Sun 1: Received an email from someone asking if I'd kindly mention their event again, because I appear to have enjoyed it last year. Sent back an email pointing out I actually mentioned it on the blog yesterday. Mon 2: I'm sitting in a bus shelter in Stratford surrounded by three girls and a boy carrying a hoodie. The girls seem quite excitable about what's inside the hoodie, especially after they spot a couple of police officers nearby. Something that might be metal flashes from inside the rolled-up clothing. Its owner grins with casual bravado. All four then hurry towards the front of a bus that's just arrived. I'll catch the next one. Tue 3: Head to Dagenham to visit the Barking Stink, a Totally Thames exhibition at Valence House. It's very interesting, but essentially just a few information boards plonked outside the cafe so not worth trekking all that way for. Later in the week I'll discover exactly the same information boards - a second copy - plonked outside the National Theatre on the South Bank. I should have gone there first instead. Wed 4: How tired the interior of the Elephant and Castle shopping centre looks. I don't think this is the fault of the Elephant and Castle shopping centre. Thu 5: I've noticed somewhere in the Midlands that my Art Pass unexpectedly lets me into, so I need to go before it expires, so I buy rail tickets for next month. I bet it rains. Fri 6: BestMate and I go for dinner at our favourite restaurant near Tower Bridge. The sunset is dramatic, but the service isn't as good as it usually is. We'll give them one more chance.
Sat 7: I also rode the rail replacement bus from Acton Town to Rayners Lane, but that all worked very smoothly so I didn't write about it. Sun 8: I head for the new Seven Dials Market, a foodies' food hall in a former banana warehouse. I thought it it opened at eleven, but it turns out on Sunday it opens at noon so the security guard on the door sends me away. But I didn't really want a vegan doughnut, short rib burritos or Cornish Gouda off the cheese conveyor belt, so I didn't come back. Mon 9: A big spider scuttles underneath my TV. It must be September. Tue 10: I stay up until almost 2am watching the Prorogation ceremony in Parliament, which proves even more surreal than usual. But a fortnight later the Supreme Court will decree it never happened, so maybe I dreamt it all. Wed 11: I spot that the Christmas chocolates, mince pies and puddings have appeared on the shelves in my local supermarket (already), but I don't blog about it because that's really 2003, and I don't tweet about it because that's far too 2009. Thu 12: Whisper it, but the Natural History Museum is more interesting than the Science Museum (not in terms of what there is on display but how it's displayed). Fri 13: It's sunny, it's warm, and it's barely rained for the last few weeks. (How long ago 13th September now seems.) Sat 14: One of the last remaining undeveloped patches of land under the auspices of the QEOP planners is to the south of Stratford High Street between the Greenway and Rick Roberts Way. During the Olympics it was used for coach parking. Ultimately it will have 900 homes. But until April 2024 it's been adopted by a car supermarket, Big Motoring World, who've covered the site with hundreds and hundreds of BMWs and Volkswagens. Their application passed all planning hurdles, but who the hell thought the sale of exhaust-belchers was an appropriate use of public development land? Sadiq, over to you.
Sun 15: An incident somewhere in the vicinity has required my gas supply to be turned off. It being late in the evening, I haven't yet noticed the card saying an engineer needs to visit for a 'purge and restart'. Mon 16: I ring for an appointment. The engineer comes round promptly. He purges/restarts my system. "I just need to check it's restarted properly," he says. He checks my appliances. He notices that my gas cooker isn't 100% operational. He notices that the connection to my gas boiler might not be safe. He fills in a gas safety certificate. He switches the gas back off. It's been off ever since. Tue 17: I get a phone call from my letting agents asking if an engineer can come round now. "Sorry, I'm in Sutton," I say. Wed 18: I get a phone call direct from the engineer. He can't come until tomorrow. Thu 19: The engineer comes round. He immediately spots that the problem with the boiler isn't actually a problem. However, he then spots another problem with the boiler which may be a lot more difficult to solve. "It's old," he says. "I suspect we'll need to get it replaced." He doesn't check the cooker because the gas is off. "It's old," he says. "Probably best to just get it replaced." Fri 20: BestMate kindly offers me the use of his bath. After five days without hot water, it is bliss. Sat 21: After six days without a gas cooker, I have been surviving on cold food and microwaveable meals. The chicken breasts in my fridge have exceeded their use-by date and have to be thrown away. Sun 22: After seven days without central heating, it's fortunate that it's September and I haven't needed it.
