Author: Wansteadium

It’s now less than a week before the Wanstead Fringe kicks off with double-header events on Overton Drive.

In the churchyard of St Mary’s, Lucy Crowe and Joe Walters – the pair whose impromptu doorstep recitals delighted people during lockdown – will be making their Fringe debut.

Not that it will be their biggest performance of the week. On Wednesday they are both performing at the BBC Proms – Lucy is the soprano in a performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis.

You can get tickets for their Wanstead event here:

Next door to St Mary’s, at Wanstead Cricket Club, will be a fascinating family event all about the stars and planets, including a talk about the role of James Pound in astronomical discoveries. (Pound was rector of Wanstead from 1707 and made crucial observations about Saturn and Jupiter and more). There will also be a blow-up planetarium and rocket-building fun.

A plan to build a block of 74 flats on Snaresbrook station car park has been published following TfL’s decision to sell the land for development.

Residents are being consulted on the plans at meetings next week. The developers, Pocket Living, say that all of the flats would be affordable – costing 20% less than local prices – and would be sold to first-time buyers.

It would be the developer’s second site in Wanstead, following the flats built at Gardner Close, behind the Bull pub.

Earlier this year that development won an award for “Best Use of Brownfield Land” at the 2022 Planning Awards. That site has 20 flats, so the new proposal is significantly larger.

Wanstead Cricket Club have won the Essex Premier League for 2022 after another amazing season which also saw the second XI win their league too.

The first team finally went over the winning line last weekend when half of the usual players were abroad at a wedding, meaning that some of the club’s younger players were drafted in to the team to finish matters. One, fifteen-year-old Ali Zeb, scored 52 runs and took four wickets in the team’s victory over Chingford.

Captain Joe Ellis-Grewal told BBC Essex listeners about the club’s drive to bring on young players.

Congratulations to the Tool Box, now relocated to its new position 100m up the High Street into a much larger spot.

A rumoured unlicensed music event which was apparently due to take place in Wanstead this weekend has been targeted by a dispersal order.

Earlier this summer an unlicensed rave took place on Wanstead Flats – but following the event police commented that all the participants dispersed when asked and there had been no trouble.

The former Loon Ye restaurant at Snaresbrook – which has been empty for years and years – is going to be something new, as the terracotta facelift indicates. And though we’re read the notice in the window, below, we can’t quite imagine what it’s going to be like.

Buller And Rice have branches in Walthamstow and Stoke Newington. In a piece in the Evening Standard in 2019 founders Anita Rice and Stephen Buller spoke about being ‘the capital’s first sustainable hair salon’, saying:

“It’s not just targeted at consumers who want to be environmentally friendly,” explains Rice. “It was more like anybody could come, and we were working behind the scenes to keep it sustainable, make better choices and lower the impact. Of course, we get people coming in who are more conscious and most interested in what we’re doing but we have such a vast variety of clients, from art students to young professionals to retired folk up the road, for whom being ethical might not be at the forefront of their minds.

Good luck to them in their renovations. It’s all part of the renaissance of Snaresbrook, with vacant shops becoming occupied.