Hanwell – Around Hanwell and up the allotment

A Hanwell walk 8 – from Boston Manor tube down to Brentford

Where exactly am I?

Strictly speaking this is a Brentford walk, not a Hanwell one. For some reason I’ve always thought Hanwell extends down as far as Swyncombe Avenue, or maybe even The Ride. As I got ready to start this second part of my Hanwell stroll down Boston Manor Road, the new infographic just outside Boston Manor station caught my eye. There, at the top, it boldly stated ‘BRENTFORD’. So Boston Manor station isn’t in Hanwell; it’s in the top-left corner of Brentford. I’ve lived just up the road in Hanwell for just shy of 20 years and I didn’t know that.

The new infographic sign.

Well, wherever it is, Boston Manor station sits on top of the bridge where the Boston Manor Road rises to cross the Piccadilly line, then dips again. To the left, or northwest, the road bends on up towards Hanwell Broadway.

Boston Manor Road looking north-west.

About 120 years ago it looked like this – a country lane with grass verges under hedge, fence, trees and fields. Must have been some upheaval when that was all built on in the 1930s.*

The same view 120 years ago. Not sure what that bloke is up to.

Boston Manor station reminds me a bit of Thunderbirds’ Tracy Island HQ, well perhaps at night, with an unreliable memory. A glimpse of the imagined future we felt as children but that never came to pass.

Ghostly neon glow – this flight tonight.

The ‘real’ Tracy Island – memories are uncertain friends.

Ahead, under the station bridge, the Piccadilly line skirts the sheaf of track lines, spaghetti fronds that lead to the long shed of Northfields depot. The new infographic just outside the station shows the pattern of the tracks in all its glory. Behind me, inside the station and down the steps, it coaxes and co-axes between straight platforms.

The tracks splay to the depot shed.

View from the bridge.

Left hand side down to Swyncombe Avenue

All that metal and power gave me an imagined sensation that the electromagnetic goings-on around the Piccadilly line had grabbed me and were pinging me slowly down the road in Supermarionation, like a character from Thunderbirds. So off I bounced towards the heart of Brentford to the south-east.

Looking down Boston Manor Road from the station.

The road is wider here than up towards Hanwell town centre. To the left it is bordered by a broad pavement and occasional tree, while on the right it comprises a cycle lane and sunken paved footpath, separated by a grassy central reservation with plane trees at regular intervals. There’s none of the dense, crowded jumble of shops and house types you find north of Boston Manor station, and the neat thirties houses seem bigger, their front gardens longer. As if the road down here were a kind of runway, girding its loins in anticipation of a take-off on the Great West Road towards Heathrow.

Indeed, the speed limit here is greater too, a good old-fashioned 30 mph, which adds to that sense of being propelled, even when on foot. I’m not sure, but the different speed limits could be a boundary thing between the boroughs of Ealing and Hounslow. It will only be a matter of time before it gets reduced to 20 mph, I’m sure.

313 mystery.

No sooner was I over the bridge opposite the tube station than I encountered what appeared to be a modest office building, now empty. It has a brief name: ‘313’. What sort of office was it with no signage? Multi-company? Secret? What old office party tales would the walls tell? The truth about the great Luncheon Vouchers scandal of 2002? It’s up for sale and you can find out more here.

Perhaps it will be knocked down and replaced by what the brochure describes as ‘micro apartments’, yet more residential building, only more compact. It seems unlikely, perched as it is between the road and the bridge.

Gates to the depot?

Behind the building is a metal gate and a barrier that I guess protect Northfields train depot. I took a photo and would have gone closer but for the sudden appearance of a hi-vis jacket chap.

I moved on. The long row of 1930s terraced houses on the left was occasionally punctuated by side alleys I didn’t dare slip down… too shy to find out whether they connect along the back.

The houses down this side of the road all look the same… but it does feel like being on a road to somewhere, not just in somewhere. For until you reach the mini roundabout at Swyncombe Avenue, there are no turnings off on the left, apart from the path to Blondin Park behind black iron gates, the left gatepost of which leans endearingly these days.

Blondin Park sign.

An information sign shows a map of the park and the Northfields depot track array (again), and the path takes you past allotments, a nature reserve and the park beyond, dominated by the long shed of Northfields depot, and extending all the way over to Northfields.

Cool banner.

The park hosts the Brentford Festival on the first Saturday each September. Unfortunately we’re always away at that time, though one year we did make it back in time to see a cool band, sup a welcome pint and soak up the last of the summer rain.

The left-hand side concludes with a short stretch of older terraced houses, perhaps Victorian, and the mini roundabout at the top of Swyncombe Avenue. It may only be mini but it’s always busy, for it’s a rat run to Northfields.

Right hand side down to Swyncombe Avenue

Back up at Boston Manor station I started down the road again, this time on the right hand side. I peered through the pale blue-grey fencing down at the criss-cross of tube tracks as they disappeared under the bridge in the direction of Northfields.

View from the other side of the bridge.

Bridge House and Bridge House South straddle Boston Gardens, the first of the side roads back up near the tube station. These three-storey art deco-ish blocks of flats are slightly chipped and frayed at the edges, though I’m told they are lovely inside. Large arched windows pour light into spacious stairwells.

Bridge House South.

If you nip down Boston Gardens a short distance, you get a side view of the station platforms.

View from the side.

Heading down from Boston Manor station I noticed that the houses on the right look the same as those on opposite side of the road, in terraces of six or so residences, complete with the occasional house whose turn it was to undergo treatment under scaffolding and plastic sheeting. The procession of terraced facades resumed, all the way down to the start of Boston Manor Park opposite Swyncombe Avenue.

Back alleys of Boston Gardens.

But these facades do hide a surprise of sorts. A series of untarmacked side alleys and short grassy passages lead to narrow back lanes behind back gardens, forming a kind of ladder of residences. A hidden garage land that smells of foxes. A tidy, private world of extensions, loft conversions, the odd shopping trolley lying on its side next to a short row of wheelie bins… but no litter, no broken glass. Just class.

Back alley with playing field beyond.

Boston Gardens’ back gardens overlook Boston Manor Playing Fields, maintained and operated by the London Playing Fields Association. It comprises a 22-acre sports field with a lot of pitches for cricket, football and rugby. There’s also a running track, a keeper’s house and mini grandstand. This is where pupils from Gunnersbury Catholic School down the road enjoy, or perhaps endure, their sport. Beyond, the Chiswick Flyover and the canal soar and flow respectively.

Back on the main road I loitered at the entrance to the jewel in the crown that is Boston Manor Park. On the day I did this part of the walk it started tipping down. I gazed at the grey rainswept lake and conjured in my mind that haunting scene in the 1960s film, The Innocents, where Miss Giddens sees the ghost of Miss Jessel. (Boston Manor Park and the newly reopened manor house will feature in a future walk/blog.)

Searching for a ghost in a long black dress.

I followed the long six-foot-plus high brick wall, all 300 yards of it, on down the road. Pretty soon I came upon a milestone set in the wall, though I was unable to read the inscription.

It’s no good. My eyes aren’t what they used to be.

The main entrance gate was politely imposing with its giant wrought iron gates. The wall on each side is much higher as it curves into the drive and the grey brickwork is replaced by clean red bricks interspersed with black ones to form a geometric pattern.

Boston Manor Park main gate with the lodge beyond.

Further down, was the second, lesser set of entrance gates, and another milestone set in the wall.

I wonder what it means?

Between the two sets of gates, Boston Manor House itself hid behind the high wall.

Peek-a-boo!

Meanwhile, the other side of Boston Manor Road was lined by a continuation of more Victorian-looking terraced housing. If you approach the bus stop for The Ride on the E8 or 195 bus, the automatic voice announces “The Ride” bus stop for you, in rich plummy tones, perhaps because it was once called Colonels Drive and is home to Gunnersbury Catholic School. Clitherow Road is a turning off The Ride, not to be confused with Clitherow Avenue not too far away up in Hanwell, both a nod I guess to the Clitherow family who owned the Boston Manor estate for 250 years until the 1920s. It’s also where we turn off on our way to Brentford home games, intoning “The Ride” as we do so.

From here to Manor Vale bus stop the residential facades opened out from terraced to a more semi-detached aspect.

