Wanstead Park to Stratford International station, LSW via summit of Newham 57

Start Wanstead Park temple— E11 2LT

Finish Stratford International station (DLR and Southeastern services) — E15 2ER

Distance 6.16km

Duration 1 hour 15 minutes

Ascent 15.6m

Access Wanstead station (Central Line, Hainault loop) 1km distant from start of section. Stratford International station at end of section. station (Central Line) 1km distant from Bushwood en route. Buses at Dames Road, Cann Hall Road and Crownfi eld Road en route.

Facilities All facilities at end of section. All facilities in Leytonstone. Pub at Dames Road en route. Shops and cafés at Cann Hall Road en route.

57.1 Temple in Wanstead Park. 0m

57.2 Down avenue of trees to pond; R at path fork to keep second pond on L; 1250m main path through woodland to Blake Hall Road.

57.3 Cross road; R past bus stop; L into wood; L (SW) on main ride; cross tarmac 1770m path, then bear L (S); border football pitches; L to cross Lake House Road at bend; ahead for 100m; R to pond at vehicle access; anticlockwise round pond; keep playground to L to junction; L on L pvt to bus stop.

57.4 Cross road; R to backtrack; L (Vansitt art Road) to end; R, L, R, L and R; L 1510m along Cann Hall Road to High Road Leytonstone.

57.5 L; R on Chobham Road; ahead on Liberty Bridge Road; L on L pvt of 1630m Celebration Avenue to Stratford International stn.

© 2017-21 IG Liddell Summits Walk 57 – 1 This section starts in Wanstead Park, at the end of the 57.1 avenue of trees near the temple. From Wanstead station, turn left at the traffi c lights to keep George Green on your right, and continue along St Mary’s Avenue to the church. Turn left into Overton Drive (the second road on your left at the church junction). At the end, turn right into Warren Road. Take an entry on the left (with City of London signboard) and follow a path parallel to the road. At a second signboard, take the track off left, passing a broad gap in the trees on your left, to reach the temple. Turn right to reach the avenue of trees. The dramatist Richard Brindsley Sheridan lived in Wanstead, and in earlier times, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester and favourite of Queen Elizabeth I, died at his home in Wanstead. William Penn, the Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania, lived in the area as a boy after being evacuated from a smallpox epidemic in London. Wanstead Park as we see it today is a small part of the land of Wanstead Manor. The place-name is of Saxon origin (place on a mound), but an account of 1715 describes a mosaic which would be consistent with Roman-era habitation, and recent surveys using ground-penetrating radar suggest a house of this era, just north of the café kiosk. The Manor is mentioned in the Domesday Book; King Henry VII acquired it as a hunting-lodge. A Palladian mansion was built on the site of the previous house in 1715, but was demolished in 1825 after a somewhat chequered history which culminated in the spectacular fi nancial self-destruction of the owner, a dissolute nephew of the Duke of Wellington. The owners of the estate sold off parcels to the City of London in 1882, and to Wanstead Sports Grounds in 1920. From the era of the mansion, which was built to rival Blenheim Palace with gardens of the splendour of Versailles (neither boast came to fruition). The ornamental basin and the Temple (a folly, now a small exhibition and event space with a visitor centre) are the most prominent survivors. The site of the mansion is in the vicinity of the sports Path eastwards from the complex which is set into the golf course area. Temple, Wanstead Park Set off down the 57.2 avenue of trees, with your back to the temple. You will reach the north side of the Heronry Pond at the end of the unmade extension to Warren Road (coming in from the right at a City of London signboard) at the corner of the golf course. Here, keep ahead on the path which borders the pond