Mon 23: For complicated contractual reasons, my letting agents have asked if I could buy a new gas cooker and they'll refund me. I attempt to buy a new gas cooker online. One of the questions on the application form comes up as a No rather than a Yes, so I am unable to proceed. Tue 24: Apparently I am no longer allowed a gas cooker as my kitchen doesn't have an external wall. The old gas cooker was perfectly legal, but a new one would not be. I have no choice but to defect from gas to electric (sigh). Wed 25: I order a new electric cooker instead. It should be here on Friday. Thu 26: BestMate has flown to America for a fortnight, so popping round to his for a bath has become a lot more difficult. Fri 27: I stay in awaiting the delivery of my new electric cooker. Eventually I get a call from the driver saying he's nearly here. Shortly afterwards I get another call saying he couldn't park because I live on a red route. "Best rebook for a weekend because parking might be easier." This weekend is fully booked, but they can do October. Sat 28: I manage to get temporary access to a nearby parking space, so I ring up and rebook my delivery for Tuesday. Sun 29: I'm glad I bought a Brexit-ready stash of tinned food because it has proved very useful. Jacket potatoes from a microwave don't taste the same as from an oven, but they'll do. So far I have only succumbed to one takeaway, and I'm sure I'm eating less than usual. Nevertheless I have somehow put on three pounds in weight. Mon 30: After two weeks without central heating, it's fortunate that it's September and I haven't needed it. Two weeks without hot water is proving more problematic. As yet there is no indication as to how my boiler problem might start to be resolved, only that resolving it will be very complicated and may take weeks. I hope to know more soon. Thankfully, as a tenant, I'm not paying.
Tue 1: I stay in awaiting the delivery of my new electric cooker. Eventually I get a call from the driver saying he's nearly here. I go out and direct him to my cunningly-sourced parking space. Sadly the van is fractionally too big so doesn't fit. "Best rebook for a weekend because parking might be easier." The saga continues.
The latest big exhibition at Tate Britain is O' Magic Power of Bleakness by Mark Leckey. He's a Turner Prize-winning video artist from Birkenhead, and the exhibition focuses around a life-size replica of a motorway bridge on the M53. You sit or stand underneath it while three video works are screened around you, sequentially, over the course of an hour. The first is Under Under In, a new immersive experience inspired by folktales about changelings and memories of pre-adolescence. The second and third are his earlier works Dream English Kid 1964–1999 AD 2015 and Fiorucci Made Me Hardcore, seminal paeans to dance and casual culture. You can tell at the ticket desk who's buying tickets for William Blake and who's buying tickets for the edgy Wirral bloke.
I considered going in but the tickets were advertised at £15 (including £2 'optional donation'), and also two of the three works are availableonline in their entirety, so decided against. Instead I headed off to experience the ambience of three of London's genuine motorway bridges for myself, and to pen you a digital portrait of each.
In the 1960s the GLC had brutal plans for a series of concentric ringways around London, which were halted when public opinion rose up against mass demolition. But some sections got built, including a pair which met at a giant elevated roundabout in North Kensington. The A40(M) Westway, now merely the A40, launches off towards Marylebone while the M41 West Cross Route, since downgraded to the A3220, stalks down to Shepherds Bush. The West Cross Route was supposed to continue north to a massive junction in Willesden but that never happened, which is why two concrete spurs still jut out towards the terraced houses they were meant to destroy. If anywhere in London epitomises urban motorway blight, it's here.
And yet down at ground level a sense of community thrives. The Westway Trust own 23 acres of land under and alongside these dual carriageways, a good third of which is devoted to sport and fitness, including a huge rectangular sports complex jammed within the ring of the roundabout. Local youth flood inside for light gymming and changing facilities, or bike aimlessly round the covered outer circuit. If you think of Kensington and Chelsea as well-to-do, a spin around the immediate vicinity will soon change your mind.
I spotted two teams clearing up after their match on the all-weather football pitch above the car park. Several older players were massing on Pitch 4 whose goalposts lie either side of the elevated carriageways. If Kensington's hoodied teens have booked ahead they can occupy the basketball court, else they can shoot practice hoops for free. The riding centre closed down four years ago and is now half-overgrown. A climbing wall awaited scrambling hands. What the hell is a swimfarm anyway? A rib of concrete shielded the multi-coloured playground hump. The Westway Wildlife Garden is a dog-free zone (because poo is full of nitrogen). Tiny apples have fallen from the tree by the stile (yes, stile).
