Sep 26
It vanished piecemeal nearly a hundred years ago. The “dwellings” were considered a health hazard by the 1930s. But before the days of building controls, a haphazard development of up to a hundred homes had grown up – Lea Bridge Gardens. Or the Bungalow Town. These were the unofficial homes of the poor. And because …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/desperation-or-liberty-life-in-lea-bridge-gardens/
Sep 23
Three years ago, when I first wrote about the Iron Church, now known as the Stafford Hall, the unpretentious structure that served its community before the present St Barnabas Church, Walthamstow was built, the future of church, vicarage, iron church and church hall seemed moderately uncontentious. Life was hard for everyone in the aftermath of …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/st-barnabas-a-church-surrounded/
Sep 01
Rose Lok lived to be a very old lady. For a Londoner born in the reign of Henry VIII, to attain the age of eighty-six was in itself an extraordinary achievement. And Rose lived an extraordinary life. She grew up in a house off Cheapside in the heart of Tudor London, one of nineteen children …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/uncategorized/rose-loks-tale-silk-thread-and-subversion/
Jun 02
There is a stretch of seventeenth century garden wall left to show where the house once stood. One of many hospital carparks takes up the space that was once an ornamental lake, filled in after a nurse drowned. The Samuel Boyce Lodge, described as a “psychiatry elderly unit”, stands on what were once the gardens. …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/uncategorized/bricks-concrete-and-shadows/
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/
