Let's go for a walk down Francis Road, E10, an off-grid residential street with a wholly unexpected rush of middle class consumerism in the middle. Leyton doesn't generally look like this.
For orientation purposes we're deep in the hinterland between Leyton's two stations, working down from the High Road towards the A12. Until the 1890s these were open fields but then suburbia turned up big style (which is the history of most of Outer London but with the dates changed). Francis Road is just over half a mile long and used to be classified the B161 until it got Low Traffic Neighbourhooded a few years back. I'm starting at the quieter, leafier, northern end opposite Leyton Sports Ground and working my way south to the pub.
One side's all big bay-windowed houses, although on closer inspection many are actually maisonettes with squished-together doors at ground level. The other side is dominated by the back of a long two-storey institution which unexpectedly turns out to be Leyton's oldest building, Walnut Tree House, whose timber frame and first floor jetties date back to Tudor times. In the 19th century it briefly became a school (from which Benjamin Disraeli got expelled for fighting), and later it morphed (highly appropriately) into the local Conservative Club. It's now a mosque, because 21st century Leyton is nothing if not unpredictably diverse, and you'll need to walk round to Jesse Road to admire it properly.
Just beyond the double bend is Francis Road's most startling building, a bulky corner block with porthole windows and a staircased tower, which is patently 1930s in design. It used to be Leyton Police Station, the second on this site, located centrally at the heart of the Met's J Division. Climb the steps to the main entrance to see its finest feature, carvings of six historical police officers including a Peeler, an expressionless policewoman and a dapper goggled chappy on a motorbike. High maintenance costs ensured this was one of the police stations Boris sold off in 2012, and the fact its upper floor was given over entirely to residential married quarters will have assisted the inevitable conversion into flats.
Further nice terraced houses follow, much as you'd find on any intersecting street. But then suddenly motor vehicles have to turn off, courtesy of a one-way semi-pedestrianised interlude operational between 10am and 8pm, because this is where the shopping parade starts. These used to be bog standard shops, underwhelming even by Leyton standards, but inexorably a range of gentrified offerings moved in and now Francis Road is full-on Time Out orgasm territory.
The retail offering starts with a double-fronted winebar on one side and an organic jar stockist on the other, then progresses through a delicatessen, a pilates studio, a windchimes and candles joint, two florists and an unnecessary gift shop. Multi-purpose spaces are common, so for example the independentcoffee shop hosts a sunset cocktails pop-up and the bookshop's staff also have to be trained baristas. It's not all posh - the intermediate units include a launderette, a cobblers, a Romanian grocers and a Bengali community centre which thinks it's based in 'Layton'. But when a vinylrecordshop opened five weeks back, an actual vinyl record shop ffs, the owners knew they'd only succeed if they made a special effort to explain the provenance of their pastries.
The wormhole closes after one final pavement cafe and suddenly Francis Road is low-key residential again. Also the traffic's back but only one way, and mind the speedbumps, indeed Waltham Forest council have very much shifted the emphasis from drivers to cyclists in recent years. A faded signpost points down a narrow alleyway directing residents towards a Public telephone, a feature which may once have been relevant. A tiny cluster of unspecial shops follows, as if deliberately quarantined from the majority, including a burger takeaway, a minimarket (genuinely called Freshco) and a doctor's surgery whose telephone number is still planted firmly in the 01 era.
Here comes the multi-faith bit... starting with Christ Church, a lofty wedge of brickwork enclosing a conservative evangelical Anglican congregation. The former Christ Church Institute nextdoor was bought by Waltham Forest's Sikh community in 1979 and is now a gurdwara, a rather large one, and across the road is the UK headquarters of the Islamic Sharia Council who mediate/dictate on Muslim families' marital matters. The final 50 metres of Francis Road is much busier because it's part of Leyton's one-way system, and on the last street corner is the NorthcoteArms, a pub that likes to fill its Sundays with a drag show. The Greenwich meridian even slices through the lounge bar, which I guess makes Francis Road the first street in the western hemisphere.
Come down tomorrow (between 11am and 3pm) and you can attend The Francis Road Street Party, a community event which promises live music, local stalls, a tombola and MORE. It's a bit of a cheat that they're holding it in the pedestrianised stretch outside the shops, but I guess that made getting a licence easier. Or if taking a tour of understated chunks of Leyton is more your thing you might be interested in Matt Haynes' new Unchartered Streets book, a six mile fully-illustrated 'guided walk for the misguided'. Matt was behind the very excellent Smoke magazine which this blog enthused about on a regular basis between 2003 and 2010, and here's what he has to say about stop number 16, the former Leyton Police station.
To give you a further flavour of the trail's content, number 17 is the classically-proportioned electricity substation just around the corner in Dawlish Road. Leyton is the first in a series that'll eventually continue with walks round Peckham, Vauxhall and (ooh) Brentford, because Matt reckons London's unsung suburbs deserve to be celebrated. And if you pop into Phlox Books on Francis Road you can pick up a copy for a tenner, because that's how joined up Leyton is.