The top of Manor Vale.

At the top of Manor Vale, I turned into a gentle dip of a side road and an intriguing step back in time. Mature trees and hedges of laurel, holly and privet preserve the privacy and dignity of these once swish three-storey art deco blocks. Now mild mannered tatty, untouched yet maintained, they were probably once home to the yuppies of 100 years ago. I wonder who lives there now.

The bottom of Manor Vale.

At this point I felt myself being drawn nearer to the Great West Road and the cars flying across the elevated section of motorway that bisects the University of West London skyscraper and the distinctive mirrored glass and steel of the GSK edifice. Like an Asian city skyline in miniature.

UWL tower and the flyover.

The flyover under construction.

But before that there were still many side road side shows to visit, that I’d been past on the bus, but never down. It gave a new perspective on the familiar.

Boston House.

Georgian buildings cluster here, hiding low car parks: Clitherow Court, Boston House and Prospect House. Some are flats, others are neat office conversions.

Prospect House.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the road, was a row of 60s/70s square houses; terraced boxes recessed into the long wall where it ends at the bottom section of Boston Manor Park. They were in varying degrees of repair but interestingly each one was different.

Box houses with GSK building behind.

As you drift under the flyover you can feel the pull of the new. The sea-green steel girders carrying the elevated section of the M4. The wedge of the Co-op shop next door to the UWL tower and The Mille office rental in the concrete tangle gloom. On the right is the tall glass and bright steel of the GSK building above the trees.

Boston Manor Road also continues on the other side of the Great West Road.

My passegiata complete, I turned around and squinted back up Boston Manor Road, thinking again of how it all looked 120 years ago. Indeed, aside from the manor house and its estate, from where I stood all the way up to the tube station was once a couple of farms, some fields and woods, and a muddy lane.

Houses started lining the Boston Road (as it was then called, and Boston Lane before that) from the mid-19th century after the arrival of the Great Western Railway. Trams rattled up and down the road. Another railway, the Midland District Railway followed the northern edge of the manor’s grounds and in 1880 Boston Road station was built, opening up the southern part of Hanwell to development. The station was renamed Boston Manor in 1911.

*With acknowledgements to Hanwell & Southall Through Time by Paul Howard Lang

If you’d like to find out more about Hanwell, local historian David Blackwell has a fascinating collection of books, maps and photos, old and new, of Hanwell and neighbouring areas. They are on display at Hanwell Library on the first Saturday of each month from 10am to 3pm. On the third Saturday of each month the display is more about Ealing in general.

A Hanwell walk 6 – down Boston Road to the tube station

William picked up his bundle of tools and left the new manor house at Sudhale. He trudged eastward along the Oxford Road, barely noticing the woods and common on either side, for his back ached terribly after a hard day’s wood carving. Approaching Hanewelle, he splashed through the shallow river, wishing the lord of the manor would repair the collapsed bridge. Then up the lonely hill to the corner of the path to Brentford. On this corner stood a huddle of small cottages. Some called this corner Tickill, William called it home…

Stand by the clock tower and reflect that this part of Hanwell was called Tickill on a map of 1680. Tickill Clock Tower. Has a certain ring to it. This is one of the busiest spots in Hanwell – the junction where Boston Road meets the Uxbridge Road. These days, shops and cafés are packed together here in busy density.

Boston Road is a one-way street. On the left-hand side, looking south, all is a hot spot of bustle and confusion. Until recently, in the now closed Fade To Black corner café, locals chatted and cappuccino steamed under the mini minaret. If you turned the corner too fast on leaving you risked colliding into the kid riding a bright red pedal car outside the Expresso kebab shop, for want of anywhere else to play. Or being jostled by those struggling to catch an E8 or 195 at Jessamine Road bus stop.

Fade to Black has re-opened, as Momentum. So you can get your fix of top-notch coffee once again, while perhaps catching up with the movement hoping to transform Labour…

Exploring the little yard just after the bus stop takes seconds – a cosy motor repair shop. Next up, Jessamine Road is dead-ended by the high brick wall of Lidl – its aspect less cosy. Maunder Road is a narrow meander; it looks dead-end, but isn’t.

Things are busy on the right-hand side, too, but the vibe is a bit calmer, the pavement wider. Mleczko on the corner and its endearing sign (Have you ever visit butchers downstairs?) used to be a branch of J Sainsbury 100 years ago. Big Bites is back. Hanwell Kebabs is still the best!

On this first stretch of the walk, these shops and businesses, and the flats above them, are a mix of mid-20th century and Victorian/Edwardian terraced buildings. They are now punctuated by the latest wave of new buildings, inspired by Crossrail, which will enable travel to and directly through London.

The vibe isn’t always calmer on this side though, you sometimes find an individual looking anxiously up at the flats above the parade of shops – sometimes shouting. First thing you learn is that you always gotta wait. There are some interesting little side-streets to slip down when the waiting’s over; the nearest being Wilmot Place. The disused phone box opposite is alos popular in this regard.

A good mix of the usual suspects can be found on this part of Boston Road: kebab shops and cafés, newsagents, hairdressers, dry cleaners, a florist and solicitors. But there are some eclectic and unusual premises, too: security and electronics businesses, a posh flooring shop and the Olive Orchard Boutique. Another shop has closed down since I last walked by a few days ago. All signage has been removed and already I can’t remember what kind of shop it used to be.

Next up, Seasons Close is gated housing, the entrance flanked by the Golden Chip fish and chip shop on one side and the Little Wonder bakery on the other. Both are run by the same family and both are marvellous. Good quality and friendly staff.

Londis near the bottom of this stretch used to be Costcutter. What it was before that, I don’t know, but the brand was originally known as London & District Stores. Lovely name. Ghost signs on the wall, above the buddeleia next to the wonderful Provender Mews, offer fading reminders of how things used to be, and how they change over time.

Next door is an arch leading to a lovely mews – Queen’s Terrace Cottages. Further down we have George Bone Tattoos, accountants, solicitors, the Dodo micropub, and a café-cum-florists called W7 Emporium.

Cottages opposite Provender Mews, with Hanwell Square in the background

Hanwell Square is a massive new residential development on the site of the old Wickes. The building looks like it’s nearly finished and residents will soon be moving in. High-earning young professionals will spend their golden handshakes on rooftop sundowners while enjoying the bullet point benefits of state-of-the-art apartments, shops and cafés, landscaped courtyard, charming locals and prime access to Crossrail/Heathrow/M4. They probably won’t worry about possible new-build scope creep tactics… This might be the third main wave of building expansion over the centuries, but this time it’s on land previously built on.

Perhaps the new residents will try out the two old-boy pubs nearby on the fork of Boston Road and Lower Boston Road: the Prince of Wales (which used to be the Pig) and the Village Inn (which used to be the Royal Victoria). They won’t know about the wonderful Horseshoe Café that used to be next door, now a crammed in new build/conversion. Maybe they’ll hang out at Ben Scooters, everyone else seems to.

Ben Scooters. Usually busier than the adjacent pubs

They will likely enjoy the Hanwell Hootie, which takes place every year in pubs and other venues all over Hanwell, and especially here on Boston and Lower Boston Roads.

A map of 1786 shows Boston Road as a lane to Brentford with very few buildings (Park Farm perhaps, which was occupied as early as the 13th century). By 1816, there were a few cottages at the junction with Lower Boston Road, and by now all remaining land to the north of Park Farm had been enclosed.

The catalyst for the first main wave of building expansion in Hanwell was the development of rail travel, when the Great Western Railway opened in 1838, crossing the Brent valley on Wharncliffe Viaduct. In the 1870s and 1880s, large-scale building began and by 1894 the area between the railway and Studley Grange Road was dense housing and not a lot else.

This area is known (especially by estate agents) as Olde Hanwell and also extends up the Lower Boston Road and down to the Fox, where the River Brent meets the Grand Union Canal. The whole length of Boston Road, by now two-way, is generally flat, though most of the side streets on the right slope gently down to the canal.

On Boston Road itself, Nissan Westway is making way for yet more third-wave residential new builds – the young lad in me used to like seeing the big car transporters. Next on the left is the ambulance station; handy for Ealing Hospital. After that an Access self storage place. For some reason I really like these, even though the hedge in front of this one reeks heavily of fox.

