River Lea - Old Ford
Hackney Cut, old River Lea. City Mill River.
The Old River Lea joins the Hackney Cut at Old Ford Locks and they flow south to be met by what has become the Bow Back River. The City Mill River flows south, as did the Pudding Mill River until recently
The Great Eastern railway line to Ilford swings north eastwards still running from Bethnal Green Station.
Post to the north Hackney Wick
Post to the east Abbey Mills
Post to the west (south section) Roman Road Bow
Post to the south Bromley by Bow
Atley Road
This road has now gone
Old Ford School. The school is now on another site
Autumn Street
In the 19th called Avenue Road
Autumn Yard
Barbers Road
Lampblack manufactory – marked in the 1860s
Waterproof cloth manufactory – marked in the 1860s
Bow Generating Station. Charing Cross and Strand Electricity Supply Company had originated with the Gatti Brothers 1883 electricity generation for their Strand restaurant. The need for a larger facility led to the purchase of land here in 1900 including a railway siding. The works was designed by William H. Patchell using AC. In 1902 when it opened it was the first British station undertaking three- phase generation, transmission and conversion at 11,000 volts. The plant used 83.3rpm reciprocating Sulzer engines with flywheels replaced in 1903 by Parsons steam turbines. In 1925 Bow amalgamated with nine others to form the London Power Company, and eventual nationalisation of the industry in 1947. Some water supply came from Pudding Mill River. The site was bombed in the Second World War. It stopped work in 1963 and was demolished in 1968.
Magnet Works. Cowan Colours
Heron Industrial Estate
Cockman Bros. & Co., tallow melter, in business since 1905
Turner King and Shepherd, Monolac Works. The firm subsequently moved to Cuxton in Kent. Making sealants for building materials.
Croda Agricultural Ltd. Agricultural chemicals
Blackwall Tunnel Approach A12
The road south of Old Ford was constructed in the mid and late 1960s as part of the East Cross Route which was intended to be the eastern section of the London Motorway Box. It has been redesignated as A12
Blondin Road
This was once called Mary Street
Bow Bridge
Clearly there had to be a way to cross the river Lea between Essex and Middlesex. It is said that in 1100 Queen Mathilda, the wife of King Henry I, while on her way to Barking Abbey had a problem crossing the ford and because of this the bridge or a causeway was built. It is thought to be the earliest mediaeval bridge in England. It was a diversion from the traditional, maybe Roman, crossing at Old Ford Road. At first Queen Matilda provided for the upkeep of the bridge, from income which included a water mill which she placed with the Abbess of Barking. Its name is said to refer to its 5 arches. The original bridge may have had a chapel on it dedicated to St Catherine. It seems to have been rebuilt in the 14th and again in 1741. The income from tolls went to the Abbess of Barking but this was then sold to West Ham Abbey for £200. When the Abbey was dissolved the legal problems were not resolved until 1691 and eventually an 1876 Act of Parliament which paid £1,000 to West Ham. In 1835, the bridge was rebuilt as a single arch, by the turnpike trust. It was replaced again in 1905 by an iron girder bridge with two carriageways, and in the 1960s it was rebuilt again plus the Bow flyover
Bow Gas Works. This was the Whitechapel Road Oil Gas Company Works which was set in up 1819 by John Taylor and Philip Martineau to light the Whitechapel Road with oil gas using a patent to make town gas from oil. They had statutory consent to light the turnpike road from Whitechapel to Stratford with oil gas. The works was sited alongside the east bank of the Lea, north of Whitechapel Road; although the address was Old Ford Road. The site is thus not clear - the best guess is it was on the east of Paynes Road, on a site which is virtually an island under the flyover – marked as ‘chemical works’ on maps. Gas made from oil rather than from coal was produced in the 1820s partly using scrap oil from soap makers, etc. This works was not well run and a Parliamentary enquiry into the use of oil gas, and the management of this works, ensured. By 1823 the larger, North London based. Imperial Gas Co. had a financial interest in this works and installed coke ovens using the gas to supply their West Ham district. In 1829 the works was sold to the, East Anglia based, British Gas Co; and then, in 1852, to the, Stepney based, Commercial Gas Co. Commercial closed it and sold the site in 1865. One gas holder from it was sold to the Crystal Palace Gas Co. and the other to Tottenham Gas Co.
John Cooke and Co. malt distillers of Bow Bridge. Distilled 500,000 gallons of spirit a year in the 1760s-90s. The income on this would have been about £41,000
Bow Junction
This link between the Great Eastern Line and the London and Blackwall Railway was laid as a temporary connection in 1848 following disputes between the railway companies. An interchange station was built - Victoria Park and Bow. Disputes continued and the station became difficult to use. London and Blackwall trains ceased to use it after a year and it was closed in 1851.
Bow Junction signal box. The first box here was replaced by a second in 1893. It was bombed in the Second World War but not replaced until the Shenfield Electrification scheme.
Caxton Grove
Caxton Hall. Local community centre used by Malmsbury Residents Association for a wide range of projects
Cooks Road.
New Imperial Saw Mills. The Saw Mills Co. these are said to have been founded in 1854 and come to this site in 1869, by Joseph Wilmott, in 1964 the premises was taken over by W. I. Brine and Sons furniture veneerers.
Vulcan Wharf - waste disposal site
East London Soap
Works. Edward Cook came from Norwich and
Kings Lynn in the 18th where they had been soap makers. In 1820 they
family came to London to make Cooks Primrose Soap. They were early users of the
Leblanc process.
Crown Close
Old Ford Road's end was partly renamed Crown Close. The road, in effect, becomes the footbridge along its original course. It has sculpted fish motives – presumably because it goes to ‘Fish Island’.
King John’s Palace. Site of ‘King John’s Palace‘. Very little is actually known about it. Two brick gateways, which were standing in 1764, were considered to have belonged to the palace. A Gothic 'Ivy Gate' survived into the 1890s as a folly. It stood on the corner of Wick Lane and what were then Old Ford Road.
Palace Works. This was on the site of the former ‘palace’ 1880s J. Palmer and Son; who made wax vesta matches, anti-sulphurous matches and Vesuvian Cigar Lights
New Bethel Revival Ministry International. Built 1890 by W.A. Hills & Son with a Gothic stone front as Christ Church Mission. The current occupants, a church of Ghanaian origins, have added a building in matching style.
Crown Wallpaper factory. This was the Alan Cockshut Wick Lane Works dating from at least the 1880s. It included the Ligbomur & Cameoid Co which made decorative relief products for ceilings and walls. It became part of the Wallpaper Manufacturing Group and took over the Hayward hand paper business. The group later became Crown. The works closed in 1968. Many of their buildings remain. The site later became used by Dudley Stationery Co. and is now used by Big Yellow Storage who has square thing sticking out of the chimney. Wallpaper and paper staining has been carried out here from 1846 at Allan’s Mill in Wick lane – and this may be the same site. William Allan, from Elgin, had set up a paper mill in 1812 in Bow Lane producing the heavier type of paper used for decorating purposes. He was joined by a paper-hanger named William Parry and in 1846 "Allan's Mill" moved to larger premises in Old Ford. Here, under John Allen, they built up a business which in 1876 employed 150 workers producing wall paper of every kind
409 Victoria Park Conservative Club, Alfred Stevens, secretary
Dace Road
The first of the streets laid out by the Gas Light & Coke Company in the 1870s on a triangular site between the sewer and the canals.