Dream English Kid 1965–2019 AD:Bow Flyover A102(M)
Next up it's my local multi-level 1960s interchange, about which much has already been written. Technically the motorway terminated at the Old Ford junction a short distance to the north, because motorways never have pavements, but let's pretend. The flyover spans the Lea between the church and the high street, and is used by vehicles and brave cyclists only. Those on foot dice with death to dash across the sliproads, despite the pedestrian crossings TfL added a few years back, because few can be arsed to take the longer route via the centre of the roundabout. There's probably nothing coming, at least nothing especially fast, oh hang on, run!
A set of locked doors block entry into the cavity beneath the Bow up-ramp. Five of the pillars are numbered, bigly, in a misguided attempt to provide navigational assistance to people who haven't noticed. Beneath the concrete roof is a space large enough to provide overflow parking for Friday prayers. You won't normally find a narrowboat here, but when one was abandoned last week on the back of a lorry a traffic warden made sure to give it a parking ticket.
The planters in the centre of the roundabout are filled with spiky leaves, irrigated by pipes pushing through a crust of bark chunks. The three-letter metal sculpture up one end was originally nicknamed The Bow Wow, for which I hope someone is truly sorry. A white bike is still chained to the railings close to the spot where one of the roundabout's three cycling victims was killed. Behind it the advertising tower has recently been covered in silver sheeting and upgraded from static to video. Engineers switched the screen on last week, and this week is the first to be blazing ads for Ford, Coke and Hiscox into drivers' line of sight. Removing the flyover has disappeared off TfL's list of visionary priorities, so dream on.
The North Circular meets Eastern Avenue at the Redbridge Roundabout. Originally the 'South Woodford to Barking Relief Road' it was intended to connect the M11 to Beckton and the Thames, and had the notional designation M15. But beyond the roundabout it wasn't built to motorway standard, more massive dual carriageway, so remains the A406. Orbital traffic crosses the junction on a parallel pair of high concrete stilts. And in the centre of the roundabout is a vast Ballardian corral five acres in size, accessed only via three subways or a raised barrier for service vehicles only.
Anyone could set up a tent here, or have a picnic, or play an entire croquet tournament, if only they didn't mind the fumes. Nothing grows in the strip beneath the flyover, but to either side are two copses planted with an impressive variety of trees. Lime, plane, maple, horse chestnut and pine aren't even the half of it. But hardly any people step off the entrenched walkway which orbits the southern perimeter, if indeed they walk through at all, the subways generally a lifeline only for inhabitants of a single isolated street. I did spot one resident offering up the central space to two large dogs for a runaround, which if nothing else has put me off the picnic idea.
Thanks, that'll be £15 (including £2 'optional donation').
Or go off and explore some motorway flyovers of your own.
THE UNLOST RIVERS OF LONDON Seven Kings Water Hainault → Fairlop → Little Heath → Seven Kings (5 miles)
[Seven Kings Water → Loxford Water → Roding → Thames]
Here's a London river you'd hardly notice even if you knew where it was. The Seven Kings Water drains much of northeast Redbridge, including Hainault Forest Country Park, the arable wastes of Little Heath and somewhere called Happy Valley, not to mention Seven Kings itself. It doesn't make for a great walk, but that didn't stop me trying. [Google map][1898 OS map]
The Seven Kings Water rises just outside London, by barely the length of a football pitch, on the northern slopes of Hainault ForestCountry Park. The village of Chigwell Row runs along the ridgetop, and below that a pool called the Sheep Pond, and partway down the wooded hillside the Essex/Redbridge boundary. I found only dry trenches in the trees, even after all this rain we've been having, so I'm calling the source as the boating lake instead. This was added in the early 20th century after the London County Council bought up Fox Burrows Farm and some surrounding forest for recreational purposes. I was pleased to discover the lake ringed with Michaelmas daisies, given what the date was yesterday, but the end of September is also the cue for Jeff's rowing boats to pack up for the winter.
Across the busy Romford Road, now in Hainault proper, the Seven Kings Water still follows the same angled course as it did when it was a brook across a field. On one side is the Hainault Business Park, a warehouse cluster so forward-looking that it has its own app, and so paranoid that it flashes your car's registration number up on an electronic display as you enter. I was particularly excited to discover DG Solutions, purveyors of Amazing Double Glazing, although I'm unlikely ever to require their conservatory expertise. The other side of Peregrine Road is postwar housing, which anywhere else would be bogstandard, but because this is almost-Essex a surprising number of Land Rovers are parked outside. High green railings keep residents out of the riverside strip, but haven't stopped a spate of litter getting in.
