Oct 31
It didn’t look Tudor at all. I walked past two or three times thinking this couldn’t be right, but then decided this must be the Sutton House I had come to see. Half of it was rendered, the forecourt was paved, the windows were clearly eighteenth century, there was a 1930s noticeboard about its acquisition …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/hackney/disguise-in-homerton/
Oct 19
The northern approach to the Blackwall Tunnel isn’t the most inspiring landscape. A building on the left not far from the big Tesco’s near Bromley by Bow looks to the casual glance like, perhaps, an Edwardian public library or maybe a business headquarters that has had an adventurous life. It’s been a lot of things: …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/hackney/a-palace-in-disguise/
Jan 20
From damp orchards and watercress beds to a hodge-podge of terraced housing, shops and small factories and workshops was a short journey for an inoffensive field in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. For the area between Boundary Road to the south and what is now Walthamstow High Street to the north, the transformation …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/church-hall-school-scout-hut-performance-space-meeting-place-pub/
Sep 21
At the turn of the nineteenth century, Hoe Street was still a well kept suburban road. The houses along each side were spacious, so were the gardens – these were on a less grand scale than country houses in the shires, but needed perhaps half a dozen indoor servants to run, with gardeners, grooms and …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/the-chestnuts-slave-traders-bankers-and-a-long-wait-for-a-new-chapter/
Jul 19
A time traveller going back five centuries would be likely to get lost In Walthamstow. St Mary’s Church is in the right place, but is a different shape, inside and out. The Ancient House is more reliable, but lacks a wing, is weatherboarded and surrounded by farmland. Hoe Street is there, without a single chicken …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/music-and-a-dark-lady/
Apr 23
A wing of it, beautifully restored, recently went on the rental market for around £2,000 a month. A hundred years ago it was a row of rather sorry-looking shops. Before the first Tudor became king it was already too small and old-fashioned to be a manor house. In between it has been a farm, an …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/six-hundred-years-of-shape-changing-walthamstows-ancient-house/
Mar 11
Three centuries ago the trees met over the head of any traveller up Hoe Street. A time traveller from 2022 would depend on the street layout to be sure of the way – Hoe Street runs the same course, but with an unreliable surface and little lighting. There are houses, but only a few, mostly …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/shadows-and-damp-the-early-days-of-the-chestnuts/
Dec 14
We are often told that celebrity is a modern invention that came to birth with the advent of the cinema. Or, pushing it, that Lord Byron, followed in the streets of London by adoring young women clutching copies of “Childe Harold” was the first example. The idea that the first celebrities might have been Londoners …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/aphra-behn/more-tales-from-canterbury/
Nov 01
A treble love story, music, spectacle, music, dance, stage machinery, knockabout comedy and a gullible old pseudo academic with a pretty daughter, a twenty-foot property telescope and a belief not only in the Man in the Moon but a world in the Moon. A smash hit musical, and so far, so frothy, perhaps, viewed from …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/aphra-behn/britains-moon-mission-a-good-blacksmith-400-and-a-lot-of-feathers/
Aug 01
Watercress sandwiches aren’t really a thing now. Gone the way of cucumber with the crusts cut off, and unlikely to be included in the riverside picnic of any modern day Ratty along with the cold meats and French rolls. No watercress for sale in the market either; just bags in supermarket salad aisles alongside the …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/watercress/
