internationally renowned actress. Sadly (or perhaps thankfully) CBS decided to locate JessicaFletcher's murder capital far from her childhood home in Bow, and so E3's innocent gangsta hoodies remain unchampioned.
four local sights » The Milestone: A Mile End pub that can't make up its mind what it's called. Over the last decade or so it's been the Cornucopia, Horn of Plenty, Flautist and Firkin, Matter of Time, Virtue, and (as of a couple of months ago) The Milestone. No desperate rebranding would encourage me to venture inside, however. » Spratts: Until a few months ago Tower Hamlets Planning team hung out at 47 Bow Road in what was once the sales office of the world's first dogbiscuitcompany (founded by an electrician from Ohio). » Milepost: A rusty black and white metal mileage marker outside Electric House declares "Whitechapel Church 2", "Stratford 1½". This 200-year-old relic is best seen from a vantage point in the middle of the road, should you dare to risk standing in the path of an oncoming stagecoach to photograph it. [photo] » Bow Road station: "This simple brick and timber building, set above the railway cutting, is typical of an Edwardian station. The platforms, situated where the railway emerges from the 'below street' tunnel to the surface, is notable for the brick retaining walls and the massive cast iron columns, set along the curved platforms, that support the roof structure with their brick lined 'jack arches' above the tracks." So says the newly installed heritage plaque in the ticket hall, brilliantly positioned in a corner where nobody will ever stop to read it. [photo]
Your comments • "Spratts", once at 47 Bow Road, was the building where Tower Hamlets Planning team were located up until about six months ago. It was then vacated and locked up prior to selling the site for another new residential development, but in the meantime it has been squatted and now boasts several anti war posters in the first floor windows. (fishislandskin) • I'm not certain but I'm sure the Council had reserved the St Clements site to extend the Southern Grove buildings into a new town hall - the lease on the current town hall towers must have been extended if they're still there. (Bina) • In fact Both the St Clements site and the Southern Grove site have been earmarked for residential redevelopment, the lease on the current town hall at Clove Crescent E14 has indeed been extended and the Council have also leased the major part of an additional building next door to it, this has enabled them to empty out many various buildings around the borough such as 47 Bow road. (fishislandskin)
High Street 2012 12) BOW ROAD Bow Road tube station to Fairfield Road
A century ago, this next stretch of road would have been the part of Bow everybody visited. Here was the municipal hub of a growing suburb, the civic centre, the social heart. It doesn't feel quite so must-see today.
100-ish years back: Come, let us traverse eastwards from the brand new Metropolitan District Railway station. Here is Tredegar House where many hundreds of nurses have been been trained, including no lesser angel than the formidable Miss Edith Cavell. How splendid is the new police station with its capacious stables at the rear. One wonders many tiresome suffragettes have spent the night within its gloomy lock-ups before crossing the street to be tried in Bow Court House! Today: Oi, let's walk down to the takeaway. Do stop to pick up a free newspaper from the racks outside the tube station, there's bound to be one in your language [photo]. I see there are flats for sale in Tredegar House for 300K. I bet the Police Station will be turned into flats too soon - the front desk's only open 35 hours a week[photo]. Oops, mind that dollop of steaming horseshit. Hey, isn't that wotsisname, the drug-addled pop star, stumbling down the steps in front of the Thames Magistrates Court surrounded by paparazzi?
100-ish years back: Hark, a locomotive of the London & Blackwall is belching smoke across the railway bridge before halting at the elevated Bow Road station. To which of the two cinemas immediately beyond shall we give our custom? I must say I rather fancy viewing the jolly electrographic spectacle of The Count of Monte Cristo. A pint of finest milk stout in the Little Driver will slip down a treat for thruppence, and then perchance a crumpet or two for tea. Today: Hardly any trains ever cross the off-network Ferodo Bridge, which must be how that intrusive spraypaint sketchin got daubed up there [photo]. I need to punt a fiver in the betting shop (it's the old station's ticket office you know), and then I thought we'd grab a DVD from the Somerfield on the garage forecourt. Dunno about you but I'd kill for a greasy breakfast from the tiny Mighty Bite caff. And then let's join the gang in the LittleDriver beer garden and get rat-arsed on real ale.
100-ish years back: Bow station boasts a mighty edifice, does it not, with four platforms beneath road level and a bustling tram stop directly outside the main entrance. Up above are the rooms of the Bow and Bromley Institute, where I need to pay my subscription to Henry the secretary. I'm certain that the tellers at the Aid in Thrift Mutual Benefit Building Society on the second floor will provide. And thence to my piano lesson with Mistress Mumford at number 147, such sweet music shall we make! Today: Watch out for dem bastard pickpockets beneath the windswept canopy of Bow Church DLR. Jeez, the ticket inspectors are everywhere, I think I'll hop on the free bendy bus to Whitechapel instead. But first I need to get a packet of fags from the bloke in the lock-up kiosk, so long as the Barclays cash machine nextdoor isn't buggered again. Those bleeding kids in the playground at Bow School ain't half making a racket, but they'll be off down the kebab shop soon enough.
100-ish years back: Let us away to the Bromley Vestry Hall for an evening of light flirtatiousness and merry dance. It is a far better use of land, is it not, than the humble almshouses which once stood upon this very spot. And then we shall partake of another pint or three in the Bow Bells, until the landlord ejects us out onto the gas-lit street to stumble home. I trust that Doctor Lightburne, in his surgery on the corner of Fairfield Road, will have the patience to patch us up in the morning. Today: Mind out, there's a tattooed wedding party blocking the pavement outside the Registry Office. They'll probably end up in the bright orange boozer nextdoor, watching some unconvincing Elvis impersonator and vomiting in the urinals, before crossing to the sliproad outside the old Town Hall and piling into their pink stretch limo back to Plaistow. Nice 'ere, innit? [photo]
four local sights » Mornington Grove: Still bears the original stone street name of Mornington Road, carved into a wall, punctuated with a totally unnecessary full stop. [photos of local street signs] » Kitcat Terrace: Not a row of chocolate townhouses, but a cul-de-sac named after the Reverend Henry J Kitkat, Rector of St Mary's Church between 1904 and 1921. » Enterprise Rent-A-Car: A small forecourt dispensing temporary wheels to weekend drivers, doing business on the site of the Kray Brothers' first club - the Double R. » Poplar Town Hall: Between 1938 and 1965 the London borough of Poplar was governed from a tall triangular wedge of a building resembling a slice of multi-layered chocolate cake [photo]. Industrious Thames-side activities are depicted in a colourful mosaic map on the underside of the Members Entrance porch [photo]. Meanwhile five carvings of generic labourers grace the sharp curve above Fairfield Road - an architect, a stonemason, a navvy, a carpenter and (of course) an oxy-acetylene welder. Now that Poplar has been consumed into Tower Hamlets, the building lives on as the Bow Business Centre.