57– 2 London Summits Walk © 2017-21 IG Liddell (which may have been drained), bending slightly to the right at the second island. About 100m after this bend, the main path trends left: here, take a path straight ahead, still bordering the golf course. This path passes another pond on your left (rounder than the Heronry Pond), and continues, now in a west-south-westerly direction, and passing through woodland — just keep to the main path — to reach Blake Hall Road. Turn right, and cross to reach the bus stop on the other side of the road. The 101 and 308 bus routes serve the stops here: northbound, both routes go to Wanstead station. Southbound, the 101 route serves Manor Park station (TfL Rail) and East Ham station (District Line and Hammersmith and City Line); the 308 serves Wanstead Park (Overground), Forest Gate (TfL Rail services), and Stratford (Central Line, Jubilee Line, DLR, Overground and TfL Rail services). Immediately beyond the bus stop (with services 57.3 bound for Wanstead) where the pavement ends, take a path which leaves the road and enters the woodland: this is Bush Wood. Ignore side-paths off to the right, to reach a broad grassy ride which crosses from right to left. The ride is marked with green-topped waymark stumps (though at the time of researching the route, these had been defaced with event-related advertising). Older white-topped posts are also to be seen. Take the ride to the left (i.e., to the south-west). After about 230m, you will meet a narrow tarmac path which crosses the ride. At this point, Leytonstone station is 1km away, the same distance off -route as Wanstead was at the start of this section. In deciding upon breakpoints, a signifi cant factor may be to recall that Leytonstone is served by all Central Line trains, while Wanstead Ride, Bushwood only sees those trains which operate on the Hainault Loop. As far as facilities are concerned, Leytonstone is well supplied with cafés, restaurants and shops. For Leytonstone, take the tarmac path to the right, cross the street called Bushwood, and (with a quick right-and left) take Leybourne Road to its end. Another quick right-and-left takes you onto Barclay Road, which you

© 2017-21 IG Liddell London Summits Walk 57 – 3 follow to its end, in the process crossing Mornington Road at the anti-crossroads, where barriers prevent all passage except west-to- north and north-to-west turns. Turn right along Leytonstone High Road and left along Church Lane to the station. To reach this point from Leytonstone, simply apply these directions in reverse. Cross the tarmac path, and about 30 metres on, bear left to continue southwards with a belt of trees separating you from the houses which lie to your left. Over to your right, you will see two slab-shaped tower blocks (John Walsh Tower on the left, and Fred Wigg Tower to its right). These blocks are useful navigation beacons for a couple of turns ahead. When you line up with Fred Wigg Tower, look for a path on your left which reaches a parallel path in the belt of trees. Take this link, and go right on the parallel path to reach Lake House Road at a bend. Cross the road and turn right. Just past the chevron warning notice across the road, take a path to the left, into scrubland. Follow this path for about 100m, and then take a cross-path to the right (west-south-west). At this point, you may check that you line up exactly with John Walsh Tower, on your right. Follow this path to reach a small area of tarmac — an access point to this part of Wanstead Flats for maintenance vehicles Keep the tarmac on your right, and advance to Jubilee Pond. It does not matt er which way round the pond you decide to go, but the anticlockwise route will give you the opportunity to nip across Dames Road to the small convenience shop for essentials, should you need to do so. At the east end of the pond, keep a children’s playground to your left to reach the junction of Sidney Road and Dames Road, opposite the Holly Tree pub. Keep to the left-hand pavement of Dames Road as far as the next bus stop on the left. This is the summit of Newham, 45m above sea level. Jubilee Pond, Wanstead Flats Cross the road: down at pavement level, in front of the leftmost of the post-war houses, you will discover two old parish boundary stones which are now set into the garden wall on the pavement. The parishes appear to be West Ham on the left, and Wanstead on the right. These old boundaries tend to linger on in today’s municipal

57– 4 London Summits Walk © 2017-21 IG Liddell boundaries, often in complete and total disregard for more logical divisions based on modern clustering around the provision of service, and using key dividers such as railways and major roads. Here, the post-war housing is in Waltham Forest, while the older houses on the left are in Newham. The National Library of Scotland has an extensive inventory of maps (http://maps.nls.uk — they include much Parish boundary stones coverage ‘furth of Scotland’) which may be searched and studied on Dames Road on the web: these show fascinating histories. Buses on the 58 route travelling into Newham serve Forest Gate station (TfL Rail services); in the opposite direction (back towards Jubilee Pond), they will take you to Leyton station (Central Line). Turn to the right, and take the fi rst street on the left 57.4 (Vansitt art Road) to Odessa Road — this is as far as you can go without running into the boundary wall of West Ham Cemetery. Turn right onto Odessa Road, then left along Trumpington Road. At the end, turn right onto Tavistock Road, to fi nd another of the ‘tin tabernacles’ which were set up in areas of rapid population growth. The need for new churches came with the urbanisation of the later part of the Industrial Revolution, as towns and cities expanded very quickly. At the same time, there was a drive to inculcate church att endance in rural areas among people who had no transport, or who would be likely to use the lack of transport as an excuse to their employers for non-att endance. Tin tabernacle, The formation in 1844 of the Free Church of England, splitt ing Ramsay Road Methodists off in schism from the Church of England, and the increasing identifi cation (at the same time) of many parishioners with a range of nonconformist denominations and sects, brought the need for more church buildings (apocryphally explained in Wales as “so that I have a chapel I don’t go to”). At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Church of

