✉ Wyre Piddle is a small village in Worcestershire just upriver from Pershore. It really is called that.
✉ Wyre Piddle is a pleasant village, mostlylinear, squished between the river Avon on one side and the railway on the other. It's old enough to have been named in the Domesday Book, then called Pidele. It has a pub, a church and a population of about 600. It's neither of great consequence nor especially visitworthy, just nice. And it really is called that.
✉ It's called Wyre Piddle because it's on the Piddle Brook. The Piddle Brook rises near Inkberrow and flows for about 14 miles past Flyford Flavell, North Piddle and Naunton Beauchamp to join the River Avon at Wyre Piddle. Inkberrow is sometimes thought to be the inspiration for Ambridge in The Archers, in which case a better name for the fictional village might be Piddlebridge.
✉ The UK's greatest concentration of Piddles is in Dorset on the River Piddle. This flows through the villages of Piddletrenthide and Piddlehinton to join the River Frome near Wareham. It also flows through Puddletown, Tolpuddle, Affpuddle, Briantspuddle and Turners Puddle, all of which were originally piddles rather than puddles before 19th century prudes forced a name change.
✉ Piddle is thought to be a Saxon word for a small stream or tiny flow, although it's unclear whether the comparison with urination came before or after.
✉ This is what the Piddle Brook looked like at Wyre Piddle earlier in the week, although it's normally a lot lower than this. The bridge here was widened and reconstructed in 1930 but retained parts of the original structure because this has long been part of a main road between Worcester and Evesham.
✉ I arrived in Wyre Piddle an hour after the Environment Agency lowered their red flood warning (flooding is expected) to an amber flood alert (flooding is possible). Seems they were a bit premature because I had been intending to walk down Mill Lane to Pershore but the road was still underwater so I had to turn round and go back the way I came. This is why I ended up spending so much time in Wyre Piddle.
✉ This driver has just spotted the flooding at the top of Mill Lane and is thinking better of it. He was probably driving to the marina at Wyre Mill, a former watermill now occupied by a clubful of boating types. This is where Toyah Willcox used to come sailing at weekends with her parents, staying in a caravan by the marina.
✉ I'd love to have seen the mill again but the floodwater meant I never got anywhere close. I last boated past on a chilly Saturday morning in September 1984, negotiating the lock by the weir while several of my friends slept off their hangovers.
✉ The weir has been here for over 1000 years, indeed 'wyre' originally meant weir, hence Wyre Piddle means weir by the small stream and is thus absolutely nothing to laugh at.
✉ Wyre Piddle has some really lovely 15th century timber cottages, great hulking things with thatched roofs, whitened brick and dormer windows. Generally the oldest buildings face the river because that's where the action was, and the subsequent infill is across the road.
✉ The village has a lot of listed buildings, mostly strung out along the river with a cluster by the pub. Manor House is 17th century with an overhanging gable. Ivy Cottage's thatch looks a bit mossy at the moment.
✉ The Anchor Inn is a long low Georgian public house, once again offering traditional cuisine after kitchen problems last month. Alas it no longer serves pints of 'Piddle in The Hole', not since the Wyre Piddle brewery was dissolved in 2015. If the weather's fine you can drink outside on a rear terrace in the 'Piddle Beach Garden'.
✉ A foot ferry used to cross the Avon just alongside the pub, long since closed but there's still a lengthy pointless footpath on the opposite bank.
✉ You can't easily get to the river unless you own one of the houses backing onto it. The sole public access is at the far end of Church Street in Smith's Meadow, but on my visit the top half was full of dogs and the bottom half full of water so I gave it a miss.
✉ St Anne's church is Norman with an original chancel arch, medieval altar slab and replica font. You can feel how old and unaltered it is as you step inside, a simple stone nave with a cell-like altar space at the far end, just how most English churches used to be. SPAB very much approved. St Anne's is usually open from 10 til 4, which is considerably more often than it hosts services.
✉ It's been a very long time since Wyre Piddle had a shop and even longer since it had a Post Office. If you want groceries you need to walk half a mile up Wyre Hill (no footpath) to the service station by the roundabout which has an Asda Express, Starbucks and Greggs. That's a pretty good selection for a small village, but technically that village is Pinvin not Wyre Piddle because these are Pinvin Services.
✉ Regular events at the Village Hall include Puppy School (Monday), Tuesday & Coffee (Tuesday), Over 60s Keep Fit (Thursday) and Yoga (Friday). The Wyre Piddle WI meet monthly.
✉ The Preaching Cross at the village T-junction is "a good example of a medieval standing cross with a square stepped base", and is surmounted by a 19th century knob and iron cross head. Three spook-like metal bollards prevent careless drivers from accidentally demolishing the structure.
✉ If you're interested in road numbering, you've hit the jackpot with Wyre Piddle. It used to be on the B4084, the less important road between Evesham and Worcester, while the main A44 ran to the south of the Avon and crossed the river at Pershore. But the B4084 still funnelled a lot of traffic through the heart of Wyre Piddle, being more direct, which fair dampened village life. Thankfully a Wyre Piddle bypass opened in 2002, and proved so good they swapped the road numbers so that the B4084 now runs through Pershore and the A44 runs north of the river via the bypass.
