The London/Essex border - Ponders End

The London/ Enfield/Essex boundary goes south on an eccentric course (presumably the course of the original river) down the reservoir and joins the boundary of Waltham Forest.
The London/Waltham Forest /Essex boundary Goes straight east-west across the reservoir.

Post to the north Brimsdown
Post to the east George V
Post to the south Picketts Lock
Post to the west Ponders End

Sites on the London, Enfield, side of the boundary

Alma Road
Developed from 1855. Redeveloped by the council from the 1950s with tower blocks. The area had been part of an estate attached to Ponders End Mill.
173 Alma pub
Tin tabernacle
Alma Road Secondary SchoolPumping Station. In 1854 the local board opened a water works here.

Conduit Lane
Navigation Inn. This was the Ponders End Pumping Station for the Girling reservoir built by the East London Waterworks Co1899 and designed by W. S. Bryan. The Inn was created in 1995 from parts of the Pumping Station and an extra building in pastiche was added to the north. The style of both buildings is half-timbered with big tiled roofs. This pumping station was for one of five wells sunk by East London Water Works under their Act of 1886. Roughcast below big tiled roofs. Now a Mitchell and Butler Harvester. Formerly 'The Palladium'.
Keid’s Weir . South of Ponder’s End Lock. Intake for East London Waterworks Co. The water is sent in a channel to Chingford Mill. From here the East London Water Co. owned the bed of the stream.

Lea Navigation.
This runs from the Thames to Hertford, Modest improvements to the natural river course began in the late 12th under the Abbot of Waltham and in 1424 an Act of Parliament - the first for this purpose - appointed commissioners to improve the navigable waterway. Following a report in 1766 by John Smeaton, Thomas Yeoman created a series of artificial channels and pound locks of modem type in place of previous flash locks.
The Barge River – its course lies under the reservoirs that flank the east bank all the way to Tottenham from Enfield
Edmonton Cut - one of Yeoman's improvements. Broad and straight five miles long from Tottenham Hale to Ponders End, begun 1770
Enfield Cut. Less regular above Ponders End, following the earlier Enfield millstream.
Ponders End Lock. Until 1861, this lock was also called Enfield Mill Lock after the nearby Mill. It was the first of the Lee locks to be duplicated, in 1959. The Lee Conservancy lock house was demolished to make way for the new, mechanised, chamber. The original lock remains manual.
Ponders End Ferry

Lea Valley Road
Road crosses the River Lea., Mar Dyke, Lea Navigation, and Ponders End Mill. The road was built in the 1870s financed by public subscription,
South Marsh. Mentioned in 1419.
Bridge House. Unexploded bomb,

Morson Road
Riverside Industrial Estate
Valley Link Estate
Columbia Wharf
Wharf Road Industrial Estate

Northampton Road
1/3 Granville. Listed pub.

Overflow channel
Approximately 2 miles long. Flowing from the River Lee Navigation above Ponder's End Lock across South Marsh close to the King George V Reservoir and following the western perimeter of the William Girling Reservoir to merge with the River Lee Diversion at Edmonton.

Ponders End
Ponders End - Marked thus on the Ordnance Survey 1822, earlier ‘Ponders ende’ 1593, that is 'end or quarter’ associated with the Ponder family' from Middle English ‘ende’. John Ponder of Enfield is mentioned in a document of 1373; the surname may well mean 'keeper of, or dweller by, a fish-pond or mill- pond'. Was it where Ponder highwayman was, or J.Ponder lived
Tannery in 1740s
Pub called Pike and Anchor in 19th
Ponders End Station. 15th September 1840. Between Brimsdown and Angel Road on One Railway. Northern and Eastern Railway. Station, built at Ponders End not Enfield because it was flat and therefore cheaper
East London Water Co. sewer from Ponders End to Tottenham Lock. It takes effluent from Cheshunt, Enfield and Edmonton

Wharf Road
Built to replace Marsh Lane. Was Dell’s Ford on it?
Overlooking fragments of water meadows was a Domesday water-mill site on the River Lea with some buildings dating from late 17th . There was a mill on the site in the 16th and some evidence of one in the 14th. Was it a gunpowder mill? It was once called Flanders Mill with seven pairs of stones. Then called Enfield Mill and in the 19th Ponders End Mill. It had been a Leather Mill in the late 18th,
Wright's Mill, established 1867 by George Reynolds Wright, one of the first in country to install roller mills Wright partnership with miller Young and lived in the Mill House. Electric power introduced 1909 replacing water wheels. Tall 600-ton grain silo built 1925, now a local landmark. G. R. Wright & Sons Ltd is still a flourishing concern. . Three-storey mill, barn, sack hoist. c1789. Bought freehold from MWB and rights of passage for barges. Refurbished 1950s. Miller’s house and offices flanking a three-and-a-half-storey water-mill of brick and white weatherboarding, c. 1789. They overlook fragments of water meadows by the Lee. An attractive ensemble, despite the large unloading bays built out in the 1970s in front of the mill. Dark weather boarded sheds of different heights, taller steel-clad silos and milling plant behind.
Lodge with Gothic windows. 19th
Mill House. Queen Anne. At the core is a Georgian brick miller’s house
Mar Dyke Joins the steam near Keid’s Weir. Joined by the Lea.
Ponders End Shell Works. Built here during World War I, a huge munitions factory, which was sold off after the war.

Comments

Unknown said…
This is a great blog!
Regarding the 'Navigation Inn. This was the Ponders End Pumping Station for the Girling reservoir built by the East London Waterworks Co1899 and designed by W. S. Bryan', I think it is unlikely that the pumping station was used for the William Girling reservoir as this was not completed until after WW2 having been started before it. Furthermore the land in which it was built was WW1 airfield!
Incidentally Alma Road was redeveloped in the early 1960's not the 1950's as stated.

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