Your comments • Some of your blog readers who are fans of "The Bill" may recognise the Ferodo bridge that crosses Bow Road as this view featured in the opening credits in the Original series where a Police car would screech to a halt with a clear view of the bridge in the background. (fishislandskin) • Wouldn't use that cash machine if you value your bank details... (James)
High Street 2012 13) BOW VILLAGE Fairfield Road to Flyover
I live in a medieval village. No anonymous housing estate on the site of a former field for me, oh no. The spot where I live has been part of a thriving settlement for many hundreds of years, a cluster of cottages astride the main East Road whose importance hasslowlygrown over the centuries. My home is built by the old village green, around which generations of bakers and blacksmiths and brewers have plied their trade. But today it's no longer easy to recognise Bow, heavily built up and choked by dual carriageway traffic, as a long-standing location. Only one obvious clue to our village history remains, and that's the church in the middle of the road.
St Mary's church dates back to 1311 when Edward III granted use of a patch of land "in the middle of the King's highway'. Neither the site nor the road have shifted since, although the building has taken a bit of a battering in its time. A storm in 1829 caused the top half of the medieval tower to collapse (cue rebuild 1). By the end of the century the entire building had become unsafe and was threatened with being pulled down to improve traffic flow (cue restoration campaign and rebuild 2). And then, on the very last night of the Blitz, a wayward bomb caused serious damage to the western half and the tower (cue restoration campaign and rebuild 3). The church we see today is a bit of a mishmash of styles [photo], but the lower half of the tower is still very 14th century and the font is even older.
St-Mary's-By-The-Flyover continues to minister to an indifferent parish, severed from the rest of the community on its isolated traffic island. But on the inside, with Bow's buzz and bustle blanked out, it's a delightful building. The roof has ancient oak rafters, the walls are littered with antique memorials and the stained glass window conceals a secret squirrel... as I discovered whilst attending the vicar's summer fete last weekend. Old ladies chatted on wooden chairs in the nave, sipping tea and nibbling cakes, while a second-hand bookstall dispensed Mills & Boon and Blue Peter annuals beneath the belltower. [No, these aren't the famous Bow Bells, because those are at St Mary-le-Bow in the City instead]. I may have failed abjectly to Splat The Rat in the churchyard, but I did manage to walk away from the tombola clutching a photo frame and two cans of Stella. Now that's my kind of church fete.
Bow Road divides in two to pass the church, with considerably older buildings along the northern slipstream. Look east past Mr Gladstone's statue and you'll see what I mean [photo]. The Roman Catholic church opposite the pedestrian crossing was once coupled with a Victorian convent, whose nuns specifically targeted this area in 1868 because they wanted to work "in the worst part of London". How quickly, and desperately, the village of Bow had been swallowed up by the sprawling city. One group who suffered were the matchgirls working at the Bryant and May factory round the corner in Fairfield Road (now Bow Quarter), and whose 1888 strike initiated one of the very first trade unions for women workers. The girls' impoverished lives were improved when their leader, the radical Annie Besant, established the East London Working Women's Club at number 193 (now Link House apartments).
Over on the southern side of the road, razed to create the Bow Bridge council estate in the 1930s, is a more famous location in the feminist struggle. It was at a former baker's shop, now long demolished, that campaigningsuffragetteSylviaPankhurst set up her campaign headquarters in 1912. She painted the words "Votes for women" in big gold letters above the door and set out to mobilise local support for George Lansbury's upcoming pro-suffrage by-election. George narrowly lost, and Sylvia & Co moved on to protest from cheaper premises on the Roman Road. But the issue wouldn't go away, and Bow Road was the scene of many an angry protest, and broken window, and arresting behaviour, before the vote was finally won.
four local sights » Gladstone statue: The respected Liberal Prime Minister gazes out across Bow Road from his lofty plinth, gazing down over a set of barricaded gents urinals that may one day be transformed into a mini subterranean art gallery. William's hands are covered with red paint, daubed by some anonymous protester in the early 90s. [photo] » Co-Op beehive: Above the flagpole at my local Costcutter, formerly part of the Stratford Co-Operative, is an eye-catching stone carving of a beehive and associated buzzy insects. [photo] » Bow Arts Trust: A community of over 100 artists, who splatter and carve and construct, and whose studios are open one weekend every June should you fancy a look inside. In the alleyway between the two buildings, optimistically named "Bow Arts Lane", a selection of brightly coloured fluorescent tubes dangle from the sky. [photo] » Bow Baptist Church: Once a lofty rose-windowed chapel, then a squat post-war brick hall, then (a fortnight ago) completely bulldozed to the ground to make way for another block of tall shiny flats. But a block of flats with a small ground floor chapel, no less. [photo]
Your comments • The statue of Gladstone, sculpted by Albert Bruce-Joy and donated by the directors of Bryant and May’s match factory, dates from 1887. The tradition of daubing the statue with red paint (for blood!) comes from a misapprehension that it was paid for in part by a forced levy from the match worker’s wages. (Bina) • Right where McDonalds is now used to be the offices of Kango Wolf Power Tools Ltd. Suppliers of professional tools - such as jack hammers to dig up concrete - and even had a royal warrant. I seem to remember they disappeared in the late 1980s. (Brendan) • It's surprising that the traditional church fete lives on in Bow of all places, with its multi-everything population. I don't suppose your MP put in an appearance, by any chance? (trad or anon)
High Street 2012 14) STRATFORD HIGH STREET (west) Bow Flyover to Greenway
The Bow Flyover is a point of transition. Previously High Street 2012 has been a bit old-fashioned, a bit retail/residential, a bit compact. And suddenly all that's wiped away. The rest of the road up to Stratford is a bit new-fangled, a bit light industrial, and a bit wide-open. Oh, and just marginally Olympic. All change please.
