Gospel Oak to Barking Railway Leytonstone

Gospel Oak to Barking Railway from Leyton Midland Road Station runs south eastwards


Post to the north Leytonstone
Post to the west Leyton
Post to the east Wanstead Flats
Post to the south Cann Hall


Acacia Road
Acacia Road Playground. This was redesigned from 2005 by Rachel Mooney with a theme of “journeys”, for children under 4. With money raised by Acacia Playpark Friends. This included gates at a new entrance, and the Giant’s Head.  Dance Chimes in the main axial pathway parallel to the railway embankment was adapted from a playground in Kensington Gardens - when stepped on, the bronze plates chime different notes on a scale.
Meeting Hall – Mission Rooms. A Bethel mission existed here from 1895. Methodists also had a mission in the road and Brethren met here from 1903. A meeting hall is shown on maps on the south side of the road, next but one to the west side of the railway bridge – a site which had properties of newer build than its neighbours.


Beachcroft Road
Emmanuel Hall. This was used by Brethren since the 1920s and registered for worship as Beachcroft Hall. The hall was still in use in 1968 but now appears to be part of the Homebase car park.
Essex Cottage. Nurses' Home.  This was a training institution for District Nurses run under the Queens Nursing Institute. It also appears to have been called the Lady Raleigh Training home.

Birch Road
Birch Road and the surrounding area are built on the site of Langhorne Hospital.
Langhorne Hospital. In 1840 the West Ham Union built a new workhouse on land acquired from the Stratford-Langthorne Abbey. It has a 3-storey block with courtyards for male and female inmates plus offices, infirmary and quarters for the Master and the Matron. It was subsequently enlarged.  In 1930 it passed to West Ham Borough Council and renamed the Central Home Public Assistance Institution - for the chronically ill, aged and infirm.  In the Second World War it became part of the Emergency Medical Service. It joined the NHS in 1948 under the Leytonstone Hospital Group Hospital Management Committee and renamed the Langthorne Hospital for geriatric care.  Some improvements were made and there were some ungrades – a car par and a lawn. In 1951 am Out-Patients Department was added and upgrading continued including work with the WRVS. In 1974, the Hospital came under the control of the West Roding District Health Authority and later under the Waltham Forest District Health Authority. It finally closed in 1999; the main workhouse building was taken over by the Waltham Forest Housing Action Trust and converted into housing and rest of the site used by Waltham Forest Council in 1996 for the Langthorne Park development.
Langhorne Park. On the site of Langhorne Hospital, Langthorne Park was opened in 2000 and is named from the Stratford-Langthorne Abbey, which owned it as farmland. There are a number of art objects in the park - a cafe with a mosaique by Stewart Hale, Robert Koenig's oak totem figures, Tom Norris's wooden seating area made from old railway sleepers, Dee Honeybun's carved clay panels and Stewart Hale's mosaic sign and mosaic trail.


Cann Hall Road
145 Cann Hall Deen and Education Trust. The trust acquired the building in order to fund raise and convert it to a mosque and a community centre.  This building was previously the Colegrave Arms, named for a family connected to Cann Hall itself and said to have had an unusual 1930s interior.
296 Cann Hall Methodist Church. The church began as a mission in 1887 and Services were first in the open, then in a rented hall. They had a small iron church from 1898 and an additional iron hall in 1927.  They said that this meant they had negligible maintenance costs. The current church was designed by Higgins Group plc. Design & Build, and has a gable to the road with three circular stained glass windows.
314 Lord Rookwood Pub. This appears to have closed. It opened in 1893. Named after Sir Selwyn Ibbetson MP, created Lord Rookwood for his efforts in steering the Epping Forest Act through Parliament in 1878.
234 Buxton All-through School Primary Phase. This was previously Cann Hall Primary School. Education in this area was at one time the responsibility of the Wanstead School Board but from 1902 it was the under Leyton Urban District Council.  . Cann Hall Road Board School was opened by the Wanstead school board in 1882 and from 1948 was solely for junior mixed and infants.

Cathall Road
Cathall Estate. This estate was built by the local authority in 1972 on an area cleared of 19th houses with two 20-storey tower blocks Redwood and Hornbeam and 8-storey flats. These used the Camus industrialised buildings construction system and had been built by Wimpey for Waltham Forest.  It became a poor area with high levels of poverty and crime.  It has been largely replaced in the late 1990s through a Housing Action Trust implemented by English Partnerships and the tower blocks demolished.
2-4 Waltham Forest Worknet
6a Harrow Green Library.Opened in 1960. The library was closed in 2011 despite a 4000 signature petition. The building is now being used as offices by charities, etc.
8 Leytonstone Children’s Centre
Cathall Green – green space with boulders and gym equipment
Cathall Baths and Wash House built in 1902.  They were bombed in the Second World War. It had two pools which were first and second class and priced accordingly, as well as slipper baths and facilities for concerts, etc. There was an adjacent public laundry. It was demolished in 1974 having been used for filming.
Leisure Centre of 1974-7 N.F. Astins, Borough Architect.  The site includes a Community Centre, and a playground. It has pedestrian access from Cathall Road and some access from Lincoln Street.  It is recorded that in front was preserved the pump and motor of an artesian well, which pumped water to the old baths 1899-1972.  Now run by Greenwich Leisure Ltd.
Welcome Mission. Originally a pub it was renovated in 1896 and a hall built at the back. It became an evening institute affiliated to Shaftesbury Society