✉ Lorries aiming for the Pershore Trading Estate still had to drive down Wyre Hill and enact a hairpin turn by Piddle Bridge, this V-shaped road renumbered the B4083. So in 2022 the council built an extra link road over the railway bypassing Wyre Piddle entirely, the old fork now mysteriously labelled A4538 instead.
✉ To stop traffic taking a shortcut through Wyre Piddle the council's had to add a barrier near the railway bridge which supposedly only lets through buses, cycles and emergency vehicles. It's made the entire village a dead end, which must be annoying for residents trying to drive to Evesham but hasn't stopped villagers getting their speedwatch cameras out and moaning anyway. Graphs of actual and average speeds are published monthly.
✉ Wyre Piddle used to have a station called Wyre Halt, opened in 1934, but Beeching culled it in 1966. Pershore station is just over a mile away but you really wouldn't to walk it after dark.
✉ 20 years ago Wyre Piddle had an hourly bus service to Pershore and Evesham but is now down to one circuitous timewaster a day allowing 90 minutes shopping time in Evesham, a service that's practically unusable.
✉ More people live on my London street than in Wyre Piddle and yet you'll find far more of a community feeling here, what with clubs and gatherings and Brian's Charity Quiz and the summer fete, not to mention Chocolate Bingo with a Fish And Chip Supper at the village hall next month. If you want a great social life, move to a village.
✉ Thank you for holding out to the end for a few more Piddle references. The monthly village newsletter is called Piddle Post. The monthly film night at the village hall is called Piddle Pics. And a few doors down is Wee Wee Cottage, official address Wee Wee Cottage, Wyre Piddle WR10 2HR, and what a laugh the owner must have had when they renamed it.
✉ Wyre Piddle is a small village in Worcestershire just upriver from Pershore. It really is called that.
Pershore is a small market town in Worcestershire and one of several fictional candidates for Borchester in The Archers. It's not quite in the Cotswolds, more the Vale of Evesham, a floodably fertile plain much favoured by market gardeners (as we saw yesterday). The river hereabouts is the Avon, as in Stratford-upon-, which was very much overspilling earlier in the week and thus limiting exploration potential somewhat. But I still got around to see many of the town's finest features, most of which you could list under the headings 'abbey', 'river' and 'Georgian'. [VisitPershore][town map][18 photos]
abbey
Pershore's Saxon monastery got the full Abbey upgrade in the 12th century when the Normans piled in. Alas the building suffered several subsequent catastrophes including two fires, the collapse of the north transept and Henry VIII, so what's left is a stunted building that ought to be larger. The tower was saved by local townspeople after the Dissolution, also the quire where the monks sang which was reformulated into a nave, also the south transept. But the surviving chunk is still impressive enough and also free to wander round, that is once you've stopped admiring it from outside.
The nave has intricate ploughshare vaulting, also carved stone roof bosses which would look even more splendid had the Victorians not decided to 'clean' them by washing off the brightly coloured paint. The transept has effigy-topped tombs of abbots and crusaders nobody's quite sure of the name of. The bookstall has a particularly wide collection of cards for 80th, 90th and 100th birthdays, though not 20ths and 30ths hinting at the age of the congregation. The truly unique feature interior is the bell-ringing platform which is a cube-shaped chamber suspended 30m off the ground inside the tower, propped up only by four horizontal supports. It was added by George Gilbert Scott and can only be accessedvia two spiral staircases, a walkway through the roof, a squeeze through a narrow passage and a see-through iron staircase down into the cage. Safer to just look up.
The abbey is surrounded by Pershore's only proper park and watched over by an iron horse. The Warhorse Memorial Sculpture was created by a local blacksmith, is made from recycled horseshoes is meant as a tribute to all the fallen animals across two worldwide conflicts. It was unveiled in 2019 (in pouring rain) and since then Armistice ceremonies have also been attended by a lot of poppy-clad folk on horseback. A few other sculptures are scattered around the wider site, my favourite being Peter Inchbald's two-sided Moon Goddess in St Andrew's Gardens (even if I'm not sure how the lunar disc can have a crescent hole).
river
The Avon rules life in Pershore which is why you can't see it from the town centre. Locals worked out centuries ago it was safest to live on the slightly higher land alongside and let their long gardens stretch down to the river because it didn't matter if they flooded. Pershore is also the sole bridging point for miles, the earliest wooden crossing finally replaced in stone in the 15th century after the Abbot got washed away and drowned. The five-arched sandstone bridge is a rare medieval survivor, although the central span had to be rebuilt after Royalist troops ineptly destroyed it while fleeing from Parliamentarians during the Civil War. The narrow span proved increasingly impractical for road traffic so a proper concrete span was built alongside in 1926, but you can still walk across the jaggedy original as a short deviation from the main road. Even during flooding, blimey.
I once passed under thisbridge on a canal boat but you couldn't possibly do that at the moment because river levels are too high. Instead I watched an inexorable flow of brown water rushing through the central arch with maybe a metre's headroom, and understood why additional 'flood arches' had been built to either side to help ease peak flow. Normally this is a peaceful picnic spot with a footpath leading out across the meadows, and whilst the tables remained safely dry the path was a washout with substantial bankside undergrowth submerged beneath the water. It got worse than this in 2024 and far worse in 2007, the Avon occasionally capable of regional paralysis. But even at current levels the adjacent bridges at Eckington and Fladbury become impassable, and the Environment Agency employ flap-down yellow signs in the town centre to point to the diversions.
