Pudding Mill River

Protesting the London Olympics Bid – 2005

Protesting the London Olympics Bid: On Saturday 19th February 2005 I sent for a guided walk around the proposed Olympic site on Stratford Marsh and then joined others in a protest march through the area to Hackney Marshes which would also be affected.

The favourites for the games were Paris, and although public opinion in Britain largely backed the bid, there was rather less support by locals both because of the effects it would have on the area and the high coast which would mean an extra £20 per year on council tax.

Paris accused London of violating the rules but the decision was was made by a small majority in London’s favour.

After the success of the bid in July 2005 there were fears around the rest of the country that the extra spending on the games would mean diverting funds for more necessary work away from the rest of the country – which it did.

And locally many suffered from the disruption of the works over an extensive area – with local businesses and some residents being forced out of the area.

This bridge had a local message for Seb Coe who heads London’s bid for the 2012 Olympic Games

Here I’ll reproduce – with appropriate minor corrections – the article I wrote along with some of the pictures I took on the day.

Site Walk, Bow Back Rivers

Saturday 19th February saw me in the Bow Back Rivers again, on another guided walk looking at the areas threatened by the London 2012 Olympic Bid. We walked along The Northern Outfall Sewer from Stratford High Road to Old Ford, then along the Old River Lea and back down the City Mill River.

Traditionally an area for dirty industries on the east of the city, a health and safety hell-hole, now with plenty of derelict land, but still providing local jobs that will all disappear if the bid goes through.

Much of the area will disappear under concrete, almost all redundant after the big event, with plans for its after use unpublished and unfunded.

At the moment it’s a rich wildlife environment, but all that will go, and the tidal Bow Back Rivers are likely to be lost or severely altered.

If the bid goes ahead it will severely distort a regeneration that needs to be based on local needs and priorities, and the trumpeted increased investment will largely create unwanted facilities that will be future millstones.

*Hackney marshes. Football pitches will be concreted car parks for the Olympics*

Not to mention the disruption over perhaps 15 years as the site is developed and then (if finances materialise) restored for use.

No London 2012 Olympics March

*More local businesses that will close on Waterden Rd.*

After the walk, we went to join the demonstration and protest march that was forming in Meridian Square outside Stratford Station. It wasn’t a huge event, with just over a hundred marchers, but I was surprised at the positive response from those hurrying by to catch trains or go shopping, many expressing support.

The march, on a bitter, dull afternoon, ended on Hackney Marshes, where considerable local sports facilities are due to be covered by car parks if the bid succeeds, with people playing games and a very spirited sack race.

*View from the walkway over Carpenters Lock*

I walked back to Stratford, again through the Olympic site, crossing over the Lea at one of the locks and along the side of the Waterworks River, with often dramatic lighting and the occasional light flurry of snow.

You can see the 2005 post on My London Diary and also many more pictures from the day

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London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

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

Around the Olympic Site – January 2007

Around the Olympic Site: Thursday 4th January, 2007 looked like being a pleasant enough day for a bike ride around the area where preparations were getting into full swing for the London 2012 Olympics to see how things were going in the area. So I wrapped up warm and put my folding bike on the train to make my way to Stratford.

Most of the central area of the site was already closed off to the public, but I was able to cycle to various parts of the perimeter and take photographs, though I was disappointed to find large areas where nothing was yet taking place already fenced off. From Stratford I went around in an anti-clockwise direction and on My London Diary you can read a fairly long piece about where I went and my opinions about what was happening.

It was becoming more and more clear that many of those who lived and worked in and around the area were being very shabbily treated, with nothing being allowed to stand in the way of the Olympic juggernaut. People were being lied to, promises being made and then abandoned.

Probably the worst case of this was with the 430 residents of the Clays Lane Housing Co-Operative who were first promised they would be rehoused in conditions “as good as, if not better than” their present estate but were later told “at least as good as in so far as is reasonably practicable.”

The tenants there had already suffered from their cooperative estate with its strong community being transferred against their wishes to Peabody Housing following an adverse Housing Corporation inquiry, losing their mutual status. After their eviction under the Olympic Compulsory Purchase Order (CPO) they were dispersed and many found they were having to pay much higher rents and living in worse conditions in places that lacked any of the feeling of community of Clays Lane.

