Day 57
Leyton - Leyton Midland Road - Leytonstone - Leytonstone High Road - Limehouse
HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!!!!!
I open today with the shock announcement of a major scientific breakthrough!
It seems that one of the stalwart plot devices usually confined to the realms of science fiction has at long last become a reality and that someone somewhere has invented an honest-to-goodness real-life time-machine! Yes! I know! Sucks to you Einstein!
And the confirmation of this ground-breaking development comes from what is, at first glance, an unlikely source... Who would have thought that the two rather chavvy employees of an East London temp recruitment agency sitting opposite me on the tube this morning would be the ones to reveal that time-travel is no longer a wildly far-fetched bit of theoretical mumbo-jumbo, but has now actually been achieved.
Nevertheless, it was while having an ostensibly innocuous discussion about one of the more obnoxious and irritating colleagues of theirs, that one of them inadvertently let slip that the said colleague was (and I quote):
"...literally stuck in the Dark Ages..." (my italics).
Quite how this courageous pioneer of time-travel ended up being marooned so far in the past was not explained, nor indeed, how they got there in the first place. But now that the knowledge is out there, surely it won't be too long before the world's media takes up the unfortunate time-traveller's plight and we have search and rescue missions, telethon appeals and excessively Bono-based benefit gigs...
Well, it amused me anyway...... but now back to the blog.
***
Really, the 'L's do seem to want to make my life easier than some of the previous letters have...
I open today with the shock announcement of a major scientific breakthrough!
It seems that one of the stalwart plot devices usually confined to the realms of science fiction has at long last become a reality and that someone somewhere has invented an honest-to-goodness real-life time-machine! Yes! I know! Sucks to you Einstein!
And the confirmation of this ground-breaking development comes from what is, at first glance, an unlikely source... Who would have thought that the two rather chavvy employees of an East London temp recruitment agency sitting opposite me on the tube this morning would be the ones to reveal that time-travel is no longer a wildly far-fetched bit of theoretical mumbo-jumbo, but has now actually been achieved.
Nevertheless, it was while having an ostensibly innocuous discussion about one of the more obnoxious and irritating colleagues of theirs, that one of them inadvertently let slip that the said colleague was (and I quote):
"...literally stuck in the Dark Ages..." (my italics).
Quite how this courageous pioneer of time-travel ended up being marooned so far in the past was not explained, nor indeed, how they got there in the first place. But now that the knowledge is out there, surely it won't be too long before the world's media takes up the unfortunate time-traveller's plight and we have search and rescue missions, telethon appeals and excessively Bono-based benefit gigs...
Well, it amused me anyway...... but now back to the blog.
***
Really, the 'L's do seem to want to make my life easier than some of the previous letters have...
Alright, so today's selection are (all bar one) at the opposite end of the Central Line to my home in Ealing, but once I get there they're all within walking distance of one another (again, all bar the last one). And what's more it's a fairly pleasant walk at that - following a roughly circular route along some quiet, leafy, residential streets, which in many ways remind me of the Ealing thoroughfares I've just left.
You'll also notice a certain similarity in the names of today's first two locales - Leyton and Leytonstone - and they are of course closely related, as you'll see.
***
***
So, let's kick off with Leyton.
The name 'Leyton' comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for a settlement ('tun') and the name of the river on which it is situated - the river Lea, which flows from Luton down to the Thames. The settlement dates back at least as far as the Domesday book, and probably to prehistoric times.
The later settlement which grew up nearby (slightly to the east), and which was the location of a Roman marker stone along the old road from Epping to London, was unimaginatively called "Leyton at the Stone" (or, to be more historically accurate, "Leyton atte stone"). In due time this became simply "Leytonstone" and the two developed side by side - but more of Leytonstone anon...
 |
| Leyton |
Back to Leyton, and the station itself is not really much to write home about, being simply a grey box stuck on a railway bridge. However, turning through 180 degrees (and trying to ignore the retail park in the foreground) you get a reasonable view of the velodrome in the Olympic Park, and of the London skyline beyond.
 |
| Olympic Park Velodrome |
Heading north from the station things become a little more colourful as I cross over the busy A12, which pretty much cuts Leyton in half, and walk along the brightly painted Leyton High Road.
I do wish more places would slop a bit of coloured paint about - rather than sticking to plain old whites and greys. There's something very refreshing and Summery about it - almost as if we were in one of those picturesque continental coastal towns perched impossibly on the side of a cliff.
One shop has taken it a step further and gone to the extent of painting individual bricks different colours. Now that's how to liven up a shop-front! (Pity it's selling such a mundane collection of goods, but hey-ho...)
A little further up Leyton High Road are the Coronation Gardens - a park built to commemorate the coronation of Edward VII.
