Stratford, East London

 

 

I don't know east London that well.  Areas like Bow and Whitechapel, Hackney and Stratford, East and West Ham are just names on a map (either the good old A to Z, Google Maps or the Tube network). I've heard more about some areas than others.  Bow for instance: it's common knowledge a true Cockney is born "within the sound of Bow Bells" - at least according to local mythology.  And Whitechapel was where the unsolved Jack the Ripper murders took place in late Victorian times.  West Ham has a decent enough football team that provided three key member of England's 1966 World Cup winning team.  And Hackney Marshes is part of football folklore, home to 88 full sized pitches hosting 200 odd matches on any given weekend, a place that in times gone by was crawling with club scouts trying to unearth the next Martin Peters or Geoff Hurst or Jimmy Greaves.....whether they still do so, given how much development has been lavished by professional clubs on their academies, is questionable.

East London, and Stratford in particular, was also a place to drive through: coming from Kent the A2 through the Blackwall Tunnel deposits you in Blackwall, part of the London borough of Tower Hamlets (formed of the old boroughs of Poplar, Bethnal Green and Stepney).  Keep driving northeast, through Stratford, and eventually you hit the A11, A12 or A13, all heading into Essex, and eventually the 11, morphing to the M11 beyond Leyton, up past the M25 and Harlow, through Cambridgeshire to the Norfolk and Suffolk North Sea coasts. Or you could pick up the old London Ring road that circles inner London, and further out the Road to Hell, the M25, that will link you to the M11, the M1, the M3, and M4 (amongst other major roads) and thus speed up your drive to pretty much anywhere in the country.  Even with the M25 gridlocked, as it often is, it's quicker than driving across Central London - and cheaper now that fees are charged to reduce traffic there (the hated Congestion Charge and even more disliked Ultra Low Emissions Zone charge, introduced over the past few years to reduce traffic and get knackered old petrol and diesel polluters off the capital's roads....but since when have successful Green policies been popular?).

I've driven through it many times, and travelled by coach and tube or mainline train, but always to get somewhere else.  It always looked grubby and dark, inhospitable and downright dangerous, and not somewhere to stop for a stroll.  

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But all that has changed.  Over the past 30 years or so - since Thatcher drove construction of the Canary Wharf business district on the Isle of Dogs, London's very own Wall Street-on-Thames - the area has been cleaned up and gentrified, and nowadays is a sought after area in London's obscenely expensive property market.  It must be good, because my second son, an Alphabet-employed whizz-kid with impeccable taste (he's my son, so that's to be expected, right?) bought a place there....but I'm getting ahead of myself a little.

London hosting the 2012 Summer Olympics also gave the area a huge boost.  Wasteland was turned into a sparkly new development, with a 60,000 capacity sports stadium as its centre-piece (now the home a re-located West Ham United) sitting in a nicely designed and green park that houses the obligatory Olympic Rings installation, the velodrome for cycling events next door to another complex housing the Lee Valley Hockey and Tennis Centre.  Beyond that lies good old Hackney Marshes, linked to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park via a couple of graceful bridges, and the River Lea runs through the parkland.  There is a wide network of foot- and bike-paths running across the land and round the entire perimeter.  

The surrounding area was also very well developed.  The Athlete's Village, once the Games were finished, was converted by the Council into essentially a new town, known as Stratford City (very grand!) that includes a big and modern shopping mall (Westfield), adjacent to an expanded Stratford Station (a confusing hub for a selection of rail, tube and bus routes) and a brand new Stratford International station that is home to Britain's only existing high-speed train lines that serve the Channel Tunnel and Kent Coast lines, although the international services from Eurostar no longer stop there - a victim of Covid cuts, apparently.  This whole new complex and parkland is labelled East Village.

Then there is  old Stratford, reached from the new Stratford City/East Village area by a big old bridge with steps (the moving ones never seeming to work) down to the old and shabby Stratford Centre shopping mall and yet another, even more confusing, entrance hall to the station, that at least houses a manned ticket office rather than being reliant on a variety of (often broken) ticket machines.  Strolling around this area looking for Santander bank (eventually found hidden by scaffolding) is markedly different to Stratford City.  It's older, of course, and shabbier, with fewer road signs - which didn't help my search - and alive with people crossing the roads every which way, largely ignoring the pedestrian lights and dodging between honking cars and buses (the traffic is heavier and hence slower moving, than in Stratford City).  The shops in the mall are also scruffier, not the sparkly designer outlets and large department stores of M&S, H&M, Diesel, Foot Locker and the rest that fill Westfield, but smaller stores, budget supermarkets like Lidl and Sainsbury's, a string of fast-food outlets like McDonalds and Burger King and Taco Bell, all mixed in with a selection of cheap and cheerful market stalls.  They're both lively malls, but with different clientele - older and somehow poorer looking in Stratford Centre, younger and more prosperous looking in Westfield. 

