Category: Wansteadium

Introducing the Wansteadium Blitz project

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Seventy years ago, for people living in Wanstead, like all areas of London, each day must have seemed like a been a daily dance with the possibility of having a bomb landing on your house. Records show detailed times and addresses of where the bombs fell during the traumatic few months from September 1940 until May 1941, when that particular phase of the Blitz stopped. Flying bombs and long-range rockets were to arrive later in the war, but it’s the Blitz and the civil defence which it inspired which captivates such strong emotions.

As the table below shows, by this date in October 1940, several streets in Wanstead – part of Churchill’s constituency – had already taken a pounding. But even at this point – six weeks into the bombing – things were only just beginning.

For us today it’s hard to imagine the stresses this must have placed on daily life. As an exercise in what that uncertainty might have felt like, over the next few months, Wansteadium will be recording those days on which parts of Wanstead were hit. You are welcome to join in – particularly if you know exactly where or can even photograph where a bomb hit on a particular street. (Clue: it’s usually quite obvious where the gaps in the older houses are.)

The details for this project have come from It Happened Here – the Story of Civil Defence in Wanstead and Woodford 1939-1945 by Stanley Tiquet. Thanks to the local studies department of Redbridge Libraries for their advice.

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Hadley House, arrivederci

Every starter somewhere is a final After Eight somewhere else. As Wanstead tries out its new steak house, longtime favourite Hadley House has shut up shop forever. A notice in the window announces it will reopen later this month as an Italian restaurant. Feel free to opine here.

UPDATE: Mark Bentley was first to report the news, saying:

wanstead restaurant merry go round continues. New Queens place rammed all day yesterday. Hadley House now closed for good. End of era.less than a minute ago via webMark Bentley
markb999

Luke Morton points out in a comment to this post: “I think the words ‘Open from 21st October 2010’ might’ve been enough!”

It’s a fair point – the language of the notice is, shall we say, translated by an online tool flowery? In case you can’t make it out on the picture above, it is:

“l’infinito is a brand new Italian restaurant with the age-old Italian passion for taste, art and pleasure. It is the portrait of the Italian cuisine that brings the best of our hospitality to one unique environment… Our intention is to offer you the best that we as Italians can find when we sit at a table, and we hope to inspire you to eternalize this moment with the best of this infinite now.”

Wansteadium reader Mick adds, also in a comment on this post:

Maybe just as well. We used to love Hadley House but the quality of the food has been disappointing on the last couple of visits. Would welcome another Italian, we used to have three: the curiously named Papillon (now Applebees) which was great, the one that is now 62 Spice and the one opposite Snaresbrook station.

Wanstead news roundup, 09.10.10; Flats, lollipops, and fingerprints

• The angst and anger about the Met’s plans for Wanstead Flats has not gone away. A public meeting this week with the police and the City of London, which owns the flats, was heated; there is more debate about the cost of the consultation process, and the rent that will be paid for the duration of the Olympic operations.

• Wanstead woman Penny Bickerstaff was going to Trafalgar Square in a black cab which had a crash. She was hurt and had to go to hospital. The cab charged her the full fare plus waiting time. Story here at the Daily Telegraph.

• Parents of children at the Wanstead Church School have launched a petition to “save” Derek the lollipop man who helps children cross the high street outside the Cuckfield pub. Redbridge Borough Council is attempting to save money, and in August a spokesman told the Wanstead Guardian:

“(Lollipop people) provide a valuable service and will be appreciated by people but they are mainly at existing crossings, and a large number of primary school children are accompanied anyway. We have to ask the question whether it is value for money.”

• A sermon by the Rev Robert Hampson at Holy Trinity church on Hermon Hill has angered Guides leaders. His message, he says, was against the sexualisation of children, including the sentiment that it was “better to wait until they were married before having sex with boyfriends and girlfriends although I made sure I did not use the word sex”. Some parents have told the Guardian that because there were young children there, they felt it was inappropriate. Wansteadium hopes to be able to bring you the transcript of the sermon.

• Fingerprinting is being introduced at Wanstead High School, as part of making proceedings cashless. Observer columnist and civil liberties campaigner Henry Porter has highlighted the news on his blog.