June 2026

Five gardens on the Aldersbrook and Lakehouse Estates will open to the public on 5 July as part of the charitable National Garden Scheme.

“You’ll find something inspirational at each garden. The ‘no waste’ garden at 152 Belgrave Road, for example, uses waste products from a house renovation to create an environmentally conscious space, while my garden at 4 Empress Avenue includes log piles, wildflowers and a natural pond,” said Ruth Martin.

The gardens will open from 1pm to 5pm (tickets: £8).

Visit wnstd.com/ngsal

The Wanstead War Memorial is set to be restored following a successful fundraising initiative.

“Thank you to everyone who donated to the fund, which now stands in excess of £9,000, enough to complete phase one of the project: to clean the structure, repoint the stone and repaint the base,” said Rev James Gilder, who is awaiting a licence from Redbridge Council to proceed with the work.

Phase two will seek to add the names of around 40 servicemen who were recently discovered to be missing from the memorial.

Visit wnstd.com/wwm

A dam built by vandals was removed from a stretch of the River Roding between Wanstead Park and Royston Meadows earlier this month.

“The dam was made of large plywood sheets and a mixture of charred and sawn-down trees… A lot of work went into this construction, if only these mindless vandals would channel their energy into something more eco-positive,” said Derek Seume from Friends of the River Roding.

It took two volunteers two and a half hours to clear the dumped material.

Visit wnstd.com/fotrr

Five homes across Wanstead welcomed over 150 visitors into their gardens at the end of May as part of the charitable National Garden Scheme (NGS).

“We raised a total of £902 in three hours! The visitors were able to wander around five very different gardens and perhaps gained ideas for their own plots. If you would like to open your garden next year and contribute to cancer charities, please get in touch before September,” said NGS local area organiser Teresa Farnham

Email teresa.farnham@yahoo.co.uk

A new strand of the Wanstead Fringe will launch this September.

The Family Fringe will feature a host of events designed for families, children and young people. “The idea of bringing together all the events suitable for families and children is to send a signal that the Fringe is for everyone, we want all of Wanstead to feel involved,” said Fringe chair Giles Wilson.

Among the Family Fringe activities will be the launch of Wanstead Youth Theatre. “Young people will spend two weeks in August taking part in workshops before performing a production during the opening weekend of the Fringe.” Now in its 14th year, the Wanstead Fringe will run from 5 to 26 September, bringing a diverse range of cultural events to local venues.

“If you’d like to be involved, we still need volunteers. From helping to run plays at the Wanstead Curtain and The Bull to screening films and checking tickets. And it’s not too late if you want to run your own event.”

Email info@wansteadfringe.org

After restoring the Alders Brook earlier this year, River Roding Trust volunteers were facing prosecution by the Environment Agency. But Trust chair Paul Powlesland will not stop what he considers vital work

Update: the Environment Agency has now dropped it’s plans for prosecution

Good news! After decades of ignoring rampant environmental crime on the Roding, the Environment Agency (EA) has finally decided to take action. Bad news! It’s not against Thames Water for illegally dumping billions of litres of sewage in the Roding, or the criminals who have dumped thousands of tonnes of rubbish on its banks, but against the River Roding Trust for… restoring a river without a permit!

In the April 2026 issue of the Wanstead Village Directory, I wrote about our biggest river restoration project to date, bringing 250m of river back to life on the Alders Brook (a tributary of the River Roding with its source within the City of London Cemetery). Over the course of 10 days, we removed hundreds of tonnes of silt, leaves and rubbish from the river. Dozens of amazing volunteers then sorted through the wet silt and removed the tonnes of rubbish it contained. As part of the work, we also opened up accessible points to the river, so you can now visit and walk along it. In short, we restored the Alders Brook as a rare and precious jewel.

Then, within a week of River Roding Trust volunteers completing this magnificent work, EA investigators had been down to the site and rattled off a letter threatening us with prosecution for doing the work without a permit. This is despite the fact the Trust had repeatedly asked the EA to do this vital work themselves, which they refused, and despite the fact they have also not investigated the huge, illegal sewage outlet on the Cran Brook a few hundred metres away.

The actions of the EA are nothing short of outrageous, and the River Roding Trust is calling for all threats of prosecution against us and our volunteers to be publicly withdrawn, and threats to destroy the pond and river channel we have created similarly withdrawn. The EA should instead use its prosecutorial powers against Thames Water to demand they produce a plan to fix all illegal sewage spills on the Roding by 2030, failing which they should prosecute every single illegal sewage spill to the full force of the law.