It's actually the River Lea that marks the boundary proper, the traditional dividing line between Middlesex and Essex. It's been a barrier to east-west travel for millennia, but it wasn't until Queen Matilda nearly drowned trying to get across in the 12th century that a bridge was first built. Its unusual shape resembled the curve of a longbow, and so the area became known as Stratford atte Bowe. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about the place, you know, which is probably more than can be said for the suburb where you live.
There's still an arched bridge here crossing the Lea [photo], but it's now a 1960s concrete road on stilts [photo]. The Bow Flyover is part of a destructive post-war motorwayscheme designed to speed up road traffic around the edge of inner London. Great for through traffic, but curtains for carved-out communities and farewell to any character this river valley might ever have had. Beneath the flyover the replacement ground level bridge is depressingly mundane. A flat concrete slab crosses the low-ceilinged waterway, beneath which the occasional narrowboat disappears into darkness between a Calor Gas dealer and a closed-down graffitied caravan park [photo]. Meanwhile walkers and cyclists are forced up from the towpath and have to dash across the busy main road where no safe crossing is provided. It's not the Lea's finest moment.
High Street 2012 continues eastwards along the old Stratford Causeway, threading its way through the braided waterways of the Lower Lea. The road used to be lined by marshes, mills and factories, the most famous of which was the BowChina Works. In the mid 1700s it churned out world-class porcelain, both "useful and ornamental", specialising in glazed figurines and blue and white chinaware. The factory site is now covered by a cluster of newly-constructed apartment blocks [photo], part of a series of opportunistic developments along Stratford High Street. Some were planned before the Olympics were announced, even more have started springing up since, capitalising on the readily-available easily-knocked-down post-industrial landscape. The dominant architectural style appears to be "shiny and colourful", and anyone buying a penthouse flat will have an excellent view of the adjacent Olympic Park come 2012.
The road rises slightly to cross Joseph Bazalgette's Northern OutfallSewer. Flush a north London toilet and your effluent will eventually pass this point powered by gravity through giant Victorian pipes. The sewer-top is now a long distance footpath called the Greenway [photo] ('Brownway' would surely be more appropriate), which will be appropriated in 2012 to transfer thousands of Olympic visitors from West Ham station to the Olympic stadium. It's a very long walk - I hope they don't mind the smell.
four local sights » J Bulman & Sons Ltd: A not-so-old carpet factory by the flyover, very plain and bricky, and typical of scores closed down and boarded up over the past few years. The "Staff Wanted" sign pictured here hangs jobless from the wall in Cooks Road (although you can't see it any more because some insensitive security firm has nailed their own "keep out, under surveillance" notice over the top). » The Dane Group of Companies: A rare pocket of surviving industry at the top of Sugar House Lane, established by James Dane in 1853 as a manufacturer of printing inks. Their day-glo doggy logo really brightens up the street. [photo] » Porsche showroom: I laughed when I saw Porsche building a showroom on Stratford High Street a few years ago. Now, surrounded by emerging high-rise affluence, the choice doesn't seem quite so stupid. » City Mill Lock: This gated water-step on the Three Mills River at Groves Bridge never really took off as a beauty spot. The council have kindly provided a semi-circle of off-road metal benches overlooking the large tidal basin here, but I've never seen anyone (sober) sit here.
Your comments • What about the usual Ron n'Reg connection with the "Mad Axeman" holding up one of the piles on Bow Flyover? (Allegedly...) (Bowroaduk)
High Street 2012 15) STRATFORD HIGH STREET (east) Greenway to Great Eastern Road
Is there a less High Street-y High Street in the country than Stratford's? No department stores, not a single high street chain, in fact barely even a shop in sight. You might just be able to buy a Mars Bar or get your hair cut, but don't count on much more than that. Instead Stratford High Street is little more than a fast track east, an ex-industrial thoroughfare, a road in transition. Few hang around to find out more.
The nicest building along here is the Yardley factory, a creamy lido-style Art Deco structure, blessed by an attractive "Lavender Girls" mural on the wall above the entrance [photo]. Its location by the Greenway seems a strange place to base a perfumier - beside a none too fragrant river and a stinky sewer - but back in 1903 it made perfect scents. Your great gran no doubt daubed herself with the company's finest flowery essence, once produced and packed herein (until Yardley moved out to new premises beside the Wickford bypass in the 1960s). The old building looks like being a rare survivor of Stratford's pre-Olympic goldrush, its shell now standing alone in a sea of high-rise development (good grief!blimey!). A few metres further west and the Lavender Girls would have been absorbed by the 2012 security frisking zone, but instead their smiling Cockney faces should remind international visitors that not everything round here is shiny and fresh.
The area seems as yet undecided whether it's serving the old community or the new. There are still sufficient grease-covered workers to support a greasy spoon or two, plus the obligatory betting shop and fried chicken dispensary. Giuseppe's barbers shop struggles on, though judging by the photo of a moustached model in the window this hairdresser hasn't trimmed any locks since the Seventies [photo]. Local ladies can sometimes be seen puffing and gossiping outside the entrance to the Gala Bingo Hall, before vanishing swiftly back inside for another eyes down. But facilities are thinning out - there's just the one garage now and only a single pub - as the street's upmarket transformation begins to plays out. The Labour Party have seemingly given up, as a half-vanished sign in front of their former West Ham HQ bears witness.