Can you see Osterley Park from here? I can’t

Meanwhile, on the right-hand side as you continue south, you pass the tops of Rosebank Road, Osterley Park View Road (which has a view, but not of Osterley Park as far as I can tell) and Studley Grange Road. Late 19th century terraced houses, I’d say. These side roads are narrow, or maybe the cars these days are wide – in places they nudge up onto the pavement. Until about 20 years ago this area was dotted with small factories. A map of 1865, 27 years after the railway arrived, shows Boston Road built-up as far down as here, with gravel pits and Park Farm further down. By 1920, there were allotments in between the gravel pits.

Back on the other side of the road, Tools4Trade used to be the Red Lion pub, and a tricky little mini roundabout by the junction of Cambridge Road, leads to the Royal Mail Sorting Office and one of Hanwell’s dismantled but still operational LTNs.

Then the shop on the corner that still (I think) occasionally distributes groceries to those who can’t afford regular shops, and used to be an antiques shop called Studio something. A few doors down, Iverson’s Tyres/MOTs is now Halfords.

At this point, moving south away from Hanwell Broadway, the architecture of the houses changes from Victorian/Edwardian to a more modern style. For in the 1930s, the second main wave of building expansion started with Humes Avenue and continued all the way down the Boston Road. Indeed, most of the south of Hanwell was covered with streets and houses by 1932. Humes Avenue is home to the wonderful Humes Avenue Garage that does a great job and doesn’t rip you off. The area bounded by Studley Grange Road, Boston Road and Townholm Crescent was once gravel pits, all the way down to the canal. Indeed, Humes Avenue is named after Thomas Hume, physician to the Duke of Wellington during the Napoleonic Wars. He later lived nearby and built a wharf to load gravel onto barges bound for London.

At the top of Humes Avenue is South Hanwell Baptist Church and the wooden scout hut of a church hall adjacent. Then a tile shop with a tatty flat atop – the shop was once a petrol station. Behind these is an estate of flats – Lambourne Close.

We pass the top of the delightful Trumpers Way. Not always easy as we dodge the frequent sudden appearance of Getir scooters trying to get-there. As we hope to as well in a future post. Well worth exploring.

Then Boston Hotel used to include an Indian restaurant that’s now Kone Japanese restaurant. We’ve been in once and have also ordered a good few takeaways – highly recommended. A few more shops, a multi-cuisine takeaway and a couple of hairdressers. Opposite, across the zebra crossing you have a shop, another hairdressers and a petrol station that’s handy for the late-for-workers and the live fast/die young brigade, who find it impossible to observe the 20mph speed limit. I guess we all do at times.

More thirties semis on the right, including Townholm Crescent which, like Humes Avenue have the solid look of old council houses and are set on wider roads than Olde Hanwell. Just don’t let anyone hear you call it Molde Hanwell.

Halfway houses, their denizens and a paint shop haunt the left before the turning into Oaklands Road. In 1886, the remains of sixth century Saxon warriors were found on the site of what is now Oaklands Primary School. After the turning is Hanwell House, a residential care home next to the Cumberland Road bus stop.

In the 19th century a glacial erratic, or Sarsen stone, was found in the area of what is now Townholm Crescent, in a place where you wouldn’t normally expect to find a large flat boulder about five feet long. It was deposited at the end of the last Ice Age as the ice melted and retreated. There it stayed until house-building started on Townholm Crescent, when it was moved by builders. It now resides just by the main gates of Elthorne Park.

To think that 12,000 years ago this area was all covered by a thick sheet of ice. In more modern times it was all heathland, then farmland. Until a couple of hundred years ago, Boston Road was a lonely lane connecting Brentford to Hanwell. There were very few buildings of any sort.

Elthorne Park was opened in 1910. It has a bandstand, joggers and dog walkers, and people who do Tai Chi in the early morning. The Hanwell Carnival float parade ends here, and the many participants and onlookers wander among the stalls and rides, no doubt waiting to see which pooch would steal the dog show. And talking of winners, the school next door was attended by Lioness Chloe Kelly.

According to Eric Leach, the first known evidence of human occupation in Hanwell is Paleaolithic flints discovered in gravel pits opposite Elthorne Avenue in 1910. This means the first Hanwellites settled here any time between about 500,000 years ago and about 11,000 years ago.

Nearby, St Thomas church hall sometimes shows films. The front porch sags in the middle. Or maybe it’s meant to look like that. The church next door is imposing, but I can never decide if it’s handsome, too. It does have a flagpole, and a flag of St George (usually).

The house on the corner must be proud of its collection of street furniture

At this point on the walk south, the almost-semis start getting larger, and more spaced out on both sides of the now-tree-lined road. Few of them have front lawns, most are paved.

The Royal Harvester. No silver service, but it’s OK you know

Otherwise, there’s not much to distract, on a stretch that always goes on further than you expect it to. Until you get to the Royal, that is. The Royal Harvester is one of our locals and used to be called the Royal Hotel.

The Royal Hotel. I’d guess in the mid-1930s?

Back in the day, it had a restaurant offering silver service. Nowadays, it’s Harvester Fayre, including a cheeky little mac’n’cheese.

The old off licence behind the Royal is now a plant and flower shop.

Opposite is the grassy southern entrance to Elthorne Park leading to the top of the wooded lane that goes down to the canal.

Back on the left, we have the Royal pub garden (squint and pretend you’re on your holidays).

Then, some 60s/70s maisonettes…

and last but not least, a shopping parade of miscellany a bit further down, including the lovely Nepal, Sainsbury’s, a café-cum-post office, a coffee shop, takeaways and the inevitable hairdressers. Somewhere near here, as if anticipating the tube station, the road name changes from Boston Road to Boston Manor Road. I don’t know exactly where, nor why.

Across the road, you have a car repair station that has an art deco feel to it. A little further down, opposite the tube station, there’s a small office block. 1970s I’d guess. It’s called Boundary House and is home to a branch of Airivo serviced offices – your space your way.

Bet there’s a great view of the railway tracks from the top

And if you peep round the back, you get a wonderful view of the back end of Northfields Underground Depot with its massed ranks of trains parallel to the Piccadilly Line. From the top of the office block you could imagine a sort of steel bouquet: the train tracks behind the fence as flower stalks and the row of train fronts as red-bottomed flower heads.

Boston Manor station is a portal to escape – the Piccadilly line runs south west from central London down to Heathrow. It was first opened in 1883 as Boston Road station.

Boston Road station

The current station building opened in 1934, coinciding with the second wave of building expansion. It was designed by Charles Holden, and is more eye-catching than most of the work he did for London Transport. You may know the pub by Collier’s Wood tube station that’s named after him.

The station front semi-circular concession still features the Cup of Joe Coffee Shop signage, but the shop itself is long closed. A forlorn hand-written note in the window says ‘face masks for sale inside’.

I’d read about the Hanwell Gospel Oak that was supposed to be near here, and a couple of years ago spent a lockdown exercise hour in search of it. It’s just as well social distancing prevented me asking anyone for directions. It turns out said oak lay beside the road just to the north of where the tube station is now until around 1928. Instead, we now have what I call the nettle pit, a gap down the side of the tube station, also just to the north. For most of the year, it’s full of what must be very tall nettles. Perhaps in years gone by the local magistrate might have punished minor transgressions by ordering the miscreant to be ‘Cast into the Nettle Pit!’

So the walk packs more in than you might have thought, for such a short stretch of average suburban London street. All compressed in time when you consider millions of years ago when it was molten rock, then sea, swamp and glacier, and more recently woodland, heath and river. And now it’s on its way to becoming beige, a clean brushed-brick Crossrail new-build beige.

You might be interested in these other blog posts about Hanwell…

Walk out to winter (on parallel paths)

Hanwell during lockdown

LTN boxes and bollards

Introduction of LTNs during lockdown

Hanwell Square! Oh yeah!

The new development

From heaven’s gate to prison gate

A walk down High Lane, Hanwell

Hanwell’s rubbish

Litter and fly-tipping

Hanwell Hootie – what a beauty!