Bollards at the east end, with designs on them
Britannia Works. Built 1898-9 for the Britannia Folding Box Co Ltd, owned by a New York firm of milliners. They made folding paper boxes and were printers and lithographers. The buildings were extended eastwards in 1907 and there was some damage in the Second World War. They are now used as studio space
Gatehouse to Britannia works which was later used as offices for the Percy Dalton peanut processing group – who opened in this area in the 1930s and are now in Suffolk. Separate from the main works and built in 1890s. It is now used as studio space
Café Greenway
Crown Iron Works. This works fronted onto the canal with one building which remains which is a galleried engineering workshop. It was accessed from a narrow entrance in Dace Road. The foundry and other buildings have been demolished. The site is now housing.
The Safety Tread Ltd were established 1893 on Crown Wharf to make nosings for staircases. Their predecessor may well have been a chemical works. Inside the works were a number of old buildings including a chimney with the words ‘Johnson and Hooper’ on it - this company were known to be at a different Crown Works in Marshgate Lane, Stratford makoig naphtha, paraffin, manure and super phosphate in the 1890s. However Scott, a previous occupant of the Old Ford, Crown Works was a sulphur manufacturer, and there is likely to have been a chemical works here in the late 19th
Crown Wharf developed 2004 by PTE Architects for live-work units
Roman remains at Crown Wharf. Excavation has revealed Roman timber piles and base plates of Roman date which could be the remains of a bridge which could have been associated with the main Roman road from London to Colchester of AD 50
Bridget Riley Studios
Stables. Multi-storey stables for cartage contractor Henry Crane built 1906-12. This has a plain front with rows of small openings, now blocked, with blue brick dressings. Access to the upper floors was at the back with external ramps for the horses - since, demolished. It was converted later to a warehouse. The original use was as a three story stable block for dray horses for the nearby Bow Goods Yard of the Great Eastern Railway. hay and straw for the horses was brought from East Anglia by barge and tripod crane to unload them once stood in the south-east corner of the yard - a the vertical triangular cut-out in the wall for its stand remained. Inside the stable, each horse had a window - now bricked up, and the floors sloped to a central drainage channel the contents of which was collected and sent back on the barges to East Anglia as fertilizer, being known as the "London Mixture". Inside the floors were later levelled and partitions removed, although some iron rings remained. ,
Stairs up to Greenway
Swan Wharf. The site was earlier called Unicorn Wharf, changed to Swan Wharf in 1972 because a swan is this company's logo. The wharf was used by Sutor and Co. but had been used for storage by Percy Dalton’s Peanuts amongst, including storage of upright pianos. Sutor used it to store Natural Gums, Waxes and Resins, including Gum Arabic, Tragacanth, Guar and Ghatti, Beeswax, Carnauba, Candelilla, Ozokerite, Ouricoury and other Waxes, Copal, Damar, Sandarac, Benzoin, Elemi, Myrrh and other Resins, and various grades of Shellac – which was the company's main business. They gad crushing, powdering and milling machines on site. An extractor fan for was on the river side of the buildings, protected by a silver soundproofing box, put up in 1992 because of the TV studios across the canal. A lean-to roof over the canal contained the remains of another crane for loading/unloading barges, and a spiral fire escape staircase dating from 1976/7 when offices were in used in the newer block.
Wick Lane rubber works. Farina house 1887. This was closed in 1906 and taken over by Waterlow printers specialising in bank notes and postage stamps. This group of multi storey factories and warehouses was originally a rubber works for Bernard Birnbaum, a vulcanised rubber-clothing manufacture from Spitalfields. It contained fourteen buildings dating from 1882 to 1889.
Dye House Lane
It is thought that there were medieval dye works in this area – however a large dye works was here on the riverside site in the 1890s.
Permanite Works. Set up in the late 19th by the Smart family using aggregate and also roofing materials from bituminous products. Mastic Asphalt production began in the 1920s at this site. In 2005, it became part of the IKO group.
Riverbank Business Park
J B Riney and Co. civil engineering
Norway Yard, hair and wool works 1890s
East Cross Route
The road was built from the late 1950s and replaced the North London Railway's goods yard and severed Old Ford Road in two.
Fairfield Road
Named for the Whitsuntide Fair, which was held in a field just behind the site of what was Poplar Town Hall. It began in 1664 as a Michaelmas Fair at Mile End Green, but was later transferred to Bow, where it stayed until 1823, when it was closed down because of rowdy behaviour. The Fair Field was covered with houses by 1862.
Terrace of the 1820s, with decorative laurel wreaths to the flat-headed paired entrances
Grove Park Hall, a mansion house owned by the Byas family. In Tudor times there was a convent on this site, when the land was given to the Earl of Sheffield, Henry VIII's Lord High Admiral, who went down on the Mary Rose Edward Byas opened a lunatic asylum here in the 19th century specialising in insane soldiers. The hall is mentioned by Charles Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby. Demolished 1909 - the rest of the grounds were built up with houses.
Bus depot. Originally a London County Council electric tram depot of 1906 converted to trolleybuses in 1939. It has a large arched vehicle entrance. Extended on either side 1910-11. The garage was built on the land of the largest mansion in Bow, the late c17 Grove Hall. It has been used for storage of buses – for Festival of Britain stock, and for RTs before sale. Now operated by Stagecoach.
51 Bromley Arms Pub. Now housing. This pub was built before 1861 and closed in 1997. It was a Watney’s pub until 1989, when it was purchased by Shepherd Neame
Fairfield Works. The original works was built by William Bridges Adams, coachbuilder and builder of railway locomotives in 1843. Between 1847 and 1850 they built seven railway steam locomotives here. This included Steam rail motor Enfield built 1849 and used on the Enfield branch of the Eastern Counties Railway. Later the site of the match factory.
Fairfield Works - Bow Quarter - the former Bryant & May Match Factory. The Factory was founded in 1860 by Quakers, Bryant & May, who began to import Swedish safety matches in the 1860s from Johan Lundstrom's factory in Jonkoping before altering an existing works on the present site with advice from Lundstrom. The factory was run on the Swedish model of semi-mechanized production and relatively healthy working conditions. By 1862 the firm was producing nearly two million matches – where elsewhere match production was home based piece-work. A strike by female workers in 1888 led by Fabian lecturer Annie Besant led to a walkout of 700 women matchmakers. Continuous matchmaking machinery led to a new factory in 1909-11, designed by Holman and Goodrham. The works stand behind a red brick Gothic wall with pointed-arch recesses created in 1874. It closed in 1979 and redeveloped from 1987 as Bow Quarter said to introduce the 'loft style' living popularized in Manhattan.
Gatehouse. Also 1874 two-storey which has a carved emblem of Noah's Ark and the inscription, 'Security'. Terracotta panels of beasts and a panel with a flaming torch and the inscription 'Luce Ex Lucellum'.
Chimney freestanding brick once connected to the powerhouse. This has been replaced by a leisure club with roof gardens.
