In this series I'm taking the train one stop beyond the Greater London boundary, getting off and seeing what's there. Today that means Grange Hill, one stop beyond Hainault on the Central line shuttle. The station's barely outside London, indeed the boundary runs immediately behind the southbound platform, as a small bulge of Essex nudges unnecessarily into the capital. I should say up front that the iconic children's drama was never set here, indeed Grange Hill's only school is a primary, but if you walk to the far side of the suburb you eventually end up in Birds of a Feather.
Grange Hill was originally an isolated hamlet around a crossroads on the edge of Hainault Forest. North to Chigwell, east to Chigwell Row, south to Barking Side and west to Woodford Bridge, just to get your bearings. There was once a 15th century manor called the Grange and there is still is a hill, hence Grange Hill. Alas nothing pre-20th-century survives except a triangular green by the crossroads, complete with grubby village sign and minimal shrubbery. One of the old pubs took a direct hit from a parachute mine in 1941 and is now a Shell garage, and the other was sold off to developers in its 240th year and has been replaced by a block of flats.
What wrought the greatest change around here was inevitably a railway. The Fairlop loop opened in 1903 crossing open countryside to link Woodford to Ilford, with Grange Hill station slightly better used than lonely Hainault. A doodlebug took out the original station building in 1944, hence the somewhat utilitarian flatroofeddesign. But theplatforms only needed a new canopy so remain some of the most evocative on the Underground, complete with twiddly green columns with the letters GER entwined in the ironwork. Services were transferred to the extended Central line in 1947 and this was finally the trigger for a considerable burst of housebuilding locally - private developers to the west and an LCC estate to the east.
Grange Hill is one of three wards under the jurisdiction of Chigwell Parish Council, and closer you get to Chigwell proper the larger the houses get. Along Hainault Road the neighbours appear to be having some kind of blingiest gate competition, black and gold twiddles preferred, shielding sizeable detached homes and parking for several vehicles. Step back off the main road and the houses are more typically postwar, from half-timbered semis to gabled four-bedders, but still on the large side as befits the Essex fringe. Fontayne Avenue was one of the first additions and has a thick strip of hedge down the middle of the road, like some kind of suburban dual carriageway sloping down towards open farmland views. The bungalow at 22 Dacre Gardens is called Llamedos, and yes we see what you did there.
A decent parade of shops ascends from the station with estate agents and beauty salons perhaps over-represented. This being Chigwell South the local cafes tend to be either pink or cottage green, and a tiny chihuahua will meet you at the door of the Naked Lounge if you pop in for spa treatment or microblading. Obviously there's a florist, who with Valentine's Day imminent have erected a gazebo of blooms on the pavement and wrapped pink ribbons all around the pedestrian crossing. The top row of newspapers in the rack outside the Manor supermarket kicks off with the Daily Telegraph and continues Times, Sun and Daily Mail. It also has a slot for the Jewish Chronicle while the cafe nextdoor promotes Hot Salt Beef, so yes there is a synagogue up the hill, recently refurbished with funds from a local businessman and renamed the Lord and Lady Sugar Community Hall.
Grange Hill's most conspicuous church is St Winifred's, built in 1935 as a chapel of ease because traipsing all the way to Chigwell proper every Sunday wasn't ideal. Something about the building looks a bit off, perhaps the sparse tower with its painted black crosses, or more likely the fact it was cheaply built in brick then coated with cement. The local cemetery is more recent, accessed at the far end of the delightfully-named Froghall Lane which appropriately enough is a dead end. Here the parish council oversees a long sliver of land with a tranquil rural outlook, employs on-site groundsmen and charges a £40 release fee if your car gets locked in overnight. The oldest grave I could find is from the 1970s and the latest is marked only by Charlie's floral tributes, as yet unfaded. Looking on the back of the headstones I spotted one with the extra epitaph He Lived He Laughed He Loved, and I hope this isn't a trend that'll spread.
The cemetery is the only part of Grange Hill beyond the railway, this being the official boundary of the Green Belt. The tracks run in a cutting all the way to Chigwell, bar a brief section where the Edwardian engineers had to burrow through the spur of a hill. The Grange Hill Tunnel is only 237m long making it the shortest in regular service on the Underground and takes just 12 seconds to whizz through aboard a train. It's also perfectly straight as you can clearly see from the bridge outside the station, also the caged footbridge on the opposite side accessed up a muddy path from the corner of Wycliffe Gardens. Just be aware that if you want to see a train pass through they only run every 20 minutes, this because Grange Hill is the 3rd least used station on the Underground, beaten only by the next two stations up the line.
But if there's one worth seeing round here it's probably the Limes Farm Estate, that is assuming postwar housing is your thing. In the late 1960s Chigwell Urban District Council belatedly decided they ought to build a lot of council houses and picked an as yet undeveloped slope abutting the edge of Redbridge where most Essex residents would never see it. The architects had a field day, starting by drawing a single-exit loop road and then adding a maze of large apartment blocks and crisscrossing townhouses in the centre. The flats form three large U-shaped blocks facing a central car park, each of the trio distinguished by red, yellow or green detailing. The houses have timber, brick or chunky pebbledash exteriors and separate rows of garages. And just for a laugh they numbered them all 2-634 Limes Avenue round one side and 1-731 Copperfield round the other, which must make deliveries a nightmare.
The finest feature is the green wedge that tumbles down the centre of the estate, a bit squidgy at present but creating an attractive backdrop to urban life. A slim concrete footbridge connects the top of the estate to the summit of the hill where a bench has been plonked with views towards Docklands and Kent. The estate's parade has only four shops, and currently offers just takeaways or nice nails while a crew of refrigeration experts rips the interior out of Londis. Residents must be hoping the Post Office reopens soon. There's an underlying sense of isolation here, as tends to happen when a community is a developmental afterthought, with only a few short alleyways linking Limes Farm to earlier streets. But slip through to the south and you instantly enter cul-de-sacs with Redbridge bins, then it's barely five minutes to Hainault station, because that's how close to London a One Stop Beyond can be.
