Designing the town centre

On Friday I joined a group touring the High Street with members of the council's design and development team, an event that was designed to show off the many development sites in the area. The most interesting discovery was that the council have an office on the top floor of the Scene, a corner flat with great views across London. We met there for coffee and introductions before setting off to look at the quiet private courtyard for residents of the Scene. It's a car-free development. Is it true that (as rumoured) after three years tenants can get a parking permit? Nobody knew the answer but they thought probably not.

I spent two hours with an assorted bunch of architects and a contractor or two without really discovering what the purpose of the tour was or who it was aimed at. But as a resident it was at least a chance to make a point or two about the Mall proposals. We got to discuss (briefly) the loss of public space, 150 year old trees likely to be cut down, and the lack of joined-up strategy for the overall space including the bus station and Natwest. Vague plans for an overall strategy were mentioned but it certainly isn't at the stage of hiring designers to work out an acceptable solution, an alternative to the Mall's commercially driven proposals.

Isn't the value of the current square and garden their scale, large spaces flexible enough for all sorts of activities? No, the response was that a smaller space could be better designed and would provide somewhere to arrive at rather than just passing through. No, the trees are suffering from being too close together. The Scene is obviously a nice place to live and enhances the end of the High Street, tall but not too tall. But surely tall towers without their own public space are not going to enhance anything? I missed my chance to mention Grenfell Tower, but in any case we didn't get any response on that as far as I could tell. But it was pretty noisy, maybe I missed something when a refuse truck pulled up alongside our little group.

We looked at the shopfront improvements at the St James end of the market. Nothing to criticise there (except that whoever designed the new shopfronts ought to know that window sills need to slope so the rain runs off, otherwise they will go rotten). It's paid for by the council and lottery money about 50-50, about £3 million overall. Looks like money well spent (except for the window sills).

Lastly we walked over towards the South Grove site. Interestingly, there was talk about developing the dire bus park area behind the High Street, bringing that to life with new uses. Then the tunnel under the railway brought us into the old industrial area. The garages were all busy, and demolition of one large block is well under way. Nothing decided yet about the long-derelict pub. This site between the railway and South Grove is earmarked for tall blocks, which will be perhaps a bit like Tottenham Hale. What about the loss of business premises? Yes, they have to move further and further out. Could the small garage inits be turned around so they don't face the new residential area? NO, they are part of the land designated for development. Aren't there any plans to provide affordable business units elsewhere in the borough, perhaps where industrial areas could become denser? Well yes.. sort of, nothing definite though.

I would have liked to know more about the new requirement for significant planning applications to go to a design panel, but discovered nothing useful except that it happens. It was a frustrating morning. The team have obviously considered all the issues before, but the event (which to be fair wasn't designed for that purpose) provided only a hint about the reasoning behind the current official policies. Walking around provides immediacy but it's not really the best situation to discuss and understand the pros and cons of complex issues.

Another one bites the dust

This is the big Art Deco factory building in Burwell Road. It's the biggest feature of a little complex of industrial buildings, not the elaborate Victorian architecture that would perhaps be listed, but simply solid brick buildings with big Crittall metal windows, metal roof trusses and lots of rooflights. Nothing fancy apart from the decorative street frontage, but the buildings have a solid dignity that could have formed a basis for something really interesting, perhaps a mixture of flats, shops and studios, a place with a real sense of identity that would be an asset to this end of Lea Bridge Road. That isn't going to happen though. The site was sold for development, the developers applied for planning permission for flats, and despite highly vocal opposition, planning permission was granted without any serious modifications to the densely packed tower blocks that were drawn up. What is going to be built on the site is just flats, too many flats appallingly shoe-horned into the space to maximise profits. The last tenants have gone, and now the demolition machines are working their way across the site, leaving this imposing structure until last. It's unlikely to be a great place to live, let alone 'affordable'. The little two-storey terraced houses across the road are going to be diminished by the close proximity of very much taller buildings - and it is no justification to point to the familiar presence of the factory even if it is twice the height of the houses.

In a parallel universe, old buildings like these would be an asset, even when their usefulness as factories and workshops is over. All over the country, old industrial buildings have been rescued and turned into thriving popular areas, using the inherent qualities of no-nonsense industrial buildings to enhance ideas and enterprises that don't fit easily with modern development. Camden Lock made it work by using the old warehouses, stables and workshops for the thriving market. Covent Garden and Spitalfields markets were due to be demolished, but instead became successful as a different kind of marketplace. Borough Market, better managed perhaps by the long-established Borough Market Trust, simply made the transition bit by bit, acquiring some modern additions that blend in with the whole sprawling, hectic phenomenon. In Clerkenwell, businesses and flats occupy the old commercial buildings. But it takes a particular combination of development control, economics and enterprise to make that sort of thing work: buildings and land with little in the way of cash-in value, or protected by listing or conservation status, and often, enterprises working on a shoestring while they becomes established. Walthamstow's industrial buildings are mainly doomed simply because the land they occupy is so valuable, and except in rare cases there is no statutory protection. A huge swathe of buildings along Blackhorse Lane and Sutherland Road went in the last five years, with just two buildings - Gnome House and Blackhorse Workshop - left as inspiring examples to show what might have been. At this point I don't think there is anything major left to demolish.

