Marsh Lane is just a temporary set-up while Olympic construction occurs. Sometime after 2012 every allotment holder will be relocating once more, this time back to sustainable new premises within the Olympic Park. For the best part of a decade, however, this uninspiring patch of Waltham Forest will have to do. And I doubt that this windswept space beneath the pylons will ever reclaim the sense of community cultivated back at ManorGarden. diamond geezer 05/01/08
That "uninspiring patch of Waltham Forest" was our wild life meadow. Now it is gone, and most likely forever. SteveE10 10/01/08
Bleak and characterless the allotments may be, but the Birse Civils contractor who had to help the plotholders move their possessions onto the site in November was really proud of their uninhabited perfection. "This shouldn't be allowed," he said as corrugated tin, old garden gates and dismantled greenhouses were unloaded, "the place looks really nice and they're going to ruin it with all this junk".
I hope Birse Civils are better at building nuclear power stations than allotments. After £1.5million and 10,000 tons of soil replaced, you'd expect an ideal growing environment ready for cultivation. But it's so waterlogged and poorly draining nothing wants to grow except moss and algae, and bulbs planted to cheer the place up are just rotting. There's no worms to break up the heavily compacted soil - and no way for them to get in due to the plastic barrier protecting the site from surrounding contamination. Charlie C 11/01/08
Another group of evictees are the Clays Lane residents who have been scattered to the four winds. They too have lost their community. The LDA actually said we were not a community, unlike the Travellers, who were moved as a community... Residents are considerably worse off in financial terms and some are worse off in terms of the quality and size of their new accommodation...
In evidence to the Compulsory Purchase Inquiry the LDA also claimed we were 'isolated' by our neighbouring green space, the Eastway Cycle Track, which was a sign of how desperate they were to rubbish everything to do with our estate and community to justify its demolition. Clays Lane is to be the site of the Athletes' Village and the LDA claimed this would create 9000 new homes. This has now been altered to 4,500. Either way much of the Village will be built at Stratford City and is not new housing but housing which would have been built anyway and modified. The LDA/ODA still claim it as an Olympic benefit...
But then who can be surprised by this? Our former MP, Lyn Brown, goes around telling her local party she was visiting the estate when she never came near us, the Mayor of Newham apparently said we were 'peasants' even though he also said he would come but never did. Livingstone and Higgins of the ODA failed to respond to invitations while Coe said he would come but never followed up. The media couldn't get past our human interest value so it was impossible to discuss anything of substance. That's politics! julian cheyne 09/01/08 [more here]
Olympic update
Another group of evictees are the Clays Lane residents who have been scattered to the four winds. They too have lost their community. The LDA actually said we were not a community, unlike the Travellers, who were moved as a community... Residents are considerably worse off in financial terms and some are worse off in terms of the quality and size of their new accommodation...
