Cinema behind the shops

Walk along Hoe Street from Walthamstow Central and stop outside 324. It’s a shop called The Pavilion. Except it’s not a shop but a banquetting suite! Until recently you looked into very large windows at  a reception area, but now they have broken the wall through and you can see a large space beyond. The Pavilion is host to all the large and lavish Pakistani weddings in the area and traffic is regularly held up on Saturdays as grand cavalcades arrive.

Now look to the right and through the alley you will see a large old brick structure occupying the yard. You are looking at what began life as The Queen’s Cinema Walthamstow. Opened in 1911 behind shops owned by the Good Brothers, local builders who were diversifying into the new medium of showing films. The thing is it looks nothing like a cinema, because it is neatly hidden behind a row of shops.

The Queen’s along with many other Walthamstow cinemas enjoyed steady audiences till the mid 1930′s when it closed due to competition, not from television but the local speedway track! It opened again but was showing it’s last film in 1940. The building was later used as a store and then remained empty for a long time until 1959 when it re-opened as a billiard and snooker hall run by Temperance Ltd.

Then more recently it became The Pavilion and once again a focal point for the local community which is predominantly Pakistani, established over a number of years.

Do you know of a cinema in an unlikely location?

Stratford Place

Leave Bond Street tube station by the Oxford Street north exit and you find yourself walking up some steps in to what is a cul-de-sac off Oxford Street. As you reach the top look ahead and you are looking at Stratford House. Notice the elephant flag? This has been home to the Oriental Club since 1959. Step through those doors and you are stepping back in time to the days of the East India Comapny. In his book Winter in London, published in 1950, Ivor Brown devotes a chapter to the time when Stratford House was an art gallery for sports-themed pictures. It is a grand house, so what’s the story?

First clue; look to your left and notice a brick structure, like a sentry box with a stone lion on top. Now imagine one the other side and a gate across. Suddenly Stratford Place is not quite so open.

In the 1770′s Edward Stratford bought this strip of land from the Corporation of London and built his grand house across the end and smaller houses either side. He needed the gate and sentry boxes because at this time what is now Oxford Street was still a dangerous place. Walk towards the big house and notice how soon it becomes tranquil. This part of Oxford Street is always busy and yet it now all seems far away. As you reach the big house notice the turning circle, your carriage would stop so you could dis-embark then head off again.

Look carefully and you will spot a small City of London crest, yet this is not the City of London, that’s way over there. Back in the 1230′s the City of London was fast runnning out of clean water, the search was on for a fresh supply. So it was that in 1237 the Lord of the Manor of Tyburn granted the City of London a strip of land on the banks of the Tyburn River. Conduits were installed and the water was piped to the City.

This was such an important event that each year the Lord Mayor of London would ride out to inspect the conduits. Remember this was all still countryside. The Lord Mayor and his party would then go hunting in the surrounding fields for hare with a hunting cry of so-ho. A banqueting house was constructed so that they could have a big meal before riding back to the City. There is a print of the banqueting house in the archives and it looks like a big cottage.

With construction of the New River, the City no longer needed this supply and eventually the banqueting house was demolished in 1757. The Tyburn River was piped and still runs underground from it’s source in Hampstead. Standing in Stratford Place you would never know the river came through here, so we need to venture out into Oxford Street for some clues.

Turn left along Oxford Street and you very quickly reach Marlyelbone Lane. This still winds it’s way north and was originally the path by the Tyburn River. Notice that here where it joins Oxford Street it forks and currently there is a big hotel in the space created. 

Where you are standing is where the settlement of Tyburn developed and in 1200 a church was built in the triangle of land. In time a watch house was built on the site, this was where the constable would lock up wrong-doers overnight. The watch house evolved into a court house and then a town hall. Along the way the settlement of Tyburn was abandoned for a more secure location further north than became modern day Marylebone, or as Peyps called it Marrowbone.

One last clue; walk along Marylebone Lane and look carefully and you will discover a small stone plaque that refers to the conduits. History in unlikely places.

Broad Street

At the St Giles end of Shaftesbury Avenue there is a new upmarket vegetarian place. Above it you  see the stret sign “Shaftesbury Avenue” Look again and you will just make out, behind the sign, some words painted on the brickwork. It says “Broad Street” and that is where you are standing.

Notice how wide it is here. Looking at the old map from 1870 this was literally the stub end of Broad Street that went as far as Drury Lane. There were four pubs and the public wash-house along that stretch of road, all long gone. At some point it got absorbed into High Holborn, though this is not Holborn. It’s where St Giles High Street begins and thankfully that has not been absorbed into High Holborn. Yet. Don’t hold your breath on that one.