Burwell Road, photographed November 2016 (above) and February 2017

An attitude to change

Last year, everything between the Standard and Gnome House was flattened, leaving a whole stretch of Blackhorse Lane with no buildings on the west side. It’s opened up a whole new vista of sky that wasn't there before. You quickly get used to that sort of thing, and begin to take it for granted that there is an amazing view every time the day ends with a break in the clouds, a red glow on the horizon and the clouds lit up pink, the sky shading through subtle shades from orange to deep blue. In the daytime, it’s the sort of big sky you get at the seaside, houses and shops along one side and nothing at all the other side. At least, like the seaside with a hoarding blocking off the view of the actual sea. This is temporary, of course. The buildings were demolished because new flats are going up, and soon enough they will be tall enough to block the view again, and then I suppose we will feel deprived of the previous open-ness for a while, until the new streetscape becomes familiar. It’s happening all over Walthamstow, with probably dozens of new development sites in the pipeline, large and small, averaging five to seven storeys and some of them much higher. The net result is going to be more buildings and less sky, a radical shake-up in the familiar landscape that has hardly changed for a long time.

The changes are a complicated equation, representing investment and improvement, but also loss of affordability and familiar places changed beyond recognition, a sense that things could go many different ways but the way it’s actually going is driven by profit, not necessarily by what people want to happen. So far, it’s mainly industrial sites that are being redeveloped, but the process is not stopping there, and is becoming increasingly controversial as the sites are closer to public attention. Two snooker halls and the derelict cinema in Buxton Road to become flats (hopefully the Embassy will only be converted, not demolished). More flats taking over the entire South Grove car park and industrial area, including some very tall buildings. Huge towers crammed onto a site on Lea Bridge Road, overlooking the marshes. A proposal to expand the Mall including a 27 storey tower and other buildings covering nearly half the Town Square Gardens. Not least, the whole Marlowe estate including the recently completed plaza and playground about to be demolished.

Some proposals are positive, nearly all need a healthy dose of criticism to try to shape them closer to what is appropriate. There is no point simply objecting to every change. It’s worth remembering that Walthamstow was more or less countryside a little more than a hundred years ago, and if capitalism in the form of property development hadn't changed things drastically, most of us would not be living here now.

A downhill road?

The massive bulk of what was once Young & Co. Lea Bridge Steelworks, a four-storey factory with an Art Deco front, looms above the two-storey terraced houses on the other side of Burwell Road. Steel fabrication, not making steel from raw materials. I haven't been able to find out much about the place or the company, except that at one time they made steel frames for experimental prefabricated houses - an idea that didn't take off. The last tenants have been given their marching orders, and the whole little industrial enclave here at the end of Argall Avenue is set to be demolished. Once again, an industrial site that will be demolished to make way for too many flats shoe-horned into the plot.

The factory front is decorative, but behind that the structure stacks up to its full height in functional brick and concrete. It could be amazing if it was converted into a business centre, split up into manageable sized starter units and studios. There are less spectacular factory units along Lea bridge Road, too, some of them still occupied, but all due to be taken down. The houses across the street look like they were built in the same period, some time in the 1930s. I found a local blog that reflects on the downhill trajectory of the area, and expects the new development to do absolutely nothing for houses on the residential side of the road. Which sounds about right.

Demolition

After a couple of weeks careful crunching behind the scenes, the big demolition contract on Blackhorse Road finally reaches the interesting stage, where you begin to see gaps behind the screen of plastic sheeting. This morning I watched as people came and went at the bus stop apparently unaware that overhead, a giant metal claw was pulling down one section of brickwork after another, accompanied by wrenching and crashing noises as the debris fell to the ground. I thought they might have to close the road for the last stage, but it's apparently so highly controlled that isn't necessary.

The building has been taken down layer by layer from the back, so that until now nothing seemed to change from the front, but from the car park next door there are no hoardings, and you can look over the fence and get a good view of the whole huge site, and the demolition machines in action. There are no wrecking balls nowadays: the biggest machine has a long hydraulic arm with pincers at the end, which can pull down brickwork effortlessly, crunch the concrete covering off the steel frame, crumble the concrete floors so they can be pulled out, and it can also cut the metal girders. All operated by one man, with another man hosing down the rubble to keep the dust down, and another vehicle that picks up the debris and sorts it into piles.

The whole site is being cleared. Pretty soon, this stretch of Blackhorse Lane will be looking unusually empty, opening up views across to Tottenham for anyone living over the shops. Although of course the new blocks that are going to be built there will be just as high.

Aerial view of the site showing the extent of demolition. The centre of the site is already cleared.

The warehouses on Hookers Road look like being the last to go.

The hollowed-out shell of Mandora House, once home to Inky Cuttlefish print studios and many small businesses.

