Pudding Mill Lane | >Re-PHOTO

Hackney Wick & Manor Gardens – 2007

Hackney Wick & Manor Gardens: On Tuesday January 16 2007 I took a walk in Hackney Wick on my way to what was to become one of many casualties to the London Olympics, the Manor Gardens allotments, for an open day when the press and public were invited to see the vibrant site that was under threat.

Here with a few corrections and some of the pictures is what I wrote about the day. Many more pictures are still on My London Diary.

Hackney Wick remains one of the more interesting areas of London, and I took a few pictures despite the light rain on my rather meandering way to the Manor Gardens Allotments off Waterden Road.

The Manor Gardens Allotments were another of the charitable provisions that came out of the link with Eton College and the Eton College Mission set up in Hackney Wick.

Arthur Villiers was one of four Old Etonians (the others were Gerald Wellesley, founder of the Eton Manor Old Boys Club for over 18s, Alfred Wagg and Sir Edward Cadogan) who in 1924 set up a charitable trust to keep the clubs running.

Villiers, who was a director of Barings Bank, had previously in around 1900 provided the Manor Gardens Allotments on an adjoining site as a means of providing both healthy exercise as well as suitable nutrition for the young men of the area. The land was provided for the community to use in perpetuity.

Since then it has continued in use, with a short break when the area was used for a wartime gun battery. At least a couple of the allotment ‘sheds’ are heavy concrete structures left over from this use.

Over the years it has been a thriving community of cultivators, recovering in recent years from some slight loss of interest, with the current renewal of interest in green and healthy living and eating.

Then came the London Bid for the 2012 Olympics, which put the allotments within the site. It could have been seen as a golden opportunity to give the games some green credibility behind the lip-service the bid gave to biodiversity and sustainability, and certainly as a commitment to the post-2012 legacy of the games – to leave sites such as Manor Gardens and the adjoining nature reserve as a green centerpiece to the site. Unfortunately the architects and developers seem hell-bent to create a brown Olympics, creating an irredeemably distressed site that will only be economically recoverable when all the concrete has crumbled.

The New Year Feast was an Open Day at Manor Garden Allotments, inviting the public and press to see the site and the 80 plots for themselves. A rather low-tech ‘Olympic torch’ was carried across the bridge to the site and used to start a bonfire.

Then we had a party around it, with a couple of speeches and some tasty refreshments. There was support from some celebrities, as well as the opportunity to meet some of the plot-holders, some of whom have raised crops here since the 1940s – and those whose parents had plots in the 1920s. There are also many newer tenants, very much reflecting the multicultural nature of the surrounding area.

It would be a great shame to lose this splendid facility for four weeks of use in 2012, when it could easily be built around. It isn’t in a critical area but will simply be under concrete as a footpath, and probably also the site of a huge advertising ‘scoreboard’ for the games sponsor.

What will it say about the 2012 Olympics for a site that is currently a beacon for healthy green eating to be selling Big Macs?

The planning application was to submitted on 1st Feb 2007, with eviction expected on 2nd April 2007. it is unlikely that the replacement site offered at Marsh Lane can be ready before 2008. Hopes are not high, but it would certainly be a great green miracle if the allotments survive.

Of course the miracle did not happen, and the Olympic juggernaut took its course, destroying the allotments and much else. By June 2008 allotment holders were struggling to grow crops on a new site on common land at Leyton. The move was expensive and the contractors used to prepare the site had ruined it by sterilising and compacting soil with heavy equipment and much of the site was waterlogged, with the only healthy crops being grown in grow-bags.

The allotment holders had been promised they would be able to return to their old home after the Olympics, but this promise was not kept. Eventually in 2017 some were able to go to a much smaller new site at Pudding Mill Lane. It’s future came under threat in 2022 by plans for extensive development around its edges which will overshadow it restricting cultivation on much of the site.

Many more pictures of the allotments, some of the surrounding areas and of the New Year Feast on My London Diary.

Flickr – Facebook – My London Diary – Hull Photos – Lea Valley – Paris
London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

All photographs on this page are copyright © Peter Marshall.
Contact me to buy prints or licence to reproduce.

Before the Olympics – 2007

Five years and a few months before the London 2012 Olympic Games took place much of the site was still open although businesses had been moved out and some of the buildings were becoming derelict. I’d had an invitation to a party at a site there the previous evening but hadn’t been able to attend, but on Sunday 11th February 2007 I took my Brompton on the trains to Stratford Station for a tour of the area. It began as a rather gloomy day but the weather at least brightened up later.

I did return to parts of the area in later months as the close down was taking effect – and even led a two-day workshop at the View Tube in April 2010. And in June I was there to photograph workmen putting up the blue fence to keep us out of the whole Olympic area until well after the games were gone.