As Stratford nears, the older buildings stand firm against the modern onslaught. Stratford Market station hasn't seen a train for 50 years but the southern pavement still diverts beneath its litter-strewn urine-stained Victorian portal. The closed down nightclub opposite is the StratfordRex, born as a three-thousand seat Theatre and Opera House (opera in Stratford! How things change!) before metamorphosing into an Art Deco cinema. And some architect had fun decorating the front of Essex House [photo], topped off with three rampant griffins, not that anybody ever thinks to look up and notice. Yes, those really are palm trees down the centre of the road [photo], plus a few shiny metal sculptures for good measure to celebrate the area's inherent Newham-ness. But there's still nowhere to buy bread, furniture or shoes. Keep walking, genuine High Street approaching.
four local sights » Holiday Inn Express: It's hard to imagine anyone wanting to stay here, on Stratford High Street, no matter how "vibrant" the website claims the area is. This identikit hostel may be ideally situated for the Olympic Park, but I can't believe local construction workers get paid enough to stay overnight. » Pie Crust Cafe: One of my readers recommends checking out the Pie Crust. "It's a place that I love very much. A small run down looking cafe serving Thai dishes alongside the usual bacon and eggs. Run by friendly Thais the place is decorated with golfing trophies, colourful Thai pictures and a British Rail clock. Nothing beats a hot plate of chilli beef and onions with rice on a damp and cold Saturday morning. Funnily enough it does not seem to serve many pies. Kind of opposite the Holiday Inn, it is quite easy to miss. It is mostly frequented by local builders and is by far the best place to eat in Stratford."[photo] » Log Cabin: Former coaching inn, now a forlorn semi-boarded-up pub with drooping green and gold sunshades [photo]. Wholly inappropriate black and white photos of grinning Cockneyfolk fill each first floor window. » Greenwich meridian: There's a plaque in the pavement on Stratford bridge, above the Jubilee line, marking passage from the western to the eastern hemisphere. There's no such plaque on the Bingo Hall on the opposite side of the street (they don't do zero, obviously).
High Street 2012 16) STRATFORD Great Eastern Road to St John's church
Four miles from the City, at the eastern end of High Street 2012, we finally reach Stratford. Apologies, it's not the most uplifting end to a journey, is it? Unlike its upon-Avon counterpart, this Stratford is nowhere any tourist would ever dream of visiting. Its shops are absolutely nothing special, its attractions are limited and its amenities well buried. But in just four years time all this should have changed. The eyes of the world will be on the Olympic Park immediately to the west, and East London's shoppers will be flocking to the Stratford City development adjacent to the north. Can the traditional heart of Stratford survive the transformation?
This striking spiky sculpture stands on a traffic island on the western edge of Stratford's inner ring road [photo]. It's called RailwayTree and, according to its creator, it "symbolises Stratford as a focal point of arrival and departure by featuring a dynamic series of curved steel beams that radiate and rise out of the ground to converge at a central point before reaching for the sky in all directions". Obviously. Stratford has considerable railway heritage, and indeed most of the 180 acres of Stratford Citydevelopment is taking place across former railway marshalling yards. Look past the bus station and you can already see the first buildings climbing above the skyline. A new footbridge is due to connect the old to the new, and the old is going to need all the help it can get.
Onward into the traditional centre of town, along Stratford Broadway [photo]. The whole of Broadway's left flank dates from the mid 60s when the previous buildings were compulsorily purchased and replaced by Stratford Shopping Centre[photo]. And it shows. However state-of-the-art its design at the time, the echoing mall boasts little to attract today's discerning shopper. You'll search in vain for haute couture or an organic delicatessen because there's nothing here more sophisticated than Boots and Woolies. Most local shoppers are more at home in the artificial market near the pound shops, or in the warren of "accessibly-priced" retailers hidden away down an uninviting passage behind Wilkinson. Oh yes, Stratford has been credit-crunch-ready for years.
Exit the shopping centre onto the Broadway, beside an unlikely Starbucks, and you'll more than likely be met by some evangelical leaflet-waver (although last time I was here a BBC journalist thrust a microphone under my nose and tried to ask me about the Olympics instead). There's a real multicultural mix out here, and usually a youthful vibe, although some might interpret the ambience as edgy and a little insecure. The far side of the street is usually a little quieter, at least away from the bus stops, maybe because that's where the older buildings are. You may not be able to see the Old Town Hall at the moment because it's shrouded in scaffolding, but the occasional rooftop statue still pokes out defiantly above the green sheeting. And if you want to go drinking in a pub with even a smidgeon of character then be sure not to stay in the 60s zone, be sure to cross the road.
Finally, on this long journey up High Street 2012, to St John's Church. It's 1834 vintage, built in the Early English style with a ornate southwestern spire. Outside is another tall stone spire - a Martyr's Monument commemorating the burning to death of thirteen Protestant souls on this spot (or hereabouts) in 1556 [photo]. A bit brutal, even by Stratford standards, especially given that two of their number were female and one of those was pregnant. Several thousand turned up to watch the unrepentant Essex zealots go up in flames, whereas nowadays the churchyard attracts considerably smaller crowds for its charismatic open air August services. In fact to most Stratford residents St John's is little more than a useful cut-through, or maybe a secluded spot to enjoy lunchtime sandwiches or an illicit bottle of White Lightning. As we've seen almost all the way along HS2012, the only constant on this street is change.
four local sights » Samuel Gurney Obelisk: Sam was a rich City banker who lived locally in Ham House (now West Ham Park). As a Quaker philanthropist he did much charitable work in the area of penal reform, along with his more well-known sister Elizabeth Fry. And I'm willing to bet that 99% of the people who walk past his obelisk don't know any of that. [photo] » Ye Olde Black Bull: I'm not quite sure how a pub founded in 1892 dares to call itself "Ye Olde", but the "Black Bull" part evidently comes from a statuette lurking two storeys above the entrance. » King Edward VII: Decent boozer and gastropub, serving guest beers and hand-cut chips. Originally called the "King of Prussia", which suited just fine until World War I broke out, at which point the locals promptly renamed it after our own dear just-departed monarch. Now more endearingly known as "King Eddie's". [photo] » Gerard Manley Hopkins memorial: A memorialstone dumped on the pavement outside the library commemorates one of the Victorian era's greatest poets, born at 87 The Grove. Except, hang on, that's not part of High Street 2012 at all, I've gone slightly too far. Enough already.
Your comments • My father was the landlord of the King Edward in 1960. I recall that on occasions he let Joan Littlewoods Theatre Workshop have script readings in the dining room between lunch and evening opening times. There was a dumb waiter from the kitchen to the dining room. I used to earn my pocket money by 'bottling up' the shelves after school. I sang in St John's Church choir - on Saturday we could have as many 6 weddings to sing at, for which we were paid 2/- (two shillings) per wedding. We then rushed up the road to the pie and eel shop for a feast. (Gnome) • Samuel Gurney gives his name to a road in Maryland E15 formerly associated with another famous Stratford product, MMMMattessons sausages and black puddings. Another old name swept away by the Ring road was the Leach Marathon hand-made bicycle. (felix)
Four years from today, less than a mile from where I'm sitting, the opening ceremony of the 30th Summer Olympic Games will take place. Four years might sound like a long time, but it's not. There's no stadium as yet, which is perhaps not surprising given that this time last year the site housed several warehouses and the odd factory. But come 2012 there's got to be a huge circular grandstand erected around a mighty arena, otherwise there'll be nowhere to let off the balloons and fireworks. And somebody's got to build it.