Manhattan Building. Factory built in 1909-11 by Holman & Goodrham. It has five storeys and basement in red brick with Italianate stair towers capped with water tanks for the sprinkler system. At the base of each are the foundation stones from earlier buildings of 1868 and 1870. It covered the entire production process- timber was taken in to the saw mill on the ground floor and reduced to splints on the upper floors before dipping and boxing on the fourth-floor and there was a railway sidings on the side. Converted to housing 1992-3 by ORMS Architects. Atriums were cut into for lift shafts
Arlington Building. Designed in 1874 as warehouses and offices. Originally symmetrical, but partly demolished. Over the arcade which is on granite columns with cast-iron ones behind, is a carved- stone panel with a clock, the firm's emblems and monogram. The extension of 1961 was built on the site of the staff canteen one of the concessions won by the strikers in 1888
Lexington Building. Part of factory converted 1988-9 by Forth Architects.
Central Park Buildings. This consists of three apartment blocks built 1993-5 by CZWG.
Hard landscaping of reset granite setts around a fountain and pond. There is a sculpture Maurice Agis, 1990 commissioned to commemorate the match girls' strike.
61 Caledonian Arms former Watney’s pub on site before 1851. Closed in 2000 and is now housing,
Moreland Cottages. Built close to the gates for company employees, Gothic with slate roofs
Blondin Terrace terraced houses 1989 on either side of a gate.
Eastway Business Studio
Greenway
The High Level Sewer becomes the Northern Outfall Sewer after leaving Wick Lane. Having followed line of Hackney Brook it then crosses the Lea in four pipes supported by plates beneath a bridge. It is then joined by the Middle Level Sewer.
Greenway. This is the entrance to a footpath created in the 1980s to link Old Ford with Beckton going along the embankment of Bazalgette's Northern Outfall Sewer of 1860-4.
Second World defence structures including tank-traps and pill box in concrete
Grove Hall Park
This consists of a part of the gardens of Grove Hall preserved as a park. It was opened to the public in 1909 and a line of London plane trees, planted c.1909, runs across the park. The park was extended in 1930 with the addition of the garden of St Catherine's Convent. The memorial garden is next to the work with a war memorial situated at one end surrounded by flower beds. This was paid for by Bryant & May as a setting for the company's War Memorial: a simple white stone cross, lightly carved with Gothic tracery plus the Bryant and May monogram. A sculpture was given to the Park by the Constance fund, it was by Harold Youngman
Gates inscribed with the words ‘Memorial Gardens’ lead to a passage leading back to the church.
Iceland Road
New housing
Boiler house of 1915 with earlier chimney From Kidd’s Riverside printing ink Works which lay along the northern side of the road. Now gone. The works had at one time belonged to Slater and Palmer who left in approximately 1882.
Iceland Wharf
It is thought that Iceland Wharf is the point at which the Roman Road crossed the Lea.
New housing on the site
Forbes Abbott. James Forbes was at Iceland Wharf from at least the 1840s preparing chemicals, mainly sulphate of ammonia, from gas works waste. He patented a number of processes for this work. By the 1882 they had become Forbes Abbott and Lennard and had moved to East Greenwich and Shoreham. The company had by then become the Standard Ammonia Company and eventually were taken over by ICI. Some remaining buildings recently demolished
War memorial to war dead workers of John Kidd and Son works has been set into the wall of new housing
Knobs Hill Road
The road contained a number of industrial sites, known as Sun Wharves
Knobs Hill.. It had been part of the Lee Conservancy's scheme of the 1930s. Then its sides were revetted to form steep slopes leading up to a flat summit. Spoil from the widening of the City Mill River and Old River Lea was used to level the summit of the hill, forming a plateau. Flattened for the Olympics
Lea and Bow Back rivers
The
origin of this complex pattern of channels is not known but the pattern seems
to go back at least to the 11th. Various have been made over the
centuries. In 1930 there was major conservancy renovation of the back rivers.
Lea –a lock existed above Bow Bridge in the 16th, but was not replaced. It may have been associated with a tide mill – “landmylles’ in this area.
Pudding Mill River – this waterway diverged from the Lea and was originally a major stream. Work in the 1930s downgraded it and terminated it at Marshgate Lane. It has now been removed completely
City Mill River. The river originated to feed City Mill which was removed in the 1930s. In the 1930s many changes were made although the course of their river was largely unchanged. It then became semi-tidal but made navigable at 50ft wide.
Bow Back River – in the 1930s this was widened and straightened.
Levfevre Walk
Lefevre was the 19th distiller at Three Mills
Lefevre Walk Estate. Built by Tower Hamlets as slab blocks in 1969-70. The area between this and the road was developed with traditional patterns of low-rise housing, the terrace nearest the road presenting a solid, curving flank.
Malmesbury Road
171 PDSA Pets hospital
Maverton Road
The road was residential until the construction of the motorway. It is now light industrial and trading
units.
Marshgate Lane
Marshgate Lane Railway Bridge. In June 1839 the Eastern Counties Railway opened a section from a temporary terminus at Mile End to Romford. This bridge had additions in 1892 of wrought iron on the north and south sides and 1937 in steel on the, south side.
The Middle Level Interceptory sewer crosses Lea and joins the High Level Sewer, crossing Marshgate Lane, to go together to Abbey Mills. There is a Sewer Essex plaque on it.
Marshgate Mills. The Mills comprised three rows of buildings set within a large yard, with two entrances from Marshgate Lane. Usher Walker Ltd. They made Printing inks and rollers. They had opened in Sugar House Lane, in 1892, were bombed in 1940 and moved here in 1948-54. They incorporated Slater & Palmer who begun work here in 1882 also making printing ink and had previously been in Iceland Road. Usher Walker left in the 1970s and was brought by Sun Chemicals in 1993. The site became the Vanguard Trading Centre, and let out as a trading estate
101 Queen Mary College Laboratories and nuclear facility built 1966. The reactor was decommissioned in 1982. The building has now gone.
30 Foreman and Son. Salmon smokers. Now moved to Stour Road.
Rope Works - John Alderson & Sons, rope and twine manufacturer, had a factory in here by 1870 and it remained until about 1934
53 Commercial Glass Bottle works
Smithfield Animal Products. This firm was here from 1920 and later became part of Smithfield’s and Zwanenberg Group
Alfred Jeffery (Waterproof) Ltd. Established 1841, probably in Commercial Road, Limehouse, came here 1879. Made marine glues, resins, sealing compounds, marine glue.
Loose Ltd. cocoa and chocolate. 1898-1917.
Hart Accumulator Co. 1898 Edward Clark, founded the Hart Accumulator Co with an interest in batteries for train lighting. By 1912 they were part of Stone & Co and continued here until the 1930s.
28 Hemingway and Co. Insecticides and Fungicides. Manufacturers of Arsenic Acid, Arsenic Metal, Calcium Arsenate, Copper Arsenate, Copper Carbonate, Copper Oxy Chloride (Paste Powder), Kuprokyl (Copper Fungicide), Lead Arsenate (Powder Paste Colloidal), Lead Nitrate, Orpiment, Paris Green, Sodium Arsenite.
Morville Street
Tom Thumb’s Arch – tiny pedestrian passage under the railway
Old Ford
The Old Ford name was first noted in 1268. A Roman military highway from London to Colchester, crossed the River Lea by a ford situated about a mile north of Bow Bridge and it is thought that this is what ‘Old Ford’ refers to.
