Picture: Petty Son & Prestwich

A Wanstead house which is just 8ft 5in wide – reputedly narrower than a Central Line carriage – has become a cause célèbre for the nation’s tabloids.

The one-bedroom house on New Wanstead was recently on sale for £275,000 through Petty Son and Prestwich, and is now under offer. That’s something of a snip, provided you’re on the slim side. It has two floors, with a living room, kitchen and bathroom on the ground floor, a double bedroom upstairs, front patio space and off-street parking.

Both the Sun and the Mirror featured the house, placing it alongside other examples of London’s narrowest houses, which includes a Shepherd’s Bush house which is just 5ft 5ins wide.

The Mirror said the price made the house “more expensive than the UK average of £251,500 – though the London average is £496,066”.

Good luck to the team behind another new Wanstead enterprise born in lockdown. Spence Hall is a fresh food retailer which bills itself as being “set up by cookery enthusiasts for fellow food lovers”.

It sources its items directly from London’s food markets – fruit and veg from New Spitalfields Market, meat from Smithfield via Leyton’s MeatLove, and fish from Brixham. Bread comes from Hackney’s Breadstation, another Wanstead-born business.

Spence Hall takes orders online and delivers directly to homes in homes in E10, E11, E12 and E17. Founder Ben Sherbrooke (who – full disclosure – sent Wansteadium a sample veg box, pictured) says: “Spence Hall is one-stop-shop for fine ingredients, with a firm belief that fine ingredients shouldn’t cost the earth, be that economically or environmentally. Shortening the supply chain is a key factor that is a massive enabler of this. Everything is delivered by bike, with zero emissions targets firmly in place.” Good luck to Ben and team.

9 comments on "Some front"

Longtime readers will know of Wansteadium’s mild obsession with shop signs and shopfronts. Some will probably roll their eyes at it too.*

So we can’t miss out on cooing over the frontage for the new City Place Coffee shop. Could it be more on trend? It all augurs well.

Meanwhile the Ginger Pig has responded to the person or persons unknown who smashed its front window by installing this metal grille.

It’s not pretty (high streets which become like a row of lock-up garages after closing time have a depressing effect) but who honestly can blame them?

*Wansteadium sees you rolling your eyes and doesn’t care.

1 comment on "Wanstead, 100 years ago"

This is very cool – thanks to @pjacksonphilip for sharing it. Clicking on the tweet will let you see the photo in detail. Can anyone work out where exactly it was taken? Bearing in mind the presence of Sidney Jackson’s piano, we’re tending to think it’s in the Christ Church gardens.