The George and Dragon, formerly the George, will not be opening before Christmas, drinkers have been told, meaning it will be a festive season without their favourite watering location.
Signs outside the pub, which is undergoing some refurbishment, promise a reopening in January – and also announce a recruitment process which will be welcome news to many former bar staff.
The Wanstead Curtain, the new theatre and cinema crafted by the Wanstead Fringe team, is coming back to life for half term with two Halloween films and a play. Tickets are now available for all three events.
Thursday 31 October 7.30pm
Tim Burton’s 1999 gothic supernatural horror film with a stellar cast, including Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Miranda Richardson, Michael Gambon, Christopher Walken, Casper Van Dien and even an appearance from the King of Horror Christopher Lee. A Halloween classic for grown ups. Certificate 15. And an interesting factoid taken from Winifred Eastment’s 1949 book Wanstead Through the Ages is that our beloved bit of the world used to be widely known as Sleepy Hollow. You have been warned.
Saturday 2 November 6pm
If there’s a family film for Halloween week, this is it. Pixar’s 2017 animated fantasy film is inspired by the Mexican Day of the Dead festival. The story follows 12-year old Miguel as he attempts to follow his love of guitar (despite his family’s long-standing ban on music), and accidentally embarks on a death-defying journey to solve the mystery of his great-great-grandfather. Certificate PG. Bring your fancy dress, mums and dads. (Children in fancy dress also permitted.)
Sunday 3 November 3pm
An original hit at this year’s Wanstead Fringe, Rossetti’s Stunners tells the tales of the women who were the inspiration for painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti – this is a highly entertaining one-woman drama written and performed by Elaine Britten.
The Wanstead Society has announced it is closing because of a lack of volunteers.
The campaigning group was established in 1997 with the goal of saving the Evergreen Field from development. But with planning permission having been granted by Redbridge Council for a block of flats on the site, the society has decided it’s time has come.
“We feel that we have outlived our usefulness,” a newsletter told members. “We have continued to raise a variety of issues with the Council, principally around planning laws being broken, but are ignored. There comes a time when even the most hardy of organisations has to know when it’s time to go, and our time has come.”
The group does however take pleasure in its successes, which it lists as including:
MPs have backed a bid to give protected status to pie and mash, citing the strength of its regional heritage and distinctive characteristics.
Richard Holden, MP for Basildon and Billericay, mentioned Robins Pie & Mash, which has been namechecked in the national press during the debate, saying:
This debate points to something wider about British culinary heritage, about how we view food in Britain, and perhaps a little bit about how we view our own food in this country. That is something we need to look at again. We need to look at how we can celebrate it more. I hope that, as hon. and right hon. Members have mentioned, other parts of the country will look at how we can champion their local food produce—yes, in order for it to be recognised locally, which is a nice thing, but also for the broader economic narrative, whether that is exports or tourism.
I thank my pie and mash shops in Basildon and Billericay for putting up with me invading them over the last few weeks, particularly Robins, which has had the national media with it over the last couple of days. To everyone, I say: get out there—try that pie and mash. To the Minister, I say: I hope we will be able to get this status. I hope that at the end of this process, we can say to him, “Yes, Pie Minister.”
No sooner than it started, the Great Squat of the George appears to be over. The paper covering the windows, along with the hand-written notices asserting legal rights to squat are, as of Monday afternoon, no longer.
Workers arrived on Monday morning to put up scaffolding and by later afternoon were well under way with moving furniture out of the pub and storing it containers in the car park at the back of the pub, presumably to make way for redecoration.
Just days after Wetherspoons closed the George pub, squatters have moved in and told people that there is nothing anyone can do about it.
The Wetherspoon signs were removed within 24 hours of the pub closing at the start of last week. It had just been announced that the pub had been taken over by Urban, a small chain which operates 50 other pubs in London.
But by the weekend, squatters had got access to the building and covered up the windows with paper and signs declaring their legal rights. This did not, however, stop scaffolding being erected on Monday.
Longtime readers will remember the squatting in the former Barclays Bank, which was empty for months while Sainsbury’s decided if it was going to turn it into a mini-supermarket. In the end it became Gail’s.
And going waaay back to 1968 (even before Wansteadium existed) the Hollies, the small block of flats on the crossroads of the high street with New Wanstead, was the target of the London Squatter Campaign which was demonstrating against ‘luxury flats lying empty for years’. For a while, apparently, Wanstead was a cause célèbre.
Buildings standing empty for years is hardly the case with the George, however, which was empty for just a matter of days.
