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The Wanstead and Woodford Marie Curie fundraising group has reached its target of raising £100,000 for the charity, which provides care and support to people with terminal illnesses and their families.

“This has taken six years to achieve, but we are finally there,” said a spokesperson for the group, which was formed in June 2013. To mark the achievement, a celebratory afternoon will take place at Wanstead House on 22 February from 2pm to 4pm. There will be a short talk on the work of Marie Curie, a cheque presentation and informal discussions over tea and biscuits.

“When we collect in the local area residents are so supportive and generous, and we would like to let them know how their small contributions add up and welcome them to celebrate with us if they want to drop in and meet us.”

Call 020 8989 2193

In the ninth of a series of articles looking at the developing plans for restoring Wanstead Park, Richard Arnopp of the Friends of Wanstead Parklands reflects on the recent River Roding flooding

This winter, nature gave Wanstead Park an unexpected but very welcome Christmas present. On 21 December, after days of very heavy rain, the water level in the River Roding rose to its highest level for some years and inundated the Ornamental Water. Within hours, the flood began to recede, but several years of low water levels had been resolved at a stroke, with the lake filled to capacity.

The River Roding sits in a huge valley, the relic of its past as a seasonal torrent during the last glaciation, carrying vast volumes of spring meltwater from the ice sheets just to the north. Nowadays, for most of the year, it is a placid little stream, but sometimes during the winter months, it shows something of its old mettle, with significant flooding occurring every decade or so.

The Roding and the Ornamental Water have a close historical relationship, which looks likely to be revived in a new form, as I shall explain.

Prior to the creation of the lake, the natural course of the river as it ran through Wanstead Park isn’t altogether certain, though an engraving of circa 1708 suggests that part of it roughly followed what became the eastern arm of the later Ornamental Water behind the islands. At this stage, there were also two artificial canals, which were later partly subsumed into the lake as it developed.

The Ornamental Water as we know it first appears on a plan of 1725, though construction may have begun up to a decade earlier. The new lake utilised elements of the water features already present and was directly fed by the river.

The water level was sustained by a system of weirs. The original plan of the lake was modified at various times, most radically by 2nd Earl Tylney of Castlemaine, but probably reached something like its present form around 1760.

Around this time, or slightly later, the Ornamental Water was severed from the river, which was canalised behind it. The average water level in the river is now about eight feet lower than in the lake when it is full, and the lake is retained by two brick-faced dams. The owners of Wanstead Park retained the right to temporarily dam the river to top up or flush out the Ornamental Water, and this right was exercised into the 20th century.

The purpose of canalising the River Roding may well have been to mitigate the flood risk upstream from the park. In 1768 a stone bridge, planned in 1752, had been built at Woodford. Almost immediately this was destroyed by floods and had to be rebuilt in 1771. Further canalisation of the river has taken place over the years, most recently in connection with construction of the Barking Relief Road.

As the Friends of Wanstead Parklands have explained in previous articles, discussions are being held with the Environment Agency to allow winter pumping from the River Roding into the Ornamental Water. However, as well as demonstrating the potential for winter spate pumping to manage lakes levels, the recent flood also fits into the evolving strategy of creating planned overflow areas to reduce potential flood risk for residents and businesses along the river.

Volunteers came out in strength this month to clean up Wanstead on the first litter pick of 2020.

“Some 12 adults and children gathered at Woodbine Place before fanning out to collect the debris and detritus of those who walk and drive around our streets. The result was a haul of 14 bags of rubbish collected… The turnout proves that the community spirit in Wanstead is second to none… This year will be a significant one, with new wheelie bins being rolled out and efforts increasing to clean things up,” said Councillor Jo Blackman.

Litter picks take place on the third Saturday of every month, meeting at corner of Woodbine Place and Wanstead High Street from 10am.

Additionally, litter pickers, bags and gloves are also available in the library for those wishing to pick in their own time.

