To complete my journey along the Greenwich Meridian through Tower Hamlets and Newham, today I'm covering the section north from Stratford station. It could be worse, I could be blogging all the way to Cleethorpes. [map][photos]
Stratford station [51.543°N 0°W]
Stratford station may resemble a sprawling octopus with platforms firing off at all angles, but only one of them crosses the meridian. Crossrail's future platforms miss by some distance. Platforms 9 and 10 serving long distance Greater Anglia services almost reach. But the occasionally-served platform 10a extends a fair bit further to the east, so anyone walking 40m beyond the last shelter could find themselves waiting for a train on the zero degree line.
To take a decent photograph of the far end of the platform I made my way to the unnamed service road that lurks behind Stratford One, the Unite Students accommodation fortress, and ignored all the notices suggesting the public aren't terribly welcome back here.
MSG Sphere [51.544°N 0°W]
A large chunk of land remains undeveloped behind Stratford station on a triangular site bounded by platform 10a, platform 11 and the High Speed 1 trench. What's planned to erupt here is the MSG Sphere, a huge globular music'n'entertainment venue more capacious than the Manchester Arena, optimally located alongside the perfect transport hub. It'd also sit astride the meridian, which is a boast the O2 down in Greenwich can't quite match. But this 92m tall golfball will also have "a fully-programmable exterior that serves as a digital showcase for the venue, artists and partners", which basically gifts central Stratford an unavoidable advertising screen contaminating the night sky. Planning permission is pending but not yet granted. Whether investors deem the place profitable in a new normal future is yet to be seen.
Eurostar trains cross the meridian here, just before entering/after exiting the tunnel between Stratford International and Dagenham.
New Garden Quarter [51.545°N 0°W]
It sounds like Telford Homes spun their Residential Development Buzzword Generator when they named New Garden Quarter. Obviously it's new. Yes there is a central garden. No it's not a quarter, just a dense horseshoe of flats built across brownfield land round the back of Westfield. The sales brochure describes it as "a contemporary interpretation of a classic London Square" but although the intention was Grosvenor Square what the architects delivered was a bland white-faced fortress with a jumped-up children's playground in the middle. The meridian runs past the automatic bollards on the central access road, immaculately paved but with the whiff of bins.
To prove it's not all regeneration round here, a tiny light industrial estate survives across Penny Brookes Street. They'll repair your vehicle, they'll tint your window, they'll polish your nails, but best of all they'll fire you up jerk chicken if you're Jamaican Me Hungry.
Warren Gardens [51.548°N 0°W]
This is random. Warren Gardens is the very definition of an insignificant street, a dozen lowly flat-roofed postwar houses on a gently curving dead-end terrace. One resident has built a play castle in their tiny front garden, complete with battlements, while most have left theirs lightly weeded. But among the paving slabs out front is one with a Greenwich Meridian marker, partly because the zero degree line passes through number 3 and partly because someone at Newham council inexplicably decided Warren Gardens deserved one of the borough's trio of commemorative markers. Abbey Lane and Stratford High Street I get, but this is fantastically niche. Alas the paving slabs have been relaid at some point and someone accidentally rotated the meridian marker through 90° so it now points east/west and is essentially invalid.
We now enter a grid of Victorian terraced streets so the opportunities for meridian marking dry up somewhat. I did find a mysterious circular footprint on the correct alignment in Chandos Road Open Space, but I suspect it's just the remnants of a dead bench or similar.
Crownfield Road [51.552°N 0°W]
Here's one last slab in the pavement. It's on the south side of the Crownfield Road during a brief run of unterraced houses outside number 153. It's got a crack across it, thankfully not along the central line, but then it is thirty-six years old. You may notice there isn't an 'N' in the middle, and that's because we're not (quite) in Newham any more - Crownfield Road is the first street in Waltham Forest. Sixty meridian-crossed streets in Waltham Forest were marked with green thermoplasticcompasses for the millennium, but this gets a bit samey after you've seen a few, plus most of them are now looking very much the worse for wear. I did check out the first in neighbouring Drapers Road just so you get the idea, but best stop there.
• Today's 8 photos can be found here
• The entire set of 40 photos can be found here
• Further meridian markers are listed here and here
