May 2025

Local artist Verity Watkins is fascinated by flowers – including Wanstead Park’s iconic bluebells – and celebrates their beauty through screen printing

Over Easter, the bluebells were out in all their glory in our beautiful Wanstead Park, and I visited there most days to enjoy these increasingly rare and delicate plants. There is nothing like an ancient woodland glade, in dappled spring sunshine, with a misty blue carpet of flowers.

Traditional English bluebells (Hyacinthoides non-scripta) are defined by their arching stem and almost violet bells that droop in one direction, and this is what I’ve tried to capture in my screen print designs. They are also known as wood bells, wild hyacinths or fairy flowers, on account of the fluted bells that look charmingly like tiny fairy dresses.

I work on an occasional basis for the learning department at the Chelsea Physic Garden, the oldest botanical garden in London which started in 1673, just after the Great Fire of London. It gives me ample opportunity to observe the many plants that come and go during the seasons and I take a lot of pictures of these. Sometimes, I scavenge leaves, petals, nuts and berries from the streets around Wanstead or Wanstead Park itself. I’ve even knocked on someone’s door and asked if I can take a picture of their gorgeous flowers. From these, I create digital collage images, which I also turn into designs for cards. Sometimes, I just sit quietly and look. It’s amazing what you can see when you truly look; this is what nature teaches us, to appreciate the small details of the beautiful plants around us.

Screen printing can be a complex process, but I choose to do it at home on the kitchen table, cutting out traditional stencils, which encourages simplicity. I’ve always been fascinated by plants and flowers and the character they have when distilled into simple shapes. I use acrylic paints for their vibrancy and work fairly large, with anywhere between three and eight colours per screen print. These days, it’s fairly easy to recreate the look of screen printing using digital techniques, but it’s the real-life inconsistencies that give a screen print its character and joy. I usually start by intending 10 prints, but after some misaligning or soggy stencils, I usually end up with about five originals I am satisfied with. I then scan the image and create artwork to send to the printers to create greetings cards.

I have lived in Wanstead for 30 years and always look forward to the show of bluebells every year. It used to be a local secret. But sadly, the rise of social media has led to many more people coming simply to grab a picture of themselves with these iconic and joyful plants. Did you know that a bluebell once stepped on can take six years to recover? We all need to be careful to protect the natural heritage we have, otherwise, sadly, all we will have left are the pictures.

To view more of Verity’s art and to order greetings cards, visit wnstd.com/verity

Open-air theatre will return to Wanstead Park this summer.

The new season will begin on 14 June with a performance of The Wind in the Willows by outdoor theatre company Illyria.

This will be followed by the East London Shakespeare Festival’s production of As You Like It on 5 and 6 July.

Illyria will then return with Pride and Prejudice on 22 July and HMS Pinafore on 8 August.

All shows take place in the park’s Temple enclosure and attendees are encouraged to bring their own seating and a picnic.

Visit wnstd.com/wp25

Residents are continuing their fight against the changes made to local bus routes last September.

“We will stand up for residents until we see the improvements needed, starting with the W14, now running hourly and not even stopping at Whipps Cross Hospital etc… We believe TfL’s decision was based on profitability rather than residents’ needs… The struggle continues but we are here for the duration! Please help by signing the petition,” said Liz Martins from the Save Our Local Bus Services campaign.

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TfL has confirmed the W14 bus will once again stop at Woodbine Place.

“We regularly review our services according to feedback… We are now working to change the W14 westbound service so it stops at Woodbine Place,” said a spokesperson.

It follows TfL’s review of the W12, W13 and W14 bus routes, which were restructured last September.

The review – published last month – concludes the services have not been good enough, with the arrival of new electric buses in the summer expected to improve performance.

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This year’s Wanstead Festival will take place on 14 September.

Exhibitors, performers and caterers are invited to apply to take part in the annual community event. “This popular event attracts thousands of people, who come together to enjoy a fun-filled day on Christ Church Green. So, don’t miss out on this great opportunity to showcase your business. And why not invite your friends and family to Wanstead for a brilliant day out with great entertainment?” said a spokesperson for Vision RCL.