Roman items. Records of the lock structure include in 1892, a mention of the need to remove “the Roman Sill” at Old Ford which was an obstacle to navigation. Two stone coffins were found in 1867 and it is thought these were Graves marking the Roman road to Colchester. One had a woman in it with a small cup and glazed pottery by the feet. Other coffins contained two men and a woman although one body had been put in later
East London Water Works site. In 1807 the East London Water Co took over what had been the Shadwell Water Works and also took over the West Ham Works. They set up their works at Old Ford at a site south of the junction of the Hackney Cut and the Old River Lea. Here they were required to only take water on the incoming tide. Pumping engines were installed by Boulton and Watt and in 1838 Thomas Wicksteed installed the first Cornish engine in London here and it was still in use in 1890. Reservoirs were built here and in the surrounding area. The works was closed when uncovered reservoirs were identified as a possible source of cholera in 1865 and moved their intake, and works, to Lea Bridge. Considerable lengths of wall remained from the works into the 1990s from their pumping station of 1902-3. There was a house on the site deep in the undergrowth owned by the water board and home to the first person to be evicted on the Olympic site.
Old Ford Locks. These are at the south end of Hackney Cut. The original tidal lock was built in 1769 and duplicated in 1856. The banks of the cut were then built up in ragstone blocks to provide quays to attract industry and support wharfs. The lock was then rebuilt as a double lock, with a rise some 4ft higher, so as to eliminate a second lock 1½ miles upstream. Between 1864-1867 the Lee Navigation was upgraded between Tottenham and Old Ford to take 100 ton barges. The Old Ford locks remained tidal until 2000 and were rebuilt in 1935 the only difference between the large and small chambers being the depth. The second lock was obsolete when the 1930s locks were built. The lock was bombed in 1940.
Lock Foreman's house. Designed by Frederick in red brick with half-timbered gables. They were bombed in 1940 but rebuilt in 1946. They were sold by British Waterways in the early 1990’s and became the television studio which hosted Channel 4's “The Big Breakfast”. As a result all sorts of items could be seen in the garden – giant cups and saucers and much more.
Lock entrance. Bronze gates and gate piers by Jan Rosser and Penny Sadubin, 2002, designed with local school children.
Old Ford Island. A wedge of scrub and meadow lies beside the Northern Outfall Sewer. This was rich in herbs and there were 16 species of butterfly recorded
Old Ford Road
Until the 1960s Old Ford Road continued, as it had done from earliest times, as far as the 'old ford' across the Lea. The motorway covered the part of the road mentioned below.
Old Ford Station. Opened in 1867 and built alongside the site of a ballast pit which became a brick works. The station architect was possibly Edward Henry Horne. There was a street level building on the south side of the road and because of its siting, one end was wider than the other. The sign in cement on the west side read 'North London Railway', while that on the narrower east end said 'N. London Railway'. The station was in yellow stock bricks with two covered stairways to the platforms. There were London Midland and Scottish Railway name boards, of black lettering set against a golden yellow target shape. In 1945 the line was closed following the bombing of several stations and it was used for goods only from then on. Eventually the street level buildings were turned into living accommodation and in 1967 with the building of the motorway it was demolished. The footbridge marks the site of the street level building. Until the early 1980s up to 200 yards of old railway formation could be seen from the footbridge but this area is now housing.
Siding to the ballast pit which North London Railway sold when it was worked out and it became brickworks. The siding remained in use by them,
Old Ford Goods Depot. This was on the east side of the line at the south end of the station. It was opened by the North London in 1868, but transferred to the LNWR two years later. It was enlarged in 1872 and 1879, and closed in November 1967. Part of it was used as a scrapyard, and some of the buildings lasted into the 1980s.
Signal box. The original box was replaced in 1872 by a box at the south end of the line, and this was itself later replaced in 1900.
Pudding Mill Lane
The Pudding Mill River has been removed
St. Thomas Mill – also called Fotes Mill or Pudding Mill. This was what was the junction of Marshgate and Pudding Mill Lanes. It was there from at least 1200 and connected to the City based hospital of St. Thomas of Acre and was a fulling mill. After the dissolution the mill was leased out by the Crown and it was probably used for gunpowder in the later 16th. In the 18th it was used by Peter Lefevre in association with his distillery at Three Mills. It was then a water corn-mill, a malt mill-house, and a windmill. In 1764 it was sold and became a paper-mill. The mill was later acquired by the Eastern Counties Railway, and by 1853 The East London Waterworks Co. were the owners by 1853. From 1875 until 1926 it was owned by Du Barry & Co., making Revalenta Arabica Food – basically some sort of lentil flour under ‘Neville’s patent’. In 1934 it was demolished as part of the River Lee Flood Relief Scheme.
Wooden footbridge built 1990s. Now gone.
Pudding Mill Lane Station. Opened in 1996 it lies between Bow Church and Stratford stations on the Docklands Light Railway. Previously the site had been a simple passing point for trains on the otherwise single-tracked section of the line. When all the other platforms on this branch of the railway became usable by three-car trains, Pudding Mill remained with a two-car platform. This means it needs to be rebuilt.
Crossrail will have a tunnel portal on the current Pudding Mill Lane station site.
Wick Lane
419 Riverside Works. Site of the printing ink and varnish works of John Kidd & Co Ltd, who supplied Fleet Street pint works with ink. It was built partly on the site of an early 18th scarlet dye house. There were a two-storey warehouse blocks with black and colour grinding shops, to the south. The earliest section dates from 1897, extended in 1914-16 and an office added in 1926. A block, by Holman & Goodram, was added in 1935-6. There was also a laboratory block of 1915-6, with a drum washing room. There is a plaque with a Second World War memorial to its workers.
421 The Iceland Pub. Rebranded as The Lighthouse
Bow Midland Railway sidings The goods depot was built on part of the East London Waterworks site – in particular on the site of a covered reservoir. Used for the Olympics as the Bow Logistics Centre. Bow Goods Depot, Old Rail Yard... Now an aggregate works.
413 White Hart operated between the 1820s and the Second World War
415 Steleonite Metal Stamping Co Ltd, steleonite manufacturers
443 White Horse and Woolpack Pub. Closed and demolished
Sources
A Survey of the Industrial Monuments of Greater London
Bow Heritage Trail,
Business cavalcade of London
Business History
Connnor Liverpool Street to Ilford
Co-partnership Herald
Day. London Underground
Denney. Walking London’s Waterways
Discover the Bow Back Rivers leaflet
Disused Stations web site
Docklands Light Railway Trail
East London Record
Friends of the Earth. Gasworks sites in London
Glazier. London Transport Bus Depots.
GLIAS newsletters,
Interview with Mr. Dalton, Dalton’s Peanuts and documentation lent by him
Interview with Mr. Sieffert, Safety Tread Co. and documentation lent by him
Lea Valley Walk
Lewis. London’s Best Kept Secret
London Encyclopedia,
London Transport depots leaflet,
London’s Industrial Archaeology
London Railway Record
London’s Water Supply, leaflet
Martin. London Industry in the 19th century
Methodist walks in London,
Mills. Gas and Chemicals in east London
Mills. People and Places in the early London Gas Industry
Notes on interview and visit with Manager, Sutors.
