London has just one street called Advent and it's miserable, but also thankfully atypical and interesting.
A country lane called Angel Road once headed east out of Edmonton following Pymme's Brook, ending at a sylvan bridge across the River Lea where anglers often gathered. Then in the 1920s the North Circular Road was built, the engineers choosing to span the river here with a low curving viaduct, thus damning this quiet crossing point to a thundering concrete future. A further upgrade came in the 1990s, widening the viaduct to carry a new dual carriageway and adding service roads to either side called Argon Way and Advent Way. Advent Way runs along the northern side, and during its grim half mile manages to tick off a lost motorway, a historic live music venue, a pioneering energy facility, a banqueting venue, a famous arms dealer, a Superloop bus stop and an atmosphere heavy with particulates, so there's much to look forward to.
Advent Way begins at the Cooks Ferry roundabout, a grade-separated monster added 30 years ago so that traffic could escape the A406 and access the industrial hinterland to either side. The junction was supposed to be even bigger because the M11 was originally due to carve this way, but plans were duly diverted from the Lea to the Roding and then cancelled altogether so this is all we got. Think pylons, coned-off slip roads, part-time traffic lights and a whopping great concrete viaduct slicing across the top. But the Cooks Ferry name correctly hints at something much older, a medieval boatman offering his services to cross the Lea here at Edmonton Marsh, this being one a handful of ferries between the bridges at Bow and Waltham Abbey. By the 18th century the Cooks Ferry Inn had been established, a regular stopping-off point for bargemen seeking refreshment, and this survived in situ until the building of the North Circular when a larger roadside pub was opened.
After WW2 a music club opened in the hall out back, initially jazz-focused, with bandleader Freddy Randall signed up to play every Sunday. Eventually tastes broadened and in the 1960s the Cooks Ferry Inn became locally renowned as the place to see up-and coming bands. In the month I was born Buddy Guy, Long John Baldry and The Who all played here, later followed by (deep breath) the Yardbirds, Bo Diddley, Cream, Jeff Beck, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Jethro Tull, Fleetwood Mac, King Crimson, The Faces, Genesis, Supertramp, Wishbone Ash, Elton John, Thin Lizzy, Slade, Dr Feelgood, Judas Priest and Generation X. Alas the building didn't survive road widening in the 1990s, indeed these days thousands of vehicles every day drive straight through where the bar used to be, but if you ever find yourself waiting at the eastbound Cooks Ferry bus stop, that's pretty much where Led Zeppelin opened their set with The Train Kept A-Rollin'.
Advent Way begins at the Cooks Ferry roundabout and curves north to avoid some pylons. This would once have been the boundary between Middlesex and Essex but the braid of the Lea that marked the dividing line is long filled in. On the first bend is the access road to one of north London's most inappropriately-named sites, the Edmonton Ecopark, which sounds lovely but is actually home to the UK's oldest Energy from Waste power station. Lorries pile into the incinerator complex, its belching two-pronged chimney visible for miles, then exit down a high concrete ramp in search of more of north London's waste to burn. But the facility is now over 50 years old and nearing the end of its life, so what's currently emerging behind is an even larger incinerator, intrinsically greener, which should be ready to take over in 2027. This way too for the local tip, aka the Edmonton EcoPark Reuse and Recycling Centre, a brightly coloured skip-fest which opened in the summer (although it's a bloody long walk along the new hairpin slip road to get there).
The first river Advent Way crosses is the Lee Navigation, this at what used to be Bleak Hall Bridge. Its waters are high at the moment and unnervingly brown, although I think that's sediment rather than residue overflowing from Deephams Sewage Treatment Works. A labyrinth of paths and access ramps services the towpath and nearby bus stops, best avoided after dark, plus one additional sliproad to serve an isolated timber merchant. The second river shortly afterwards is the Salmons Brook, a stream which rises close to Potters Bar and gradually evolves from rural trickle to suburban conduit to littered trench. On its west bank is Meridian Grand, a triple-ballroomed space which makes its money as "a unique Asian Wedding and Reception Venue" and proudly offers the option of segregated dancing zones. It doesn't look 'grand', indeed from outside it resembles a giant cash and carry warehouse, and I can only imagine the crushing disappointment on the face of arriving guests before they get inside.
The next building really is a giant cash and carry warehouse, the home of Holland Bazaar "where passion, hard work, and a sprinkle of magic transformed a small veggies shop into a beloved wholesale market powerhouse". Mind the white vans loading up with tins, sacks, bottles, jars and squeezy sauces. This turn-off marks the entrance to the Eley Industrial Estate, a long thin cluster of workplaces elongated between the river and the railway. It was built on the site of the Eley Cartridge Works, a murderous business founded by brothers William and Charles Eley, only one of whom inevitably died in an explosion. Their factory shifted here in 1894 as the company expanded, initially earning a reputation for low quality goods, but innovations such as aircraft munitions kept Eley's afloat. During WW1 they stepped up production to churn out 209 million rifle cartridges, then moved out shortly afterwards to be replaced by businesses like Ever Ready, Great Eastern Cabinets, Dunlop Rubber and Parker Knoll. Today's tenants are generally rather littler.
Advent Way's second bus stop has a rainbow roundel on top because the SL1 stops here, this one of the Superloop's less accessible stops set adrift in a layby beside a dual carriageway. Escape to Walthamstow is available every 12 minutes. A lofty footbridge provides rare access to the far side of the maelstrom, crossing ten lanes of traffic to connect to Argos, Wickes and Tesco, but they're on Argon Way so don't count as part of today's travelogue. Advent Way can only offer a Screwfix and a Big Yellow Self Storage warehouse, but your business could join them if you choose to snap up one of the refurbished units on the Edmonton Trade Park. There's even an Advent Business Park a tad further on, somewhere for decorators to buy paint and also home to The Soho Sandwich Company who sound posh but actually serve workplace, education and healthcare settings. I've checked their brochure and they don't do turkey, sorry.
I always thought Advent Way carried on to the Premier Inn but no, it suddenly turns away from the A406 just before that launches itself across the railway. This feels like a proper Lea Valley backstreet industrial estate, a narrow lane lined with parked-up white vans and bollards hooped with stacks of tyres. Here men in hairnets emerge from backdoors for a smoke, MOTs are undertaken in messy dens and yellow forklifts deliver pallets to the back of a badly parked truck. The local workmen's cafe is called Workmans Cafe & Kebab and likely shifts more tavuk şiş than plates of Full English. By the time the road ends, juxtaposed between a tile wholesaler and a pebbledashed shed, the surging flow of the North Circular is far behind. Coca-Cola's Edmonton factory is just across the street, a huge site that'll be celebrating half a century of bottling next year, although that's on Nobel Road so officially out of scope. But how appropriate that what comes at the end of Advent is a product synonymous with Christmas, because holidays are coming and the countdown starts today.