Cecil Road
1 Rowan House. Waltham Forest YOT.  Local authority youth work centre, justice, etc
Acacia Road children centre. Nursery

Corn Way
Plaque to those who died, including five air raid wardens, when a bomber crashed into the grounds of Harrow Green School in 1942.
Holy Trinity Church with St. Augustine of Hippo. Two Anglican Churches were amalgamated in 1974 to form the present Church. Holy Trinity in Birkbeck Road was demolished for redevelopment and services were held at St. Augustine in Mayville Road. A new church was built here and dedicated in 1974. It was a very plan church, designed to match in with the mew Cathall Estate. The Lady Chapel was enclosed in plate glass could be left open for private prayer and there were some windows from St. Augustine’s church. The church has recently been renovated.  A Roman Catholic Mass is held here on Sunday mornings and the hall is used on Sunday afternoons by the Pentecostalist Church, the Spiritual Baptists.


Cotton Close
This new housing was built on the site of the Acme Seals factory.
The Acme Lead Seal Company established at Harrow Green Works in 1884 following the development of a Lead Seal and Sealing Press. In 1914 they moved to this site in order to expand the lead seal. They designed an alternative to the lead seal and later the first flat metal strap. Later they moved into plastic and heavy-duty barrier seals. In 1998 they opened a factory in Malaysia and in 2003 left Leytonstone and went to a new factory in Witham, Essex

Davies Lane
The Pastures.  This was the property which Agnes Cotton bought and renamed.   It was built by Daniel van Mildert about 1686–7 - the date 1697 was on a cistern - but was remodelled and refaced in the 18th. It was eventually owned by a Mr. Davies.  In 1762 it was left to Mary Bosanquet, daughter of a wealthy Leytonstone family who had become a convert to Methodism and a friend of Wesley. She opened a Methodist centre and orphanage here.  After bombing in the Second World War it stood derelict until its demolition in the 1960s.
15 Pastures Youth Centre. Built on the site of Pastures house.
Home of the Good Shepherd. In 1879, Agnes Cotton, a daughter of William Cotton owner of the estate in the later 19th, built a girls' industrial home with chapel and laundry, by Milner Hall. On her death in 1899, the home was taken over by the Clewer Sisters of the Anglican Community of St. John the Baptist. It closed in 1940 when the children were evacuated, and was not reopened after the Second World War. A three-storey building remains. This is used for youth and children’s activities
Davies Lane Primary School. This is an old Board School in a three-decker which is plain except for pretty tiled plaques and a terracotta panel at the side. It yeas opened in 1901, and was reorganised in 1932 and since 1948 had been for juniors and infants.
Drinking Water Fountain. This was provided by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association. It is made of polished red granite.

Ferndale Road
1 sign for Acme Seals on the side wall.
12 Christ Apostolic Church.  This was the London City Mission’s central hall built by Henry Borton, a builders' merchant at Wanstead whose five children were holding evangelistic services. In 1901 he built this hall in brick and stone by T. & W. Stone. It became a centre of evangelism in the area and in 1948 Beatrice Borton, invited the London City Mission to take charge.

Granleigh Road
Football ground. This was the ground of Leytonstone Football Club which dated from 1886 and had one covered stand and the remaining three sides were for standing. The ground was sold by after merger with other clubs in 1986. It stood alongside the station.

Harrow Green
The green is the site of an old hamlet now, marked by a triangular patch of grass and named after the pub. It was earlier called ‘Sob Green’, Sauls Green or Salts Green. Legally .it hands been part of Epping Forest handed to Local Board as ornamental land by the Conservators in 1883. The planted area surrounds the War Memorial as a formal 1930s style layout. This is a circular paved seating area with four radial pathways having Stone piers are at each entrance. There are small trees around the perimeter including winter flowering cherry. The layout appears to predate the war memorial which itself replaced a central drinking fountain
1 Wesleyan Christian Centre. The building is by J Young built in 1959 and it replaced a bombed church. Simple, with angular windows and small square tower.  It is a Wesleyan Holiness Church which is Evangelical, Protestant denomination with its roots in John Wesley’s Methodism.  The church apparently originated in 1895 with a group of evangelistic Baptists who set up in Harrow Green in a building known as the People's Hall. In 1940 this was bombed, and rebuilt in 1959.
War Memorial, a simple granite obelisk. This was erected to the Leyton dead in the Great War and the names of those killed in the Second World War added later.