Parks. The Chemical Industry in West Ham
Random. Exploring London
Robins. The North London Railway
Sainsbury. History of West Ham,
Stewart, Gasworks in the North Thames Gas region
Survey of London. Bow
TourEast Leaflet
Trench and Hillman, London Under London
The Old River Lea joins the Hackney Cut at Old Ford Locks and they flow south to be met by what has become the Bow Back River. The City Mill River flows south, as did the Pudding Mill River until recently
The Great Eastern railway line to Ilford swings north eastwards still running from Bethnal Green Station.
Post to the north Hackney Wick
Post to the east Abbey Mills
Post to the west (south section) Roman Road Bow
Post to the south Bromley by Bow
Atley Road
This road has now goneOld Ford School. The school is now on another site
Autumn Street
In the 19th called Avenue Road
Autumn Yard
Barbers Road
Lampblack manufactory – marked in the 1860s
Waterproof cloth manufactory – marked in the 1860s
Bow Generating Station. Charing Cross and Strand Electricity Supply Company had originated with the Gatti Brothers 1883 electricity generation for their Strand restaurant. The need for a larger facility led to the purchase of land here in 1900 including a railway siding. The works was designed by William H. Patchell using AC. In 1902 when it opened it was the first British station undertaking three- phase generation, transmission and conversion at 11,000 volts. The plant used 83.3rpm reciprocating Sulzer engines with flywheels replaced in 1903 by Parsons steam turbines. In 1925 Bow amalgamated with nine others to form the London Power Company, and eventual nationalisation of the industry in 1947. Some water supply came from Pudding Mill River. The site was bombed in the Second World War. It stopped work in 1963 and was demolished in 1968.
Magnet Works. Cowan Colours
Heron Industrial Estate
Cockman Bros. & Co., tallow melter, in business since 1905
Turner King and Shepherd, Monolac Works. The firm subsequently moved to Cuxton in Kent. Making sealants for building materials.
Croda Agricultural Ltd. Agricultural chemicals
Blackwall Tunnel Approach A12
The road south of Old Ford was constructed in the mid and late 1960s as part of the East Cross Route which was intended to be the eastern section of the London Motorway Box. It has been redesignated as A12
Blondin Road
This was once called Mary Street
Bow Bridge
Clearly there had to be a way to cross the river Lea between Essex and Middlesex. It is said that in 1100 Queen Mathilda, the wife of King Henry I, while on her way to Barking Abbey had a problem crossing the ford and because of this the bridge or a causeway was built. It is thought to be the earliest mediaeval bridge in England. It was a diversion from the traditional, maybe Roman, crossing at Old Ford Road. At first Queen Matilda provided for the upkeep of the bridge, from income which included a water mill which she placed with the Abbess of Barking. Its name is said to refer to its 5 arches. The original bridge may have had a chapel on it dedicated to St Catherine. It seems to have been rebuilt in the 14th and again in 1741. The income from tolls went to the Abbess of Barking but this was then sold to West Ham Abbey for £200. When the Abbey was dissolved the legal problems were not resolved until 1691 and eventually an 1876 Act of Parliament which paid £1,000 to West Ham. In 1835, the bridge was rebuilt as a single arch, by the turnpike trust. It was replaced again in 1905 by an iron girder bridge with two carriageways, and in the 1960s it was rebuilt again plus the Bow flyover
Bow Gas Works. This was the Whitechapel Road Oil Gas Company Works which was set in up 1819 by John Taylor and Philip Martineau to light the Whitechapel Road with oil gas using a patent to make town gas from oil. They had statutory consent to light the turnpike road from Whitechapel to Stratford with oil gas. The works was sited alongside the east bank of the Lea, north of Whitechapel Road; although the address was Old Ford Road. The site is thus not clear - the best guess is it was on the east of Paynes Road, on a site which is virtually an island under the flyover – marked as ‘chemical works’ on maps. Gas made from oil rather than from coal was produced in the 1820s partly using scrap oil from soap makers, etc. This works was not well run and a Parliamentary enquiry into the use of oil gas, and the management of this works, ensured. By 1823 the larger, North London based. Imperial Gas Co. had a financial interest in this works and installed coke ovens using the gas to supply their West Ham district. In 1829 the works was sold to the, East Anglia based, British Gas Co; and then, in 1852, to the, Stepney based, Commercial Gas Co. Commercial closed it and sold the site in 1865. One gas holder from it was sold to the Crystal Palace Gas Co. and the other to Tottenham Gas Co.
John Cooke and Co. malt distillers of Bow Bridge. Distilled 500,000 gallons of spirit a year in the 1760s-90s. The income on this would have been about £41,000
Bow Junction
This link between the Great Eastern Line and the London and Blackwall Railway was laid as a temporary connection in 1848 following disputes between the railway companies. An interchange station was built - Victoria Park and Bow. Disputes continued and the station became difficult to use. London and Blackwall trains ceased to use it after a year and it was closed in 1851.
Bow Junction signal box. The first box here was replaced by a second in 1893. It was bombed in the Second World War but not replaced until the Shenfield Electrification scheme.
Caxton Grove
Caxton Hall. Local community centre used by Malmsbury Residents Association for a wide range of projects
Cooks Road.
New Imperial Saw Mills. The Saw Mills Co. these are said to have been founded in 1854 and come to this site in 1869, by Joseph Wilmott, in 1964 the premises was taken over by W. I. Brine and Sons furniture veneerers.
Vulcan Wharf - waste disposal site
Teesdale Works, A. Baveystock and Co. nursery furniture manufacturers and
importers.
Crown Close
Old Ford Road's end was partly renamed Crown Close. The road, in effect, becomes the footbridge along its original course. It has sculpted fish motives – presumably because it goes to ‘Fish Island’.
King John’s Palace. Site of ‘King John’s Palace‘. Very little is actually known about it. Two brick gateways, which were standing in 1764, were considered to have belonged to the palace. A Gothic 'Ivy Gate' survived into the 1890s as a folly. It stood on the corner of Wick Lane and what were then Old Ford Road.
Palace Works. This was on the site of the former ‘palace’ 1880s J. Palmer and Son; who made wax vesta matches, anti-sulphurous matches and Vesuvian Cigar Lights
New Bethel Revival Ministry International. Built 1890 by W.A. Hills & Son with a Gothic stone front as Christ Church Mission. The current occupants, a church of Ghanaian origins, have added a building in matching style.
Crown Wallpaper factory. This was the Alan Cockshut Wick Lane Works dating from at least the 1880s. It included the Ligbomur & Cameoid Co which made decorative relief products for ceilings and walls. It became part of the Wallpaper Manufacturing Group and took over the Hayward hand paper business. The group later became Crown. The works closed in 1968. Many of their buildings remain. The site later became used by Dudley Stationery Co. and is now used by Big Yellow Storage who has square thing sticking out of the chimney. Wallpaper and paper staining has been carried out here from 1846 at Allan’s Mill in Wick lane – and this may be the same site. William Allan, from Elgin, had set up a paper mill in 1812 in Bow Lane producing the heavier type of paper used for decorating purposes. He was joined by a paper-hanger named William Parry and in 1846 "Allan's Mill" moved to larger premises in Old Ford. Here, under John Allen, they built up a business which in 1876 employed 150 workers producing wall paper of every kind
409 Victoria Park Conservative Club, Alfred Stevens, secretary
Dace Road
The first of the streets laid out by the Gas Light & Coke Company in the 1870s on a triangular site between the sewer and the canals.