Demolition and recycling

Demolition of the Oomers factory site in Sutherland Road reaches the piles of rubble stage. At least the piles are neatly sorted for re-use. Bricks in one pile, concrete crushed to manageable-size chunks in another, old tyres and timber all likely to find some purpose. The materials are crushed on site, hence all the huge shiny new machines lining the roads nearby. The materials have different uses: crushed concrete can be used to make new concrete, and bricks as well as concrete chunks are used as hardcore - the layer of rubble put down to provide a level base for paving and concrete floor slabs.
Recycling is driven by high landfill costs, and by green building criteria such as the BREEAM scheme (the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Methodology, established in 1990) which are now standard requirements for virtually all new developments. Complying with BREEAM is so complicated, it's usual to have a consultant qualified to check on all the different criteria, and it is taken absolutely seriously in working out the scope and costs of a construction project. A double incentive to avoid waste.

Lost opportunities

Oomers textile factory bites the dust, along with another huge swathe of industrial buildings just off Blackhorse Lane. That is where the big changes are happening now, with two big new developments completed and another area cleared but so far left empty. Oomers was there last weekend, now it isn't. A single-storey factory building with the typical sawtooth roof, glass on the north side to give lots of light without direct sunshine, battered old brickwork with iron trusses: unused and in the way of progress, but a lost opportunity none the less. Now that end of Sutherland Road is choked with plastic barriers and huge demolition machines lumbering past the parked cars. The public gets no real say in this, despite all the studies and some semblance of consultation, and there is no chance for anyone to see for themselves what is on these sites, because they are securely locked up even when they are lying vacant.

More demolition is in the pipeline. Right on Blackhorse Lane, the hoardings have gone up on the Macdonald Egan development site - which includes the recently opened Gnome House and will surround it with new residential blocks. As far as I know everything else on the site will be demolished, including the picturesque old warehouse buildings on Hooker's Lane, and the Mandora building which was home to Inky Cuttlefish Studios and who knows how many office workers, until recently. Demolition in the name of progress, powered by the huge profits to be made. Early studies of these sites recommended keeping something of the industrial character by saving the best existing buildings and converting them for new uses, but it isn't happening. The developers want a clear site to put up nice neat blocks, and that's what they generally end up getting. Sorry hipsters -  make the most of Ravenswood Industrial Estate before that goes the same way.

Going to the dogs

The old Stadium is looking tired and shabby, waiting for the rest of the new development to get a bit closer to completion I suppose, before it's worth doing any restoration. It was lit up the other day, perhaps a test run to see how much of the neon lighting still works - because the whole point of the iconic frontage is the way it used to light up at dusk. The 1933 Totaliser Building is crude 30s construction, painted cement render on cheap bricks, with nothing much in the way of interesting detail, just a plain backdrop for the well-known neon sign, the leaping greyhound and the Art Deco lettering. You just have to hope the developers do keep it lit up. The Stadium was listed Grade II, otherwise no doubt the whole thing would have been value engineered out, like the BMX track and climbing wall etc. I'm pleased to see this central feature kept, but not really convinced the car park has any real architectural value on its own, without the rest of the stadium buildings. At least its good to see the hideous metal railings have gone. They must have been added in the 1970s, when adding red tubular metal features to buildings seemed like a good idea.
I went there once, shortly before it closed, had a great evening and won forty quid. Not because I know the first thing about dog racing, just by following what a friend of a friend was betting on. It was quite unique, the combination of the live races and associated betting on the one hand, and on the other the family-friendly night out - junk food and beer, what more could you want? Sophisticated it was not, but adults and children alike were happy. I was sorry to discover my first visit was also to be my last.

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Londonist published an article about the 2011 alternative proposals which tried but failed to save the site for dog racing.

William Morris: “the house clearances of 1955”

William Morris wrote News From Nowhere in 1890, 125 years ago. In the book Morris imagines Europe transformed into a socialist paradise 200 years in the future. It’s more of a curiosity than a serious political commentary, but I’m wading through it all the same in the interests of research, and found an unexpected reference to Walthamstow in the first few pages. William Guest, the protagonist from the 19th century, finds himself transported into the 21st, and quickly realises that he must prevaricate and explain himself by saying he has been living abroad for a long time.

I was just going to blurt out “Hammersmith,” when I bethought me what an entanglement of cross purposes that would lead us into; so I took time to invent a lie with circumstance, guarded by a little truth, and said: “You see, I have been such a long time away from Europe that things seem strange to me now; but I was born and bred on the edge of Epping Forest; Walthamstow and Woodford, to wit.” “A pretty place, too,” broke in Dick; “a very jolly place, now that the trees have had time to grow again since the great clearing of houses in 1955.”

Morris disapproved of the rapid spread of London in his lifetime, and envisaged the whole city largely transformed into something like the way Walthamstow must have been in his youth, houses spread out among gardens and orchards. Morris has some interesting things to say about work and property, and about the equality of men and women (rather spoilt by generous helpings of casual sexism). The basic premise of the book is that money and private ownership have become unnecessary. But is there a snake in paradise: will Morris come to the conclusion that people in this imaginary future are unfulfilled because they lack conflict and competition? There are hints along those lines - why does the little art that is produced always refer to the past, not the present? - but evidently that was something he couldn't make his mind up about.

News From Nowhere is available as a free e-book on Amazon and on Project Gutenberg.