Stroudley Walk has reopened! It's been four miserable years.
Memo to non-Bow residents Stroudley Walk is a pedestrianised street in Bromley-by-Bow near Bow Church, the church. It was redeveloped in the 1980s, exceptionally unattractively, wiping away all but three of the original Victorian buildings. Formerly it was the top end of Devons Road but they renamed it Stroudley Walk when adding the hideous brick colonnades. It's just been redeveloped again.
I went to the pharmacy on Friday afternoon and noticed most of the hoardings had been removed, with just a feeble plastic tape to keep people out. When I came back out a few minutes later a man was rolling up the aforementioned tape, and I asked "have you actually finished?" and he said yes. I'm not sure we had much of a language in common but he must have picked up on my enthusiasm because he grinned, and when I said "you must be proud" he nodded and continued to roll. By collecting a prescription I had accidentally borne witness to the precise moment of regeneration.
It's hard to overstate how horrible StroudleyWalk used to be, despite the good efforts of the businesses and residents based there. Four rows of shops mostlyconcealed behind brick arches. A tall block of flats surrounded by scrappy grass. A large central zone optimistically left empty for market stalls but where only pigeons ever gathered. A dingy Post Office that shifted somewhere nicer in 2014. A Victorian pub that called last orders in 2006 and morphed into a cash and carry, then a chicken shop. A broad windswept cut-through devoid of charm. The architects should have been forced to live in one of the flats above the betting shop as some kind of punishment.
There thus weren't many dissenting voices when it was proposed to knock most of it down and building something better. The block of flats would be replaced by something twice the size. Two lower blocks would be shoehorned into excess space elsewhere. The southern parades would be replaced by a street of actual houses, not flats. All in all there'd be 274 new homes where previously there'd been 52, also a pocket park, also a community hub, also 33 new trees, also half the original shops would be retained in a cluster around the three listed buildings. But they'd been promising this would happen for years.
The crunch came in June 2022 when construction finally began, or rather demolition started. Down came Warren House floor by floor, and a team of builders moved in to undertake everything the redevelopment demanded. Annoyingly they set up camp in Stroudley Walk's central space, entirely blocking it off, which quite wrecked connectivity hereabouts. A gap of just 50m forced a quarter mile detour from one side to the other, this particularly annoying for those living to the south who couldn't easily get to the shops any more.
Those shops could also only be accessed via a thin strip of shielded walkway, necessitating squeezing past the takeaway and several trays of vegetables laid atop upturned crates. The hit to custom proved too much for Ahmed's Bakers Delight which ceased trading, also the coffee shop called Posted which opened with high hopes in 2024 and admitted defeat a year later. This cafe was about the only thing which might have appealed to incomers moving into the replacement 25-storey apartment block, a private tower branded Upper East, but instead its construction snuffed the business out.
But hurrah, after 46 blockaded months the hoardings are finally down and we can all walk through again. I thought I noticed a broader smile on the face of the minimart cashier yesterday morning. And yes haven't they been busy.
We have herringbone paving all the way down. We have imported shrubbery. We have rising bollards so only very selective vehicles can get in. We have angular patches dotted with rocks and logs, these filled with gravel suggesting they might be for drainage. We have mature trees and saplings that came in on the back of a lorry. We have additional brick colonnades, these thinner and taller in an attempt to better conceal the ugliness behind. We have a part-finished play area, larger than expected but nowhere near ready for children to clamber over it. We have doors to at least four blocks of flats. And we have a rather nice artwork reflecting the most significant event that ever happened here.
On 17th February 1913 Sylvia Pankhurst climbed onto a cart outside the LCC school, which was located where Upper East now stands, and delivered a campaigning speech in support of Votes for Women. She pleaded for the women of Bow to join her in making a sacrifice to secure enfranchisement, then walked a few steps up the road and hurled a large flint through the window of the local undertakers. Two policemen duly seized her and dragged her along Bow Road to the newly-opened police station, which led to a sentence of two months hard labour and a famous hunger strike in Holloway prison. The new artwork is thus a big disc in suffragette colours featuring the dates 1903-1928 and a swirl of related positive phrases. It's great to finally see recognition here, but I doubt Sylvia would have been pleased to see the roundel attached to railings which bar entry to a private garden.
Some of the new blocks were opened in October by the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, his visit commemorated by a really cheap-looking plaque. But at least two blocks are still being fitted out ("Blue Overshoes Must Be Worn Throughout Block E") which'll be why there's still a small corral of diggers and portakabins outside the Halal Meat & Fish Bazar. The blocks all have locally relevant names, appropriately enough four pioneering women but seemingly skipping Sylvia Pankhurst. Let's see if we can work out who they were.
It's lovely to have Stroudley Walk back and open again, even if not all the workmen have cleared off yet. Four years of severance are finally over, I have hundreds of new neighbours and I suspect a few new businesses will be moving into the units under some of the newbuilds. Stroudley Walk's gentrification journey isn't over yet and could still arguably go too far, but it's impossible to look back on the previous grim brown incarnation and say this isn't a huge improvement.