Bollards at the east end, with designs on them
Britannia Works. Built 1898-9 for the Britannia Folding Box Co Ltd, owned by a New York firm of milliners. They made folding paper boxes and were printers and lithographers. The buildings were extended eastwards in 1907 and there was some damage in the Second World War. They are now used as studio space
Gatehouse to Britannia works which was later used as offices for the Percy Dalton peanut processing group – who opened in this area in the 1930s and are now in Suffolk. Separate from the main works and built in 1890s. It is now used as studio space
Café Greenway
Crown Iron Works. This works fronted onto the canal with one building which remains which is a galleried engineering workshop. It was accessed from a narrow entrance in Dace Road. The foundry and other buildings have been demolished. The site is now housing.
The Safety Tread Ltd were established 1893 on Crown Wharf to make nosings for staircases. Their predecessor may well have been a chemical works. Inside the works were a number of old buildings including a chimney with the words ‘Johnson and Hooper’ on it - this company were known to be at a different Crown Works in Marshgate Lane, Stratford makoig naphtha, paraffin, manure and super phosphate in the 1890s. However Scott, a previous occupant of the Old Ford, Crown Works was a sulphur manufacturer, and there is likely to have been a chemical works here in the late 19th
Crown Wharf developed 2004 by PTE Architects for live-work units
Roman remains at Crown Wharf. Excavation has revealed Roman timber piles and base plates of Roman date which could be the remains of a bridge which could have been associated with the main Roman road from London to Colchester of AD 50
Bridget Riley Studios
Stables. Multi-storey stables for cartage contractor Henry Crane built 1906-12. This has a plain front with rows of small openings, now blocked, with blue brick dressings. Access to the upper floors was at the back with external ramps for the horses - since, demolished. It was converted later to a warehouse. The original use was as a three story stable block for dray horses for the nearby Bow Goods Yard of the Great Eastern Railway. hay and straw for the horses was brought from East Anglia by barge and tripod crane to unload them once stood in the south-east corner of the yard - a the vertical triangular cut-out in the wall for its stand remained. Inside the stable, each horse had a window - now bricked up, and the floors sloped to a central drainage channel the contents of which was collected and sent back on the barges to East Anglia as fertilizer, being known as the "London Mixture". Inside the floors were later levelled and partitions removed, although some iron rings remained. ,
Stairs up to Greenway
Swan Wharf. The site was earlier called Unicorn Wharf, changed to Swan Wharf in 1972 because a swan is this company's logo. The wharf was used by Sutor and Co. but had been used for storage by Percy Dalton’s Peanuts amongst, including storage of upright pianos. Sutor used it to store Natural Gums, Waxes and Resins, including Gum Arabic, Tragacanth, Guar and Ghatti, Beeswax, Carnauba, Candelilla, Ozokerite, Ouricoury and other Waxes, Copal, Damar, Sandarac, Benzoin, Elemi, Myrrh and other Resins, and various grades of Shellac – which was the company's main business. They gad crushing, powdering and milling machines on site. An extractor fan for was on the river side of the buildings, protected by a silver soundproofing box, put up in 1992 because of the TV studios across the canal. A lean-to roof over the canal contained the remains of another crane for loading/unloading barges, and a spiral fire escape staircase dating from 1976/7 when offices were in used in the newer block.
Wick Lane rubber works. Farina house 1887. This was closed in 1906 and taken over by Waterlow printers specialising in bank notes and postage stamps. This group of multi storey factories and warehouses was originally a rubber works for Bernard Birnbaum, a vulcanised rubber-clothing manufacture from Spitalfields. It contained fourteen buildings dating from 1882 to 1889.
Dye House Lane
It is thought that there were medieval dye works in this area – however a large dye works was here on the riverside site in the 1890s.
Permanite Works. Set up in the late 19th by the Smart family using aggregate and also roofing materials from bituminous products. Mastic Asphalt production began in the 1920s at this site. In 2005, it became part of the IKO group.
Riverbank Business Park
J B Riney and Co. civil engineering
Norway Yard, hair and wool works 1890s
East Cross Route
The road was built from the late 1950s and replaced the North London Railway's goods yard and severed Old Ford Road in two.
Fairfield Road
Named for the Whitsuntide Fair, which was held in a field just behind the site of what was Poplar Town Hall. It began in 1664 as a Michaelmas Fair at Mile End Green, but was later transferred to Bow, where it stayed until 1823, when it was closed down because of rowdy behaviour. The Fair Field was covered with houses by 1862.
Terrace of the 1820s, with decorative laurel wreaths to the flat-headed paired entrances
Grove Park Hall, a mansion house owned by the Byas family. In Tudor times there was a convent on this site, when the land was given to the Earl of Sheffield, Henry VIII's Lord High Admiral, who went down on the Mary Rose Edward Byas opened a lunatic asylum here in the 19th century specialising in insane soldiers. The hall is mentioned by Charles Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby. Demolished 1909 - the rest of the grounds were built up with houses.
Bus depot. Originally a London County Council electric tram depot of 1906 converted to trolleybuses in 1939. It has a large arched vehicle entrance. Extended on either side 1910-11. The garage was built on the land of the largest mansion in Bow, the late c17 Grove Hall. It has been used for storage of buses – for Festival of Britain stock, and for RTs before sale. Now operated by Stagecoach.
51 Bromley Arms Pub. Now housing. This pub was built before 1861 and closed in 1997. It was a Watney’s pub until 1989, when it was purchased by Shepherd Neame
Fairfield Works. The original works was built by William Bridges Adams, coachbuilder and builder of railway locomotives in 1843. Between 1847 and 1850 they built seven railway steam locomotives here. This included Steam rail motor Enfield built 1849 and used on the Enfield branch of the Eastern Counties Railway. Later the site of the match factory.
Fairfield Works - Bow Quarter - the former Bryant & May Match Factory. The Factory was founded in 1860 by Quakers, Bryant & May, who began to import Swedish safety matches in the 1860s from Johan Lundstrom's factory in Jonkoping before altering an existing works on the present site with advice from Lundstrom. The factory was run on the Swedish model of semi-mechanized production and relatively healthy working conditions. By 1862 the firm was producing nearly two million matches – where elsewhere match production was home based piece-work. A strike by female workers in 1888 led by Fabian lecturer Annie Besant led to a walkout of 700 women matchmakers. Continuous matchmaking machinery led to a new factory in 1909-11, designed by Holman and Goodrham. The works stand behind a red brick Gothic wall with pointed-arch recesses created in 1874. It closed in 1979 and redeveloped from 1987 as Bow Quarter said to introduce the 'loft style' living popularized in Manhattan.
Gatehouse. Also 1874 two-storey which has a carved emblem of Noah's Ark and the inscription, 'Security'. Terracotta panels of beasts and a panel with a flaming torch and the inscription 'Luce Ex Lucellum'.
Chimney freestanding brick once connected to the powerhouse. This has been replaced by a leisure club with roof gardens.
