LONDON A-Z In this alphabetical series I'll be visiting places in London I haven't blogged about before, ideally unsung settlements that fly below the radar. They may have been mentioned inpassing but they've never been the focus of a single post because I've never wandered around in detail before. I'm starting off in Redbridge with a semi-engulfedvillage on the edge of Fairlop Plain, and if you've never heard of it don't say the signs weren't there.
A is for Aldborough Hatch
For centuries Hainault Forest covered five square miles with dense woodland ideal for deer hunting. Around the perimeter were several entrances with wicket gates, or hatches, with Aldborough Hatch the fastest access for carousings at the Fairlop Oak. In 1851 Parliament passed "An Act for disafforesting the forest of Hainault in the county of Essex" which permitted the destruction of the vast majority of the woodland and its transformation to agricultural use. Many were aghast at this wanton privatisation and would later mount a much more successful defence of neighbouring Epping Forest.
As part compensation the Crown agreed to fund a new parish church on Aldborough Hatch Lane, at the time serving a small local congregation from a string offarms and manor houses. They also contributed a unique building material, namely chunks of Portland Stone from the original Westminster Bridge which had just been demolished in favour of a stronger replacement. The church was called St Peter's in honour of the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, better known as Westminster Abbey. You can't get inside unless the Reverend Kate's unlocked, but you can admire the squat turrety spire and wander round a dense churchyard packed with Alberts, Sidneys and Queenies. The parish hall alongside hosts murder mystery evenings and the 1st Aldborough Hatch Scouts, while at the far end is a well-tended Memorial Garden part-paid-for by Tesco Bags For Life (despite the supermarket having no local outpost).
St Peter's sits bang on the edge of the Green Belt so if you head north it feels like you're walking down a country lane. In reality it's mostly gravel pits behind the hedges, the largest protected by further fences and signs warning of deep cold water. The Fairlop Quarry Complex is vast and still partly operational while the rest rewilds. An unmarked gate on the right leads to Aldborough Hall Nature Reserve, in essence a long path trapped behind a hedge to keep the longhorn cattle in, and also a dead-end because public rights of way aren't plentiful hereabouts. Aldborough Hall Farm survives but now limits itself to geese and peacocks; it also claims to host the closest Caravan and Motorhome Club pitch to central London. Nextdoor is the village pub, the Dick Turpin, although there's no evidence the highwayman ever visited and it's now a Miller & Carter Steak House (which likes to pretend it's in Ilford).
The lane continues past farm machinery and grazing horses to a sharp right-hand bend where the pavement gives out. The white gate ahead marks the aforementioned entrance to Hainault Forest, the actual Aldborough Hatch, but since 1956 has been the entrance to an isolated equestrian centre. Although they welcome riders they don't make it obvious their driveway is the start of a permissive path, so yes you can lift the latch and walk round the back of the stables to cross the site. It's all very paddocky out here with smells to match, though thankfully frozen underfoot at present so not the hoofed mudbath it looks like it often is. The bridleway crosses further quarry workings, tightly padlocked, and then emerges somewhere just as remote but entirely different.
This huge open space is Fairlop Waters Country Park, formerly RAF Fairlop because a flat expanse of deforested land was ideal for aerial wartime manoeuvres. It's since been quarried and partly refilled so is fun to sail on, but this is the side furthest from the car park so less recreationally blessed. One all-weather footpath weaves through nature reserves and round scraped lakes but all the rest is open country with a web of grassy paths. Much of the adjacent land used to be a golf course but this hasn't reopened since the pandemic so Redbridge council have advanced plans to increase the extent and opportunities in the country park. It'd just be nicer for the residents of Aldborough Hatch if it was easier for them to get here because connections are both paltry and well dodgy underfoot.
In total contrast, turn right out of the churchyard and it's suburbia all the way. A wedge of avenues bears off from the original Aldborough Hatch Lane, this the Aldborough Grange estate laid out by a company called Suburban Developments Limited in the early 1930s. The majority are gabled, some are pebbledashed and most can't officially be called semi-detached because they're all joined together. Along the main artery just one house dates back to the 19th century, a small stand-out villa, while others are set back further than you'd expect behind a long shrubbery that used to be the village pond. A small enclave of townhouses was squeezed in behind the vicarage much later on, and I love the non-specific plaque that simply states 'This stone was laid by Maureen in March 1965 to initiate the development of this estate'.
What originally triggered the despoliation of Aldborough Hatch was the A12, here known as Eastern Avenue, which carved through what was then open countryside in the 1920s. Here engineers followed the alignment of a rustic backroad called Hatch Lane and transformed it into a dual carriageway, the only hint of former times being a line of trees on the central reservation. Ideally you don't want to live in one of the houses facing the maelstrom, you want to live one street back for a quieter life with excellent road connectivity. However only the A12 gets a bus service because TfL have never deigned to send a small bus round the backroads, condemning many in Aldborough Hatch to live beyond the usual 400m threshold. This includes residents on Oaks Lane, the wiggling boundary road whose residents still look out onto hedgerows, paddocks and the last remaining farmhouse.
The suburb has only two shops, both very similar convenience stores and inexplicably nextdoor to each other. It does however have a whopping primary school, a 1930s monster in brick with two end turrets and a central clocktower, also frequented by kids from across the arterial in Seven Kings. Where Aldborough Hatch stops is geographically dubious, especially the further southwest you go and the houses become a tad less aspirational. The long parade of shops, the mosque and the high school all address themselves instead as Newbury Park, this because they abut the railway and what dominates hereabouts is a Central line station. You know the one, it's got this magnificent postwar bus station outside...
...and could very easily have been called Aldborough Hatch instead, in which case you'd all have heard of it.