Every month since the Olympic Park was sealed off, I've been up onto the Greenway bridge to take a same-angled photo. This month an extra crane has gone up, and all the surrounding land has been flattened and compacted to make terraces suitable for building. Marshgate Lane has been diverted, obliterated even, to be replaced by a new orbital distributor road for construction traffic. But the most striking change I saw wasn't on the Olympic stadium site at all, it was up on the Greenway, and it was walking home.
The Greenway's always been a fairly quiet footpath, bar the odd boy racer on a stolen moped, but no longer. Come half past five in the evening it's suddenly become a hive of commuter activity. No really. I stood to one side as a steady drip of men in suits, women in heels and workmen in boots wandered by, fresh from clocking off. The construction phase has begun, and now there's work to be done. Two great big temporary office blocks have been erected on the edge of the Olympic site, and their pedestrian access is via a long walkway to the Greenway. It's suddenly clear why the ODA have been so keen to keep this sewer-top footpath open during the construction period - it's the main route between the site office and the nearest DLR station at Pudding Mill Lane. And I suspect this also explains the expense spent on installing shiny new streetlights (but only along this northernmost stretch of the Greenway and not along any of the rest yet).
Another unexpected feature was a new pedestrian crossing at the bottom of the ramp beneath the railway arches. It's unlike any I've ever used before. It has lights and push buttons and green men and everything, but this area is so health and safety conscious that the whole length of the roadway is securely fenced off, even the crossing. Wait patiently and the two waiting wardens will press the button for you, stop the traffic and open their gate to let you across. Sigh, I remember when this particular stretch of Marshgate Lane was just a threateningly-quiet dingy tyre-strewn dead end, wholly suitable for fearless independent travellers. Now it's the main through route for Olympic lorries, dumper trucks and construction vehicles, unnavigable without assistance, and requiring a permanent staff of two lollipop men to keep the commuter stream moving. Who says the Games haven't created worthwhile jobs for local people?
Not everybody takes the DLR home, some take the bus. Road traffic on the Olympic Park has recently been boosted by a host of shuttling minibuses, each labelled "Team Stadium" to ensure that employees end up in the correct location. This is a vast construction site, so a complicated transport network has had to be established to move the workforce around and to keep them away from the underside of passing steamrollers. The ODA are even using bendy buses, painted white, to ensure sufficient passenger capacity. I noticed that one such articulated monster still has the number 453 on the back, so maybe this is where Boris is hiding all his bendies until he gets his new pseudo-Routemaster sorted out.
So what can we expect to see in the Olympic Park over the next year as "The Big Build" commences? The ODA are committing themselves to ten new milestones, including the pledge that "the foundations of the Olympic Stadium will be complete" and "work on the upper seating structure and roof will be underway." I'm cheered to see that "the overhead pylons will have been removed", but considerably less thrilled by the promise that "the erection of the new perimeter security fence will be underway". I expect to see something even less inviting than the blue wooden wall that currently encircles the site, incorporating razorwire, sheer concrete barriers and CCTV cameras. But all essential, alas, if the Queen is ever to stand on this building site and announce to a worldwide audience of two billion that London is where it's at. Four years and counting.
It was the jaffa cake on the escalator that first alerted me. Escalators should always be cake-free, and indeed object-free, given their repeated circuitous motion. This, then, was a freshly-dropped jaffa cake, sitting chocolate side up on the metal slats. I wondered briefly, as I stepped carefully past, whether it might survive to the bottom intact or whether some other passing footstep would squelch the orange-y bit completely flat. More importantly, however, I wondered how the jaffa cake might have appeared here in the first place.
And then I hit the milk. One moment I was striding confidently down the escalator, holding onto the rubber rail in line with current safety guidelines, and the next my left hand was covered with white sticky white dampness. Yeee-ugh. The slimy trail continued for a few more unpleasant centimetres, and then I pulled my fingers away to walk on unsupported.
That looked like the spillage culprit a few steps below. A man with lank mousey hair and a thick blue jacket, clutching something edible tightly in front of him and lumbering unsteadily downwards. Not the best place for a fast food meal, I thought. He reached the foot of the escalator before me, wobbling unsteadily, and headed off towards his train. I spotted the telltale upturned blue lid of a milk carton on the lowest step as I alighted behind.
Oh great, I was walking behind a ravenous passenger intent on scattering his remnant leftovers anywhere and everywhere. I sped up, attempting to overtake him along the passageway to the platform. As I passed I noticed the unmistakable whiff of ingrained filth erupting from his unwashed torso. This was the kind of man who'd reek even in the middle of winter, but on the hottest day of the summer his fetid aura was all-pervasive. All this plus a little extra dab of milk. I walked a little faster to reach the uncontaminated air ahead.
I made sure I stopped just far enough up the platform to be safe, and looked back to watch my pasteurised nemesis shuffle to a halt. He made for the one remaining seat on a bench of four and settled back to finish off his meal. Alcohol might now be banned on the tube, but there are no such regulations against cow juice and cake. I noted the man's thin feral face, revealing rather too much cheekbone, as he stuffed down yet another jaffa from his plastic stack.
Two smart young ladies, who'd previously been enjoying their chat unmolested, looked briefly at one another and rose silently to evacuate their endangered resting place. Ignorant of being shunned so politely, the stooped diner munched on. With the next train now rumbling in the distance, an elderly couple then took the opportunity to rest awhile on the newly vacated seats. They didn't last long, but still probably several distasteful seconds longer than they'd have liked.
As the doors opened, the source of all our discomfort remained resolutely still, fiddling in his bag and gulping down a few more milky mouthfuls. I thought travellers to Hainault (via Newbury Park) might be safe from the inescapable discomfort of radiating body stench in a confined space, but no. At the last second the hungry hunchback arose, spilling more white liquid, and lumbered purposefully into the train.