Email Jo.Blackman@redbridge.gov.uk

The Woodford and District Floral Arrangement Group will hold its AGM and host the editor of the UK’s leading floral art magazine The Flower Arranger on 17 February from 7.30pm at Wanstead Library (visitors: £5).

“I will discuss the history of the magazine, how it has been inspiring floral artists for nearly 60 years and also its future now flower arranging has been taken up by the Instagram generation. Floral arrangements inspired by six decades of the magazine will also be on display,” said editor Chloë Bryan-Brown.

Call 020 8530 2427

Paul Kaufman, Chair of East London Humanists, introduces Ariane Sherine, writer, comedienne and woman of many parts who will feature at the group’s Wanstead meeting this month.

Ariane Sherine, who lives in Leytonstone, will be talking about her extraordinary and eventful life journey and signing copies of her latest book at Wanstead Library this January.

Expelled from school at 16, Ariane started hanging around with Duran Duran and played piano on two of their tracks. Her journalistic career started at 21, reviewing records for NME. She was soon contributing to TV shows,  including Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps and Countdown, and spent time on the stand-up comedy circuit. She has gone on to write several books and is a contributor to The Spectator, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sunday Times and Esquire magazine.

Ariane has a young daughter and is a patron of Humanists UK. In 2013 she published the ebook Give: How to be Happy. She wrote in The Guardian at its launch about her lack of religious belief and her wish for her daughter to grow up in a kinder world. The book describes 10 practical actions we can all take to help achieve this. Ariane sold half of her possessions as part of the campaign and donated the proceeds to Médecins Sans Frontières.

But perhaps the best-known achievement initiated by Ariane was the Atheist Bus Campaign. Launched in 2009, the campaign grew at an astonishing pace. A total of £100,000 was raised in four days. It was taken up in over a dozen countries. Ariane thought up the campaign in response to the use of bus advertising by the Jesus Said organisation to promote their message that all non-Christians would burn in hell for all eternity. Ariane’s message was: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” Even this simple retort was too much for some. It was criticised by George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury. Attempts to run similar campaigns in Russia, Italy and Australia were thwarted. And there was a backlash for Ariane. The hate mail she received from extreme Christians contributed to a breakdown.

The road to recovery prompted Ariane to write her book Talk Yourself Better: A Confused Person’s Guide to Therapy, Counselling and Self-Help. Reviews include: “What an excellent, long-overdue idea! A super-accessible guide, through the bewildering marketplace of modern therapy, to ease our noble search for help,” (Derren Brown); “How do we cope with this brutal world? In this witty, revealing book Ariane Sherine runs through the ways. An excellent, funny and thought-provoking read for all who seek answers,” (Arthur Smith).

There will be time for questions and discussion following Ariane’s presentation.

Wanstead has changed considerably over the past 160 years. Ahead of a talk at Wanstead Library this month, Dr Colin Runeckles discusses his work cataloguing local building plans dating back to 1858.

The Heritage Section of Redbridge Central Library holds over 40,000 building plans for Ilford and 14,000 for Wanstead and Woodford. These range from an entire area, drainage and street plans, churches and cinemas, stables and garages, down to alterations to houses including installing WCs and additional bedrooms. The majority of the plans are folded and stored in individual envelopes and numbered for identification purposes.

However, it should be noted that not all plans are available – sometimes, the original list records that the plan is missing and what has been left may be a document relating to the building. Where the original list records the exact location of the building, this still has some use to researchers, but where we are left with simply ‘one house’ in a particular street, the value of the record diminishes greatly.

Ilford Historical Society member Carol Franklin took on the task of computerising the details of every Ilford plan onto Excel spreadsheets. The details include the following: plan number, month and year, building type, house numbers, company, street name, area of Ilford, number of houses, proposer, builder and architect. So, for example, if you wanted to look at every plan held by a particular builder – Cameron Corbett, for instance – this can be done very quickly by filtering the information held on the spreadsheet.