Visit wnstd.com/festival

Wanstead Theatre Co will mark the VE Day anniversary with an adaptation of a moving wartime play, and in a truly special moment, the playwright is flying in from New York to see it. Fiona Gordon reports

One of our slogans we like to use here at Wanstead Theatre Co is ‘for the community, with the help of the community,’ as since our very first production we have relied on the kindness of Wanstead residents and businesses to lend us their venues, props, costumes and general expertise. In short, we couldn’t do our plays without our wonderful community.

For our fifth production, we knew we wanted to do something very special for the 80th anniversary of VE Day. So much is going on in Wanstead for VE Day, most of it on 5 May to tie in with the early May Bank Holiday, and we wanted to be part of it too!

After reading every play written or set on the Home Front in wartime, we finally narrowed it down. And once again, our community stepped in, this time our church community, who offered us their beautiful buildings to perform our next show.

The first option – a 1940s farce set in a church with too many vicars and an escaped Nazi on the loose – would have been perfect at Christ Church or Wanstead United Reformed Church, but we were unable to get the rights. The second option – a love-letter drama between a soldier and a girl who have never met – would have shone under the high-tech lights at the fantastic and soon-to-be premier performance space, The Wanstead Curtain in the old Hermon Hill Methodist church but, again, the rights were unavailable.

Our final choice, See Rock City – a love story that follows the lives of ordinary folk left behind in WWII – was a good choice to perform at a series of VE Day parties at Our Lady of Lourdes parish centre, but it wasn’t exactly straightforward. Originally set in America, we asked for permission to re-set it in England as we felt our community would be able to see their own parents’ and grandparents’ lives in the truly universal characters and story. And, so thrilled is the award-winning playwright (Arlene Hutton) with our British adaptation, she has decided to fly in from New York especially to see it!

Wanting her to see it in its best possible light, our impossibly wonderful community has once again stepped into the breach! Cue, literal, lights, set, action! The Wanstead Curtain, The Wanstead Fringe, lighting experts and staging wizards are all helping to turn the Our Lady of Lourdes parish centre into an English garden with a fabulous VE Day party in the interval.

We are so grateful for this support and truly hope we can fulfil our side of the slogan. For the community, with the help of the community has never felt so important.

See Rock City will run at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish Centre from 5 to 11 May with a special matinee on VE Day itself for older community members. For more information, visit wnstd.com/theatre

As part of VE Day 80th anniversary celebrations, local historian Davis Watson will give a talk about the impact World War Two had on Wanstead

Eighty years ago this month, Wanstead joined the rest of the country in celebrating VE Day. Amid the jubilation, Wanstead could also reflect on a trying time that had seen residents pushed to their limits.

By the time war had been declared in September 1939, Wanstead, like many other towns across the nation, had been preparing in case of conflict. The Borough of Wanstead and Woodford had founded a local Civil Defence Service in March 1936 and when war was announced, 43 wardens’ posts, spread across six districts, were quickly confirmed.

Locations of posts in Wanstead included the entrance to Wanstead Golf Club, the grounds of the Weavers’ Almshouses and Nutter Lane, opposite the junction with Buckingham Road. Other well-known local sites utilised during the war included Wanstead High School for use as a field kitchen, Christ Church Green as a home for a temporary shelter and Hermon Hill Methodist Church hall as a rest centre to provide accommodation for bombed-out families.

Wardens dashed between these sites night after night as reports of bombings and fires were reported to the posts. One of their most memorable call-outs occurred in August 1940 when a British plane crashed in Hereford Road, bouncing off two houses before landing in the road and sending stray bullets through nearby walls; the pilot having baled out successfully, the sole injury was sustained by a dog.

A week later saw the commencement of the Blitz and Wanstead suffered heavily on the first night, chiefly around the Nightingale Lane junction of the High Street. Roughly 500 incendiaries fell in that area alone, which destroyed several buildings, including two houses on Grove Road (since renamed Grosvenor Road) and a block of flats at the newly built Shrubbery. Several properties on the High Street itself were also badly damaged.

In the meantime, other important measures were seen to; guardrails were installed at Eagle Pond to prevent pedestrians falling in during blackouts, a siren was installed at Wanstead Police Station to signal the start of a raid and the all-clear, and Reverend Godwin Birchenough, rector of the parish, reluctantly cancelled Wednesday evening services as they were frequently interrupted by raids.