Harrow Road
This was once known as Wigram’s Lane –Wigram were a local family
31 Refrigeration Spares. This company provides refrigeration components. It was founded and been in this site since 1946. It is a sister company to an Irish parent.
119 Woodhouse Tavern. Built in 1865. May have closed and turned into housing


Holloway Road
The area around this road, and that of the West Ham Union Workhouse, was known as Holloway Down. This was named for the estate of Holywell Priory, Shoreditch, set up in 1201.
Bell Centre, The Redwood Pre-Nursery


Howard Road
Mission church. This stood on the north east side of the road on the site now covered by the Homebase car park. It has been established in 1867 by the Leytonstone High Road Congregational Church and built by William Goodman about 1880. It was sold to the Harrow Green Baptists in 1943.
Acacia Business Centre


Joseph Ray Road
Trading Estate on the site of the Leytonstone Goods and Coal Depot and sidings
Leytonstone High Street coal depot.  This was owned by the Midland Railway and set up in the 1890s. The site included a Hyraulic Pumping Station and Brotherhood turnover capstans. Restricted space meant wagons had to be lowered from the goods line to ground level by means of a hydraulic hoist which stood immediately behind the High Road shops. The yard closed in 1968
Royal Mail distribution centre
Panther House. Stratford City College. Not at all sure about this.


Leytonstone High Road 
Royal Lodge, big house which preceded the cinema and demolished in 1932. It appears to have originated as a 16th house called Andrews, the name later changed to Royal Lodge during the 17th.  During the 18th it was used as a boys' school. It was partly burnt down in 1878. It had very large grounds which were used by the railway and later for cinema car park.
566 Lincolns, a plain three-storey pub of c. 1870, J five bays with big projecting eaves. This pub was established in 1870 as the Elms. It was renamed Lincolns in 1986 and closed in 2008. It was demolished in 2012 and there is housing on the site.
689 Rex Cinema. This was built for Associated British Cinemas by their in-house architect William R. Glen. It had a facade in white faience tiling, with six vertical columns. Inside were decorative panels depicting deer in a forest. It closed in 1960. It was converted into an ABC Tenpin Bowling alley which closed in 1972 and the building was later demolished and the site lay unused for several years. It is now the site of flats
Leytonstone High Road Station. This opened in 1894 and now lies between Wanstead Park and Leyton Midland Road.  It was originally opened by the Midland Railway and spread across the grounds of what was Royal Lodge. And included some old stables which were demolished.  Originally called just Leytonstone, it was renamed Leytonstone High Road in 1949.  The original upside platform was bracketed on the viaduct with a glazed staircase going to the booking hall which was in the viaduct but these structures were damaged in Second World War bombing,.  The station was modernised and rebuilt in 1958 but was burnt down and demolished in 1996.  It has since been rebuilt again and is now part of Transport for London’s Overground system.
Signal Box. This controlled entry to the goods yard and sidings and stood at the top end of the down platform. It stopped work in 1993.
647-661 Panther House. This was at one time a car show room. It is now TFC
615 State Cinema was opened as the Premier Electric Theatre in 1910 by architects Emden & Egan with a single floor. The ceiling has plaster decorations. It closed in 1938. Cinema architect George Coles employed to re-construct it into an Art Deco styling and it re-opened on 1938 as the State. It closed in 1961 and it became a bingo club. In 1979 it was converted into a snooker club. In 2008, it was refurbished and converted into a banquet hall known as Ivory Mansion.
466 Fire Station. Thus was built by Leyton Urban District in 1924 as headquarters of the Leyton Fire Brigade and taken over by Essex County Council in 1948.  It has striped stone-and-brick and a tower with clock and parapet. Closed
468 The Bell. A 1930s pub. A pub with this name was first noted here in 1718.
470 Police Station 1908 by John Dixon Butler, in his domestic Jacobean style, all brick, including the window mullions. This is now closed as a police station.
485 Shepherds Inn.  This was previously the Loaded Dog pub. It is now a Lithuanian restaurant. The pub dates from at least the 1870s and was originally the Cowley Arms
419 Plough and Harrow, a big half-timbered pub. Named from an inn recorded as ‘Le Harrow’ in 1651 - referring to the agricultural implement -- later the Plough & Harrow 1760. The present pub is south of the original and dates from 1928. It was more recently renamed the Laurel and Hardy for a while.
362 The Academy Cinema opened in 1913 operated by Scriven and Huxtable. It was closed on 1933 and then enlarged and given a new modern facade to the plans of architect F.C. Mitchell. It re-opened as the New Academy Cinema operated by Harry Hymanson. In 1954 it was taken over by Granada Theatres Ltd and closed in 1955 for renovations by George Coles. It Re-opened as the Century Cinema and in 1957 was taken over by Denman (London) Ltd. In 1962 bingo sessions were held on Thursday nights, and it closed in 1963. It was converted into a full-time Granada Bingo Club which closed in March 1983. The building was demolished and a block of flats known as Paramount House was built there.