They contain a fountain, a war memorial, a bandstand and a children's maze, and in the sunshine it's all rather pleasant. I stroll the length of the park and spot a number of joggers, and mums with toddlers, and also one or two cider-swigging loafers, though they don't seem to be doing anyone any harm.
Immediately to the north of Coronation Gardens is the 'Matchroom Stadium' - home to Leyton Orient Football Club.
As someone who knows (and cares) little about football, there are only one or two club names (other than the obvious ones such as Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs and their ilk) which have entered my consciousness. But Leyton Orient is, surprisingly, one of them. And it's all the fault of schoolboy peer-pressure.
Not being a sporty type, I often felt left out of the intense childhood discussions about which club/player/kit/mascot was best, or who was going to win which cup. But there was one thing I could join in with, and that was the more leisurely pursuit of completing the Panini Football Sticker Album.
Like many of my generation, the lunchtime ritual of flicking through stacks of duplicate stickers looking for the elusive one or two you wanted to swap with your school-chums was one I regularly engaged in. And for some reason the name Leyton Orient (and one or two others such as Notts Forest and Wolverhampton Wanderers) is one that has stuck in my mind from those days. Perhaps it's because you always seemed to get loads of players from these lower echelon clubs in your packets of stickers, rather than the (at the time) more glamorous Glenn Hoddles and Kevin Keegans you were still missing...
***
As I continue north I become aware of some of the more outré names on the establishments I pass.
We have the "Peculiar Unisex Hair Studio" (though it's unclear whether it's the Hair Studio that is considered peculiar, or the unisexuality of its clientele. They do also proclaim on their hoarding that 'our god reigns' - though again, which particular god is not made clear. The possessive insistence of it seems suggestive of a minor cult of some kind.)
Further on we have the "Smart Barber Box" (I shudder to think), the "Chicken Runn" [sic] fried chicken shop, the "Bee Sovereignty" dry cleaners (another - this time insect worshipping - cult?), and finally - as I reach Leyton Midland Road overground station - the "Good News Shop". I initially think this is a newsagents that has taken to only stocking newspapers which print positive news-stories within their pages, and is therefore likely to be bereft of any stock whatsoever, but on closer examination it turns out to be a book-shop selling religious texts.
The blurb on their website has the usual potted history - the owners originally ran a bog-standard, if financially struggling, newsagents until a beneficent, pious, and - some might say - more financially canny nearby bookseller came along and suggested that since (for reasons unspecified) he had to move away from the area, they might 'pray to God about becoming a Christian Bookshop'. Apparently both they and God must have thought it a good plan, because 21 years later it's still here, employing (in a phrase that has me spluttering my morning tea all over my laptop) a number of "full-time people" (as opposed to what - those who are only people some of the time???).
***
Be that as it may, I'm now at my second destination - Leyton Midland Road.
It's not much to look at - being tucked away down the side of some railway arches - and I'm not actually taking a train from here anyway, since I plan to walk to the next station.
But just round the corner is somewhere a tad more interesting (from my admittedly biased point of view at least).
Number 14, Wesley Road is the birthplace of none other than Harry Beck - creator of the modern-day tube map which I'm so pointlessly travelling around.
He was born here in 1902 and the house now has an English Heritage blue plaque to commemorate him. It was in 1933 that his revolutionary non-geographical representation of the underground network was first published, though in subsequent years his name was conveniently forgotten by London Transport and alterations were made without his approval, despite a long-running legal dispute. He eventually gave up the case and died, embittered, in 1974. It wasn't until the 1990s that he was once more posthumously credited with designing the map, and now the words 'This diagram is an evolution of the original design conceived in 1931 by Harry Beck' are printed at the bottom of every one.
***
Just around the corner is another example of Leyton's eccentric approach to business signage.
This is either an incomprehensible and completely unreasonable prohibition of the sticky, gingery, baked Yorkshire food-stuff, or else a transcription by a very literal-minded sign-writer of the owner's East London dialect.
***
And with that, I leave Leyton, and enter Leytonstone.
A street or two further along, and I reach the birthplace of yet another 'celebrity' of yesteryear - Fanny Cradock.
I have no memory of the eccentric (by today's standards) fore-runner of today's celebrity TV chefs, though she was still going strong well into the 70s when I was growing up. While she might have looked more like a drag queen than a cookery expert, anyone who can set up an oven in the middle of the Royal Albert Hall and put on a cookery demonstration to a packed auditorium must have been doing something right.
Leytonstone has a number of famous residents - past and present - among them singer Damon Albarn, photographer David Bailey, footballer David Beckham, cricketer Graham Gooch, presenter Jonathan Ross and actor Derek Jacobi.
The tube station, however, has a selection of mosaic murals depicting scenes from various films, all directed by the area's most famous past resident - Alfred Hitchcock.
He was born here in 1899 - son of a greengrocer (who apparently once sent him round to the local police station with a note requesting he be locked up for five minutes for misbehaving).