The local music festival

Brunel in Hanwell – Wharncliffe Viaduct

A special place

A Hanwell walk – 1

From Hanwell Broadway to West Ealing

A Hanwell walk – 2

More of a West Ealing walk, really

A Hanwell walk 4 – heading east through West Ealing

Part 2 – West Ealing Broadway from Grosvenor Road to Dean Gardens

You’ll find no checkpoint at the border between Hanwell and West Ealing, where the Uxbridge Road meets Grosvenor Road. But you might find subtle indications that you have moved from one community to another. The street signs now say W13 instead of W7. The Uxbridge Road has left Hanwell Broadway far behind and now calls itself West Ealing Broadway (or the Broadway) for the next half a mile or so.

In some respects little changes; the same red buses pulse back and forth along this artery as on Hanwell Broadway, but the vibe is different. It’s busier here and feels more mainstream – the coffee shops and fast food joints in this section are more likely to be major branded chain outlets.

But West Ealing does have some hidden gems, like Cozy Unique Ride. I’ve no idea what it is, something to do with cars perhaps? I just like the name.

Almost next door is Grosvenor House, which has been a surgery for nearly 100 years. Wounded soldiers and civilians were treated here in both World Wars.

‘KwikFit on the corner when the lights are going down and I’ll be there, I promise I’ll be there… ’

Just before KwikFit on the corner is the Broadway Café. These premises were once home to the Pamela Howard Dancing School. Pamela Howard passed away in 2021 and the school has moved elsewhere. I don’t know if the two events are connected but I do know the school was highly thought of.

Over the road, there’s an art deco school uniform shop on the corner that used to be Arnolds Leisure, purveyors of sportswear, camping gear and the like.

Lounge 142/Diamond Hotel looks like it was once a fine big pub, and in fact it was. The Half-Way House (as you can see at the top of the building), formerly the Old Hat, was a London–Oxford mail coach stop until the arrival of the railways.

A little further along are a couple of pubs that changed names not so long ago. Hennessey’s became the Leather Saddle…

…and one of our favourites, Flynn’s, was once the Old Hat too, then the Walsingham Arms and is now the Old Hat again. Old names never die, they just move around a bit.

On the opposite side of the road, behind the shops, is St James’s Church, which has had an uncertain time in recent decades. Built in 1903, it faced demolition in the 1980s because of falling attendances and indeed was closed from 1984 to 1990.

It closed again in 2018 and nervously awaits its fate. We hope it will be left intact and perhaps used as a community centre.

Further along the Broadway, Chignell Terrace is a short side road I’ve always been curious to explore, as there always seems to be lots going on. People hanging out, chatting, cars coming and going. A stone carving high-up states that it’s on the site of Old Chignell House. I wonder what that ever was.

This stretch of the road has a feeling of impermanence. The pawnbrokers, and the pop-up and mayfly shops that sadly close not long after opening – hopes, dreams and expensive signs, dismantled so soon. You often forget what a shop was once its signage is removed, identity stripped.

The Butcher’s Club is a new shop selling Halal meat. It’ll be easy to remember for it has a neon sign inside saying ‘Pleased to meet you, meat to please you.’

On the opposite side of the road, behind the shops, among the new builds, is the new West London Islamic Centre on Singapore Road. It’s impressive, particularly the intricate patterning of the great window above the entrance.

An almost hidden Holiday Inn lurks (unless you happen to look up in the direction of the sky) on the corner of Melbourne Avenue by the flower stall and Greggs – this pedestrian-only zone seems to be a sort of focal point in West Ealing.

The nearby Sainsbury’s opposite the library has a frieze above the exit I hadn’t seen before the pandemic. I only noticed it while waiting for my partner in the days of solo-only shopping. It features some trees and kids, two of whom appear to be caught in a pigeon poo shower, due to the unfortunate positioning of two floodlight perches just above them.

Between Sainsbury’s trolley stand and the Broadway is a familiar sad back-street scene. Large bins on wheels are overfull with packaging from yesterday’s treats. Cardboard is strewn about by the wind, pigeons nodding and picking through it all. Beyond, discarded old shopping trolleys lie stranded and a couple of crouching street drinkers share a can and look on, seemingly also stranded. The dirt behind the shopfront daydream.

Yes, times change and I’ve only lived here 15 years, but I do miss Woolworths and its magnificent art deco façade, the old artists’ materials shop, even BHS. These ones stick in the memory.

There’s a lot of info about the history of West Ealing on www.westealingneighbours.org.uk a fascinating website with a website address that makes me want to say ‘stop stealing neighbours’.

Many of West Ealing’s new residential blocks aren’t popular with locals, and getting planning permission can be problematic. Developers are sometimes accused of storey creep, whereby they get planning permission for a certain number of storeys, then apply for permission to add further storeys once building work has started. But to be fair, many of the new residences are SO Resi shared ownership flats, perhaps for the young caught in the Crossrail property trap.

However, they do tower over the surrounding buildings on the Broadway. Big windows and small balconies loom uneasily over the streets down below, where those on hard times of one sort or another bustle outside half-way homes of hope, while all of us try to steer clear of sleep-walking jay walkers and sweet-talking street drinkers. A juxtaposition of professionals and precarity. There but for the grace of fortune…

On the Broadway you’ll also find a handy range of shops, Wilkos especially so. There’s a post office too, and a cheerful choice of cheapos, charities and more pawnbrokers. Yet back in the 1960s there were more shops of all sorts than now, a wider range, as was also the case in Hanwell.

On Saturdays, Leeland Road hosts a small but delightful Farmers Market in Leeland Road. At the bottom of the road is the Salvation Army Hall, a handsome red-brick affair with white stuccoed bits, built in 1909.

Back on the Broadway there’s a piece of graffiti high up that reads ‘ICKY IS AN ANOMALY’, followed by what looks like the Extinction Rebellion symbol. It’s been there a while and I’ve no idea what it means. I’m guessing it’s not a cryptic crossword clue.

On the left, on the site of what is now Iceland, was once another major coaching inn, the Green Man.

Once you’ve negotiated the piles of rubbish and bags of donations outside the charity shop, the walk up Green Man Passage to Waitrose is a pleasant one, with a variety of high back-garden fences on the right and the church and nursery on the left.

J. Sanders Depositary and Furniture Storage

Along the road from Waitrose a fascinating building dominates the corner of Drayton Green Road. Wilton House is a former warehouse built 120 years ago. Twenty years ago it was converted into residential apartments.

Up the road from here is the Drayton Green Hotel. Bizarrely, Ho Chi Minh worked in its kitchen in 1914. Exactly 100 years later, my wife and I got married there (but not in the kitchen).

A stroll back down Drayton Green Road takes you back to the Broadway by Dean Gardens. The bus stop says the Lido, which isn’t a swimming pool – though it was once a cinema, then a bingo hall, then a snooker hall and finally a cinema again. Now it’s offices and flats.

If you were to venture south, down Northfield Avenue, you’d pass by the wonderful Northfields Allotments, London’s oldest. It’s a visual treat from the upper deck of an E3 bus.

Northfields Allotments from the upper deck

East of Dean Gardens there are restaurants and pubs, a topic for another time maybe. Soon after, the Broadway becomes the Uxbridge Road again, flowing into Ealing Broadway and all points towards the towers of London.

If you’d like to find out more about Hanwell and West Ealing, local historian David Blackwell has a fascinating collection of books, maps and photos, old and new, of Hanwell and neighbouring areas. They are on display at Hanwell Library on the first Saturday of each month from 10am to 3pm.

A Hanwell walk 2 – Hanwell Broadway heading east

The Clock Tower and the café of the same name just behind

If Hanwell has a proper centre it must be Hanwell Clock Tower, built in 1937 to mark the coronation of King George VI. Though modest as clock towers go, it has a certain appeal. It’s also popular – messages and tokens of sympathy and encouragement are occasionally found here, though sometimes it seems the clock tower itself could do with a bit of TLC.

Hanwell Clock Tower stands on a wide stretch of pavement by the crossroads, a nodal point where Boston Road and Cherington Road meet Hanwell Broadway. Beyond the clock tower is an imposing façade behind which Domino’s Pizza once kneaded and baked, but is now boarded up. I believe it was once a branch of Barclays bank. Next door is the ever-popular Clocktower Café, a nice spot on a sunny day.

