Tag: leytonstone

Wanstead’s Co-op snobbery

A delicious slice of Wanstead history is revealed in the Leyton-based site Across the Divide: Wanstead folk in the 60s didn’t want to be seen in a Co-op.

Margaret Wilks, writing about shops on Leytonstone High Road, said:

“Bearmans used to have a fantastic Father Christmas. But you had to be middle class to shop in there. They had a lovely tea place downstairs with all the cake stands, and they brought out your tray with your little cups and saucers. The co-op took it over in the late 60’s. It was kept quiet for six months, my mother in law worked there. They kept it quiet because they had so many account holders there, as soon as that came out everybody cancelled. People from Wanstead and Woodford did not deal with the Co-op! It was called Pioneer, for a short while, so that it didn’t sound like Co-op. It closed within six months. People just didn’t go in there.”

Ironic now that any lingering snob value would, out of Wanstead’s two supermarkets, work in the Co-op’s favour. (Well-spotted, Grouchotendency)

Wanstead news roundup, 15.11.10; Swings, Paphitis, Stone

• Up to £14K could be spent renovating the stone on the corner of Hollybush Hill which historically gave Leytonstone its name. The money would be spent on cleaning the stone, putting a plaque next to it explaining its history and, perhaps strangely, removing the pedestrian safety barriers nearby.

• Campaigners are holding a Take Back Wanstead Flats event next Sunday at which they plan to stake out the area proposed for the police’s Olympic base. Meanwhile one campaigner, Kevin Blowe, says in 2008/9 Redbridge issued 16% of the UK’s fixed penalty notices for flyposting, and that 49% of them were subsequently cancelled. He says he was issued with one for a poster put on a tree on Wanstead High Street, but it was withdrawn.

• Five playgrounds in Redbridge are to be renovated with some new government money, but none of them is in Wanstead.

• Dragon’s Den’s Theo Paphitis, amid preparations for Children In Need, had his dinner in Wanstead on Thursday, (presumably at Nam Am).

• Nice things said about Wansteadium, I

Mum just let me know Mike Leigh’s new film was shot on my Nana’s old road in Wanstead 🙂 http://bit.ly/bRpEC5 (nice local London blog too)less than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhoneJazCummins
JazCummins

UPDATE MONDAY, 2330 GMT: The plan to clean the stone at Hollybush Hill has been shelved, on the grounds of cost, reports Wanstead Guardian.

Olympic sculpture to hit Freeview in Snaresbrook

[picappgallerysingle id=”8382660″]The massive 120m Anish Kapoor sculpture to be built at the Olympic Park is going to cause disruption to the reception of Freeview TV signal to parts of Snaresbrook and South Woodford, Wansteadium can reveal.

The disruption is not expected to be massive – but could cause “ghosting” – and it doesn’t seem there is much that can be done to correct it, other than affected residents upgrading aeriels or switching to cable or satellite TV. There is no plan at the moment to fund those upgrades – they will have to be paid for by affected households.

The expected disturbance is revealed in a planning document published by the Olympic Delivery Authority. It says:

[the proposed sculpture] is likely to have a slight adverse impact on terrestrial TV services, due to shadowing of terrestrial TV signals caused by signal shadowing to Crystal Palace and Croydon transmitters, in a number of households to the north east of the development.  The affected locations may be able to have terrestrial television services restored by using one of the following methods as appropriate: installing a higher gain antenna or re-locating the existing antenna or re-pointing the existing antenna to another transmitter where possible or, if any of these solutions are unable to restore service, by installing satellite or cable TV services;

The affected areas, as detailed in this report, TV Reception Report and Appendix A – The construction of a Sculpture for the Olympic & Paralympic Games and Legacy phases, include parts of Stratford, Leyton, Leytonstone, Snaresbrook, South Woodford, Woodford Green and Buckhurst Hill. The areas are shown below, with the red line indicating disturbance from the Crystal Palace transmitter, the blue one Croydon.Comments on the application can be submitted via this page.


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