A volunteer subsequently made a start on the plans for Wanstead and Woodford and catalogued 1,500 plans dating from 1959 to 1963. Sue Page, Development Librarian, gave me the more exciting task of going right back to the beginning of the archive for Wanstead, dating from 1858. So far, I have catalogued up to 1924, and I’m aiming to finish Wanstead up to the point it joined Woodford in the new Borough Council in 1934 by January 2020. Part of my work is to reassign houses to their modern street number as so many were given individual names or terrace numbers when they were built.

As a researcher into the streets and houses of the borough, the original plans and the lists are invaluable for my work into the growth of the area. This is especially true for the years before the earliest detailed Kelly’s Directory of 1900, where knowledge of when roads were laid out or the first houses built can be sketchy, to say the least. I am also constructing a full list of roads for the area with the date of them being laid out.

Some of my findings will be the subject of a talk at Wanstead Library this month, entitled Building Wanstead, where I will show the development of Wanstead over the last 150 years or so through a number of these plans.

In the 19th of a series of articles charting the Wild Wanstead project, Alex Deverill encourages us all to resolve to do more to help local wildlife in 2020.

The latest State of Nature report published in October paints a sorry picture of the UK’s wildlife, which is continuing to decline due to factors like modern farming techniques, use of pesticides and urbanisation. But anyone with a bit of outdoor space can make a big difference. Here are six New Year’s resolutions to help nature thrive in Wanstead.

Love the trees you’ve got
We’re lucky in Wanstead to have some ancient trees in the parks around us. But mature trees in our gardens are just as important. Take the lime trees where I live. These trees are like a wild flower meadow in the sky. The leaves are eaten by many moth caterpillars and attract aphids, which are food for hoverflies, ladybirds and many species of bird. The flowers provide nectar and pollen for insects, particularly bees. Long-lived trees provide dead wood for wood-boring beetles and nesting holes for birds.

Plant a new tree
Billions of new trees are urgently needed to address the climate crisis, and they have the added benefit of helping wildlife too. TV gardener Joe Swift says some of his favourite garden trees include Cercis siliquastrum (Judas tree, 10m high, 9m spread), Amelanchier lamarckii (10m by 10m, but can easily be kept smaller), Malus ‘John Downie’ (crab apple, height 8m, spread 6m), Prunus x subhirtella ‘Autumnalis’ (winter-flowering cherry, 8m by 8m), Ilex aquifolium ‘JC van Tol’ (holly, height 6m, spread 4m) and Arbutus unedo (strawberry tree, 5m by 5m). Winter is the perfect time to plant a tree as a cheap, small, bare root sapling – so get that spade out!

Create a mini meadow
Flower-rich meadows support eight times more wildlife than close-cut grass. Just dig up a patch of turf and plant a wild flower seed mix this spring. Alternatively, sit back and let nature do her thing. Cut the grass just once in September – if you remove the cuttings every year to reduce the nutrients in the soil, wild flowers will gradually naturalise without you planting anything.

Plant native shrubs or a hedge
Hedges are brilliant. At the front, they provide a green barrier against pollution from cars. At the back, they create the twiggy, thorny habitat loved by small birds and hated by burglars. It’s not too late to plant one using bare root native species like hawthorn, dogwood, hazel, blackthorn and dog rose – and for evergreen, try beech and hornbeam (which keep their leaves in hedges), or yew, holly and privet. Why not work with your neighbour to swap your last fence panel for native shrubs to let hedgehogs move more easily between gardens?

Build a pond or water feature
Adding water adds a new dimension to a garden. Before you know it, it will be full of newts and a magnet for insects. Woodford Aquatics, just up the road, is great for advice and any materials you need.    

Green up hard surfacing
Nothing can live on a paving slab, so why not bring your drive or patio back to life in 2020? Lift bricks, slabs or gravel to find the earth, and plant pollinator-friendly shrubs like weigela, viburnum, sambucus nigra or hebe. Place a large, raised bed direct on the hard surfacing to create a new border (scaling up helps, but even big containers always need more watering than plants in soil). Or make the most of nooks and crannies with plants that can survive in smaller areas of soil like Mexican fleabane, Aubrieta, hardy geraniums, bellfower and thyme.

