High Road follows the path of an old Roman road from Colchester in Essex to London and is one of the oldest in the UK. It has been in use for at least two thousand years. The junction is where Whalebone Lane South and North meet the High Road. The areas of fields and allotments along side the roads are all houses and shop now. The pond visible on the left of the image is now covered by industrial areas along Selina’s Lane.
Continuing from last week’s theme of the construction of Dagenham, we move to the area around Dagenham parish church and see how it changes over a period of ten years.
This first image shows the Leys Field and Church Elm Lane as they were c.1950. Leys in an old name for this area, dated to at least the mid 1600s from archive documents.
Snaking down the photograph to the right of the church is the Wantz stream, not culverted until later in the 1960s and at this point still prone to summer flooding. In the early 1950s there were plans to develop the Leys field into another large park similar to Central Park or Parsloes.
Just ten years later (c.1960) and the need for housing has lead to development of the portion of Leys field close to the church. The ambitious park plans of the 1950s have found fruit in the form of Old Dagenham park, constructed from the remainder of the Leys, and just outside the field of view of the second photograph.
By mid 1921, the construction of the Becontree Estate and the enlargement of Dagenham was gathering pace. The photograph below shows an aerial view of the west of the estate looking north to Chadwell Heath. The two prominent roads running parallel to the bottom of the photograph and diagonally to the right are Longbridge Road and Beacontree Avenue respectively.
In the middle distance some of the housing is beginning to take shape, although large areas of land are still open fields. It took a further ten years before some of the more recognisable features of Dagenham were constructed. The second photograph has the Heathway running diagonally down, left to right. Just visible before the great sweep of Downing Road, and towards the top of the photo is a partially constructed Heathway Hill. Heathway station still being a year or so away from opening at this point.
Another random dip into the past next week…
These bank holidays screw up your sense of time… I meant to post this on Wednesday.
The small smudge towards the middle of the leaf is my non-traditional entry for EDW this week.
Here is a zoom so we can really see the beauty of this little foreign invader.
This is Eupteryx decemnotata a Southern European leafhopper that has recently shown up in the UK. They have arrived on plants imported from the continent. They were first reported in the UK a couple of years back and have steadily established themselves.
Leafhoppers in general are very well dressed insects on any day of the week. They are also a total pain to try and photograph, the dedicated bunch over at Flickr are doing much better than I am.