He began his working life as a draftsman for a Telegraph Cable company, and was a prolific contributor to their in-house magazine - writing short stories and articles.
He then got a job designing the title-cards for silent movies at a studio in Islington, gradually becoming more and more involved in all the other aspects of film-making - turning his hand to screen-writing, art-directing and directing.
 |
| Leyton High Road |
One shop has taken it a step further and gone to the extent of painting individual bricks different colours. Now that's how to liven up a shop-front! (Pity it's selling such a mundane collection of goods, but hey-ho...)
 |
| Carnival! Yes indeed! (I can just imagine the parades of scantily clad Rio de Janeirans blowing their party whistles and shimmying their ostrich feather head-dresses ecstatically, as they pop in for a roll of bin-liners and a Vileda Supermop...) |
 |
| Coronation Gardens Fountain |
A little further up Leyton High Road are the Coronation Gardens - a park built to commemorate the coronation of Edward VII.
They contain a fountain, a war memorial, a bandstand and a children's maze, and in the sunshine it's all rather pleasant. I stroll the length of the park and spot a number of joggers, and mums with toddlers, and also one or two cider-swigging loafers, though they don't seem to be doing anyone any harm.
 |
| Children's Maze |
Immediately to the north of Coronation Gardens is the 'Matchroom Stadium' - home to Leyton Orient Football Club.
 |
| Leyton Orient Football Club |
As someone who knows (and cares) little about football, there are only one or two club names (other than the obvious ones such as Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs and their ilk) which have entered my consciousness. But Leyton Orient is, surprisingly, one of them. And it's all the fault of schoolboy peer-pressure.
Not being a sporty type, I often felt left out of the intense childhood discussions about which club/player/kit/mascot was best, or who was going to win which cup. But there was one thing I could join in with, and that was the more leisurely pursuit of completing the Panini Football Sticker Album.
Like many of my generation, the lunchtime ritual of flicking through stacks of duplicate stickers looking for the elusive one or two you wanted to swap with your school-chums was one I regularly engaged in. And for some reason the name Leyton Orient (and one or two others such as Notts Forest and Wolverhampton Wanderers) is one that has stuck in my mind from those days. Perhaps it's because you always seemed to get loads of players from these lower echelon clubs in your packets of stickers, rather than the (at the time) more glamorous Glenn Hoddles and Kevin Keegans you were still missing...
***
As I continue north I become aware of some of the more outré names on the establishments I pass.
We have the "Peculiar Unisex Hair Studio" (though it's unclear whether it's the Hair Studio that is considered peculiar, or the unisexuality of its clientele. They do also proclaim on their hoarding that 'our god reigns' - though again, which particular god is not made clear. The possessive insistence of it seems suggestive of a minor cult of some kind.)
Further on we have the "Smart Barber Box" (I shudder to think), the "Chicken Runn" [sic] fried chicken shop, the "Bee Sovereignty" dry cleaners (another - this time insect worshipping - cult?), and finally - as I reach Leyton Midland Road overground station - the "Good News Shop". I initially think this is a newsagents that has taken to only stocking newspapers which print positive news-stories within their pages, and is therefore likely to be bereft of any stock whatsoever, but on closer examination it turns out to be a book-shop selling religious texts.
The blurb on their website has the usual potted history - the owners originally ran a bog-standard, if financially struggling, newsagents until a beneficent, pious, and - some might say - more financially canny nearby bookseller came along and suggested that since (for reasons unspecified) he had to move away from the area, they might 'pray to God about becoming a Christian Bookshop'. Apparently both they and God must have thought it a good plan, because 21 years later it's still here, employing (in a phrase that has me spluttering my morning tea all over my laptop) a number of "full-time people" (as opposed to what - those who are only people some of the time???).
***
Be that as it may, I'm now at my second destination - Leyton Midland Road.
 |
| Leyton Midland Road |
It's not much to look at - being tucked away down the side of some railway arches - and I'm not actually taking a train from here anyway, since I plan to walk to the next station.
But just round the corner is somewhere a tad more interesting (from my admittedly biased point of view at least).
Number 14, Wesley Road is the birthplace of none other than Harry Beck - creator of the modern-day tube map which I'm so pointlessly travelling around.
 |
| Harry Beck's Birthplace |
He was born here in 1902 and the house now has an English Heritage blue plaque to commemorate him. It was in 1933 that his revolutionary non-geographical representation of the underground network was first published, though in subsequent years his name was conveniently forgotten by London Transport and alterations were made without his approval, despite a long-running legal dispute. He eventually gave up the case and died, embittered, in 1974. It wasn't until the 1990s that he was once more posthumously credited with designing the map, and now the words 'This diagram is an evolution of the original design conceived in 1931 by Harry Beck' are printed at the bottom of every one.