It could be worse were it not for the Avon Meadows Community Wetland a mile upriver. After the floods in 2007 additional water storage was carved out of the grass and several large reed beds dug as part of one of the UK's first urban sustainable drainage schemes. Not only does it do its job but it looks good too, doubles as a nature reserve and is intriguing to explore. I reached the boardwalk without too much trouble, stepping out through head-high reeds past a pair of inquisitive swans and a dipping pool. But the ground beyond was sodden, then decidedly underwater, so best come any time other than a wet winter if you want to see the river's edge where it should be, at its best.
Georgian
Pershore brands itself as a Georgian town and retains a very impressive run of period houses down the main street. They kick off abruptly by the Toll House on Bridge Street, where carts and coaches were once charged sixpence to cross the Avon if they were drawn by three horses, and which is currently on the market for £¼m. Further up the road The Star is a former coaching inn, The Angel contains salty Tudor boating timbers and The Brandy Cask used to be a wool warehouse. One of the most unusual buildings used to be The Three Tuns Hotel, hence the twiddly Regency ironwork, and has a plaque saying the future Queen Victoria stayed here overnight in 1830. It's now the town's most metropolitan pub and has been renamed after Claude Choules, the oldest combat veteran of the First World War, who was born in Bridge Street in 1901 and died in Australia at the record-breaking age of 110.
Some of the finer buildings don't have quite the pedigree you'd expect. The local arts centre (called Number 8) was created inside the innards of the former Co-op and now has raked seating. The Town Hall doesn't dazzle because it was originally commissioned as a post office, which to be fair is a decent size when you're only administering to a population of of 8500. Upstairs is where you'll find the town's museum, the Pershore Heritage Centre, although it only opens between Easter and October so I never got to see the Diamond Jubilee spade, the model train cabinet or the Titanic survivor's hat. But possibly the greatest surprise is that the large Georgian townhouse at the very start of Bridge Street is the home of former punkstress Toyah Willcox.
The Birmingham-born singer first grew to love the area when her parents bought a boat at nearby Wyre Marina, spending most of their weekends afloat. She moved here properly in 2002 along with husband Robert Fripp, King Crimson's offbeat guitarist, and has been known to kayak round her back garden if the river's high enough. You can catch a glimpse inside their quirky home by watching some of the couple's effusive Sunday lunch videos, seemingly recorded in the kitchen. Nobody can say It's A Mystery why she bought this pivotal property, it's because she loves living bang opposite the heart of a genuine market town. Alas these days Broad Street only looks like a marketplace once a month when stalls replace the usual stripe of car park so I didn't see it at its best, also the temporary traffic lights outside Tesco led to far too many queueing vehicles in many of my photographs.
Wychavon
Pershore is the administrative centre of Wychavon, largest and most southeasterly of the six Worcestershire districts. Though the town's much smaller than Droitwich and Evesham it's also more central, hence the council decided to build their Civic Centre here in 1991. With local government reorganisation imminent Wychavon's days are numbered, and I wonder how long it'll take this quirky name to disappear off signs, buildings and bins.
plums
Dip into the basket of market garden produce and you'll find Pershore is best known for its plums. Legend says a publican called George Crook discovered the famous Yellow Egg plum while walking through Tiddesley Woods in 1827 and within a few years it was being farmed widely in the area. Then in 1877 a Diamond/Prolific cross created the Pershore Purple, and these days a multitude of varieties are grown locally. Several plum-themed pubs and tearooms can be found in the town, but to get truly stoned best visit on August Bank Holiday weekend to experience the annual Plum Festival at which the mascots Prunella (purple) and Eggbert (yellow) invariably make an appearance.
station
Pershore station is a big disappointment, a single track halt served by hourly trains whose buildings were all demolished in the 1960s before the line was ultimately reprieved. It's also a mile and a half from the town centre with barely any bus connections, indeed officially in the neighbouring village of Pinvin, and surrounded not by houses but a large industrial estate. On the bright side it has a nice heritage sign in bold block capitals and Sir John Betjeman once wrote a poem about it, but otherwise substandard in every way.
I bought a cheap rail ticket in a sale at the start of the year, keeping my fingers crossed that 17th February would be a fine day. Thankfully it was so I've just come back from a fine day out. Normally at this point I'd tell you all about it but I got back quite late and there wasn't time. I will tell you all about it but for now let me tell you about the journey, not because it was interesting but because I haven't been on enough long journeys recently.
0615: It's always a relief when your alarm clock goes off at the right time on a day trip. It'd be all too easy to set it wrong and sleep in and miss your train, wasting all that money you spent seven weeks ago. 0645: It's always a balancing act putting just enough into a rucksack (food, reading material, thermos) but not so much it weighs you down all day. 0655: Don't touch the barrier with your usual card, it doesn't work this early. 0700: It's always a relief when the tube's running properly on a day you've bought a special rail ticket, so you are going to get to the departure station in time and won't be wasting all that money you spent seven weeks ago. 0705: The bloke sitting opposite gets out his smoking paraphernalia to prepare a roll-up, then drops his bag and spills poundsworth of tobacco all over the carriage floor, then scoops most of it back into his bag and prepares a tarnished roll-up.