Manhattan Building. Factory built in 1909-11 by Holman & Goodrham. It has five storeys and basement in red brick with Italianate stair towers capped with water tanks for the sprinkler system. At the base of each are the foundation stones from earlier buildings of 1868 and 1870. It covered the entire production process- timber was taken in to the saw mill on the ground floor and reduced to splints on the upper floors before dipping and boxing on the fourth-floor and there was a railway sidings on the side. Converted to housing 1992-3 by ORMS Architects. Atriums were cut into for lift shafts
Arlington Building. Designed in 1874 as warehouses and offices. Originally symmetrical, but partly demolished. Over the arcade which is on granite columns with cast-iron ones behind, is a carved- stone panel with a clock, the firm's emblems and monogram. The extension of 1961 was built on the site of the staff canteen one of the concessions won by the strikers in 1888
Lexington Building. Part of factory converted 1988-9 by Forth Architects.
Central Park Buildings. This consists of three apartment blocks built 1993-5 by CZWG.
Hard landscaping of reset granite setts around a fountain and pond. There is a sculpture Maurice Agis, 1990 commissioned to commemorate the match girls' strike.
61 Caledonian Arms former Watney’s pub on site before 1851. Closed in 2000 and is now housing,
Moreland Cottages. Built close to the gates for company employees, Gothic with slate roofs
Blondin Terrace terraced houses 1989 on either side of a gate.
Eastway Business Studio
Greenway
The High Level Sewer becomes the Northern Outfall Sewer after leaving Wick Lane. Having followed line of Hackney Brook it then crosses the Lea in four pipes supported by plates beneath a bridge. It is then joined by the Middle Level Sewer.
Greenway. This is the entrance to a footpath created in the 1980s to link Old Ford with Beckton going along the embankment of Bazalgette's Northern Outfall Sewer of 1860-4.
Second World defence structures including tank-traps and pill box in concrete
Grove Hall Park
This consists of a part of the gardens of Grove Hall preserved as a park. It was opened to the public in 1909 and a line of London plane trees, planted c.1909, runs across the park. The park was extended in 1930 with the addition of the garden of St Catherine's Convent. The memorial garden is next to the work with a war memorial situated at one end surrounded by flower beds. This was paid for by Bryant & May as a setting for the company's War Memorial: a simple white stone cross, lightly carved with Gothic tracery plus the Bryant and May monogram. A sculpture was given to the Park by the Constance fund, it was by Harold Youngman
Gates inscribed with the words ‘Memorial Gardens’ lead to a passage leading back to the church.
Iceland Road
New housing
Boiler house of 1915 with earlier chimney From Kidd’s Riverside printing ink Works which lay along the northern side of the road. Now gone. The works had at one time belonged to Slater and Palmer who left in approximately 1882.
Iceland Wharf
It is thought that Iceland Wharf is the point at which the Roman Road crossed the Lea.
New housing on the site
Forbes Abbott. James Forbes was at Iceland Wharf from at least the 1840s preparing chemicals, mainly sulphate of ammonia, from gas works waste. He patented a number of processes for this work. By the 1882 they had become Forbes Abbott and Lennard and had moved to East Greenwich and Shoreham. The company had by then become the Standard Ammonia Company and eventually were taken over by ICI. Some remaining buildings recently demolished
War memorial to war dead workers of John Kidd and Son works has been set into the wall of new housing
Knobs Hill Road
The road contained a number of industrial sites, known as Sun Wharves
Knobs Hill.. It had been part of the Lee Conservancy's scheme of the 1930s. Then its sides were revetted to form steep slopes leading up to a flat summit. Spoil from the widening of the City Mill River and Old River Lea was used to level the summit of the hill, forming a plateau. Flattened for the Olympics
Lea and Bow Back rivers
The
origin of this complex pattern of channels is not known but the pattern seems
to go back at least to the 11th. Various have been made over the
centuries. In 1930 there was major conservancy renovation of the back rivers. Lea –a lock existed above Bow Bridge in the 16th, but was not replaced. It may have been associated with a tide mill – “landmylles’ in this area.
Pudding Mill River – this waterway diverged from the Lea and was originally a major stream. Work in the 1930s downgraded it and terminated it at Marshgate Lane. It has now been removed completely
City Mill River. The river originated to feed City Mill which was removed in the 1930s. In the 1930s many changes were made although the course of their river was largely unchanged. It then became semi-tidal but made navigable at 50ft wide.
Bow Back River – in the 1930s this was widened and straightened.
Levfevre Walk
Lefevre was the 19th distiller at Three Mills
Lefevre Walk Estate. Built by Tower Hamlets as slab blocks in 1969-70. The area between this and the road was developed with traditional patterns of low-rise housing, the terrace nearest the road presenting a solid, curving flank.
Malmesbury Road
171 PDSA Pets hospital
Maverton Road
The road was residential until the construction of the motorway. It is now light industrial and trading
units.
Marshgate Lane
Marshgate Lane Railway Bridge. In June 1839 the Eastern Counties Railway opened a section from a temporary terminus at Mile End to Romford. This bridge had additions in 1892 of wrought iron on the north and south sides and 1937 in steel on the, south side.
The Middle Level Interceptory sewer crosses Lea and joins the High Level Sewer, crossing Marshgate Lane, to go together to Abbey Mills. There is a Sewer Essex plaque on it.
Marshgate Mills. The Mills comprised three rows of buildings set within a large yard, with two entrances from Marshgate Lane. Usher Walker Ltd. They made Printing inks and rollers. They had opened in Sugar House Lane, in 1892, were bombed in 1940 and moved here in 1948-54. They incorporated Slater & Palmer who begun work here in 1882 also making printing ink and had previously been in Iceland Road. Usher Walker left in the 1970s and was brought by Sun Chemicals in 1993. The site became the Vanguard Trading Centre, and let out as a trading estate
101 Queen Mary College Laboratories and nuclear facility built 1966. The reactor was decommissioned in 1982. The building has now gone.
30 Foreman and Son. Salmon smokers. Now moved to Stour Road.
Rope Works - John Alderson & Sons, rope and twine manufacturer, had a factory in here by 1870 and it remained until about 1934
53 Commercial Glass Bottle works
Smithfield Animal Products. This firm was here from 1920 and later became part of Smithfield’s and Zwanenberg Group
Alfred Jeffery (Waterproof) Ltd. Established 1841, probably in Commercial Road, Limehouse, came here 1879. Made marine glues, resins, sealing compounds, marine glue.
Loose Ltd. cocoa and chocolate. 1898-1917.
Hart Accumulator Co. 1898 Edward Clark, founded the Hart Accumulator Co with an interest in batteries for train lighting. By 1912 they were part of Stone & Co and continued here until the 1930s.
28 Hemingway and Co. Insecticides and Fungicides. Manufacturers of Arsenic Acid, Arsenic Metal, Calcium Arsenate, Copper Arsenate, Copper Carbonate, Copper Oxy Chloride (Paste Powder), Kuprokyl (Copper Fungicide), Lead Arsenate (Powder Paste Colloidal), Lead Nitrate, Orpiment, Paris Green, Sodium Arsenite.
Morville Street
Tom Thumb’s Arch – tiny pedestrian passage under the railway
Old Ford
The Old Ford name was first noted in 1268. A Roman military highway from London to Colchester, crossed the River Lea by a ford situated about a mile north of Bow Bridge and it is thought that this is what ‘Old Ford’ refers to.