Up next is the Seven Kings Water's finest hour as the centrepiece of the Gardens of Peace cemetery. This is exclusively for Muslim burials, and much in demand because Islam forbids cremation, packed with rows of identical unpretentious mounds aligned towards Mecca. It's also been filling up steadily since 2009 so an extension has had to be opened up at Five Oaks Lane, coincidentally where another tributary of the Seven Kings Water begins. The main branch continues beneath two recreation grounds to Fairlop Waters, and runs down the eastern side between the main boating lake and the angling lake. You won't see it, it was culverted beneath the runway of RAF Fairlop in 1940, the area since used for gravel extraction and now a very popular countrypark.
The enormous wedge of farmland between Hainault and the A12 is some of London's most inexplicable Green Belt. The Seven Kings Water runs through it, as does lonely Hainault Road, plus a single public footpath I've never managed to follow. An area of fields and landfill the size of three Olympic Parks could make way for an entire new suburb with several thousand homes, but isn't even on Redbridge's radar because they're not allowed to touch it. The aforementioned tributary meets up with the main river just south of Hainault Farm, nowhere publicly accessible, and the combined flow can only be glimpsed through a fence along the godforsaken ratrun of Painters Road. I risked the pavementless verge, stepped over detritus chucked from cars (including McDonalds cups and a Pure Speed Garage CD), and barely spotted the 7KW below a temporary bridge providing access for tipper trucks. Redevelop it, I say, redevelop it all.
Civilisation is briefly regained at the A12 Eastern Avenue, after which the Seven Kings Water continues south between private playing fields and the grounds of King George Hospital. The nature reserve on the hospital side is called Happy Valley, which is a dreadful name for several reasons. The river's fenced off, so can't be reached, let alone seen. The so-called valley is almost flat. The path skirts the outer edge of the car park, with the smashed windows of the original Goodmayes (mental) Hospital on the far side. Patients are invited to head out this way as part of 'King George's Healthy Hike', a mile-long wellness circuit, but I didn't see any. The path eventually dips into woodland overshadowed by an excessive number of floodlights. I was happy to emerge at the far end into another sports ground and finally cross the river.
Seven Kings Park is the prime recreational facility for folk living near Newbury Park station. Most won't reach the far eastern edge, where the playground and skatepark are, and even fewer'll look beyond the trees to see the Seven Kings Water shrouded behind. The river's only a proper feature in the farthest corner, where access is currently part-restricted behind a taped-off oak tree surrounded by fallen branches. This is the only place I managed to stand beside the stream in anything approaching a natural state, although I was also accompanied by all the summer litter that autumn winds had blown to the perimeter, including a Warburton's bag, a bottle of Highland Spring and a ripped sachet of Pasante Silky TLC.
Finally I'd reached built-up streets, in an area rapidly developed after Seven Kings station opened in 1899. It's not far to Westwood Recreation Ground, optimistically described on its noticeboard as "a rolling parkland", and awkwardly bisected by the culverted Seven Kings Water. The river makes a pleasant backdrop to the playground, but the ornamental pond has been entirely screened off - allowing flocks of waterfowl to flap in peace - and its dammed waters tumble over a weir to return underground. I looked across to where the tennis courts had been ripped out, and the bleak concrete cricket slab which replaced the model yachting pool, and wasn't entirely surprised how empty the place was.
There is a legend that in Saxon times seven kings met at a cool, clear stream while out hunting, where they let their horses drink and then moved on, leaving the name Seven Kings behind them. Looking at the busy High Road today, a magnet for those who like driving cars, parking cars, repairing cars and eating chicken, other explanations seem massively more likely. The culverted Seven Kings Water passes down the side of the McDonald's drive-through, then zigzags beneath and beyond the railway before eventually reemerging beyond Green Lane to fill the lake in South Park. Which is where the Loxford Water begins, and where yesterday's post kicked off. If you want to see London as it really is, follow a river.
THE UNLOST RIVERS OF LONDON Loxford Water Seven Kings → Ilford → Loxford → Barking (2 miles)
[Loxford Water → Roding → Thames]
Loxford is the minor suburb between Ilford and Barking. Loxford Water is the minor waterway between the River Roding and the Mayes Brook, and drains into the former. A rather longer river feeds it, the Seven Kings Water, but more of that tomorrow. [Google map][1898 OS map]
I'm going down to South Park, gonna have myself a time.