Before the Olympics - 2007 — *Footbridge to railway works over Waterworks River, Stratford Marsh.*

Here’s what I wrote on back in 2007 about my ride around the area, much of which I spent pushing and carrying my Brompton bike along footpaths. But it did make it possible for me to cover rather more ground than would have been possible on foot. I’ve corrected the capitalisation etc. There are several pages of pictures with the original on My London Diary, just a few of which are shown here.

2012 Olympic Site – Stratford, Sunday 11 Feb, 2007

Sunday I went to the Olympic site again, keen to photograph before the area becomes ‘fortress Olympics’ and is destroyed. Many of the businesses have now moved out and some of the small industrial estates are looking pretty empty. Tate Moss, who occupied a site by the City Mill River had staged their final event the night before, but the partying didn’t keep going long enough for me to look in and the place was deserted.

*Marshgate Lane under the Northern Outfall Sewer is blocked with old tyres*

Some of the riverside paths were open again after the test borings that have been going on, although several were fenced off over a year ago. The gate to the path by the waterworks river from the Greenway wasn’t locked, so I took a walk up this, but I knew that it was no longer possible to get out onto Marshgate Lane so had to retrace my steps.

*The Marshgate Centre and Banner Chemicals from the Greenway*

The route back up to the Greenway from Marshgate Lane was almost completely obstructed by heaps of old car tires, and I had to carry my Brompton for a few yards and climb up onto a grass bank where the steps were completely blocked. Parts of the road were no longer open to cars too.

From there I moved on to Hackney Wick and Waterden road, and I finished the day as the light was getting low on Hackney Marshes, one of the areas in which locally important sporting facilities will be lost at least for a few years, perhaps for good.

Original text on the February 2007 page (you will need to scroll down.)

My article back then ended with the paragraph above, but my ride didn’t – I had to get back home. It had previously taken me to a number of places just outside the condemned area, including some that were to be demolished for Crossrail, and it didn’t actually end on the Hackney Marshes, as the pictures on My London Diary demonstrate.

I decided to ride back to Stratford to get the train home, and that ride took me back past Clays Lane, where the estate was to be demolished for the athletes’ village and I stopped several more times on my way to take more pictures in the gloom. Even when I arrived at Stratford around sunset there was still enough light for a few final images.

You can see many more pictures from the entire ride on My London Diary

Marshgate Lane

Marshgate Lane runs through the centre of Stratford Mash and what became the London 2012 Olympic site. It’s southern end was a short distance north of the bridge over St Thomas’s Creek on Pudding Mill Lane, and it ran parallel and a few yards to the east of Pudding Mill Lane, which rejoined it just south of the Northern Outfall Sewer. Marshgate Lane then continued in its northerly route past Knobs Hill to run beside the Old River Lee and across both the City Mill River and the Waterworks River to Carpenters Road.

City Mill River, Marshgate Lane, from Greenway, Northern Outfall Sewer, Stratford Marsh, Newham, 1983 33x-32_2400 — Industry between Marshgate Lane and the City Mill River, 1983

It’s southern area still follows the same route, though it now starts at Stratford High St, which was previously Pudding Mill Lane, and north of the sewage outfall its route is completely different. But what was back in the 1980s a street lined for much of its route with industrial premises is now a wasteland with some athletic facilities, parts of which will shortly be covered with tall blocks.

Marshgate Lane, Stratford Marsh, Stratford, Newham, 199090-9g22_2400 — Maryland Plastics, St Thomas’s Creek, Pudding Mill Lane, 1983

As well as the Olympic devastation, Crossrail has also played havoc with the southern area. An earlier addition with little disruption was the Docklands Light Railway, extended to Stratford for the Olympics and opened to the public in 2011 with a station on Pudding Mill Lane, which gives considerably more convenient access to the area.

Marshgate Lane, Stratford Marsh, Stratford, Newham, 1990 90-9g24_2400 — Marshgate Lane, 1990

It isn’t always easy to decide now exactly where I took some of these pictures as I wandered freely around the area, both on the streets, on the Greenway and other footpaths and through some small areas of waste land. So some pictures captioned as Marshgate Lane may actually be on Pudding Mill Lane or even Barbers Rd or Cooks Road.

Marshgate Lane, Stratford Marsh, Stratford, Newham, 1990 90-9g26_2400 — Marshgate Lane, 1990

There was considerable opposition from some of the businesses in the area to the redevelopment for the Olympics, and for some it was the end of their business, while a few did well out of their relocation. I continued to photograph in the area during the redevelopment, though access to much of it was closed, the area surrounded by a blue fence and security guards. Now there is little to attract me back to Stratford Marsh, and my few visits before Covid have been sadly disappointing.

Marshgate Lane, Stratford Marsh, Stratford, Newham, 1990 90-9h52_2400 — Marshagate Lane, 1990

More pictures from the 1980s on Flickr.

All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated, are taken by and copyright of Peter Marshall, and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.