0745: I asked for a forward-facing window seat. Instead they reserved me a backward-facing seat unaligned with any window. All that lovely scenery out there and I'm staring at a grey bulkhead with a thin sliver of outside. 0810: The guard is selling a standard ticket to a tourist who's boarded without buying one. That ticket costs them £93 return, which is five times what I paid and he's only going half as far. 0820: Denise does an announcement apologising for the limited catering, She's prioritising first class and the rest of us won't get a full service until the last fifteen minutes of the train's journey when the crew changes over. 0840: Most of the passengers on board pile off, so I take the opportunity to sneak into a proper window seat - that's better. 0841: A young lad boards the train and dives into the viewless seat I just vacated, despite there now being loads of other spare seats. Fool, I think, but over the next hour he never takes his eyes off his phone so he's missing nothing.
0900: When I booked this ticket, aiming for a riverside town, the weather was sub-zero and wintry. Since then it's rained almost non-stop and the landscape outside the window is now seriously flooded, all overspilled rivers and underwater meadows and puddled fields. Doesn't bode well for later. 0900: A second ticket check, but this time it's civilians in tabards doing a 'ticket audit'. 0930: I'm wearing walking boots, but maybe I should have brought wellies. 0945: The guard walks down the platform holding a quiche. 0950: I've got a lot of reading done.
I then walked around Town One for three hours. Only one road was so flooded that I had to turn round and go back the way I came. I surprised a birdwatcher in a purple anorak. I saw plenty of snowdrops. I did not see the famous pop star. The lady in the Tourist Information Office was lovely. The bridge was quite something. I noted that 'large cod' in the local chippie is only £8.90 so we're being fleeced in London. I spotted the pub I didn't go to in 1984.
1300: I caught the bus from Town One to Town Two. Fares outside London are still £3, mostly. The next stops were announced very loudly, and quite early.
I then walked around Town Two for three hours. Only one path was so flooded that I had to turn round and go back the way I came, but a lot were very muddy. I heard a lot of birdsong. The lady in the Tourist Information Office was brusque. I noted that 'large cod' in the local chippie is only £8.95 so we're being fleeced in London. I chatted to a man called Robert who said the flooding was worse yesterday. I didn't spot the newsagent where I bought a copy of Record Mirror in 1984.
1700: The return trip wasn't especially noteworthy.
The last time I was in the area was 40 years ago, just after leaving university. I'd somehow made some cool friends there, one of whom lived in Hillingdon and one of who lived on a farm outside Town One. So First Friend and I decided to drive out to the farm and surprise Second Friend, mainly because we only had an address not a telephone number so couldn't warn him in advance. First Friend was so cool he had a Rover 800 and had been employed to steward at the final Wham! concert two weeks earlier. It was a three hour drive and on the way we stopped off so First Friend could buy some Insignia gel and I could buy Second Friend a Toblerone as a thankyou. We also stopped off at a local phonebox to ring Directory Enquiries, but the number they gave us turned out to be Second Friend's gran so wasn't much use.
Second Friend was extremely surprised to see us, lumbering around the farm in his wellies near the polytunnels. We joined in with the day's work in the top field which involved sitting on the back of a tractor-pulled contraption and planting savoy cabbages. Sorry, we put some of them in upside-down. After 24 rows we went switched jobs and picked some courgettes, then hitched a ride back to the farmhouse on the back of a truck. Second Friend's mum was very pleased to see us and served up cake and raspberries, I think pleased her son had genuinely made some friends. We overscrutinised the contents of his bedroom, sat round the Aga in the kitchen and got an invite to his sister's next big party. For a surprise visit it all went surprisingly well, plus when we finally got home I was able to give my Dad seven courgettes and a savoy cabbage. I sometimes wonder if my social life peaked right there.
Today is Shrove Tuesday, Chinese New Year and the start of Ramadan.
How unusual is that?
Very unusual, obviously.
But also perhaps not ridiculously improbable because all three special days are connected to the moon.
And if a new moon crops up in mid-February it's going to be a possibility.
Let's start with Chinese New Year.
The Chinesecalendar follows these two basic rules:
• Months start on the day of a new moon (Beijing time).
• The 11th month always contains the winter solstice.
The 12th month thus starts on the first new moon after the winter solstice.
That's the last month of the year.
So Chinese New Year is always the second new moon after the winter solstice.
This can be any date between 21st January and 20th February.
And that's the easy one.
This year
The winter solstice fell on 21st December 2025.
The new moon on 20th December didn't count.
The first new moon after the winter solstice was on 19th January 2026.
The second new moon after the winter solstice is on 17th February 2026.
Which is today - Kung hei fat choi!
OK, on to pancakes.
Shrove Tuesday is the day before Lent, i.e. the day before Ash Wednesday.
It always occurs 47 days before Easter.
The gap is six weeks and five days, always from a Tuesday to a Sunday.
Easter Day can fall anywhere between 22nd March and 25th April.
So Shrove Tuesday can be any date between 3rd February and 9th March.
Chinese New Year and Shrove Tuesday can thus only overlap in the period 3rd February to 20th February.
i.e. you need a late Chinese New Year and an early Easter.
