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.
High Street 2012
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
