Maryland My Maryland, Stratford 1989: It was not until the beginning of September 1989 that I found time to return to London, starting my walks there again on Sunday 3rd September at Stratford in East London and walking from the station towards Maryland.
Nobody is absolutely sure why Stratford has an area called Maryland but it could be that this is an unusually named after Maryland Point on the Potomac River in Virginia. Richard Lee (1617-1664) emigrated to the then colony around 1640, making a fortune as “a tobacco planter, trader, an owner and trader of slaves, and an employer and importer of English indentured servants.” Returning to England in 1658 he bought land in Stratford and owned a large house there. The name Maryland Point is first known to have appeared on a map in 1696.
Trinity College Oxford set up a College Mission “in connexion with the Great Eastern Railway Works at Stratford le Bow” around 1890 and it continued there until destroyed by a German air-raid in 1941.
Tom Allen came to work at their mission in Bermondsey while still studying at Trinity in 1909 where he obtained a “Fourth in History” and a Rugby Blue. From 1911 to 1914 he was Warden of the Stratford mission but when the war broke out enlisted as a private in the Grenadier Guards, but was soon offered a commission in the Irish Guards. The following February he went to France “where less than one month later, in the firing trenches near La Bassée he was killed instantaneously by a shell.” He was only 27. The centre named for him was built in 1957.
It is now The Sanctuary, home to The Redeemed Christian Church of God.
I can’t make out the name of the company once engraved on the building of the Maryland Works at 20/22 Grove Crescent Road as it is partly covered by the later sign board for ( I think) ‘MTM ties around the world of B J Bass & Co Ltd.’ It and the offices beyond are long gone, replaced by blocks of flats, backing on to the railway.
Built in 1910 by Frazzi Fireproof Construction Ltd of Whitechapel the Grove Picture Palace later became a billiards hall. Although unused and in a rather poor stage it still retained its original decoration and railings in 1989, though its signage above the ground floor had gone. The sign ‘READ GOD’S WORD THE BIBLE’ was on the wall belonging to the Central Baptist Church next door,
You can see pictures of it as built and as a surgery on Arthur Lloyd’s Theatres in Stratford East page.
Another image of the former cinema. It appears now to have been restored very much to its original state despite not even being locally listed.
Leytonstone Road starts at the north end of The Grove after it crosses the railway and runs parallel to the tracks to Maryland Station before turning north.
These buildings at 7-13 Leytonstone Road are still there but a little altered with the roof of Bacchus’s Bin (now BAR ONE and Thailander Restaurant) having had its gables and the half barrels and sign at first floor level removed. The Chevy Chase pub at No 11 closed in 2010, was until 2014 a restaurant and after being empty for a couple of years is now a solicitors.
This is Emmanuel Hall and is now the Without Borders Church. It has lost its large cross and most of the row of windows along its side since I made this picture.
This picture on the corner looking north where Leytonstone Road turns north with the tower block of Henniker Point in the distance was the first image in the body of my Blurb book, ‘1989’, ISBN: 978-1-909363-01-4, published in 2012 and still available both as softcover or PDF. I had previoiusly published the work on the web in 2006 and it was exhibited in the 2010 London International Documentary Festival – I think the first occasion on which this festival featured still photography.
This is one of only two books of mine which are image/text pieces, though others have some separate texts. For the text I misappropriated the name ‘Upton Sinclair’, an American write and political activist who died in 1968, but I was thinking of nearby Upton Park and the well-known psychogeographic writer Iain Sinclair whose works on London I had long admired. After all there are hundreds if not thousands of us ‘Peter Marshalls’ so why not one more Upton Sinclair?
The blurb on Blurb about ‘1989’ states: ” ‘1989′ claims to be Chapter 1 of a book based on the notes made by the photographer on a walk through the streets of north-east London with a well-known author of ‘psycho-geographical’ works.
But the author is entirely fictional, and the notes, written in 2005, after his death and sixteen years after the pictures were taken are in part a gentle spoof on psycho-geography but more importantly a reflection on photography and the documentary process.”
Parts of it I still find quite funny and it really is one of my favourites among my books.
More from this walk on a later post.
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.