In the 1880′s Shaftesbury Avenue as we know it was created by widening the road that already existed, that ran alongside the site of the leper hospital. It was the Monmouth Street that Charles Dickens writes of in Sketches by Boz.  Broad Street survived that, yet looking at my 1930′s Geographia’ Atlas of London, it did not survive the mass re-naming of streets undertaken by the London County Council in the mid-thirties.

It has become just another stretch of road where the traffic clogs up and where tourists ask “where’s Covent Garden?” However the sign is painted on an old row of buildings that were all there back in 1870. To get a better look cross over to Forbidden Planet and look back. Notice the windows and then look at the shops. Arthur Beale is a ships chandler that has somehow survived from the days when this was a place to stop and talk, not simply pass through. It is a link with the metal-work workshops that once dominated the area. What else do you notice around here?

Ancient Lights

Stand in St Martin’s Lane and look across to the Coliseum. Amazing isn’t it? Now look to the right and you will just make out a narrow gap between the theatre and the next building. This is the narrowest alley in London and is called Brydges Place. It is not as old as it seems and has a story to tell.

Designed by Frank Matcham, the Coliseum was opened on 24th December 1904, as a variety theatre. The idea for the theatre went back to 1902 when Oswald Stoll started buying up buildings at the southern end of St Martin’s Lane. The Coliseum occupies a 3/4 acre site, of what was once a large mass of dwellings with connecting alleys.

What is now Brydges Place was once Taylor’s Buildings and was, going from the 1870 map wider than what we have now. So now walk along the alley, the entrance at St Martin’s Lane is literally only wide enough for one person. It gets a bit wider in the middle and then narrows again towards the Bedfordbury end, though not as narrow as the St Martin’s Lane entrance.

You walk past the backs of two pubs that have frontages on Chandos Place and it is here we start to get some clues. Look up and you will see a series of wooden boards each proclaiming ANCIENT LIGHTS. What is going on?

These signs refer to the right of those pubs to daylight, by restricting the erection of adjoining buildings too close to existing windows. They are a clear sign to the builders of the Coliseum, do not come too close. So in ensuring daylight, this ancient right of way has been kept, but only just.

The map on my polling card

As I got ready to go and vote this morning, I looked at the map on my polling card. Nice clear map, then I looked again.

There was a box shape and the lettering Pol ho at the junction of Shrubland Road with the Lea Bridge Road. You will know from my earlier posts that my trusty 1915 OS map often reveals clues about the area I live in.

At this point on the 1915 map there is indeed a Police Station. It’s not there now, just some flats and windswept open space. The nearest we have to a Police Station now at Balers Arms is you sometimes see two Community Support Officers standing next to a paste table at the crossroads with a sign that declares “Information Point.”

The map on my polling card has served it’s purpose, it showed me where the polling station is and I have voted.  I decided not to tell them about the map.

St James’ Electric Theatre

Next to St James Street station, on the Chingford branch, there is an impressive looking building,  it’s a dental practice.  But look again, do you see the steps …

You are looking at one of Walthamstow’s many lost cinemas. St James’ Electric Theatre was built in 1911 with 500 seats. During the First World War wounded soliders were admitted free.

It was said that when trains passed through the station, the projector trembled and drowned the sound.

The name was changed to Super in 1919 and to Regent in 1932. It went through the thirties being closed and re-opened till final closure in 1939.

Let us be thankful the grand old building has found use as a dental practice and not been demolished. Let us also shed a tear for the fact that here  in Waltham Forest, birthplace  of Alfred Hitchcock, we have no cinemas …

Where have all the pram shops gone?

Walking along Hoe Street this morning, I stopped at the junction with Albert Road to take a look at what was going on. There is a big corner shop here that for many years was Sainsbury & Sainsbury the office equipment people. When they moved out it was used to sell satelite dishes. At the time of writing it is all boarded up and there are signs of a major refurbishment going on.

What took my eye was the shop sign. It had been peeled back to the original owners. McClanes, Prams, Cots, Toys, Wheelchairs all in red metal letters on a creamy background.

This got me thinking what happened to all the prams shops there used to be? I expect the use of buggies has a lot to do with it. You simply do not see people pushing prams anymore.

Do you remember your local pram shop? What s it used for now?

The Piano Factory in Grange Road

The 1915 map of Leyton is all houses tightly packed together. Or is it?

