Wansteadium

There’s a welcome return for the Wanstead Theatre Co who are staging a production of a play, See Rock City, to mark the 80th anniversary of VE-Day. “The play is a warm, funny & poignant drama set in WWII, following newlyweds, Raleigh and May, as the world around them changes,” said Fiona Gordon. “It’s a story of hope in hard times and of two young people learning how to build a future when the future of the world is anything but certain.”

Productions are taking place in the week beginning 5 May and are available via the Wanstead Fringe website here.

A nice way to counteract the throwaway society is the Repair Cafe which takes place on Saturday at Christ Church.

Nine electrical repairers, sewing experts, and menders specialising in jewellery, bikes and laptops will be there mending things people bring along – all for no charge. They will also be running sessions on simple sewing and other subjects, and the Wanstead Community Gardeners will be giving away free plants and seeds along with advice on planting.

The Recorder reports the closure of the Stevens Garage on Wellington Road following the retirement of proprietor Brad Stevens after 48 years.

His daughter told the paper: “When my dad first joined the garage in 1976 there were a total of four garages in Wanstead: Wanstead Garage, Browns and Nightingale Motors, all of which were small family-run businesses. 

“Over the course of the years, and with the closure of Browns in 2015, Stevens Motors was the only independent garage in Wanstead.”

Read more here.

This is no April Fool. Part of the garden of a St Mary’s Avenue house is on the market for £2.2m. It’s what you might call open plan. No bedrooms, no bathrooms, no reception rooms. But it has got planning permission for a bungalow. More details here.

It turns out not to have been such a good idea to close the station car park in March 2024 in anticipation of building works beginning imminently. Twelve whole months of parking revenues gone somewhere else, along with some parking spaces which used to be quite useful.