By now I was, thankfully, safely tucked away in the carriage nextdoor. But my thoughts were with the nasally-assaulted passengers through the connecting door, doomed to travel in stinking jaffa cake hell. Commuting can be so wonderfully random sometimes, but random is not always wonderful.
Yesterday you got the words, today you get the pictures. You could just head over to Flickr and view them all therein sequence, but experience suggests you probably won't. So I'm going to give each of the 30 photos a little plug here, and then maybe you might click through and view the ones that sound interesting (or I might trick you with weasel words into viewing something mighty tedious - your risk).
OLYMPIC CENTENARY: Today I've been following the route of the 1908 London Marathon, blogging live via my mobile
I'm marking the centenary of London's 1908 Olympic marathon by following the original route, all 26 miles and 385 yards of it. I'll be setting out from Windsor Castle later this morning (give me a chance to get there first), then making my way to the site of the White City Stadium in Shepherd's Bush. I'm not running, not in this heat, but I expect to walk the first few miles of the route through Eton, Slough and Uxbridge. After that I'll probably do much of the rest by bus, with various stops along the way to see what these Olympic suburbs look like 100 years on. If you want to see where I'm going you can follow the original marathon route on this useful map, or check out the pre-sat-nav directions here. I'll be live-blogging from my mobile at various points, via email, and also sending updates via Twitter if you're watching on there. Yes, it's a ludicrous thing to do but hey, the weather's lovely and it beats going to work today. And if you're inspired to try something similar, why not sign up for a West London Marathon challenge? OK, I'd better get my trainers on, then head out to the starting line. Time to follow in the footsteps of Olympic history...
Windsor Castle (0 miles, 10:03am): The 1908 Olympic marathon started from the East Terrace, but it's clear I'm not going to be able to get there without forking out some exorbitant admission charge. The entire south, north and east flanks of the castle are sealed off from the public (courtesy of Section 128 of the Serious Organised Crime Act 2005) so I'm stuck on the western side with the tourist swarms. Several foreign parties have already passed by, following grinning guides holding raised umbrellas, and snapping away with their cameras at every stretch of crennellated rampart. There's a considerable but discreet police presence around Castle Hill - I wonder if Her Maj is in residence. As the low flying jumbos scream overhead, and this sun-drenched tourist town prepares to welcome thousands more t-shirted guests, I'm starting my commemorative marathon journey outside the main castle entrance. Only 26 miles, near enough, to go.
Slough (3 miles, 11:41am): After the historic calm of Eton, this much maligned modern town comes as a big contrast. The marathon route passes shiny glass service industries on the outskirts, then threads through the bustling High Street. Workmen are busy digging up the pavements and piazzas while a multicultural band of shoppers stuff themselves with muffins and pastries. There's nothing like t-shirt weather to bring out the full scale of Britain's obesity problem. One cafe-bar has dubbed itself Wernham Hogg in honour of Slough's most famous fictional paper company. Patrons are already drinking cooling pints and milkshakes at its shaded aluminium tables. Great for shopping, but Slough's other delights lie well hidden. 100 years ago the Olympic runners ran through here very fast indeed. I think Sir John Betjeman would have approved.
Uxbridge (8 miles, 1:35pm): From Slough it's a long pedestrian-unfriendly slog up the A412 dual carriageway. 1908's marathon runners would have found the going rather easier - a pleasant rural jog through fields and pinewoods - but I've had to yomp along narrow roadside verges and even down the central reservation. In the commuter village of Iver Heath, after six miles on foot, a rare bus was passing so I decided to cadge a lift to Uxbridge. My extortionally-priced ticket took me over the twin streams of the M25 and the Colne, one considerably prettier than the other. In the main town it's now lunchtime. Office workers with dangling laminated security passes pause to queue for a Meal Deal with Diet Coke, while sweaty shoppers exert minimal effort to walk between one shopping mall and the next. Windsor Street's boutiques sell flowers, handbags and lingerie to the more discerning. Quickly my route passes back out of town, alongside the common, heading north towards Ickenham. Time to put my Oyster card to good use, I think.
Pinner (15 miles, 3:13pm): I've been travelling through the affluent suburban fringes of northwest London, along green avenues lined by bright brick villas and mock Tudor domestic castles. Very few of these would have existed 100 years ago, just the odd village and farmstead along the way. But the Metropolitan Railway had just penetrated peaceful Ruislip and sleepy Eastcote, and the residential explosion was about to begin. Now the hedges along the marathon route are well-trimmed privet, not brambly bushes, and the grass is millimetre-perfect lawn, not bovine meadow. Residential nirvana, for those lucky enough to be at home today, is sitting on the back garden patio under a fringed parasol, sipping iced Pimms or an Earl Grey. Well-behaved sons cycle down to the park with fluorescent cricket stumps packed in their rucksacks, while dainty daughters in flowery dresses ask Mummy politely for an ice cream. As an Eastender used to bustle and densely-packed grime, I find the affluent atmosphere alien and alluring. Pinner is as far north as the marathon route extended. I fear it may be downhill from here on.
Wembley (21 miles, 4:47pm): Ah, that famous sporting arena, forever associated with the 1948 London Olympics. But forty years earlier there was no stadium, no athletic epicentre, just a fledgling suburb on the edge of a growing city. The 1908 marathon runners would have run within 400m of the future stadium site, but never noticed. As a multiethnic crowd arrived from all corners of the globe, they'd feel very much at home in Wembley High Street today. Here there's an unmistakable Asian feel, with mothers in saris manoeuvring pushchairs while off-school babes flounce from clothes shop to nailbar. Further down the road in Harlesden the vibe switches to mostly Afro-Caribbean. Supplies of jerk chicken are plentiful, pumped reggae fills the streets and salons dispensing specialist haircare and beauty products are everywhere. Some of the buildings may be the same, but a century of change has altered this corner of London forever. OK, enough buses, time to walk down to Wormwood Scrubs and the finishing line at BBC White City.
