The growth of the MarshesBy Walthamstow GuardianBEFORE the start of the holiday season, Looking Back took a tour round five of the old Ordnance Survey maps of Waltham Forest, republished by Alan Godfrey Maps in recent years. In the last of the present series, we visit the Walthamstow Marshes area as it appeared between 1894 and 1896. What makes this map interesting is not only what is there, but what isn't there. At the end of the Victorian era, the open space lying between Markhouse Road and the River Lea was enormous. There were no buildings to speak of on either side of Lea Bridge Road between Boundary Road and Malta Road. And the stretch of Lea Bridge Road from Markhouse Road to Lea Bridge Station featured only a handful of houses. What is now the busy Church Road, Leyton, was called Park Place and was largely rural. It is evident, however, that the earliest phase of the boom in house-building in the period up to the First World War was under way. Walthamstow Marshes were the old lammas lands where ratepayers could graze their livestock. Lyn Arlotte, who wrote a summary to the map, explained: "As demand increased for waterworks and railways, the lammas rights were bought out, although not finally extinguished until the 1930s when Walthamstow Borough Council acquired the marshes with an undertaking to preserve the remaining one hundred acres as an open space or recreation ground." Among the buildings which do appear is the Coppermill, which has an interesting history and still exists. The mill, which was established at the foot of Coppermill Lane in the 17th century, produced paper, then leather and linseed oil. It gained its name from the production between 1809 and 1814 of copper tokens to be used as wartime coinage. This was shortly after the present building was constructed. In the 1850s, the mill was acquired by the East London Waterworks Company as a pumping station for the aqueduct to and from the adjacent reservoirs. The tower was added around 1864. Between 1875 and 1877, Walthamstow Local Board set up a sewage works at Low Hall Farm in response to cases of typhoid reported in the area at the start of the decade. Its pump house with two historic Marshall engines is now the base for the Pump House Museum, which is being developed by a local campaigning group. The new railway network included the Great Eastern Railway's line into Walthamstow, and the Old Cambridge line through the Lea Valley. It was these railways which altered the area substantially. The vicar of St Saviour's Church, Markhouse Road, wrote in 1891: "When I was appointed (1884), a rapid change was in full tide. "Throughout Walthamstow, but especially in our end of it, there was a continual going away of wealthier and a continual coming in of poorer residents. "This has continued until our present time. Our population consists now of those who get their living by handicrafts of all descriptions, and in most cases get it hardly." Whatever their prospects in life, they were likely to end up in the new Walthamstow Cemetery in Queens Road, bought by the burial board in 1872. Old Ordnance Survey maps are available in good bookshops and at the Vestry House Museum, which also has a collection of many maps from ages past. 15:22 Tuesday 21st January 2003
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