*Carpenters Lock and part of the closed area*

I’d hoped to visit the Eastway Cycle Circuit and the Bully Fen nature Reserve, but both were fenced off, as were some of the footpaths I had hoped to cycle down, resulting in some fairly lengthy detours. Some of the closures claimed to be “temporary” – but some were still closed ten years later.

*Samuel Banner, inventor of white spirit, founded the company in 1860. It relocated to Teeside*

I commented “Parliament smooths the way for the Olympic Delivery Authority at the expense of people and environment, enabling them to slough off the inconvenience of democracy and justice. The situation for some of the local people – particularly those living in Clays Lane – can only be described as Kafkaesque.”

I rode down Marshgate Lane and went onto the Greenway and then returned and went on to Hackney Wick, pausing to eat my sandwich lunch in a sheltered suntrap by the lock on the Hertford Union Canal before riding on the Greenway, turning back where this was blocked and coming back to the Lea Navigation towpath and on to Stratford High Street.

*Bridge over Pudding Mill River to Marshgate Lane, Stratford Marsh.*

From here I was able to go along a short length of footpath next to the Waterworks River before returning to the Greenway on the other side of the High Street, past some more areas covered by the CPO.

*Bow Back River. Both sides in the foreground are part of the CPO area*

By now the light was beginning to fade, but I rode on to Canning Town and took a brief look (and some rather dark pictures) of the Pura foods site then being demolished before riding over the Lower Lea Crossing to the station for the Jubilee Line back to Waterloo.

*Parts of Pura Food had yet to be demolished.*

Many more pictures begin a short scroll down the January 2007 page of My London Diary.

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London’s Industrial Heritage – London Photos

Stratford Marsh & Carpenter’s Road

Pudding Mill River and Railway, Stratford Marsh, Stratford, Newham, 1990 90-9h66_2400 — Pudding Mill River, Stratford Marsh, 1990

Continuing with pictures from my walks in the 1980s and early 1990s around the area destroyed for the London 2012 Olympics on Stratford Marsh. Although there was then considerable industry of various kinds across the area, many of the factories had closed, and some were derelict, partly as a result of Thatcher’s de-industrialisation policies, but also because of competition from more efficient industry abroad as well as from lower wage economies.

Pauls Cafe, Stratford Marsh, Stratford, Newham, 1990 90-9h63_2400 — Paul’s Cafe served the many workers in the area

A few of the empty properties and sites were occupied by smaller local businesses such as car breakers and repair shops, and a few were transformed into artists studios – and I remember going to a great party in one of them off Marshgate Lane, though missing most such events as I lived thirty miles away on the other side of London.

City Mill River, Stratford Marsh, Newham, 1983 33x-34_2400 — This path beside the City Mill River was well trodden during the fishing season. 1983

This was clearly a liminal area, on the edge of London and in some respects on the edge of society, even though it was surrounded on all sides by the city which now sprawls out much further east. In it there were also areas of wilderness, with paths beside the various streams of the River Lea across the area often overgrown and some largish areas of now disused land.

Caravan, Marshgate Lane, Stratford Marsh, Newham, 1982 32w-45_2400 — Behind the caravan was the Queen Mary College nuclear engineering dept building. 1982

One large building next to the Pudding Mill River was the nuclear engineering department of Queen Mary College, which in 1966 had the first nuclear reactor of any UK university. This very small reactor was decommissioned about the time I made the picture which shows it behind a caravan and lorries parked beside the road.

Jerome Engineering Ltd, Johnson-Progress Ltd, Carpenters Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1983 92-8e23_2400 — Jerome Engineering Ltd, Johnson-Progress Ltd, Carpenters Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1983

Although there was clearly considerable industry in the area, quite a few of the properties were empty. You can find more pictures from Carpenters Rd on page 3 of the Flickr album River Lea- Lea Navigation.

Asteroid Ltd, Carpenters Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1983 92-8e62_2400 — Asteroid Ltd, Carpenters Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1983

Carpenters Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1983 35p-53_2400 — Carpenters Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1983

Carpenters Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1983 35q-26_2400 — Carpenters Rd, Stratford, Newham, 1983

The area now is unrecognisable – part of the largely still rather arid space of the new park. And although Carpenters Road still runs through the area, its sides are bare and bleak apart from the Aquatics Centre.

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.