Specifically Easter has to fall between 22nd March and 8th April.
If Easter is 9th April or later then Shrove Tuesday and Chinese New Year don't mix.
But if Easter is before 9th April, it's not unlikely they overlap.
That's because Chinese New Year is the day of a new moon, and Easter is the Sunday after a full moon.
That gap from new moon to full moon is 1½ lunar months, or 44 days.
And if the 47th day happens to be a Sunday that's when the coincidence happens.
This year
🌑New 17th Feb → 🌕Full 3rd Mar → 🌑New 19th Mar → 🌕Full 2nd Apr
Thursday 2nd April is the first full moon after the spring equinox.
The next Sunday is Sunday 5th April, which is Easter Day.
And 47 days before that is Tuesday 17th February, which is both Shrove Tuesday and a new moon.
I've checked all the years in the 20th and 21st centuries.
And these are all the years when Chinese New Year coincides with Shrove Tuesday.
That's 22 years out of 200, or 11% of the time.
It may seem unfamiliar because it last happened way back in 2002.
But it's due to happen again very soon, in 2029.
There's often only a three year gap between Chinese New Years also being Shrove Tuesday.
And roughly speaking they coincide one year in ten.
Which brings us to the first day of Ramadan.
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar.
Like Chinese New Year, it starts with a new moon.
However it's not always in winter, it moves repeatedly through the seasons.
That's because Islamic years always contains 12 lunar months, with no leap days or leap months to get things back in sync.
They're always 354 or 355 days long, i.e. about 11 days shorter than our calendar year.
Last year: 🌑New Moon 28th February
This year: 🌑New Moon 17th February
Next year: 🌑New Moon 6th February
At the moment Ramadan's in February but it hits January in 2028 and December in 2030.
By 2040 it's retreated to September and by 2050 it's in May.
Only in 2058 does it again return to February and the period we're interested in.
A February Ramadan comes around only every 32 years or so.
Ramadan and Chinese New Year are both triggered by a new moon, remember.
So if Ramadan starts in the period 21st January to 20th February then it also coincides with Chinese New Year.
This happened in 1929/1930, then again in 1961/1962/1963, then again in 1994/1995.
It's happening in 2026 and will again in 2027 and 2028.
And it'll next happen in 2059/2060/2061 and 2091/2092/2093.
But for Ramadan, Chinese New Year AND Shrove Tuesday to coincide the window is much smaller.
This time we need a full moon in the period 3rd February to 20th February.
That rules out 1929, 1963, 1995, 2028, 2060, 2061 and 2093.
But we also need that full moon to be on a Tuesday.
And it turns out 2026 is the only year that happens, at least in the 20th or 21st centuries.
It's not going to happen again until 2124.
You'll not be around the next time Shrove Tuesday is Chinese New Year and the first day of Ramadan.
But...
Ramadan is of course more complicated than that.
The month doesn't start at the new moon, it starts the day after that new moon is sighted.
And that brings all sorts of observational unpredictability into all this.
If you follow the Islamic calendar, observational unpredictability is a monthly fact of life.
A very new moon is incredibly hard to spot, being both very thin and very close to the Sun.
If an Islamic astronomer somehow spots the new moon today, Ramadan starts on Wednesday.
Or they might spot it the day after, in which case Ramadan starts on Thursday.
Every single new month in the Islamic calendar is essentially unpredictable until the night before.
It means today isn't the first day of Ramadan, sorry, just the full moon that triggers it.
And if Ramadan is always after the date of the full moon, it can never coincide with Chinese New Year.
Sorry, I appear to have wasted your time here.
Also I've failed to take into account the effect of time zones.
The Chinese Calendar assumes a prime meridian of 120°E, aligning with Beijing.
But Ramadan is based on local lunar observations, which here means 0°.
These are 8 hours apart, so a new moon after midnight in China is before midnight here, i.e. one day earlier.
It doesn't affect 2026, but in 2030 the key new moon is on 3rd February in China but 2nd February in Europe.
Also the date of Easter isn't based on the real full moon but an ecclesiastical full moon devised in the 4th century.
The whole thing is a mess, and trying to define simple rules and patterns doubly so.
It's all overly muddy so perhaps best not try.
But it IS true that Shrove Tuesday and Chinese New Year coincide this year.
And it's highly likely that the first day of Ramadan will coincide with Ash Wednesday instead.
Two celebrations take place today and two fasts start tomorrow.
And maybe those are the most appropriate coincidences of all.
For my next alphabetical visit to unsung suburbs we're off to Downham, an enormous LCC estate built 100 years ago to rehouse escapees from city slums. It sprawls across 500 undulating acres at the southern end of the borough of Lewisham (plus a sliver of Bromley), a web of interwar avenues with a fair few trees intertwined. The east side's near Grove Park station and the west side mostly untroubled by trains, so a rather harder commute, which may be why the place is mostly off-radar. It took me an hour and a half to circumnavigate yesterday and I was utterly soaked by the end, more like Pissing Downham, so when viewing the gloomy photos remember it doesn't always look like this.