This particular South Park is a green space to the east of Ilford town centre, preserved when Loxford Hall's estate was sold off for housing in 1899. Surveyors took advantage of the river through the middle by creating an ornamental lake, fed from a culvert under South Park Crescent (not that me dropping in these street names is going to help you much, sorry). It was quite the place for a promenade. Today it's somewhat less so, indeed I was struck by the absence of humanity other than two lads throwing a ball for an alsatian, a man shouting into a phone and a newlywed couple in full Sikh dress posing for photographers while wielding a huge gold sword. Two fading bouquets were tied to a No Fishing sign. A Greylag goose approached me with menace. The doors to the Wildlife Centre were firmly locked.
A small stream overflows a weir at the south end of the lake, ducks beneath South Park Terrace and disappears behind the back gardens on South Park Road. At Staines Road the river reappears and, unexpectedly, runs along the side of the pavement for several hundred metres. It's fenced off and deep in a concrete trench, so not exactly picturesque, but a welcome reminder of sylvan days when this was a rural backwater called Water Lane. A couple of inches of water flow over gravel, weed, reusable plastic bags, half bricks and upturned china plates. I stopped to take another photo.
"What are you taking photos of?" asked a grey haired lady approaching up Loxford Lane. I was uncertain whether she was genuinely interested or fired up on a Neighbourhood Watch crusade, so I told her I was just taking photos of the river. "Are you going to complain about the rubbish?" she said. Before long she was recounting how she remembered the stream in the 1940s, and how there were houses further along you could only enter across small individual bridges, and how at Green Lane they built other houses right over the top, and of course you know it feeds the lake in South Park, and I think I got away with that.
At the next bend is a small pointy-topped boundary stone, with Borough of Ilford on one side and Borough of Barking on the other. For the next half mile the Loxford Water forms the dividing line between Redbridge and Barking & Dagenham, because there's often a rivery reason for these things. Barking Park follows the same alignment, its eastern entrance tucked between a car park and some allotments. This is one of the rare spots where you can follow Loxford Water up close, now an artificial wiggle with a much higher concrete bank on the Redbridge side. The sewage works behind has been replaced by Loxford School of Science and Technology. A purple plastic bottle bobbed in the water at the foot of a shallow weir. A squirrel scarpered. What might have been a riverside footpath then promptly petered out.
Barking Park was the council's first park, and is still its finest. Its most prominent feature is a 910m-long boating lake formed by damming the Loxford Water, dug out by an army of 100 workmen in 1898. The river runs in a separate channel out of sight behind. In 1953 a mock paddlesteamer called Phoenix II made its debut on the lake, along with hireable motorboats, but these days your sole option is a fleet of self-powered boats for £15 per half hour from the pontoon by the cafe. I think I saw the owners stashing their surplus stock amongst the trees on the far side of the lake as the season draws to a close. A heron padded across the shallows. A flock of seagulls landed where three ladies had chucked a bag of breadcrumbs. The gate onto Ilford Lane was guarded by an entire battalion of geese and pigeons. I stepped carefully.
The next stretch of Loxford Water has been fenced off by the Environment Agency - they call it Loxford Sluices. It runs in a filtered trench alongside the mosque, on past the warehouses on Tanner Street, then between some modern infill flats. Eventually it vanishes into Loxford Road pumping station, beneath a bridge you'd never notice were it not for the Weak Bridge sign at the top of the road. It's here we hit a slew of railway lines, just west of Barking station. The river's been diverted along the side of the Overground, whereas crossing on foot requires ascending a grim lofty footbridge, high enough to make sure it just scrapes over the top of the westbound District line flyover.
We're very nearly at the River Roding, where this river terminates. Before modern redevelopment Loxford Water splayed out along numerous marshy channels, the main one veering left behind North Street. In the early 20th century a swathe of factories intruded, then in 1971 the Harts Lane estate replaced them, now a none-too-desirable dead end of assorted flats. Residents still hang their laundry from communal washing lines. Signs warn 'No Games'. Fat dogs trot off leash in front of their owners. Road builders used the approximate line of the former Loxford Water for the Barking Northern Relief Road. The river finally entered the Roding on the other side of London Road, just below Barking Abbey, where Barking Retail Park is about to metamorphose into the massive Abbey Quays 'urban village'.