It’s not too late to stop the decline of our wildlife if we all make the most of the space we’ve got.

In the eighth of a series of articles looking at the developing plans for restoring Wanstead Park, John Meehan, chairman of the Friends of Wanstead Parklands, reveals some of the park’s secrets and surviving features of its long history. Photo of the Repton Oak by Richard Arnopp.

Wanstead Park has had a variety of uses, styles and functions over hundreds of years. It has been a royal retreat, a deer park, a landscaped garden and, since 1882, a public open space managed as part of Epping Forest. Many surviving features of its long history are still there if you know where to find them!

If you enter Wanstead Park from its western end, through the Blake Hall entrance, you enter an area known as Reservoir Wood. Walk for perhaps 150 yards and you will come upon a magnificent oak to the right, with huge outstretched branches and with a newly cleared ‘halo’ around it. It is believed to be a ‘bundle tree’, which means it was not grown from one sapling but a number of young trees planted together in one hole. The object was to produce a large specimen tree with a spreading form, as all the stems merge into one huge, fluted trunk. This was a practice associated with the late Georgian landscaper Humphry Repton, and the tree is known as the ‘Repton Oak’ after him. Humphry Repton did produce proposals for Wanstead Park in 1813, in one of his last major projects, and the tree was probably planted not long after.

Reservoir Wood was named after a lake which once occupied the area. In fact, it stretched from the golf course to beyond Woodlands Avenue, and from Blake Hall Road to a large embankment, which is now cut by the path a little way beyond the Repton Oak. The Reservoir was drained by 1818, probably because of problems with the water supply. Its site was planted with a wood, perhaps to block the open view of Wanstead House from the public road.

The path continues to the east, past the Heronry Pond and, as you pass the second of the two islands, the Temple comes into view. Built around 1760, it seems originally to have been planned as a small building with an earth mound to the front, making it look as though it was sitting on top of a small hill, and looking like a beautiful Roman temple you would expect to see in the romantic 17th-century paintings by Lorrain and Poussin. At a slightly later date, or perhaps even while construction was still in progress, two brick wings were added, making the structure sit heavier within the landscape. Perhaps these were intended to house the menagerie, which we know the building was later used for.

Bearing around to the left of the Temple, taking the vehicle track to Warren Road, you will notice a huge evergreen tree, which is a yew. The path here leads past a big mound in the woods, which is covered in bluebells in the spring. This path leads out onto the Great Ride, and if you walk across the ride, you will find another, larger, mound. The two Mounts, as they were known, were roughly symmetrical features on either side of the Great Ride, designed to allow visitors to get above the highly formal garden to view the formal gardens, mazes and avenues. From above you could have made sense of the complex formal garden designs. The Mounts would have had a spiral path leading to their summits and the northern one seems to have been crowned by a little temple. Today, they are overgrown sentinels of a 300-year-old landscape that once covered huge areas, with avenues radiating out across Wanstead Flats to Leytonstone and Forest Gate.

The work of the Friends of Wanstead Parklands is to reveal these secrets in cooperation with the owners of the various parts of the park, the main owner being the Corporation of London. The landowners and other stakeholders, including the Friends, have jointly created a Parkland Plan, which sets out a long-term restoration and management programme that respects history, people and nature.

It’s party time for members of Art Group Wanstead on 23 January.

“As the group plans for the 2020s after running Art Trail Wanstead for a decade, new ideas and organisers will be needed. A short meeting will be held at the beginning of the night… Please bring some finger food to share; a bar will be available,” said group founder Donna Mizzi. Artists interested in joining the group (membership is free) are welcome to attend the event, which will be held at Wanstead House community centre from 7pm.

Visit wnstd.com/art

In the fourth of a series of articles by members of the Woodford and Wanstead Photographic Society, Anila Hussain tells the story behind this image of the Reichstag staircase.

Architecture was one of the first things I photographed. It opened another door called perspectives. Every angle, every viewpoint; the structure looked so different to me.