***
Just around the corner is another example of Leyton's eccentric approach to business signage.
 |
| What about Eccles Cakes, eh? It's the Wars Of The Roses all over again... |
***
And with that, I leave Leyton, and enter Leytonstone.
A street or two further along, and I reach the birthplace of yet another 'celebrity' of yesteryear - Fanny Cradock.
 |
| Birthplace of Fanny Cradock |
Leytonstone has a number of famous residents - past and present - among them singer Damon Albarn, photographer David Bailey, footballer David Beckham, cricketer Graham Gooch, presenter Jonathan Ross and actor Derek Jacobi.
The tube station, however, has a selection of mosaic murals depicting scenes from various films, all directed by the area's most famous past resident - Alfred Hitchcock.
 |
| Leytonstone |
 |
| Psycho |
He then got a job designing the title-cards for silent movies at a studio in Islington, gradually becoming more and more involved in all the other aspects of film-making - turning his hand to screen-writing, art-directing and directing.
Though his first few films apparently met with little success, he obviously managed to get it right in the end and went on to become one of the most successful film directors of all time.
***
 |
| The High Stone |
Before heading south towards the next station, I take a slight detour north along the vibrant and bustling high street, towards the bottom tip of Epping Forest and the junction of Hollybush Hill and New Wanstead.
Here stands the marker stone I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, from which Leytonstone takes its name.
Known as 'The High Stone', the various incarnations of the marker have stood at this point since Roman times, although as the nearby informative sign tells me, the current version only dates from the 1930s.
 |
| Info about The High Stone |
Having had a good look at it - which let's face it was never going to take very long - and there being nothing very much else to see here other than the busy lanes of traffic approaching the Green Man Roundabout over the A12, I head south again, and onto my final destination of this quartet - Leytonstone High Road.
Here the jolly buzz of the bustling high street gradually gives way to a more down-at-heel sort of feeling, with one or two dilapidated looking shops and cafés and not much else going on.
 |
| Leytonstone High Road |
The station - another overground one set down a side street - is next to railway arches now used as pop-up 'pound shops' selling unbranded fizzy drinks and crisps for knock-down prices. A shame, as the High Road further north has such a nice feel about it.
But that's all for this part of town - now it's time to head south and onto the DLR for my final station of the day - Limehouse.
***
 |
| Limehouse |
Having, by this stage of my seemingly unending travels, repeatedly criss-crossed the length and breadth of London on its various tube lines, I have passed by (or rather above) the Limehouse Basin marina many times, and have always liked the look of it as I gazed out of the DLR train window.
The DLR network itself, as I have probably mentioned before, was created as part of a much more wide-ranging re-development of the whole docklands area, and Limehouse is a very good example of the transformation and gentrification of what was once a rather squalid part of town.
 |
| Limehouse Basin |
Where now stand luxury flats and apartments, next to a marina filled with brightly painted narrow-boats and expensive looking yachts, there once huddled seedy opium dens and sordid slums, and the docks where full of immigrants from China and other Asian countries.
This was the original 'Chinatown' in London - the home of the fictional super-villain Dr. Fu Manchu, and the scene of many an opium-fuelled adventure for Sherlock Homes. The current Chinatown in Soho (which grew up after most of the Limehouse area was destroyed in the blitz) seems rather like the 'Disney' version by comparison.
The area gets its name from the lime kilns which operated here as early as the 14th Century and has a long history as a busy river port.
Given its gentrification, the area has attracted one or two celebrities - including the actor Ian McKellan, who is also the part-owner of a pub on Narrow Street called 'The Grapes'.
This pub - under the pseudonym 'The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters' - appears in the Charles Dickens novel 'Our Mutual Friend' and I think it's worth re-iterating the description of it here as I contemplate the modern security-gated apartment blocks and neatly-cultivated flower-baskets of the current Limehouse inhabitants...
 |
| The Grapes |
"The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters, already mentioned as a tavern of a dropsical appearance, had long settled down into a state of hale infirmity. In its whole constitution it had not a straight floor, and hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast, many a better-trimmed building, many a sprucer public-house. Externally, it was a narrow lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon another as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water; indeed the whole house, inclusive of the complaining flag-staff on the roof, impended over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all.
This description applies to the river-frontage of the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters. The back of the establishment, though the chief entrance was there, so contracted that it merely represented in its connexion with the front, the handle of a flat iron set upright on its broadest end. This handle stood at the bottom of a wilderness of court and alley: which wilderness pressed so hard and close upon the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters as to leave the hostelry not an inch of ground beyond its door. For this reason, in combination with the fact that the house was all but afloat at high water, when the Porters had a family wash the linen subjected to that operation might usually be seen drying on lines stretched across the reception-rooms and bed-chambers."
And so we cross off another few stations, and are once again within sight of the end of another section of the alphabet. Just four more 'Ls' to go!
No comments:
Post a Comment