Until 1924 all this was just two farms off the main road between Catford and Bromley. As perfectly undeveloped land it drew the attention of the London County Council seeking sites for overspill estates in southeast London, spurred on by government funding, so they bought up Holloway Farm and Shroffolds Farm and brought the diggers in. The first turf was cut in 1924, the King turned up for a public opening in 1927 and the whole place was finished in 1930 which isn't bad for a brand new suburb with six thousand homes. As no previous settlement existed the new estate was obsequiously named after Lord Downham, Chairman of the LCC. Houses were pleasant but lowly, generally two-storeys and run together into brick terraces of four or more, but a world away from what the new tenants had left behind. They loved the bathrooms, back gardens and semi-rural setting - definitely better than being sent to Becontree - and paid their 12 shilling rent with pride.
Planners essentially had a blank canvas and drew lines on their maps with gusto. A swooshing spine road called Downham Way linked the existing main roads to either side of the estate, this wide enough for trams, with a web of backstreets added beyond. Shops were eventually added at each end with a lesser parade in the centre, ten schools were liberally scattered and every Christian denomination got its own church. Greenspace was retained where appropriate, with the hilltop preserved as part a long sausage-shaped recreation ground. But it took a long time for some of these promised facilities to actually get built which wasn't ideal for a rapidly burgeoning population, and several early residents grew tired of the isolation and moved away. [1930s map]
A good place to start might be The Downham Tavern, the single watering hole at the heart of the estate, which with such a large catchment to serve was briefly the world's largest pub. Its monumental brick exterior contained two saloons, a public lounge, a beer garden, a ‘lunchroom’ and 34 bedrooms packed upstairs, all finished off with a dance hall nextdoor. It's said the two longest bars were both 45 feet long, which would help explain how the pub got a licence to serve 1200 people. Alas by the 1990s it was beyond refurbishment so Courage sold it to the Co-op who built a supermarket in the car park, then demolished the pub to create a larger car park. As part of the deal they built a rather smaller pub in the corner of the site, barely characterful apart from a squat wooden clocktower, and in 2024 even that dubious establishment closed down. Peering in you can almost imagine the tables set for Sunday lunch with Sky football blaring, if only it weren't actually Sunday lunchtime and patently obvious no cleaner's been inside for months.
Across the street were once Downham Baths and Downham Library, now combined as Downham Health and Leisure Centre. Lewisham council consolidated local services into one megahub 20 years ago, and whilst their intent was efficiency the resulting facility has all the aesthetic appeal of a recreational warehouse. Keep walking up the slope to reach the all-weather pitches, which I can confirm were thoroughly defeated by yesterday's cloudburst and firmly locked. And beyond that the hilltop opens out to reveal a grand vista looking across repetitive rooftops towards the Crystal Palace ridge and all the way round across Bromley. I don't think you can see the City from the summit of Durham Hill but I confess visibility yesterday was very poor, also paths are few and far between and I wasn't willing to squidge across the grass from the community orchard towards the broken bench and check fully.
But traipsing around Downham mainly involves an awful lot of residential streets. The finest face onto linear greens planted with mature trees, but most are part of long residential chains in brick (and occasionally pebbledash). They're nothing special but the architects did imbue them with sufficient variety to add character, perhaps a teensy porch or a geometric flourish in the masonry, though never a bay window or a garage, it being the 1920s rather than the 1930s. The local contours inevitably add more visual interest. What stands out is the uniformity of the living space within, this being an egalitarian estate where nobody got a one-bedder and nobody got four, just homes fit for the families of wartime heroes. The lack of parking spaces does mean most people have to park in the street, but equally those streets are capacious enough and don't feel too clogged.
One of the more dubious chapters in Downham's history involves the 'class wall' at the foot of Valeswood Road on the Lewisham/Bromley boundary. Back in February 1926 the developer of the adjacent estate resented the arrival of a council estate alongside his private development so built a seven-foot wall topped with broken glass across the top of Alexandra Crescent. It meant cutting off direct access to the local park but it also kept the plebs out so was deemed social necessary. Shamefully the wall remained in place until 1950, neither council willing to step in, and only a need for fire engine access finally reopened residents' convenient shortcut to Bromley town centre. All you'll find here now is the derelict shed of the Downham Gardens Guild, no longer dispensing horticultural supplies every Sunday, and some slightly nicer houses than anyone in Downham got.
You might know Downham from the Capital Ring, specifically the start of section3. This swoops in across the railway to pass the fire station... hang on no, Boris Johnson closed that in 2014 and it's been replaced by a long block of flats (a true 3-storey rarity round here). Next comes the Total Garage... hang on no, it's now Shell and with a whopping phone mast planted by the car wash. But beyond that everything's much as it ever was, including the other local recreational highlight which is the Downham Woodland Walk. This ¾-mile path zigzags round the back of umpteen houses and was originally a field boundary, hence all the mature trees. It's a bit of a rustic mirage because only this narrow strip got saved, but still a pleasant stroll and the best place locally to walk a dog. Yesterday however weather conditions were so atrocious that I met nobody for 15 minutes, bar a sporty Dad who'd brought his son to the playing fields for a kickabout only to find the gate locked so they drove straight home.