Whilst I am no longer shocked at the indifference of public bodies and local councils to the desperate plight of our rivers, it has genuinely surprised me that the EA thinks it is a good use of their time to prosecute volunteers for doing their job for them. I implore them to withdraw their prosecution threats and work with us instead. The Roding could genuinely be a test case in how government and river guardians can work together to protect and restore our rivers.

Only three things will stop me from continuing this important work. The first is for the EA to step in and do the work themselves. The second is to jail me. The third is to kill me. Your move, Environment Agency.

For more information and to support the River Roding Trust, visit wnstd.com/rrtvea

The three English Longhorn cows currently grazing in Wanstead Park were relocated from the dried-out lakebed of Ornamental Water to nearby grassland on The Glade last month.

“Due to a lack of rain, vegetation on the lakebed hasn’t grown as much as we hoped, so we moved the cows to ensure they have plenty of grazing. We hope to welcome them back to Ornamental Water soon,” said a City of London Corporation spokesperson.

Visitors are reminded to keep a safe distance from the cows and to ensure dogs are under control.

This year’s Wanstead Festival will take place on 13 September.

“Mark your calendars and get ready to enjoy live performances, sport demos, immersive activities and much more on Christ Church Green. We welcome applications from those who wish to trade and display at this year’s event… This is an excellent opportunity to engage with the local community,” said a Vision RCL spokesperson.

Visit wnstd.com/wf26

Calvin Bailey, MP for Leyton and Wanstead, has been appointed Minister for Veterans and People at the Ministry of Defence.

It follows a ministerial reshuffle instigated by the resignation of Defence Secretary John Healey earlier this month.

“I am proud to have been appointed alongside the new Defence Secretary, Dan Jarvis. The Armed Forces have shaped my life. A sixth-form scholarship gave me my start and set me on a path that led to 24 years of service in the RAF and, ultimately, to becoming an MP,” said Calvin.

One writer, one Interrail pass and a wildly over-ambitious, 37-stop journey to test railway accessibility in Europe. Wanstead-based travel writer Carole Edrich presents the fifth instalment of her Big Rail Story

Brussels South Station is Zuid in Dutch. You’d think it would be Sud in French. That would be way too easy. Instead, it’s called Midi. After years in Brussels, I’m no longer confused by this. I like to think… Ypres (which is Ieper in Dutch) is not confusing at all.

Somehow, I’m on an earlier-than-planned train to Gent St Pierre, watching the landscape flatten into fields, evenly distributed farms, woods and pools or ponds. They look restful now, although many could be bomb craters caused by the Allies in World War II, which these days is seriously sobering.

The train stops at Denderleeuw, which my slightly dodgy Dutch translates poetically. I recognise leeuw as lion, dender as teeth, think of dandelions flowering and imagine the beautiful town of Denderleeuw blossoming ever outwards. I wonder at the etymology and look it up. It turns out that dender is ancient Celtic for a roaring or turbulent river, and leeuw medieval Germanic for a burial mound. Proof that my dodgy Dutch can’t be much dodgier comes when I realise that dender doesn’t mean teeth at all. The burial ground has been long since absorbed, and the town is more commuter belt than country belle. The imaginatively named River Dender is nowadays calm and heavily managed, and the town’s heraldic adoption of a lion (I got that bit right, kinda) was more romantic than historical. Place name as palimpsest. Who’d have thought!

Leaving the town-with-a-name-that-records-a-wildness-that-has-since-been-erased, we travel under a beautiful wooden bridge at Welle. Welle means exactly what you’d think, if you heard it: well. Made entirely of tropical Azobe hardwood by the Dutch timber specialist Wijma Kampen, the bridge is a pedestrian gateway to the 65 hectare De Wellemeersen flood plain nature reserve. Wood was used instead of conventional materials after locals objected. This hardwood needed no additional treatment, cost roughly a third of a conventional bridge and will last a theoretical 100-odd years. You read that right; 65 hectares of Flemish wetland have been protected by transporting wood from a vulnerable tree species across continents to satisfy a nature conservation objection. And yes, by the Dutch, who were trading Gabonese hardwoods in the 1590s and are still doing so four centuries later. Unlike my Dutch, the irony holds up.

On we go to Gent-Sint-Pieters (hah). I’ve made good time and am early, so have a short wander before taking my connection to Ypres which – this time – I find with ease. Or so I think. Somehow, I arrive much later than planned. No wonder the ticket checker looked at me strangely. I was on the cheaper, slow train. Genius? Me? Well… I’m here now. And discover that the locals call it Yper.

For relevant links to the places, to read more of Carole’s work or to listen to her podcast, visit wnstd.com/edrich