 

But in both malls, and in the streets, the crowds showed the multi-national multi-cultural society of Stratford and the East End of London very clearly.  Afro-Caribbean, Middle Eastern, Sub-Continental and Asian are all heavily represented, with white Anglo-Saxon/Caucasian seemingly in the minority.  I know people who would be upset, even angry, at this population demographic, but to my mind it's a tribute to the area, the city and the country that, historically, people of all nationalities have been welcomed and (by and large) become a productive part of British society.  Not so much nowadays, perhaps, but that's a discussion for another day and another essay.

The housing is also different.  Old Stratford is still terraced housing mixed with older mixed shop or office premises, with flats and bedsits above - slate roofs, pillared entrances, red-bricks and all. I haven't scoured the area, admittedly, but I haven't seen any gardens to speak of, as you would see in typical suburban areas, but then this is very much an inner city community with space at a premium. They may well exist, of course, hidden away in streets I haven't seen.  

The Stratford City East Village, by contrast, is a very modern and smart looking conurbation. The blocks surrounding the parks are mostly three, perhaps four floored modern boxes, each apartment with a balcony (some tiny Juliets, others big enough for a couple of chairs and a table), in streets with names reflecting their Olympic heritage - Peloton Way, for instance, that runs past my son's flat up to the velodrome.  The flats, to judge from my son's which I think is typical, are pretty well appointed: which is to say a good sized living area, a kitchen/dining area, one or two bathrooms, and two to four bedrooms. The blocks are in a network of quiet roads and cul-de-sacs, with parking spaces and underground garages, and a scattering of small local shops and supermarkets.  I dare say other amenities like doctor's surgeries, dentists, schools and so on are there too, but I haven't noticed them.  The population is again multi-cultural, but younger.

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I've spent the last week looking after my lad's apartment and it's been fun.  

I had a set of Nordic Walking poles for Christmas and I've made good use of them in the Olympic Park and the Marshes, getting my steps in in the chilly sunshine.  I've seen many families taking their exercise there too, enjoying their Festive break, walking a variety of dogs, kids on sparkling new bikes and scooters, electric skateboards and roller blades - but not one other person using poles like mine.  I admit to receiving some funny looks....  

 

I've taken the obligatory photos of the Olympic Rings, and various competition areas like the velodrome, the panorama across the park towards the stadium and impressive (but weird) ArcelorMittal Orbit tourist attraction close by, and the ducks paddling along the river Lea.

 

 

 

I've wandered around some of the 88 football pitches and the low slung but modern changing facilities and idly wondered how you can recognise what pitch you're playing on, given the apparent lack of any identification markers by their sides.  I used to play on a similar multi-pitch facility back in the day, in Tonbridge, where there were perhaps ten pitches laid out, and that was bad enough with the little numbered pegs by the corner nearest to the changing rooms.  But I suppose you get used to it....

I've ambled around Westfield Mall, window shopping and browsing the shelves in the two good and sizable bookstores that are there without buying anything (I have a big backlog to read back home that was increased by another three at Christmas) and sampled the coffee and lemon drizzle cake at the Starbucks stall.  They tasted exactly the same as they did at any other Starbucks outlet in any city in any country that I've used Starbucks - a lot of them! - and for me that's a Good Thing.  I've shopped at Sainsbury's in the old Stratford Centre and found the selection of Cornish pasties, pork pies, sausage rolls, scotch eggs, breads, chocolate and Polish kabanosy (chains of long thin smoked sausages) satisfactory and competitively priced. 

And I got lost in Stratford Station travelling via a very scenic and indirect route (courtesy of the Network SouthEast ticketing app) that routed me to Gravesend via Abbey Wood and Dartford. What it didn't specify was that to get to Abbey Wood I would need to change trains at Whitechapel.  This means that to travel east you first need to travel west.....  Not at all obvious, and I asked no less than six staff on three platforms before I got on the right train - thus adding over half an hour to the trip.  Far easier would have been a simple one-change routing through London Bridge using the Jubilee Line then Network SouthEast.  New technology, eh?

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So it's nice here, and I've had a good trip so far, with another week to go.  I plan to go into the City later this week, to meet up with a couple of old friends, and at Kings Cross seek out Words on the Water: it's a rather fine converted Dutch barge moored on the canal five minutes walk from the station that has been converted to a new and second hand book shop, complete with armchairs and settees to rest on while choosing your purchase, a coffee area and, on deck in good weather (not likely this week unfortunately), live music.  Now that is how books should be sold.....

The East End isn't at all what I expected, and Stratford (whether old, City or East Village) an interesting place.  Would I live there?  Nope.  It's still an Inner City area. and I'm a country boy at heart.

But I'm happy to visit.