Cherington Road starts with a few shops, one of which is Plaza Pianos, for all things piano, a nod to Hanwell’s musical heritage. A little further along is Hanwell Library, which re-opened in June 2021 as a volunteer-led initiative after Ealing Council passed over its day-to-day running to the local community in 2019. The exterior was used as the police station in the film Carry On Constable in 1960. Funny really, because there is/was a real police station just around the corner.

The route east from here comprises three sections of the Uxbridge Road (aka the A4020): Hanwell Broadway, then what some call Cemetery Stretch, and finally West Ealing Broadway. In the Middle Ages, the route we now call the Uxbridge Road was one of the two main ones running west from London, and used to be known as the Oxford Road turnpike. The other, more southerly route, followed an old Roman road that ran in part along what is now Brentford High Street.

Hanwell Broadway

Hanwell Broadway isn’t particularly broad and its way isn’t long, a couple of hundred yards perhaps, but it does pack a lot in. In the heyday of the horse, it boasted two coaching inns where horses, drivers and passengers could rest and get refreshment. The Kings Arms (originally the Spencer Arms) was rebuilt in 1930, and around the same time so was the nearby Duke of York. For some years the latter was in decline. The signage outside had been reduced to a mere –KE of –O– and street drinkers occupied the benches nearby. It’s great to see that under the new management the sign has been restored to its former glory and the street drinkers have moved elsewhere. Might be worth a visit to see what’s now on offer inside.

Signage now restored to its previous grandeur

Many will know that in 1960 Jim Marshall, a drummer and drum teacher, opened a shop in Hanwell in what is now Tony’s Barbers. This is commemorated by a plaque on the pavement outside. Jim started off selling drums, and then included guitars. Several customers, including The Who’s Pete Townshend, said they were looking for a guitar amp that was louder than the UK models available at the time, but not as expensive as the more powerful American imports.

So, in 1962, Jim set up Marshall Amplification. With the help of Dudley Craven and Ken Bran, he built the box of tricks that produced the world-famous Marshall sound: a distorted wail with a distinctive crunch. Hanwell became the Home of Loud.

In 1963, the Makers of Loud moved across the road to bigger premises and from then on business boomed. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton (who went to school with my aunt, doncha know), Jimmy Page and Ronnie Wood were soon using Marshall gear. And the ultimate accolade – yes, it’s a Marshall amp that gets turned up to 11 in This Is Spinal Tap.

The move across the road is marked by a blue plaque above Hanwell Halal Meat & Groceries, on the corner of Cherington Road, which was a once a branch of Taplin’s Ladieswear shops. The need for yet bigger premises led Marshall to reluctantly move out of Hanwell in 1967, though some of their famous rock musician clients may well have returned to look at luxury motors when Hanwells Bentley and Rolls-Royce specialists opened in 1975.

Jim Marshall died in 2012. The following year the first Hanwell Hootie was held, and has been held each year since, though for the past couple of years it’s been affected by you-know-what. The Hootie is a one-day music festival in which live music events continue throughout the day in a host of small venues (mostly pubs).

Who remembers trolley-buses? This one’s just by Hanwell Bus Garage, in 1961

Behind the posh car emporium there’s a Lidl and Poundstretcher, with a handy car park adjacent. This was once Hanwell Bus Garage, that closed in 1993 – On The Buses no more.

You might notice other plaques on the pavements and litter bins featuring the Hanwell phoenix. Does anyone know the story behind this emblem?

Hanwell Broadway has a good selection of shops and eateries. There are no outstanding restaurants, but no chains or franchises either, that I’m aware of, which is no bad thing. On the north side of Hanwell Broadway, the stand out stores for me are Hanwell Fishmonger, the indie local gift shop and the Post Office. Further along you have Lavin’s Bar, which opens at 9am, and our local pharmacy.

On the south side corner with Boston Road, the Fade To Black corner café is a coffee specialist with a double hit of community feel and mini minaret (the latter on the top of the building). The Hong Kong Garden Chinese takeaway was a great favourite until it closed. I found it impossible not to quietly hum the Siouxsie & The Banshees song of the same name while waiting to collect my chicken chow mein and chop suey.

A few years ago there was a very good Indian restaurant on Hanwell Broadway called Bawarchi. The owner, Balbir, was a great guy. We miss him, and his delicious seafood mix starter. When he sold up, the premises became a Polish restaurant. In an inspired piece of repurposing the new owners kept all the furniture and signage, simply changing a few letters on the shop front so it reads Bawaro. Now there’s a new sign announcing Bistro U Kucharzy – European Cousine (sic). Must visit sometime.

Near the end of the southern stretch is Gold’s Gym. It has the usual facilities, plus a swimming pool, sauna and steam rooms, and a pleasant smell. At least, it did when I used to go there. The site was once home to J Alsfords, one of the busiest timber yards in west London. Sawn wood is another lovely smell.

On the corner of the Broadway and St George’s Road is Our Lady & St Joseph Church. It was originally built in 1864 for the hundreds of Irish navvies working on grand projects like Brunel’s Wharncliffe Viaduct, and the Windmill Bridge complex over towards Southall. Up till then the nearest Roman Catholic church was miles away, in Hammersmith, I believe. Said to have been a charming traditional Victorian structure, the original St Joseph’s was demolished in 1963 and eventually replaced by the current building, described by Nicholas Pevsner as ‘a horrible jagged outline of concrete dormers’. I quite like it.

Cemetery Stretch

The new-ish mini-roundabout at the eastern end of Hanwell Broadway announces a quieter stretch of the Uxbridge Road in terms of atmosphere, if not traffic volumes. It has a muted feel with its two cemeteries and its new and not-so-new houses and flats.

On the right (naturally) is the Conservative Club, a members-only social club with a bar, garden and small hall. It holds events such as bingo, darts, ukulele and quiz nights.

Next door is the first of the cemeteries, Hanwell Cemetery, which used to be called City of Westminster Cemetery. By the entrance is a lovely old lodge of stone, next to a yew tree, and there are many conifers among the graves, tombs and statues throughout.

The entrance to the second cemetery is a bit further along on the left-hand side, past Azalea Close and Aria Mews as you head east. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Cemetery also has an old stone lodge by the entrance, and a hedge-lined avenue draws you towards the chapel and the paths that weave around the memorial statues, tall trees and headstones.

The cemeteries are both fascinating and peaceful. All is still but there is much activity all the same. Mourners and gardeners go quietly about their business. Many graves have partially subsided and have leaning gravestones; a lot of work must go into maintaining them and the grounds around. The Hanwell cemeteries will be the subject of a future article.

Wish they’d let me in so I could find out what’s behind the tree door…

A little further along, one of the trees that line the pavement has what looks like a door. On the opposite side of the road Michael Gaynor Close/Barchester Close is a modern-ish estate of flats. Does anyone know who Michael Gaynor is/was? I can’t find any information about him. Does he live behind the tree door?

Next time – the walk continues into West Ealing…

Rumtopf, Pontack and Nelson’s Blood

Grow your own booze

The Last of the Summer Wine – old demijohns in the garden

Years ago, the only booze we grew was home-made wine, using just about any fruit or vegetable growing, or going, on our allotment. I even made rose petal wine as a kid. You need a lot of petals. Once I’d removed every petal from the bushes in our garden (no one seemed to mind) I started on the neighbours’. Of course, I asked permission (most of the time). It was perhaps the only wine I ever made that didn’t give a hangover the size of Hanover and out of all proportion to the enjoyment of the sip. Even my mum liked it.

There are plenty of recipes online and in books. And you’ll find nearly all the gear you need in your local Wilko.

We no longer make wine as such – we now have other ways of growing our own booze. Here’s a brief A–Z (or A–S to be precise) of them.

Apples

We’ve made cider a few times, but usually find that apple juice fresh out of the screw press tastes too divine to do anything else with. So, the only contribution of the apple to our festivities these days is as an ingredient in rumtopf (see Rumtopf below).

Crab apples

A Swedish recipe in which 20 or so crab apples are washed, halved then steeped in a jar of vodka for a few months in a dark place, turning and shaking from time to time. You can make it with or without sugar – we usually do one of each. After two weeks (with sugar) or two months (without) you strain off and bottle the infused vodka. The remaining vodka-steeped fruit makes a lovely jelly-jam. This year we’re trying it with gin.

