Rumours that a former restaurant on Wanstead High Street is to be filled with a new Little Waitrose seem to Wansteadium to be a non-starter. The firm is planning to open 14 new shops this year across the country, but according to a report in the Times this week, Wanstead is not on the list. (Would be delighted to be proved wrong though.)
Now this truly is weird
Surreal scene Wanstead Rugby Club… pic.twitter.com/zkxLEZsL1u
— Barney (@BriRMar) January 25, 2015
Wanstead weekend photo, CXVII
Geoff Wilkinson writes on Wanstead Daily Photo: “I came across this little still life of washers and a nut on the window sill of I & K Brown, the garage on Wanstead Path. I just love the colour combination and of course the peeling paint just makes it.”
Churchill and Wanstead, episode five
It’s nearly the 50th anniversary of Winston Churchill’s death – on Saturday to be precise – and to mark the event, Wansteadium has been selflessly reading David A Thomas’s book Churchill The Member for Woodford, and blogging about it.
Episode five: Wanstead and Woodford applied to be a borough in its own right, and Churchill backed the bid. It came into being on 14 October 1937 with big ceremonies – bells pealing from St Mary’s and Christ Church. To mark it, Churchill presented the new borough with its own ceremonial mace, and when Redbridge was formed 50 years ago this year the mace passed to the new borough. It is still occasionally shown off by Redbridge mayors.
Thomas reports that the local paper, the Express and Independent had adverts for Puddicombe the Furrier, the department stores of Boardman’s of Stratford and Bearman’s of Leytonstone.
Churchill continued his warnings about German rearmanent, and some constituents and countrymen were beginning to find it irritating, Thomas says. But information reached Churchill from Berlin that the German press was too beginning to get annoyed with him, which probably just convinced him he was right (not that he needed any convincing). In some ways he was a bit painful – his secretary Violet Pearman complained that he had taken over her life with “an inexorable grip dominated by his moods, whims, fancies and crises”.
Hitler then annexed Austria and occupied most of Czechoslovakia. Mussolini then invaded Albania. Churchill’s warnings were coming true. Local papers here prepared their readers for war, printing guides for how to make a room gas proof and how to make a bomb proof shelter in the garden. (Some Wanstead gardens doubtless still show the marks… let us know in the comments if yours does). Wanstead and Woodford was, however, praised as one of the few boroughs which was properly preparing itself for war. With the number of speeches its MP had been making on the subject, it probably had little choice.
Gridlock again
Congratulations to Aldersbrook primary
Aldersbrook primary school has had a glowing Ofsted report and is now rated “excellent” by its inspectors. “Standards have risen rapidly over the past few years and are above average,” the report says. Its last inspection had said that it required improvement, and going back to 2001 it was rated as having serious weaknesses.
Clearly a significant turnaround has taken place – this is the key paragraph in the report, but you can read the whole thing here. Congratulations to staff, pupils and parents!
(Thanks @E11Wag)