So comprehensively was Downham developed 100 years ago that it's rare to come across anything substantially new. One of the most jolting intrusions is a massive crescent-shaped wedge resembling either a driving range and/or an electric heater, this the result of a secondary school rebuild in 2005. But generally there isn't anything left to replace, just streets and streets of dependably average houses with modest back gardens in an appreciably green setting. It's no Garden City, as one local journalist optimistically wrote in 1930, but many Londoners would happily swap their stunted flats for a basic dwelling with a front door and proper neighbours. We don't build Downhams any more, London no longer has room, but a lot more large tracts of bogstandard social housing wouldn't go amiss.
12 things I didn't manage to shoehorn into the narrative: The Go Go Cobblers, a chip shop called Rock'N'Roe, the Greenwich Meridian, the somewhat elongated frontage of St Barnabas, the Spring Brook, Downham's slightly rounded streetsigns, Glenda Jackson's son's eye, the meandering 336 bus, His Glory Arena, the Glenbow Road traffic filter, King Arthur, the Splendid Cinema Suggested title for clickbait journalists cannibalising today's blogpost: The Secret Suburb Where You Can Buy A Co-op Limited Edition Spicy Tuna Sandwich On The Site Of The World's Largest Pub Ds I considered going to but didn't: Dartmouth Park, Dormers Wells, Drayton Green, Ducketts Green, Ducks Island, Dudden Hill
1: Place a coin in each box (or leave it empty) so that the totals across and down are correct.
3p
5p
10p
8p
6p
4p
2: There are three ways to give change for a 5p coin. (11111|2111|221)
How many ways are there to give change for a 10p coin?
(and, for increasingly harder questions, a) a 20p coin? b) a 50p coin? c) a £1 coin?)
3: What's the greatest amount you can have in small coins (1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p) and not be able to give change for £1?
55 years ago, on Decimal Day, we went from this...
...to this...
Here's how.
1961: Government sets up the Committee of the Inquiry on Decimal Currency. Farthing withdrawn. 1962: Bank of England urges the committee to retain the pound as the main unit in any decimal system. 1963: Committee reports. They propose 100 new pennies to the pound, with coins to be ½ 1 2 5 10 20. 1966: Government proposes to adopt the changes. Decimal Currency Board established. Five-year changeover period begins. Publiccompetition to design the new coins. 1967: Parliament approves the Decimal Currency Act 1967. Coins will be ½ 1 2 5 10 50 (not 20). Nearly 9,000 million coins will be needed. The minor unit will be the new penny (symbol p). Production of pre-decimal coins ceases.
1968: 5p and 10p coins introduced (identical in size to the existing shilling and florin). Souvenir sets of ½p, 1p, 2p, 5p and 10p coins issued in advance of wider circulation. 1969: Old halfpenny withdrawn. 50p coin introduced, the world's first seven-sided coin. "Use it just like a 10/- note". 1970: Half crown withdrawn. Ten-shilling note withdrawn. Massive public information campaign underway (posters, films, songs, TVadverts, booklets, conversion tables, TV programmes)
15th February 1971: Decimal Day, or D-Day. 2p, 1p and ½p coins become legal tender. Banks switch immediately. British Rail and London Transport switch a day early. Most shops show prices in old and new money. Shops continue to accept payment in old coins but always issue change in new coins. Twelve low-value definitive stamps released. 1971: Old penny and thruppeny bit (3d) withdrawn six months later.
1973: First commemorative coin - the European Economic Community accession 50p (with nine clasped hands).
1980: Sixpence (2½p) withdrawn, nine years later than originally anticipated. [1551-1980] 1981: Announcement that a £1 coin will be introduced. 1982: Seven-sided 20p coin introduced. Intention is to reduce the weight of the coins in your pocket. The word “NEW” dropped from newly-minted coins (e.g. the 10p inscription changes from “NEW PENCE” to “TEN PENCE“). 1983: £1 coin introduced. 1984: ½p coin ceases to be legal tender [1971-1984, the first decimal withdrawal] 1988: £1 note withdrawn. [1797-1988]
1990: Smaller 5p coin introduced. Original 5p coin (and shilling) demonetised. [1548-1990] 1992: Smaller 10p coin introduced. 1p and 2p coins now made of plated steel rather than bronze. 1993: Original 10p coin (and florin) demonetised. [1849-1993] 1994: Coinage review proposes introduction of bimetallic £2 coin. 1997: Smaller 50p coin introduced. 1998: £2 coin introduced. 1998: Original 50p demonetised. [1969-1998]
2005: Coinage redesign commissioned by the Royal Mint. 2007: New set of coins introduced based on heraldic designs. No numerical values shown.
2011: 5p coins now nickel-plated steel rather than cupro-nickel. 2011: 10p coins now nickel-plated steel rather than cupro-nickel. 2017: 12-sided £1 coin introduced to reduce counterfeiting. Original £1 coin withdrawn six months later. [1983-2017]
2023: New set of coins with animal designs to mark King Charles' reign. Salmon 50p and bee £1 coins enter circulation. 2024: No new coins ordered by the Treasury from The Royal Mint this year. 2025: Oak-leaf 5p coin enters circulation. 2026: Dormouse 1p, red squirrel 2p, capercaillie 10p, puffin 20p and floral £2 coins not yet in general circulation.