In the midst of such action on home soil, countless local residents also received news of the death of loved ones on active service. Wanstead residents to die serving their country included pilot Arthur Lowthian Barge of the RAF Volunteer Reserve, who, in April 1943, crashed his plane into a tree in Wiltshire. Barge’s father, also named Arthur, was a local councillor who played a huge role in civil defence in the borough throughout the war, at one point serving as chief warden. A fellow military casualty was Battle of Britain pilot David Edward Lloyd, who passed away in March 1942 when he collided with a Polish plane over Hayes. Both Barge and Lloyd, among many other Second World War military casualties, are buried in the graveyard at St Mary’s, Wanstead.

1. Wanstead High Street.
2. Rescue workers rest after a bombing on Lake House Road on 19 March 1941.
3. The Shrubberies following bombing in the early hours of 8 September 1940.
4. Lake House Road following a bombing on 19 March 1941.
5. The Hermitage, Snaresbrook Road, bombed in October 1940.
6. Snaresbrook Road.
7. 12–14 Hereford Road after a British plane crashed in the street on 31 August 1940.
8. Evergreen House on Wanstead High Street following a bombing on 7 September 1940.

A talk entitled Wanstead at War will take place at Christ Church on 5 May from 3pm (free; no booking required). For more information on other local VE Day anniversary events, visit wnstd.com/ve80

In the 12th of a series of articles, Revd James Gilder of Wanstead Parish reflects on the unexpected connection he found between last month’s Easter celebrations and this month’s VE Day anniversary gatherings

For the last month, my life seems to have been largely consumed by preparing either for our Holy Week and Easter celebrations in the church or for our VE Day 80th anniversary events in the town. Aside from a lot of administration, it wouldn’t initially appear that these two events have much in common. Yet, as I have come to think about them both, I have started to appreciate that in fact, they both might embody a sense of joy despite a previous experience of pain.

It is very difficult, 80 years on, to really have a sense of what the war must have been like for people day-to-day. With the benefit of hindsight, we now know, of course, that the Allies eventually were victorious – and every picture we see of the Blitz, of rationing, of D-Day etc, is experienced through the lens that ‘eventually everything was OK’, that there was a kind of happy ending and that good triumphed over evil (although naturally, the historians of Wanstead would probably say it was much more complicated than that).

Yet, at the time, such an ending was far from guaranteed. The Blitz was experienced, not as something merely to be endured, but as a very present danger that might have ended not only in homes destroyed and loss of life but also in the loss of our entire nation to a foreign power.

We also see the Easter story in the same way – ultimately, despite the pain and loss of Good Friday, we know how the story ends, and it ends well: with redemption for humanity in the Resurrection – although I very much doubt that those who were there on Good Friday itself were able to see it the same way as we do now. It must have been a desolate and painful experience.

Whether one is a person of faith or not, it is a dismal life indeed if we cannot believe that there is something of the good in this world which ultimately has the capacity to triumph over the bad. Christians believe this is the hope for us all, and that in effect it has already happened – that despite the presence of evil, the good does win out. No doubt this is a feeling shared in one way or another with other faiths and those who do not believe in God.

For many years, it has been the fashion to question whether such notions of good and evil are not antiquated. We learn so much about different places and cultures in the world and this has led many in the West to question whether everything is in fact relative.  Who are we to say what is good or not, some ask? Isn’t that just being judgmental? Yet, I think that to go down that kind of relativistic route ultimately gets us nowhere other than to a place of pain. Indeed, in a world where much can be bad, we need to know there is also something that is objectively good. We need to celebrate the joy despite experiencing the pain.

For more information on local VE Day anniversary events, visit wnstd.com/ve80

Redbridge Council is looking at ways to improve road safety on Hermon Hill.

It follows multiple collisions in recent years and calls from residents to address problems with speeding. “We are pleased to hear the council will be working on designs to improve road safety on Hermon Hill and we share residents’ concerns. We have been advocating for road safety measures for a number of years and look forward to seeing the draft plans, which will be subject to consultation with residents,” said Councillor Jo Blackman.

A planning application has been submitted to redevelop two single-storey shops on Wanstead High Street.

The proposal involves demolishing the existing buildings – currently home to The Wanstead Barber Shop (1A) and the now closed Simple ‘n’ Natural shop (3A) – and replacing them with a development featuring a ground floor retail unit and three flats above.

evelopers say the new building will complement the surrounding architecture and will in-fill the gap within the existing three-storey terrace.

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