Cucumbers

A fellow plot holder introduced us to the joys of cucumber in gin. The cucumbers we grow are sweeter and crunchier than shop-bought ones and have a slight lemony taste. The perfect snack once your glass is empty!

Damsons

Damson gin is lovely. Don’t bother removing the stone-pips; too fiddly. Just pick, rinse, prick and pickle in gin – not easy to say after a damson gin or two. Add half as much sugar as you have fruit, cover and leave for three months. After the damson gin has been decanted off, the gin-soaked fruit makes a delicious damson gin jam, which isn’t that easy to say either. It also makes a super sauce.

Elder

Elderflowers scent cordials. Elderberries are chock-full of vitamins and make great syrup. Both are popular with wine-makers. I came across this recipe for Pontack Sauce in Richard Mabey’s Food for Free. It’s not really booze but it is interesting. Pontack Sauce was once a must in the luggage of every retired military gentleman when travelling.

Take a deep breath and: pour one pint of boiling claret over a pint of elderberries in a stone jar. Cover and stand overnight in an oven on a very low heat. The next day, pour off the liquid into a saucepan with a teaspoon of salt, a blade of mace, 40 peppercorns, 12 cloves, a finely chopped onion, some ginger, and a partridge in a pear tree. Boil for ten minutes, bottle and – here’s the best bit – leave for seven years. Seven years? A recipe too far, methinks.

Greengages

These go well in rumptopf, along with apples and any other fruit that takes your fancy. What is rumtopf, apart from being a lovely word? (see Rumtopf below)

Hops

One of our plot neighbours grows hops, supported by pieces of string hung from a large wooden frame, in a runner bean style. The hops are used to make craft beer. Haven’t tried it, but I’m told craft beer slops make good fertiliser.

Marrows

Marrow rum is an interesting concept that we’ve yet to try as it seems a bit laborious. In short it involves cutting the top off a marrow, scooping out the seeds and filling with demerara sugar and a yeast preparation. You fix the marrow top back on and when the marrow starts to drip, drain into a demijohn and add raisins. Fit an airlock and let it ferment, then bottle and leave for a year or so. Hmm, might give it a go.

You can find the complete recipe here: Marrow Rum Recipe – How to Make Marrow Rum (lowcostliving.co.uk)

Wasps don’t talk about love – they only wanna get drunk

Plums

These don’t tend to finish up in the booze production channel. But each autumn we do notice wasps getting plastered on the rotting windfalls.

Potatoes

It’s illegal to make potato vodka at home but you can find dozens of ‘hypothetical walk-through’ recipes online.

Rosehips

The only home-made wine we stuck with after abandoning all others. Sweet and sherry-like, and not too headachy. These days we either do rosehip syrup (more vitamins than oranges) or rosehip sauce (great with pork).

Rumtopf

Friends in Southport introduced us to this delight. Use just about any fruit you fancy; dried, frozen or fresh. We go with greengages, apples and sultanas. Chop larger fruit into bite-sized pieces, and mix with the remaining fruit. Add half the amount of sugar and leave for an hour. Put in a pot, add rum and leave in a dark cupboard for two or three months. Add more rum if needed.

Sloes

Sloe gin. As for Damson gin above. After the sloe gin has been decanted off, you can use the gin-soaked fruit to make Nelson’s Blood. Pour ruby port on the fruit to fill the jar, seal and leave for three months.

*Nelson, from the Kellogg’s 1966 Heads of Fame series, assembled by me after breakfast, aged eight*

Sour cherries

If any are spared by wild animals, or by us (great with ice-cream and shaved dark chocolate), cherry whisky is the way to go. Stone a pound of sour cherries (I guess ordinary ones would do just as well), chop up the flesh and crush the stones. Add to a big jar, along with half a nutmeg, a blade of mace, a few peppercorns and a tablespoon of sugar. Fill to the top with whisky and put a lid on it. Two weeks later you’d be saying ‘What a winter warmer!’ if it weren’t such a cliché.

In search of Mournblade

In 1972, Hawkwind’s Silver Machine was aired on TOTP. Or blasted, more like. It sounded like nothing else I’d ever heard. A driving rock riff emerging through the swirling aural mist of the intro and powering into orbit. It grabbed 14-year-old me by the penny round collar of my Ben Sherman shirt. It made me want to be in a band. It made lots of us want to be in a band.

The first piece of the puzzle

Fast forward 12 years. Anyone walking towards the towering edifice of Wharncliffe Viaduct, Hanwell, in late 1984 would’ve wondered at the new graffiti painted high up on the top wall. One word, very neatly done in a kind of copperplate style with interlocking characters and decent kerning.

By the time I first saw it, 30 years later, it had faded to an enigmatic JRNBLADE. I often wondered what JRNBLADE meant. I also often wondered how the hell it got there. I pictured some brave artist dangling in a makeshift sling 20 metres or so up in the air, perhaps in the dead of night. I resolved to find out more.

The genesis of the band

MOURNBLADE are a West London heavy metal band formed in September 1982. Dunken Mullet and Richie Jones shared an interest in science fiction, particularly that of Michael Moorcock, and named their band after a sword from his best-known stories. Mournblade is a great name for a sword (and a pretty good name for a band). It must’ve been a special day when Moorcock gave them his official blessing to use the name.

Dunken (vocalist) and Richie (guitar) were also into the space rock of Hawkwind and The Pink Fairies, and the heavy metal rock ‘n roll juggernaut that was Motörhead. In the space of a few months they wrote a set’s worth of songs, and recruited Derek Jasnock on keyboards, Clive Baxter on bass and Aladdin Waz Jarrah on drums. Aladdin was replaced by Tim Boyd before their first gig, at Ealing College Student Union in 1983.

In the early days, performances involved Mullet making up to 14 costume changes and selecting from a variety of props, including a 2.5-metre wooden sword, a life-size Victorian doll called Victoria, a decaying World War I soldier’s mask, a devil suit with cape, and last but definitely not least, a space helmet – a gold-painted crash helmet with LED lights and a laser beam.

Comings and goings

For a spell in 1983, Mournblade’s keyboard sound was augmented by Steve Ellis on synthesizer. And at the risk of sounding Spinal Tappy, the band got through rather a lot of drummers in those early years. Tim Boyd was replaced by Nigel Tubb in 1983, who left to be replaced by Jeff Ward and then Chris Jones in 1985. Shortly after that, Garry “Magpie” Bowler was given the job and has been doing the tricks with the sticks ever since (he also recently released a solo LP).

Getting a settled line-up is never easy, and I know from experience that auditions can be fraught, especially with drummers who may take hours of precious rehearsal time to get their kit set up. Never ever came across the likes of this though…

One potential recruit brought this to an audition. Looks more like a drum shop than a drum kit.

Other changes around this time were bass player Clive Baxter leaving and Richard Goddard joining for a while, before Paul “Blacken” White took over. Like Magpie, White is still with the band, as is Stephen Loveday, an additional guitarist who was the final piece of the jigsaw.

Time’s Running Out

1985 seems to have been an eventful year. In addition to the changes in personnel, Mournblade also signed to Flicknife Records and released their first LP, Time’s Running Out. An intense touring schedule followed, with more than 400 performances around the UK over the next few years. Mournblade also played many free festivals, including Stonehenge in 1984 and 1985. I marvel at the stamina and self-belief they must’ve had to keep going.

Despite all the hard work and their links to the likes of Hawkwind, Mournblade’s initial success faded, though they did keep a core following in London, South Wales and the Midlands. They also had a full-colour feature in Kerrang! who bestowed on them the mixed-blessing and oft-quoted ‘Future of British Heavy Metal’ plaudit.

Mk 1 – end of an era…

In 1986, Derek Jasnoch left, and Peter Lazonby took over on keyboards. The following year, Lazonby left too. But the biggest change in 1987 was Richie Jones leaving the band.

…Mk 2 – start of a new era

The four remaining members of Mournblade: Dunken Mullett, Stephen Loveday, Garry Bowler and Paul White, decided to do away with keyboards and costumes. The sound became leaner and rawer, creatively refreshed. White’s distorted and immense 8‑string Rickenbacker bass sound took over the space where the keyboards once were. Mournblade were now said to be in the latter part of the new wave of British heavy metal.

