Author: Wansteadium

Open House day in Wanstead

There are a number of buildings in Wanstead taking part in the Open House Day on Saturday and Sunday. Take your pick – and feel free to submit photos if you do visit (either at wansteadium[at]gmail.com or tag them “Wansteadium” on Flickr).

Quaker Meeting House (more details)

Modernist building based on four hexagons within an Epping Forest setting. Contains a sunny meeting room for Quaker worship facing onto a wooded burial ground of simple headstones, including that of Elizabeth Fry.

St Mary’s Wanstead (more details)

Grade I listed, fine example of a small Georgian church with original box pews, next door to the now vanished Wanstead House. One of London’s best Baroque monuments (to Sir Josiah Child of the East India Company) in chancel.

Sukkat Shalom Reform Synagogue, pictured above (more details)

Red-brick, Grade II listed with sumptuous interior and stained glass windows above ark. Originally the Merchant Seaman’s Orphan Asylum Chapel, acquired by the synagogue in 1995 and restored with Heritage Lottery Fund grant

Christ Church (more details)

Grade II* listed church with ragstone tower, spire, good stained glass by Kempe and newly restored William Hill organ. A characteristic work of Scott. Diocesan Architectural Committee Award Winner 2009 for the reordering of the nave and chancel.

Snaresbrook parking up 66%

Daily parking rates at Snaresbrook Tube are going up from £2.70 to £4.50 from Saturday, a poster at the station is informing drivers. Other car parks run by NCP for London Underground will also see price rises, and the company says it is to fund continued investment in the facilities, but a statement given to the Wanstead Guardian said that the decision followed research into the prices of surrounding car parks too.

Since there aren’t any other car parks near Snaresbrook station, it means the only competing option for many drivers will be on-street parking. Restrictions near the high street – including the cunning ban on parking between 9.30am and 10.30am – seem to make inevitable a degree of increased pressure on unrestricted streets further from the station.

Olympic volunteers start here

Wednesday morning is expected to mark the start of Olympic volunteering season, as the website which allows people to put their names forward is officially launched. It will remain open until 27 October, and there are as many as 70,000 places available. The site will be available here – but there does not appear to be much point in rushing to get your name down: it’s not first come first served.

A Redbridge-led recovery?

The BBC has today published a whole series of statistics about how vulnerable different areas of England are to public sector cuts. They have been calculated by the credit rating agency Experian, which has vast databases of the make-up of the country, and are based on a range of different factors such as the number of people employed in the public sector, life expectancy, benefits etc. The BBC News website has all sorts of whizzy maps to explore on the subject.

The overall picture for Redbridge is that it is almost exactly at the mid-point of vulnerability in England – 166th out of 324 areas. But beneath that are a number of interesting figures.

The borough scores highly for the number of self-employed people – 83rd – and is 50th where earnings are concerned. Crime is relatively high at 231, and considering the image many have of Redbridge it scores poorly – 273rd – for the amount of green space (though given the number of very rural districts in England, this is perhaps not so surprising).

Where Redbridge really stands out is on the number of business start-ups since 2008 – third out of the whole of England, behind neighbouring Barking and Dagenham in second place, and Newham in top spot. This is a fascinating picture of enterprise in east London, perhaps influenced by Olympic investment, and particularly important in difficult economic times when so much store is being set on a revival led by the private sector.