White City (26.2 miles, 6:30pm): I've arrived at the 1908 Olympic marathon finishing line (or thereabouts, because there's no plaque marking the royal box. It's hometime at BBC White City, and streams of trendy meeja workers and smiley secretaries are pouring out of the Broadcast Centre and either heading home or hanging around for a pint. The Olympic rings (1908) are commemorated on the outside wall of the One Show studio, while in the window above is a large cardboard cutout of The Stig. And below in the courtyard are volunteers at a trestle table welcoming stragglers in a special centenary marathon, some jogging in with arms aloft for a celebratory Coke, others biking to a halt with a broad grin. Seems I've not been the only one out on the old course today. I desperately want to take some photos but I can't, because signs tell me I need the prior permission of the BBC (paying the licence fee not good enough, eh?). It's strange sitting in the middle of a busy place of work, once an Olympic stadium, especially when back home in Stratford it's going to be the other way round. My feet are aching now - I reckon I walked half of the 26 miles and bussed the rest. Major respect for all those who ran the distance both today and 100 years ago. Think I'd better limp out of shot before Adrian Chiles shines his big red spotlights on me.
NDHigh Street 2012
At the Regent's Canal High Street 2012 crosses from E1 to E3. Most drivers would never notice the thread of water beneath [photo], and a bus shelter blocks most of the view for waiting bendy-riders. Instead this is a towpath level treat, where walkers squeeze beneath the low brick arch and pray they don't meet a speeding cyclist ting-tinging their way round the blind corner through the darkness. The local local, The New Globe, has scattered a handful of wooden tables down by the waterside, should patrons fancy a pint in sight of Mile End Lock. More likely, from what I saw, it's a secluded spot for mischievous youth to gather and set fire to things, not all of them smokeable.
The next bridge is unique. It's called the Green Bridge, even though from underneath it's definitely yellow [photo]. It was built at the millennium as part of a major regeneration project, designed to link the two halves of Mile End Park without the need to dodge through the busy traffic below. The 'green' name derives from the grass and shrubs planted all along the 25m-wide bridge, essentially an elevated extension of the park, and a proper local landmark. Except that the bridgetop trees have almost all died, the shrubs have mostly shrivelled and the grass has grown patchy and faded, so the Green Bridge really isn't very green any longer. Maybe the park's gardeners forgot to water it regularly, or maybe Tower Hamlets budget just couldn't maintain the original pristine landscape. Whatever, this drought-stricken span always seems overlooked and underused by local people... much like the rest of Mile End Park. It's a salutary warning to planners of the 2012 Olympic Park up the road that money can create an amazing public space but nothing can force people to use it.
The Green Bridge provides an illusory crossing place, a secluded vantage point, somewhere to stand and stare. We really don't have enough contours in this part of London, so any accessible elevation is duly welcome. But the one thing you won't see from up here is the bustling parade beneath the green-glazed parapets - home to a series of restaurants and food shops whose construction helped to fund the project in the first place. Alas, that's where all the people are - down below buying frozen peas rather than up top enjoying the view. Their loss.
Beyond Mile End station, High Street 2012 changes somewhat. Up until now this has been a mostly retail street, with shops on either one side or the other almost all of the way along. No longer. From here onwards there's only the occasional parade of shops, and HS2012 has evolved instead into a neighbourhood where people live. You'd be hard pushed to spot a semi or anything detached - it's all flats, terraces, and terraces divided up into flats. But some of the terraces on the northern side of the road are rather splendid - all uniform Georgian with arched sash windows and parallel chimneypots [photo]. It's a bit of a hint that round the corner lies Tredegar Square, an impressively well-preserved white stucco quadrangle where E3's most well-to-do still reside. Welcome to leafy Bow.
The official changeover between Mile End Road and Bow Road comes in front of St Clement's Hospital (there's still a plaque on the wall proclaiming the edge of the Borough of Poplar, 1900). St Clement's started out as a workhouse 150 years ago before evolving into Bow Infirmary, then Bow Institution, and eventually a wholly psychiatric hospital. So full of depressed patients was the area that Mile End station had to have a Samaritans hotline installed on the westbound platform, at the "jumping" end closest to the oncoming trains. That telephone remains, if you know where to look, but the hospital closed down a couple of years ago. It's since been locked away to await redevelopment, and now a series of eerie empty towers loom through a screen of forbidding trees. Whatever the umpteen-acre site's fate (undoubtedly flats, it's always flats), I trust that the hospital's classical entrance and whitewashed front walls (with green and red shield insignia) will long remain. [photo]
At number 39 today there's a rather ordinary block of council housing, and a plaque, and a small stone memorial, and quite possibly a couple of spliff-smoking winos on the bench outside [photo]. George would no doubt approve, at least of the former. Daughter-in-law Minnie is remembered up the road at Electric House, where a recently restored memorial clock gleams proudly above a betting shop [photo]. But you're probably most aware of Mr Lansbury's legacy through his grand-daughter Angela, the internationally renowned actress. Sadly (or perhaps thankfully) CBS decided to locate Jessica Fletcher's murder capital far from her childhood home in Bow, and so E3's innocent gangsta hoodies remain unchampioned.
Today: Oi, let's walk down to the takeaway. Do stop to pick up a free newspaper from the racks outside the tube station, there's bound to be one in your language [photo]. I see there are flats for sale in Tredegar House for 300K. I bet the Police Station will be turned into flats too soon - the front desk's only open 35 hours a week [photo]. Oops, mind that dollop of steaming horseshit. Hey, isn't that wotsisname, the drug-addled pop star, stumbling down the steps in front of the Thames Magistrates Court surrounded by paparazzi?
Today: Watch out for dem bastard pickpockets beneath the windswept canopy of Bow Church DLR. Jeez, the ticket inspectors are everywhere, I think I'll hop on the free bendy bus to Whitechapel instead. But first I need to get a packet of fags from the bloke in the lock-up kiosk, so long as the Barclays cash machine nextdoor isn't buggered again. Those bleeding kids in the playground at Bow School ain't half making a racket, but they'll be off down the kebab shop soon enough.
four local sights
St Mary's church dates back to 1311 when Edward III granted use of a patch of land "in the middle of the King's highway'. Neither the site nor the road have shifted since, although the building has taken a bit of a battering in its time. A storm in 1829 caused the top half of the medieval tower to collapse (cue rebuild 1). By the end of the century the entire building had become unsafe and was threatened with being pulled down to improve traffic flow (cue restoration campaign and rebuild 2). And then, on the very last night of the Blitz, a wayward bomb caused serious damage to the western half and the tower (cue restoration campaign and rebuild 3). The church we see today is a bit of a mishmash of styles [photo], but the lower half of the tower is still very 14th century and the font is even older.
