Chingford Mount

 

Ainslie Wood Road

Aisnlie Wood. Oak woods, which were part of forest, owls and things.  Associated with Larks Wood the reserve is ancient woodland bordered by sports pitches.  Larks Wood itself was part of Epping Forest although this cluster of small woods has been separated from the main area of woodland for 300 years, 20C housing replacing farmland. Mixed oak and hornbeam woodland with a boundary ditch along its edge even with considerable disturbance provides cover for tawny owl, blackcap and even spotted flycatcher. . Oak woodland with wild service trees and bluebells.

Ainsle Wood Primary, c. 1990. A return to a vernacular tradition: brick with pantiled roofs.

Albert Crescent

Later 1930s shopping parade with central tower and Art Deco detail.

Chingford Mount

Chingford Mount and South Chingford are 20th-century developments to the south of the town, near to what was earlier called Nonnanshire

Chingford Mount Road,

Used to be called Salisbury Hall Lane

Grocer’s shop

Prince Albert Hotel

215, Beech Hollow, decent Neo-Georgian, was built as a 'Home of Rest' for women, 1935 by Arthur R. Mayston.

Hall Lanew

South Chingford Library, By Essex County Council 1935, their first library. A single one-storey room. Brick, with tall, narrow windows; given a little character by a mannered elliptical-arched entrance

Hampton Road.

Congregational Church, 1955 Trevor Blake. Clean-cut building of buff brick. Tower with tiled round-arched entrance; flanking extensions. Plain barrel-vaulted interior

New Road          

South Chingford Methodist Church, Elegantly restrained, faintly Georgian round-headed to clerestory and gable.

Hall of 1931 a little mosical arched window with keystone, between broad pilasters.

Larks Wood Leisure Centre, with swimming pool, 1994 by Hazel, McCormack & Young. The pool has a monopitch roof and horizontal timber cladding, making an effort to respect the genius loci on the edge of Larks Wood, but is swamped by its neighbours unimaginatively grouped around-a car park. They include indifferent refreshment places, square pavilion housing a nursery, and a large Health and Fitness Centre of routine kind, yellow brick with glazed and top-lit central mall. 

Larkswood Primary, 1904-13 by Frank Whitmore, Essex County Architect. A large, low group, the range to the street has a jolly corner with octagonal turret and pedimented windows. Other windows with hipped dormers. Behind, a more sober range with dentilled gables, and a separate Manual Instruction Centre. Future uncertain

Old Church Road

Features in films 'It Was an Accident’.

All Saints Chingford Old Church. It stands high up, with a view towards the Lea Valley reservoirs. It was called the ‘green church’ and was built in the 12th century when patches of Epping Forest were cleared, and at first it belonged to St.Paul’s. It was used in the painting ‘Home from the Sea’ by A Hughes.   It is an endearing little building, its crumbling rubble stonework lovingly repaired and patched by C.C. William 1929-30 when it was rebuilt as chapel of ease to new church. There had been a long period of decay after the new church was built on the Green. Funding came from Louisa Boothby Heathcote, one of the family at Friday Hill. This is a genuine medieval building – with a wall which is possibly c12, an arcade and aisle of the c13, tower of c1400, and the chancel rebuilt in the c15. The walls are of rubble and the windows mostly Perpendicular in style. The tiled roofs, on the side continuing over the aisle, with domestic-looking dormer windows. There is a pretty Tudor brick porch. Stained glass of the Annunciation from 1963 – it has Figures against abstract background.

84 Threshers. Features in films 'It Was an Accident’.

Royston Avenue

South Chingford

South Chingford grew quickly from the 1930s, and now only a few rural remnants can be found buried among the houses, which by the mid-c20 had covered nearly the whole area.

Southern Avenue?