© 2017-21 IG Liddell London Summits Walk 57 – 5 Scotland had identifi ed the need for over forty new churches, and Thomas Telford was commissioned to produce a standard architectural design for use throughout Scotland — though even this had to be modifi ed at Port Charlott e on the island of Islay: the church was to be shared with the Free Church, and they demanded a separate door. However, these cheap-and-not-very-cheerful kirks (this is Scotland, remember) were still too expensive and would have taken too long to build in the rush for churches and chapels in the second half of the century. Several ironworking companies in London, Liverpool, Glasgow and elsewhere built prefabricated churches in corrugated iron, off ering them by mail order via catalogues. A number of these companies segmented the market and concentrated on serving one type of purchaser (gentry, railway companies, and so on). Some of these churches are still in ecclesiastical use, others have changed use (there are scout halls and discotheques), while others exist as no more than barns or iron shells in hedges. Yet others have, of course, returned to Chobham Road, dust — or possibly to the great scrapyard of Time. Stratford New Town A walker on the London Summits Walk route will also encounter tin tabernacles in Kilburn (section 6) and in Harrow (section 39). The latt er is, like the one here in Leyton, still used for religious purposes; the former is now a scout hut. Turn left at the tabernacle and walk along Ramsay Road to its far end, where turn right onto Blenheim Road. Turn left onto Cann Hall Road, and follow it to the traffi c lights at its crossing with High Road Leytonstone. To both left and right, you will fi nd many shops and cafés on High Road Leytonstone, serving as wide a selection of mis-spellings as they do of foods and other wares. Make your way across the junction and turn left onto 57.5 the right-hand pavement of High Road Leytonstone, then turn right into Chobham Street, and at the end go straight ahead on Liberty Bridge Road into the East Village area of housing on the former Olympic Park.

57– 6 London Summits Walk © 2017-21 IG Liddell You have just passed through an area which is called Stratford New Town, but this area predates the post-war Basildons and Cumbernaulds of that appellation: it is even marked as such on the 1863 Ordnance Survey map. This area was a mid-Victorian encroachment of London on an area of market gardens and nurseries, seen in so many areas at the time. These times were the long-gone days when Batt ersea was famous for growing London’s crops of asparagus, and when the location of “the orchards of the Thames Valley” was not in Abingdon but in Brentford. There is also a seamier side to the area: Crownfi eld Road, the westward extension of Cann Hall Road, is marked on the same 1863 map as Cutt hroat Lane. You are now entering the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and the “East Village”, for the most part now a rather sterile assemblage of corporate-looking residential buildings on streets and pathways which have been loaded with a host of wince-inducing Post-Olympic housing, names. Surely the only place for the toe-curling toponymy of East Village such embarrassing names as “Cheering Lane”, “Anthems Way” or “Victory Parade” is tucked away in the pages of George Orwell’s dystopically satirical novel Nineteen Eighty-four? At the end of Liberty Bridge Road, where some shops and restaurants have broken up the line of beige tower blocks, turn left along Celebration Avenue (groan!) past some more retail on the left to International Way, with the bulk of the Westfi eld mall rising up in front of you. Turn to the right at Stratford International station. Here, you have reached the end of this section. The DLR station is ahead of you, with the mainline station over to your left. There are toilets and a café within the mainline station, and of course the vast Westfi eld mall beyond has all facilities. You may reach (Central Line, Jubilee Line, DLR, Overground, TfL Rail and National Rail services) either by the DLR or by walking through the mall.

© 2017-21 IG Liddell London Summits Walk 57 – 7