London only has one street called Winter Something. It has streets called Winterbourne, Winterbrook, Winterfold, Wintergreen, Winterstoke, Winterton and Winterwell, but only one Winter Something. I always worry when a search turns up a singular result because it might turn out to be a tedious suburban non-entity, and nobody wants to read eight paragraphs of "ooh look they have front gardens and bins". Thankfully Winter Avenue proved much more interesting than that, its story essentially the tale of three different roads, plus I get to write about East End markets, regeneration, Paul McCartney and trampolining.
Winter Avenue is an L-shaped road in the heart of East Ham, not far from the Town Hall, one street back from the High Street and one street back from Barking Road. By date of construction it's about as late Victorian as you can get, and looks it if you walk down the unbroken terrace on the western side. This is typical Newham stock - a pair of stacked bay windows, a porch that may or may not have been extended and a small protruding gable on the roof. The front garden is barely deep enough to fit two bins, the current local requirement, and sits in most cases behind a low brick wall. Throw in a couple of pot plants and slap a 'no junk mail' sign on your letterbox and you'll fit right in.
At the top end of the street is Roxanne's Curtains and Interiors, a treasure trove of drapes and glitzy ornaments. We're still a tad too close to the high street for a corner shop to succeed, whereas those in search of made-to-measure blinds, silver picture frames and sunburst mirrors are willing to walk that little bit further. Peer in through the windows of the unassuming workshop out back and you can see piles of fabric, rolls of braid and the odd tassel awaiting relocation to a nearby living room or parlour. And there'd be little more to say about Winter Avenue had the terrace on the other side of the street, that's numbers 1 to 31, not completely disappeared.
In the early 1990s Newham council sought to improve traffic flow at the southern end of East Ham's high street. They built a new road starting halfway down and drove it through the path of least resistance which proved to be the homes of 50 families, replacing bricks and mortar with a broad strip of tarmac and concrete. Half of Holme Road got the chop and also half of Winter Avenue - all the odds - which means you've quite possibly driven a car or ridden a southbound double decker through their former front rooms. They called the new road Ron Leighton Way to commemorate the local MP who'd just died in office, and although it's unlocked the traffic it's also seriously roughed up the residential boundary.
Those homes on the eastern side of Winter Avenue once backed onto East Ham Market Hall, a large covered space with the common touch. This much loved East End staple originated in 1922 when a local family rented pitches to ex-servicemen to sell their wares from barrows. It swiftly grew to become an off-street market where almost 100 stallholders sold textiles, vegetables and cut price cookware to nans and housewives, then later more diverse fare to immigrants, and which ought to have been celebrating its centenary this year. Alas it closed it 2018 for the usual reason, it was much more valuable as flats, and those brick hutches are now built, sold and occupied.
They called the development New Market Place, and left a bit of space for a few turfed out stalls in a minor arcade below Kina House. I walked up and down last year - it barely took a minute - past squished outlets for vaping, underwear, hairdressing, cosmetics and watch repairs. I went back yesterday and even that's now closed, its tenants turfed out to cope or fail elsewhere as the final phase gets underway. Meanwhile the edge of the new development now extends even further than the old market hall because every square foot counts. If you once lived in one of those homes on the eastern side of Winter Avenue, a keypadded bin store may now occupy your kitchen and a 15 storey tower erupts from what was once your back garden.
However not only did carmageddon destroy half of Winter Avenue, it also substantially extended it. The imposition of Ron Leighton Way additionally severed St John's Road, a street running perpendicular, so Newham council decided to rename its western end Winter Avenue creating the current L-shaped hybrid. You can still walk the full length of the former St John's Road because they added a pedestrian crossing in the middle, but cars are now restricted to a one way loop on the western side, hence the decision to rename. Fortuitously none of the houses along the renamed section needed to be renumbered - they were all 36+ whereas the old Winter Avenue topped out at 35.
The St John's Road end of Winter Avenue feels a lot more like a standard 1900-ish street. It has long terraces of gabled 3-bedders, sufficient space out front for restricted parking and several pollarded trees with spindly tops. Some of the front gardens are even three bins deep, so there's a bonus. I spotted a couple of helium balloons wound round the top of the telegraph pole on the corner with Campbell Road, one emblazoned with a pink unicorn, the other in the shape of a single digit. The only inhabitants I passed were a lady in a sari sweeping her front path, a ginger cat and a man returning home with heavy bags of groceries. I did alas visit a couple of days too late to see snow on walls or ice on pavements, so the Avenue looked much less Winter than it might have done.
Oh, and the Beatles played here, twice. The rear doors to East Ham's GranadaCinema opened out onto Winter Avenue so the Fab Four may well have sneaked out this way on 9th March or 9th November 1963. On their first visit they weren't even top of the bill, on their second it took 200 policemen to disperse the crowds. Today the rear doors are grubby and unloved, as befits a cinema that opened in 1936, became a bingo club in 1976, attempted a few years as a banqueting venue and closed in 2017. The auditorium is now an adventure park called Flip Out where you can take the kids trampolining, pretend to go caving or launch yourself down a giant slide from what used to be the upper circle. The door to Laser Quest is on the left, but we're on Barking Road now and my Winter's tale is at an end.