Bow Road divides in two to pass the church, with considerably older buildings along the northern slipstream. Look east past Mr Gladstone's statue and you'll see what I mean [photo]. The Roman Catholic church opposite the pedestrian crossing was once coupled with a Victorian convent, whose nuns specifically targeted this area in 1868 because they wanted to work "in the worst part of London". How quickly, and desperately, the village of Bow had been swallowed up by the sprawling city. One group who suffered were the matchgirls working at the Bryant and May factory round the corner in Fairfield Road (now Bow Quarter), and whose 1888 strike initiated one of the very first trade unions for women workers. The girls' impoverished lives were improved when their leader, the radical Annie Besant, established the East London Working Women's Club at number 193 (now Link House apartments).
four local sights
The Bow Flyover is a point of transition. Previously High Street 2012 has been a bit old-fashioned, a bit retail/residential, a bit compact. And suddenly all that's wiped away. The rest of the road up to Stratford is a bit new-fangled, a bit light industrial, and a bit wide-open. Oh, and just marginally Olympic. All change please.
High Street 2012 continues eastwards along the old Stratford Causeway, threading its way through the braided waterways of the Lower Lea. The road used to be lined by marshes, mills and factories, the most famous of which was the Bow China Works. In the mid 1700s it churned out world-class porcelain, both "useful and ornamental", specialising in glazed figurines and blue and white chinaware. The factory site is now covered by a cluster of newly-constructed apartment blocks [photo], part of a series of opportunistic developments along Stratford High Street. Some were planned before the Olympics were announced, even more have started springing up since, capitalising on the readily-available easily-knocked-down post-industrial landscape. The dominant architectural style appears to be "shiny and colourful", and anyone buying a penthouse flat will have an excellent view of the adjacent Olympic Park come 2012.
four local sights
The nicest building along here is the Yardley factory, a creamy lido-style Art Deco structure, blessed by an attractive "Lavender Girls" mural on the wall above the entrance [photo]. Its location by the Greenway seems a strange place to base a perfumier - beside a none too fragrant river and a stinky sewer - but back in 1903 it made perfect scents. Your great gran no doubt daubed herself with the company's finest flowery essence, once produced and packed herein (until Yardley moved out to new premises beside the Wickford bypass in the 1960s). The old building looks like being a rare survivor of Stratford's pre-Olympic goldrush, its shell now standing alone in a sea of high-rise development (good grief! blimey!). A few metres further west and the Lavender Girls would have been absorbed by the 2012 security frisking zone, but instead their smiling Cockney faces should remind international visitors that not everything round here is shiny and fresh.
As Stratford nears, the older buildings stand firm against the modern onslaught. Stratford Market station hasn't seen a train for 50 years but the southern pavement still diverts beneath its litter-strewn urine-stained Victorian portal. The closed down nightclub opposite is the Stratford Rex, born as a three-thousand seat Theatre and Opera House (opera in Stratford! How things change!) before metamorphosing into an Art Deco cinema. And some architect had fun decorating the front of Essex House [photo], topped off with three rampant griffins, not that anybody ever thinks to look up and notice. Yes, those really are palm trees down the centre of the road [photo], plus a few shiny metal sculptures for good measure to celebrate the area's inherent Newham-ness. But there's still nowhere to buy bread, furniture or shoes. Keep walking, genuine High Street approaching.
This striking spiky sculpture stands on a traffic island on the western edge of Stratford's inner ring road [photo]. It's called Railway Tree and, according to its creator, it "symbolises Stratford as a focal point of arrival and departure by featuring a dynamic series of curved steel beams that radiate and rise out of the ground to converge at a central point before reaching for the sky in all directions". Obviously. Stratford has considerable railway heritage, and indeed most of the 180 acres of Stratford City development is taking place across former railway marshalling yards. Look past the bus station and you can already see the first buildings climbing above the skyline. A new footbridge is due to connect the old to the new, and the old is going to need all the help it can get.
Exit the shopping centre onto the Broadway, beside an unlikely Starbucks, and you'll more than likely be met by some evangelical leaflet-waver (although last time I was here a BBC journalist thrust a microphone under my nose and tried to ask me about the Olympics instead). There's a real multicultural mix out here, and usually a youthful vibe, although some might interpret the ambience as edgy and a little insecure. The far side of the street is usually a little quieter, at least away from the bus stops, maybe because that's where the older buildings are. You may not be able to see the Old Town Hall at the moment because it's shrouded in scaffolding, but the occasional rooftop statue still pokes out defiantly above the green sheeting. And if you want to go drinking in a pub with even a smidgeon of character then be sure not to stay in the 60s zone, be sure to cross the road.
four local sights
Olympic update
Four years from today, less than a mile from where I'm sitting, the opening ceremony of the 30th Summer Olympic Games will take place. Four years might sound like a long time, but it's not. There's no stadium as yet, which is perhaps not surprising given that this time last year the site housed several warehouses and the odd factory. But come 2012 there's got to be a huge circular grandstand erected around a mighty arena, otherwise there'll be nowhere to let off the balloons and fireworks. And somebody's got to build it.
Another unexpected feature was a new pedestrian crossing at the bottom of the ramp beneath the railway arches. It's unlike any I've ever used before. It has lights and push buttons and green men and everything, but this area is so health and safety conscious that the whole length of the roadway is securely fenced off, even the crossing. Wait patiently and the two waiting wardens will press the button for you, stop the traffic and open their gate to let you across. Sigh, I remember when this particular stretch of Marshgate Lane was just a threateningly-quiet dingy tyre-strewn dead end, wholly suitable for fearless independent travellers. Now it's the main through route for Olympic lorries, dumper trucks and construction vehicles, unnavigable without assistance, and requiring a permanent staff of two lollipop men to keep the commuter stream moving. Who says the Games haven't created worthwhile jobs for local people?
• Eton: Filming in the High Street (proper camera crew and all); Barnespool Bridge (pretty in pink); A "25 miles to go" plaque commemorating the 1908 marathon on a wall at Barnespool Bridge (wow, who'd have thought 100 years later?); Eton College's 'School Hall' and 'School Library'; Eton College Chapel (from a distance); The Playing Fields of Eton (with cricket pitch flattener).
