Several people commented yesterday that they weren't particularly interested in The Archers, so today I'm bringing you a post about an aggregates hub in the Olympic Park.
This is Bow East, a roughly-triangular 15 acre site bounded by the River Lea, the Greenway and the main railway line west of Stratford. It's not actually in Bow. A 300m railway siding runs up the western edge.
For many years this was the site of Bow Goods Station, an offloading point for several of the wharves nearby. Later in the 20th century a concrete works was built in one corner of the site with access from Marshgate Lane. Here it is, photographed on the day London won the Olympics.
During the Games the site was used as the Olympic warm-up track, connected to the stadium across the sewertop via a temporary ramp. But the land was always intended to be returned to industrial use, indeed it's designated a 'Strategic Industrial Location' in the Mayor's London Plan, which is why the mucky stuff is back.
Every time I walk up Marshgate Lane on a weekday, which is very frequently these days, I have to be careful to watch out for lorries thundering by. They rumble under the railway bridge, then veer left through the gates to the site, do their business and rumble out again. This happens potentially dozens of times every hour. It's fortunate hardly anybody lives around here.
The best view of the aggregate compound is from up on the Greenway. In bright sunshine it looks stunning, an extensive range of minor mountains in varying shades of grey. The very highest peak has a bright yellow dust suppression cannon at its summit, powered by a similarly bright yellow generator. The towers of Bow Quarter rise up behind, or Canary Wharf or the City depending on where you stand. If it's a weekday two dozen cars will be parked up one end. At weekends it's eerily quiet.
Officially the site's either called the East London Soil Hub or the Bow East Logistics Centre, according to which sign by the gate you believe. It's operated by the cargo division of Deutsche Bahn and takes advantage of the siding snaking along the riverside. Freight trains unload building materials for use across East London, then depart containing spoil from East London building sites, the aim being to take hundreds of long-distance lorries off the road.
A couple of weeks ago I was walking by when a train nudged up the siding and hid its loco in the thicket by the Greenway bridge, while a few days ago I watched a freshly-loaded service creep off at tortoise speed to join the mainline. I've discovered that trains to Bow East arrive from all over the country, for example bringing china clay waste from St Austell in Cornwall and quarried lime from Buxton in Derbyshire. They also remove building waste to sidings in Acton, Wembley and Greenwich for dispersal elsewhere. It's eco-friendly stuff... almost.
Five years ago there was uproar locally when a group of companies proposed to build three concrete batching plants and an asphalt production works on the Bow East site. Residents baulked at the potential pollution, noise and additional lorry movements, and over ten thousand signed a petition. They were delighted in 2017 when the LLDC ruled against, but less pleased when the consortium regrouped last year with an amended proposal. The latest plans are for just one concrete batching plant - "smaller, lower capacity, better screened, more contained and tighter controlled on a fraction of the scale of previous proposals" - and were due to be officially submitted this spring.
This artist's impression includes a handful of moveable trees that screen absolutely nothing. It also shows the concrete plant bedecked in a Bow porcelain pattern, as if this makes it more acceptable, then takes the piss by showing departing concrete mixers similarly decorated. The image comes from a new project website which reads like a PR-driven plea for acceptance, and is quite frankly trying much too hard. That said public reaction has again been fiercely anti, with an online petition that tips over into nimbyism and has been signed by frothing fruitloops, so I'm finding it hard to have much sympathy with either side. We'll see who wins out.
In the meantime Bow East remains the last surviving industrial zone in an area that was once entirely industrial. Its 15 acres could support hundreds of new homes but are instead being used to support the building of thousands of new homes elsewhere. And its artificial hilltops have a strange beauty all of their own.