Roman items. Records of the lock structure include in 1892, a mention of the need to remove “the Roman Sill” at Old Ford which was an obstacle to navigation. Two stone coffins were found in 1867 and it is thought these were Graves marking the Roman road to Colchester. One had a woman in it with a small cup and glazed pottery by the feet. Other coffins contained two men and a woman although one body had been put in later
East London Water Works site. In 1807 the East London Water Co took over what had been the Shadwell Water Works and also took over the West Ham Works. They set up their works at Old Ford at a site south of the junction of the Hackney Cut and the Old River Lea. Here they were required to only take water on the incoming tide. Pumping engines were installed by Boulton and Watt and in 1838 Thomas Wicksteed installed the first Cornish engine in London here and it was still in use in 1890. Reservoirs were built here and in the surrounding area. The works was closed when uncovered reservoirs were identified as a possible source of cholera in 1865 and moved their intake, and works, to Lea Bridge. Considerable lengths of wall remained from the works into the 1990s from their pumping station of 1902-3. There was a house on the site deep in the undergrowth owned by the water board and home to the first person to be evicted on the Olympic site.
Old Ford Locks. These are at the south end of Hackney Cut. The original tidal lock was built in 1769 and duplicated in 1856. The banks of the cut were then built up in ragstone blocks to provide quays to attract industry and support wharfs. The lock was then rebuilt as a double lock, with a rise some 4ft higher, so as to eliminate a second lock 1½ miles upstream. Between 1864-1867 the Lee Navigation was upgraded between Tottenham and Old Ford to take 100 ton barges. The Old Ford locks remained tidal until 2000 and were rebuilt in 1935 the only difference between the large and small chambers being the depth. The second lock was obsolete when the 1930s locks were built. The lock was bombed in 1940.
Lock Foreman's house. Designed by Frederick in red brick with half-timbered gables. They were bombed in 1940 but rebuilt in 1946. They were sold by British Waterways in the early 1990’s and became the television studio which hosted Channel 4's “The Big Breakfast”. As a result all sorts of items could be seen in the garden – giant cups and saucers and much more.
Lock entrance. Bronze gates and gate piers by Jan Rosser and Penny Sadubin, 2002, designed with local school children.
Old Ford Island. A wedge of scrub and meadow lies beside the Northern Outfall Sewer. This was rich in herbs and there were 16 species of butterfly recorded
Old Ford Road
Until the 1960s Old Ford Road continued, as it had done from earliest times, as far as the 'old ford' across the Lea. The motorway covered the part of the road mentioned below.
Old Ford Station. Opened in 1867 and built alongside the site of a ballast pit which became a brick works. The station architect was possibly Edward Henry Horne. There was a street level building on the south side of the road and because of its siting, one end was wider than the other. The sign in cement on the west side read 'North London Railway', while that on the narrower east end said 'N. London Railway'. The station was in yellow stock bricks with two covered stairways to the platforms. There were London Midland and Scottish Railway name boards, of black lettering set against a golden yellow target shape. In 1945 the line was closed following the bombing of several stations and it was used for goods only from then on. Eventually the street level buildings were turned into living accommodation and in 1967 with the building of the motorway it was demolished. The footbridge marks the site of the street level building. Until the early 1980s up to 200 yards of old railway formation could be seen from the footbridge but this area is now housing.
Siding to the ballast pit which North London Railway sold when it was worked out and it became brickworks. The siding remained in use by them,
Old Ford Goods Depot. This was on the east side of the line at the south end of the station. It was opened by the North London in 1868, but transferred to the LNWR two years later. It was enlarged in 1872 and 1879, and closed in November 1967. Part of it was used as a scrapyard, and some of the buildings lasted into the 1980s.
Signal box. The original box was replaced in 1872 by a box at the south end of the line, and this was itself later replaced in 1900.
Pudding Mill Lane
The Pudding Mill River has been removed
St. Thomas Mill – also called Fotes Mill or Pudding Mill. This was what was the junction of Marshgate and Pudding Mill Lanes. It was there from at least 1200 and connected to the City based hospital of St. Thomas of Acre and was a fulling mill. After the dissolution the mill was leased out by the Crown and it was probably used for gunpowder in the later 16th. In the 18th it was used by Peter Lefevre in association with his distillery at Three Mills. It was then a water corn-mill, a malt mill-house, and a windmill. In 1764 it was sold and became a paper-mill. The mill was later acquired by the Eastern Counties Railway, and by 1853 The East London Waterworks Co. were the owners by 1853. From 1875 until 1926 it was owned by Du Barry & Co., making Revalenta Arabica Food – basically some sort of lentil flour under ‘Neville’s patent’. In 1934 it was demolished as part of the River Lee Flood Relief Scheme.
Wooden footbridge built 1990s. Now gone.
Pudding Mill Lane Station. Opened in 1996 it lies between Bow Church and Stratford stations on the Docklands Light Railway. Previously the site had been a simple passing point for trains on the otherwise single-tracked section of the line. When all the other platforms on this branch of the railway became usable by three-car trains, Pudding Mill remained with a two-car platform. This means it needs to be rebuilt.
Crossrail will have a tunnel portal on the current Pudding Mill Lane station site.
Wick Lane
419 Riverside Works. Site of the printing ink and varnish works of John Kidd & Co Ltd, who supplied Fleet Street pint works with ink. It was built partly on the site of an early 18th scarlet dye house. There were a two-storey warehouse blocks with black and colour grinding shops, to the south. The earliest section dates from 1897, extended in 1914-16 and an office added in 1926. A block, by Holman & Goodram, was added in 1935-6. There was also a laboratory block of 1915-6, with a drum washing room. There is a plaque with a Second World War memorial to its workers.
421 The Iceland Pub. Rebranded as The Lighthouse
Bow Midland Railway sidings The goods depot was built on part of the East London Waterworks site – in particular on the site of a covered reservoir. Used for the Olympics as the Bow Logistics Centre. Bow Goods Depot, Old Rail Yard... Now an aggregate works.
413 White Hart operated between the 1820s and the Second World War
415 Steleonite Metal Stamping Co Ltd, steleonite manufacturers
443 White Horse and Woolpack Pub. Closed and demolished
Sources
A Survey of the Industrial Monuments of Greater London
Bow Heritage Trail,
Business cavalcade of London
Business History
Connnor Liverpool Street to Ilford
Co-partnership Herald
Day. London Underground
Denney. Walking London’s Waterways
Discover the Bow Back Rivers leaflet
Disused Stations web site
Docklands Light Railway Trail
East London Record
Friends of the Earth. Gasworks sites in London
Glazier. London Transport Bus Depots.
GLIAS newsletters,
Interview with Mr. Dalton, Dalton’s Peanuts and documentation lent by him
Interview with Mr. Sieffert, Safety Tread Co. and documentation lent by him
Lea Valley Walk
Lewis. London’s Best Kept Secret
London Encyclopedia,
London Transport depots leaflet,
London’s Industrial Archaeology
London Railway Record
London’s Water Supply, leaflet
Martin. London Industry in the 19th century
Methodist walks in London,
Mills. Gas and Chemicals in east London
Mills. People and Places in the early London Gas Industry
Notes on interview and visit with Manager, Sutors.
Parks. The Chemical Industry in West Ham
Random. Exploring London
Robins. The North London Railway
Sainsbury. History of West Ham,
Stewart, Gasworks in the North Thames Gas region
Survey of London. Bow
TourEast Leaflet
Trench and Hillman, London Under London
Comments
And I'm loving the timing of this, bang in the middle of Olympic fortnight.
Thanks,
Peter Wood