Live Fast Die Young

The release of Mourblade’s second album, Live Fast Die Young, in 1989, was followed by tour after tour of the UK and Europe. One UK tour had 36 shows in 43 days, with the band living and travelling together in the same bus throughout. At this time, Mournblade headlined at the London Hippodrome, a show that was broadcast on MTV, as well as appearing with major acts such as Motörhead, Doctor and The Medics, Zodiac Mindwarp, Hazel O’Connor and The Enid.

The touring schedule took its toll, contributing to the band splitting up at the end of 1989.

The hiatus

Mullett has a strong singing voice that doesn’t sound pretend-American. He sings with an English accent. Early in 1990, he teamed up for a while with ex-Pistol Glen Matlock and at-the-time-still-Damned Rat Scabies. A few bands later he moved to New Zealand. Stephen Loveday went into music production (I think). Garry Bowler carried on drumming, helping out heavy metal heroes like Motörhead. No idea what Paul White did, but he certainly was and still is a mighty fine bass player.

The Resurrection

But the fans never went away. When Anthology Part 1, a compilation of live and demo recordings, was released in 2011 it reminded everyone just how good Mournblade were live. The following year, popular demand persuaded Mournblade to reform. After 24 years apart they had only three days’ rehearsal before playing at the Heavy Metal Maniacs Festival at Hoorn, in the Netherlands. Musician and film director Henrieta Tornyai made a documentary of the show, Mournblade – The Resurrection.

Mournblade then released two further albums: Live & Loud, from the reunion show rehearsals; and Live in Holland, a double DVD of the documentary and reunion show.

Time’s Running Out again

In 2013, the original Mk 1 line-up decided to re-visit the 1985 Time’s Running Out album. The original six tracks were re-worked and re-recorded, along with three songs from Ein Heldentraum, a demo cassette from 1986.

Time’s Running Out 2015 was released in September 2015, initially on CD and then on vinyl, including a short run on translucent vinyl.

Mystery and legacy

How the MOURNBLADE graffiti got on the viaduct remains a mystery, though there are whispers that two men may have climbed one of the piers at 5am one dark, foggy November morning. It’s possible they hung over the edge some 25 metres up and painted the wording with a bucket and brush. If by any chance they were having a quick track-side break between painting stints, there would’ve been the danger of being sucked into the side of one of the InterCity 125 trains that whizzed past. The painting took maybe 30 minutes. Or maybe not.

Rumours that the two then climbed back down and had a Full English at a café in Hanwell are completely unsubstantiated.

Some of us think the graffiti should be restored and listed. And it’d be great to see the band play at the Hanwell Hootie – the home of Loud. Guess it’s too late for this year’s Hootie in the Meadow on 19 September. But some time, maybe next year, it would be great to see and hear them underneath the Wharncliffe wonder in Brent Meadow.

Recordings

This list doesn’t include all the many demos and official/bootleg live recordings doing the rounds in the early years. For more details, including track listings, see the links at the end of this article.

Time’s Running Out 1985 mini LP

My favourites on this album are In The Arms Of Morpheus, Sidewinder and Titanium Hero.

Live Fast Die Young 1989 LP

Available on iTunes. For me, the best of a great bunch are Burning Ambition, a slow burner with a hypnotic rolling bassline, and Crash ‘n Burn and Off The Rails, both of which have great guitar hooks that pervade throughout and get under the skin.

Anthology Volume 1 2011 CD live/demo compilation

Available on iTunes. Includes four tracks from Time’s Running Out. The other tracks are from demo recordings, of which Servants Of Fate, Science Of Fiction, Eternal Champion and The Sorcerer stand out.

Live & Loud 2012 live LP

Available on iTunes. Includes a damned neat cover of The Damned’s Neat Neat Neat.

Selling Your Ass (for the Big Time) 2012 single

Available on iTunes. A full-pelt pop at the music industry with a killer running riff. The lyrics give Have A Cigar a run for its money, especially the menacing growl of “Sign here, sign here, sign here, sign here. And here, and here, and here…”

At the Heavy Metal Maniacs Festival 2012 live LP

Available on iTunes.

Time’s Running Out 2015

A re-working of the original 1985 album, with the addition of the following from the Ein Heldentraum demos: Science Friction, The Stairway and Desolation

Available here: NNP -015CD/VNL – Mournblade – Time’s Running Out 2015 | Non Nobis Productions (bandcamp.com)

Drummer Garry Magpie Bowler has just released an LP: Dancing With The Devil

https://recordstoreday.co.uk/releases/rsd-2021-drop-2/magpie/

NB Take care when looking up Mournblade on iTunes. The 2006 EP Mangled Lies is by a different Mournblade, a US thrash metal band.

More info and pics…

There’s tons of interesting stuff on Facebook: Mournblade – Home | Facebook
They’ve got a Wikipedia page too: Mournblade (band) – Wikipedia
Mournblade’s website is down at the moment: www.mournbladeband.com
Mournblade are on Twitter but aren’t very active there: https://twitter.com/MournbladeUK
A short and sweet summary: Mournblade – Band Biography – Diskery

Sound and vision…

The Resurrection Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toRIzQJIjrk
Sidewinder live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxdzyLisVrU
Dirty Black Leather, Wet White Lace: self-released VHS 1985

My thanks to Mournblade for permission to use images from the band’s Facebook page.

Brunel in Hanwell – Wharncliffe Viaduct

Could you imagine Hanwell without its viaduct? The whole feeling of the place would be transformed. The Wharncliffe Viaduct is one of the most recognisable landmarks in the area and features on a lot of local imagery, including St Mark’s school logo. And there’s a lot more about it than meets the eye.

The viaduct was built in 1836–37 to carry the Great Western Railway – at the time a new transport link between London and all points west – over the River Brent and its wide shallow valley.

This architectural beauty consists of a series of arches formed by hollow piers made of engineering brick. It was the first viaduct to be built this way. It was also the first major project designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, so he must have been pretty confident the hollow pier structure would work (as well as save a fortune in bricks).

It’s huge, stated to be 20 metres high, but it seems a lot more than that. When you’re standing underneath it, it’s overwhelming. Originally it carried only two railway tracks, and was so narrow those crossing it might have had to close their eyes to avoid suffering the indignity of vertigo. In 1877 the builders added an extra row of piers and arches, increasing the width of the viaduct so it could carry four narrow gauge railway tracks instead of two broad ones.

Queen Victoria must have had a pretty good head for heights. She is said on occasion to have commanded the Royal Train to stop awhile on the viaduct to enjoy the splendid view over meadow, field and woods. I can see why – the mid-air crossing does feel all too brief. Her Majesty was perhaps also thrilled by a sensation akin to that of being in one of the Montgolfier brothers’ balloons. This bridge over land soon became a tourist attraction and a nearby coaching inn on the Uxbridge Road, then a major turnpike, changed its name from the Coach & Horses to The Viaduct.

Churchfields Park from a train on the viaduct

Brunel’s spectacular construction is 270 metres long. It goes in a straight line; no deviations, neither up nor down, nor side-to-side – only forward and back, forward and back.

In addition to tonne upon tonne of steel rail for the trains, the viaduct has always carried an assortment of other items of infrastructure for power or communications. From the outset Brunel was keen to use the new-fangled electric telegraph system to help run the railway, which soon expanded into commercial use. In 1845, the new telegraph system was used to catch John Tawell, a murder suspect travelling to Paddington. It was probably the first time a telegraph message was used for this purpose. It was quite long:

“A murder has just been committed at Salt Hill and the suspected murderer was seen to take a first class ticket to London by the train that left Slough at 7.42pm. He is in the garb of a Kwaker with a brown great coat on which reaches his feet. He is in the last compartment of the second first-class carriage.”

Ever since, telegraph poles and wires, transatlantic trunk route cabling, overhead power lines to keep the trains moving, and more recently untold uncoils of fibre-optic cabling have been heaped upon the uncomplaining edifice. All that metal, carrying all that electricity. The crackle and hum of an electromagnetic field, whose swirls of energy can bend space, time and mind. An electric line to your zodiac sign, as Hawkwind once put it. I bet it looked far out amazing to the locals back in the day, as it took shape, with its sheer size and the graceful curves of its arches. Perhaps some doffed their hats to the coat of arms of Lord Wharncliffe that has pride of place at the top of the central pier overlooking Brent Meadow. This man was head of the committee that got the Bill through Parliament enabling the viaduct to be built.