I challenge myself to see how I can photograph one building but use every angle possible, giving it a completely different view. Great light also plays havoc with the shadows. I find it exciting. I never look at anything head-on. I still photograph everything, but for some unknown reason, architecture pulls me in more and more.

In any city I visit, I will always look for architecture and perspectives. Apart from liking what Foster and Partners create abroad and in London, my other most favourite architect is the late, great Zaha Hadid. Her curvaceous structures, which bring a feminine flair to such a male-dominated area, are jaw-dropping. The results are just superb. I think my dream job would be to travel the world, photographing her superb creations with my own added flair.

When visiting Berlin, it’s a must to pre-book a tour at the Reichstag. My advice: book it for an hour before sunset. That way, you can capture the glass spiral staircase in a wonderful light, and believe me, it’s stunning. A favourite by architects Foster and Partners, its innovative design shows one way up and another way down. The creative flair makes it mesmerising and leaves you wondering how.

Sometimes, it’s good not to stick to one form of photography. I always aspire to try everything, then chose what I adore. At the moment, I’m photographing flowers and food. Tomorrow, it could be something else. Keep challenging your abilities.

Helping others can be both fulfilling and fun, says Ron Jeffries of Redbridge Voluntary Care, a good neighbour scheme that has been running for over 40 years and is in need of volunteers in Wanstead.

From time to time, most people will know someone who needs help with transport to a hospital, the doctors, a clinic or the dentist. You may be aware of someone who is lonely, sick or elderly, someone who would welcome the company of a visitor.

You may have wondered if you might be able to help but are unsure how to go about it. If so, help is at hand! And it will be both fulfilling and fun for you, and a lifeline for someone who needs your support.

Redbridge Voluntary Care (RVC) is a good neighbour scheme and registered charity which started in 1973 and offers help to any resident of the London Borough of Redbridge. We help residents in many ways, by visiting lonely people, sitting with the sick or elderly when their carers go out or providing transport for people to attend medical appointments. We also take people to hospital to visit their partners or relatives. This can be a one-off visit or a regular commitment. In an emergency, RVC can get shopping or collect prescriptions. We also have volunteers who are willing to act as escorts during a visit to the doctor or hospital. This can be of benefit to patients who are hard of hearing, visually impaired or just nervous.

We have a small band of volunteers able to change light bulbs, check batteries, carry out small repairs, sort out bills or move furniture. However, what we cannot do is gardening, decorating, regular shopping or housework, or transport people who cannot get into an ordinary car.

At present, we have over 100 volunteers. Some act as duty officers, working from their homes for a day once a month or so. A dedicated telephone line is transferred to the home, taking calls from residents who need help. The duty officer has a contact list of volunteers who are able to assist when needed. When a request for help comes in from a client, carer, Age UK or social worker, the duty officer has to match up volunteers to the request and see who is available for the required task.

New volunteers in the Wanstead and Woodford area are always welcome, and we also need more duty officers. The work is rewarding in that we are able to offer help to those who are vulnerable and who need our assistance. Volunteers meet from time to time to share experiences, and so RVC is also a means of getting to know members of your local community.

Are you up for it? Can you spare an hour or so now and then to help someone who is lonely or vulnerable? If you are interested in finding out more, please get in touch. You will be warmly welcomed.

Residents keen on beautifying the streets of Wanstead for the year ahead are urged not to miss the 2020 deadline for adopting a tree pit near their home.

“Planting bee-friendly flowers under a street tree will make your road look beautiful, reduce chemicals being sprayed and help wildlife,” said a spokesperson for Wild Wanstead, which is aiming to increase the number of street trees across the neighbourhood planted at their base to support pollinating insects.

“Just email the council by 25 January to tell them the location of the tree you’re adopting and they’ll provide a label to stop it being sprayed. Plant the base with wild flowers, geraniums, herbs or any other small plants.”

Email cleansing.services@redbridge.gov.uk or visit wnstd.com/treepit for more information and street gardening safety advice.