The Lower Lea Valley has long suffered from significant disconnect, both along and across. It still isn't possibly to walk down the river between Bromley-by-Bow and Canning Town without diverting into a manky industrial hinterland. And it still isn't possible to cross the river for over a mile between Bow Locks and the A13, this despite thousands of new homes being built in the locality. Now finally a connecting bridge might actually be built, although I've said that before so any confidence may be utterly misplaced.
1993: Lea Valley Walk follows the Limehouse Cut to the Thames because the last mile is inaccessible 2000s: Half-mile dead-end riverfront promenade opens opposite Bow Locks 2009: Plans for linear Leaside park and riverside path (the 'Fatwalk') 2012: Cody Dock opens, connecting dead end to industrial estate 2016: Fatwalk renamed the Leaway (but remains unbuilt) 2016: Ramp opens linking Twelvetrees Bridge to Lea towpath 2019: Cycle ramp opens beside A13 underpass 2021: Funding for new Lochnagar Bridge (but no subsequent action)
Here's a map I showed you in 2019, since when nothing has changed connectivitywise. There are still no extra bridges across the river and the 'Coming Soon' along the river never happened.
The latest development is a joint project between Tower Hamlets and Newham because a bridge has to involve them both. It's called the Mayer Parry Bridge and is one of five tentative crossings the councils put forward for levelling-up funding in 2021. At the time the intention was to focus on the Lochnagar Bridge instead, a footbridge roughly halfway down the disjoint mile. It has planning consent but not full funding, also still no sign of developers building any of the proposed flats on the west side, so that's been mothballed in favour of something deliverable. The Mayer Parry Bridge has thus been promoted from option 2 to option 1, and if all goes to plan construction could begin next year. Where the red line is.
(the other crossings that look like footbridges only carry cables, so ignore those)
On the Tower Hamlets side the bridge launches off from the corner of the old Poplar Gasworks, which is currently being transformed into 2800 homes. One day the entire squarish plot will be covered, but for now only the west corner has flats. On the Newham side the bridge lands in the corner of what before 2022 was the Mayer Parry scrap metal recycling yard, since cleared out. It too is to be redeveloped, indeed the groundworks have already started. Annoyingly these two sites aren't opposite each other, the remainder of the riverside occupied by industrial units and business estates, so the cunning bit is to make the bridge cross the river on a diagonal. Across here.
This is the view from the A13 bridge, an unpleasant roar that those on the Poplar side have to cross if they want to get to Canning Town station. The Mayer Parry Bridge, if built, would provide many with a quicker and more pleasant shortcut. Down below is the seriously tidal end of the River Lea, known as Bow Creek, held back at the highest tides behind a floodwall of corrugated metal. You can see a huge crane is already on site marking out the land ready for the laying of foundations. The new development will be called CrownWharf, will have 800 flats and is presented as "a fantastic opportunity for Newham to densify around a major transport interchange." Four riverside towers are planned and you already know exactly what they'll look like, but feel free to click here to confirm.
What really surprised me is what's planned for the far end of the site between the flats and the start of the Mayer Parry Bridge. It's an absolutely massive data centre, to be precise an 80MW Hyperscale Data Centre, designed by Foster and Partners no less. To fit the space it needs to be over 70m tall, already cut down from 90m during the planning process, with separate blocks containing plant, data halls, heat recovery and water processing. It's the perfect spot for one of the largest data centres in the UK because The London Internet Exchange, a key global switch-house, is just across the river. Even so, blimey, the rundown urban backwoods of Bidder Street will never look the same again.
As for the landing point on the west bank, it takes a very long time to turn a gasworks into housing. Poplar's gasholders were disassembled as long ago as 2017, then during lockdown I watched as remediation works eventually gave birth to the first few residential skeletons. Thus far only two blocks are complete and two more part-sold, with the developers planning a "Special Lunar New Year Open House Weekend" which tells you all you need to know about the intended purchasers. It feels strange to be able to walk into what was once heavily contaminated land, past boards promoting swimming pools and spa rooms for residents, down generic walkways that could be any new housing development in London.
The Mayer Parry Bridge landing site is screened off and entirely inaccessible, it being part of Phase 3 whereas we're still only on Phase 1. You can however walk down to the river's edge because that's where they located the Sales Office, inexplicably crunching across hundreds of purple shells scattered across the promenade. From the gull-splattered rail you can then look out towards another development shooting up on the far side of a mudflat meander, also two more locations where nobody can afford to build a footbridge. Without a crossing it takes 30 minutes to walk to the opposite bank rather than potentially two.
A consultation event for the Mayer Parry Bridge is taking place on Tuesday between 9am and 2pm at a cafe on the Poplar side. I would have gone but I'm out of town that day so feel free to interrogate the staff on our behalf and report back. I'm particularly interested in the great unmentioned subject in all the online collateral which is whether the footpath along the Lea gets completed at the same time as the bridge. There's already a mothballed promenade beyond Cody Dock so all that was ever needed was an onward connection through the old scrap metal yard, and seemingly the bridge connection delivers that too. What a brilliant outcome that would be, for locals, cyclists and long distance ramblers alike.
The intention is for construction to begin on the Mayer Parry Bridge in 2027, with the slender diagonal span opened to the public in 2029. But as I said we've been here before and nothing's happened, even with all parties onside, so it wouldn't surprise me if I'm still writing about utter inaccessibility in the Lower Lea Valley in 2030 and beyond.
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.