I looked closer and saw the words Pianoforte manufactory, then I saw another one. Two piano factories and near where I live. So as part of my evening walk I, headed along Capworth Street, then Lea Hall Lane and before long I was at the end of Grange Road. My heartt sank as everything looked fairly modern, I had walked past rows of terraced houses but here …oh well I walked along Grange Road, most of it now taken up with a medium rise block of flats, and acroos the road a school occupied what would have been houses before.

I got to the end and recognised what had been the pub. Looked like more flats, but there was no mistaking the building, it had been a pub. I walked abck along Grange Road looking at the map for clues. Then I stoped and smiled. There was the wall at one end, then along the back butting onto the houses in the next road. I walked along and sure enough at the other end more wall. The piano factory had gone but the back and side walls had survived.

Then a friendly voice called out asking me if I was looking for somewhere particular? I walked across and spoke to this guy, telling him once there had been a piano factory here. We had a nice chat, he had been there some 20 years since the block had been opened. I pointed out the walls, we both smiled. I said good-bye and continued with my evening walk.

Imagine … they made pianos here in Leyton … someone might still have a piano made in Leyton

What was Keats doing in Edmonton?

I am reading Claire Tomalin’s magnificent biography of Thomas Hardy. In 1887 Thomas and his first wife Emma went to Italy for six weeks,  after he had finished writing The Woodlanders. At one point they stayed in a place in Rome, that over-looked the house where the poet Keats died. It was all part of a pilgrimage that many did then and have done ever since; in the footsteps of the great poet.

Did Hardy know that he did not have to travel so far to visit a place of significance to the short life of Keats?

In 1810 Keats was apprenticed to the apothacary Dr Hammond of Edmonton for five years. During this time he decided to be a poet, rather than a doctor. Dr Hammond’s place was in Church Street near Lower Edmonton railway station. 

Hardy did however get close to this special place. In 1914 he married Florence Dugdale at St Andrews, Enfield. They were married at 8am and the first leg of the journey back to Dorset was by train from Enfield Town to Liverpool Street. The second stop is Lower Edmonton and the line crosses Church Street by bridge just as it enters the station. Did Hardy look to his right as the train slowed down?

Church Street is still a windy road, but the apothacary has long gone. There is a row of fairly characterless shops there now, though you get a clue as you notice Keats Pharmacy.

I am not suggesting you cancel your trip to Rome and head for North London. There is not even a plaque to mark the significance of the place. I walked past it every day for five years going to Latymer Grammar School and they never mentioned it. So much for education.

Now you know it is there, remember special places do not always look special.

What’s at the end of your street?

At the end of my street, where it joins the Lea Bridge Road, you look across and see the magnificent almshouses founded by the London Master Bakers in 1832. There is a plaque to acknowledge their significance and by the way, they gave the neighbourhood it’s name, Bakers Arms. What you might have over-looked is the “drive-thru” KFC to your left. My street was built in the 1890′s and on the old map the site occupied by the KFC is a blank.

I can tell you that in 1906 they built a garage for the new electric trams here, the local archives have some great pictures. In the 1950′s it was used by the trolley-buses and latterly by the buses. Then it was no longer needed and in time the land was used for various endeavours, which brings us back to the KFC. The buses now use the garage round the corner at Leyton Green.

The story did not begin with electric trams. Walking past KFC to the end of the next street there is a big plumbers merchants, right next to the railway arches. The front is clearly a shop-front, but as you look at the whole building, it looks like it might have been something else. It was built in 1883 as a garage for the then new horse trams and used until 1905. The electric trams needed more space so this building became redundant.

In 1914 the premises were converted for use as a film studio by I.B Davidson, an important film pioneer who specialised in spy stories, song and sentimental films and films featurng the boxer Bombardier Billy Wells. Films were made throughout the First World War, using the Tiger trademark for some of the time. The studio had a stage 60 feet by 40 feet and negatives were developed on the premises. This was one of a number of studios locally that made films up to the late 1920′s.

OK hands up, I am a bit of a public tranposrt nut. I am not alone. When reminiscing about his childhood Alfred Hitchcock often referred to his passionate interest public transport. He was born at 517 Leytonstone High Road on 13th August 1899 and in those reminiscences he clearly remembered the Saturday night in 1906 when the first electric tram in Leyton made its maiden voyage. He also would have been aware of the local film industry, which coincided with his own ealry days at the film studios in Islington. Such was Hitchcock’s interest in public transport, that it crops up in many of his films.

What’s at the end of your street? Or the next one along …