Lincoln Street
Mayville Primary School.  This was originally Mayville Road board school, which opened in 1889, and became a junior and infants school in 1948. One building survives from the Board School of 1889.
Site of the church St. Augustine of Hippo which started as a mission church, but became ritualist. The site to the rear of the existing church in Mayville Road was bought in 1897 and a new church built by Bottle and Olley.  It was bombed in the Second World War and renovated in the 50s.  It closed in 1974 as part of the redevelopment of the area and was demolished


Mayville Road
St.  Augustine’s church. This began as a mission in the High Road., and in 1886 an iron building was erected here.

Montague Road
Fred Wigg. 17 storey tower block built in the 1960s.  Ground to air missiles were installed here by the army during the Olympics.
John Walsh. 17 storey tower block built in the 1960s


Newcomen Road
The Lifeboat evangelical church was here in 1908, bombed and restored


Southwell Grove Road
Brick barracks and citadel for the Salvation Army built by Coxhead for Leytonstone corps. Sunday school added 1954. The Corps is part of London Central Division
Site of a Zeppelin bombing raid in 1915 in which ten people were killed.


Terling Close
Buxton School. This is the site of Tom Hood School built by Wanstead board school and renamed an after local poet. Rebuilt in the 1950s. It has become Buxton School having joined with what was formerly Cann Hall Primary School in 2010


Trinity Close
On the site of railway sidings and the Leytonstone Football Club ground
Hitchcock Business Centre
Indian Muslim Federation Centre. This is the largest and oldest organisation of Indian Muslims in the UK. It was founded in 1969 by British Indian Muslims in the wake of anti-Muslim riots in Ahmadabad. In 1982 IMF bought a derelict property in East London and in 1983 was inaugurated by the Indian High Commissioner in London. It has been offices and a community centre ever since.
Granleigh Road Clinic. Health clinic now closed


Wanstead Flats
This square covers the westernmost portion of the large open space known as Wanstead Flats which are the southernmost portion of Epping Forest.
Bush Wood Flats
Northern Flats
Wanstead Flats Playing Fields. This area was used as allotments in the Second World War. There are now 13 football pitches
Cat and Dog Pond. A drainage ditch runs from here towards an SSSI and in which there are wet flushes.
Harrow Road Changing Rooms


West Street
41 The Epicentre, community buildings in an elementary neo-vernacular style, L-shaped, with big roofs and an angular lantern at the junction. Nicely paved entrance courtyard leading to a broad foyer, with meeting hall. Includes a new library using unpaid non-professional staff


Woodhouse Road 
St.Margaret of Antioch. Built 1893by J. T. Newman and W Jacques. A red brick basilica, with furnishings in Anglican tradition, on a corner site, though without its intended tower. The High altar s a memorial to the first Bishop of St Albans, designed by Louth, with carving by Sebastian Zwinck of Oberammergau,.  The Lady Chapel was added 1912 by Cutts, Johnson & Boddy
Church institute. Built 1910 by T.E. Lidiord James


Sources
Acme Lead Seal. Web site
British History on line. Web site. Leytonstone.
CAMRA. Web site
Cann Hall Deen and Education Trust. Web site
Cinema Treasures. Web site.
Clunn. The face of London
Connor. St. Pancras to Barking
Corporation of the City of London. Web site
Field. London place names
Holy Trinity with St. Augustine. Web site
Leyton and Leytonstone Historical Society. Web site
London Borough of Waltham Forest. Web site
London Encyclopedia
London Gardens online. Web site
Lost Hospitals of London. Web site
Pub History. Web site
Simpson. Leyton and Leytonstone Past and Present
Victoria County History. EssexPost to the west Leyton

Comments

UpYourStreet said…
It's so worth mentioning Neville Close which is built on the site of a former major local employer to 1975 called Nevill's Bread. It was an huge building with houses designated for the company supervisors. Nevill's went to Low Hall Lane E17 and bcame after many years Kingsmill.
UpYourStreet said…
In 1909 Wanstead Flats was marshy and wild. Trees were plantted and ponds dug so it's all rather artificial.
UpYourStreet said…
Wasn't the Jenny Hammond Primary School previously Cann Hall Primary and Tom Hood became Buxton School? The old building of Tom Hood School currently housing Buxton students will be demolished in January 2018. The new Buxton School will be occupied by then. Changes!
Anonymous said…
Rookwood Village is the new pub now with flats built behind it.

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