It's now been six months since the Olympic Park was sealed off, and everybody who lived and worked there was turfed out. The outcasts had to go somewhere, of course, and quite a lot of them have ended up one mile further upriver near Leyton. The new sites are tucked in beside a bleak arterial road, in the shadow of a couple of giant gasholders, nowhere with any character whatsoever. Few pedestrians ever walk down Orient Way, but plenty of traffic thunders by (most of it setting off the wholly unnecessary 30mph speed warning sign). A few lonely horses graze in a muddy field nearby, and there's also a great big £400m Eurostarmaintenance depot whacked down in the general nothingness. But I'm sure most of the relocated businesses don't mind swapping old tumbledown warehouses for shiny modern hangars. These giant tiger-striped metal boxes are a million miles away from their former premises, and all paid for out of your taxes too.
And some other Olympic evictees have ended up here too. You may remember the huge fuss kicked up by users of the Manor Garden allotments when it became clear that the Olympic Park would not contain a special area given over to runner beans. A shame really, because those 100-year-old allotments are merely destined to end up beneath a vast temporary footpath - no ultimate sporting destiny awaits. The allotment holders had to be pacified with the promise of new plots elsewhere, which didn't really keep them happy at all, but they got new plots all the same. The replacement allotments are also along Orient Way, in the corner of a well-hidden recreation ground, but accessible only up a far-distant muddy track. It's taken a lengthy planning battle to get the new allotments established, but here they are laid out for the start of the new growing season.
They're, erm, not quite as characterful as the old allotments, are they? The old allotments had charm, and personality, and vegetation. The new allotments are formed from a rectangle of freshly ploughed earth with a concrete path down the middle, divided up into equal-sized patches of empty mud. A tall green metal fence surrounds the perimeter, with tiny saplings planted all around to provide eventual privacy. Standing guard on each plot are identikit green huts, regularly spaced, each waiting for their new owner to arrive and provide a bit of individuality. A few plots show the very first signs of cultivation - a trowel, a chair, a waterbutt - but it'll be a long time before these feel like proper allotments.
Maybe that's OK, because 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 Manor Garden.
Olympic update
It's now been six months since the Olympic Park was sealed off, and everybody who lived and worked there was turfed out. The outcasts had to go somewhere, of course, and quite a lot of them have ended up one mile further upriver near Leyton. The new sites are tucked in beside a bleak arterial road, in the shadow of a couple of giant gasholders, nowhere with any character whatsoever. Few pedestrians ever walk down Orient Way, but plenty of traffic thunders by (most of it setting off the wholly unnecessary 30mph speed warning sign). A few lonely horses graze in a muddy field nearby, and there's also a great big £400m Eurostar maintenance depot whacked down in the general nothingness. But I'm sure most of the relocated businesses don't mind swapping old tumbledown warehouses for shiny modern hangars. These giant tiger-striped metal boxes are a million miles away from their former premises, and all paid for out of your taxes too.
They're, erm, not quite as characterful as the old allotments, are they? The old allotments had charm, and personality, and vegetation. The new allotments are formed from a rectangle of freshly ploughed earth with a concrete path down the middle, divided up into equal-sized patches of empty mud. A tall green metal fence surrounds the perimeter, with tiny saplings planted all around to provide eventual privacy. Standing guard on each plot are identikit green huts, regularly spaced, each waiting for their new owner to arrive and provide a bit of individuality. A few plots show the very first signs of cultivation - a trowel, a chair, a waterbutt - but it'll be a long time before these feel like proper allotments.