There’s no such memorial to the labourers, most of them Irish, who did the actual building. They mostly lived in tents and many of them also worked cutting the canal, making bricks and digging gravel. They had a reputation for heavy drinking and brawling, as evidenced by this excerpt from Some accounts of bygone Hanwell written by Sir Montagu Sharpe in 1924:

“In 1836, a large body of Irish men engaged in constructing the Great Western Railway went to The Stag beerhouse, where a few Englishmen had assembled, and a row commenced … Three prisoners were sentenced to two months in the House of Correction by the magistrates, who sent a letter to the Company, and stated that unless something was done, it would be necessary to apply to the Government for a body of police or military, to be stationed at Hanwell.”

From Hanwell station the viaduct starts off as a steep embankment, broken by Hanwell Small Viaduct, with three mini arches that cross Station Road, and a further three filled in to form business units. Even under these smaller arches you wonder that the bricks don’t fall, given the wide bands of mortar between them.

Take a walk on the north side in summer, along the path that runs at the bottom of Churchfields, and the thick stands of tall leafy trees almost totally obscure the viaduct in places. So much so that when a train crosses over it seems to be flying through the treetops. And they do cross frequently, the viaduct seeming to reverberate and amplify the deep whistle whoosh of the express, the busy clatter of freight trains and the steady rumble of the local stopping service.

By the time you get to Brent Lodge Park, the viaduct is no longer visible at all through the dense woodland. The shrieks and yelps behind me add to the jungle effect, though I’m not sure whether they emanate from nearby Hanwell Zoo or perhaps some small children lost in the adjacent maze.

From the other side, the viaduct dominates the skyline above Brent Meadow. In the top left corner you can cut in under the viaduct. The first thing you notice is how chilly it is and how cool to the touch the bricks are. Water drips continually from the underside of the arches, as if a microclimate were at play. The immense hollow cavities inside the supporting piers are home to several colonies of bats, most likely Daubenton’s bat. This is probably the largest bat cave complex in the London area. Only licensed bat-workers may enter, through entrance grilles that look like the gates to a Gothic prison tower. Green metal fencing serves to discourage intruders. Here, at the western end you can get closer to the grilles than at the other end. It feels scarier here – I thought I heard noises that weren’t water dripping. Round a pier and under again, to be greeted by cool graffiti; a haunt where people meet, then leave, and leave their rubbish behind.

In this corner of Brent Meadow there’s also a small allotment under the shelter of the viaduct looming behind. A scarecrow watches an old couple harvesting new onions. A little further on an embankment rises to meet the viaduct as it ends its run behind a row of houses in Brentvale Avenue. Some garden feature that must be.

These houses probably weren’t very old when the German Luftwaffe tried to destroy the viaduct during the Second World War. They considered it an important strategic target, but all the bombs they dropped either missed their target or failed to explode.

There’s faded graffiti high up on the top wall. One ancient piece in particular stands out: JRNBLADE. Neatly done in a kind of copperplate style with interlocking characters and decent kerning. Old school rather than old skool. I guess the brave artist who created it was balancing 60 feet or so up in the air, perhaps in the middle of the night. I recently discovered that it dates back to 1984. MOURNBLADE was a Hawkwind-inspired local heavy metal band. Their JRNBLADE graffiti deserves to be restored and listed. And if they’re still going, it’d be great to see them play at the Hanwell Hootie, underneath the Wharncliffe wonder in Brent Meadow.

Further reading

Wikipedia: Wharncliffe Viaduct – Wikipedia

Ian Visits: http://j.mp/ffCvEP

Mournblade: Mournblade (band) – Wikipedia

Notes from an allotment in May

SATURDAY 1 MAY

Reflecting robins composition

Spotted two robins together! Must locate their nest and keep well away from it. One year I accidentally disturbed one in the prunings pile. I felt miserable. I bet they weren’t too happy about it either.

MONDAY 3 MAY

I probably say this most months, but May really is one of the busiest of the year, when the things of spring step into summer. You get lost in the cycle of sowing, growing, weeding, netting and harvesting, all at once. And strimming. And pruning. Seemingly endless pruning of plum, greengage and damson trees. These trees are pruned in late spring because unlike the apple trees they can get a fungal disease if pruned in cold weather. It feels counter-intuitive pruning trees that already have fruit growing on them. How much to prune? The water shoots and maybe a bit more, but not too much. Some say, never shop when hungry. I say, never chop when angry.

The one that got away

Today I’m on the ladder, sawing a big branch up in one of the greengage trees. One large branch gets lopped from each tree, every year, to stop them getting too big. The trick is to start sawing from below, so that a great sliver of wood and bark doesn’t tear off at the end. A trick I rarely manage.

From my perch I see big bumbles hovering among the blossoms of apple, crab apple and sour cherry.

THURSDAY 6 MAY

Sowing is now in full swing. No matter how straight you sow the row, the seeds will move in the soil, for the result is always a meandering line of seedlings. My Special Theory of Seed Dislocation describes the various forces at work here: bent gravity, the motion of heavenly bodies, dark matter of course, soil rheology, little beasties like worms and earwigs, subsoil water flow, and last but not least, weeds. I suspect that young weeds move under cover of darkness, nudging the sown seed out of line and taking its place. All this to fool the gardener into removing the sown seedling instead of the weedling. As any fule kno, if it’s easy to remove the weed, it’s probably not a weed.

Fat Hen weedling among parsnip seedlings

SUNDAY 9 MAY

Slugs certainly know the difference between a seedling and a weedling. Slugs are The Enemy, but I can’t bring myself to kill them, at least not directly. Yoghurt pots sunk into the soil and filled with beer attract slugs that then fall in and drown, but what a way to go. We stopped doing it in the end, after a few days it smells revolting. So now we just throw them over the fence. To be fair, they too have their place in the cycle of life and decay: they help break down all vegetation (not just prized seedlings); and they are food to slow worms, toads, frogs and birds.

THURSDAY 13 MAY

In the greenhouse, and more sowing. There’s no wind, not even a breeze. So there’s no flap-flapping of plastic sheeting, just the dipple-dipple-dipple of light rain on the roof of my translucent tent.

FRIDAY 14 MAY

I spotted movement in the tree above the hedge. I could see it was a bird, but not what sort. What a wonderful song it had. Loud, cheerful, yet complex. A song thrush perhaps? In a short while it revealed itself to be… a blackcap.

SUNDAY 16 MAY

The weather has been changeable. Lukewarm rain one minute, sunny sun the next, and sometimes somehow the two at once. Rainbow weather. Weird weather. A day of dramatic cloud scapes and blowy rainstorms is followed by one of calm still sunshine. And repeat. That’s the British weather.

MONDAY 17 MAY

The rain has abated and the grass is just about dry enough for strimming. Cutting wet grass is a messy business and damages the paths and orchard ground. In summer it’s a task that never ends but I really enjoy it. Which is just as well because what I like to call the orchard hay meadow needs to be mown before the first of the plums and greengages fall. Still unripe, they make a lovely sharp windfall pickle.

Strimming’s a mildly OCD affair. I mentally define areas to be quartered in sequence. Most areas will have straight borders, following raised beds, for example. Others will be like mid-western states – three straight sides and a wobbly one that follows a natural feature, such as the wildlife hedge (aka the rubbish pile).

So much fun to be had in the United States of Strimming, but don’t get too distracted. Three days ago these irises were sheathed in green, camouflaged in the asparagus bed. Today their beauty nearly caused me to mow them down.

TUESDAY 18 MAY

This morning I weeded in bursts between showers while keeping an eye on the enormous bank of gun-grey dark cloud in the south, as wide as the sky. When it rained I sat in the shed and watched as the dark storm rumbled with thunder and spat flashes of lightning, while sliding slowly eastwards. The dirty-grey colour of the thundercloud went well against the green of the trees above which it hung.

It was exciting viewing the edge of the storm mass when the sky directly above me was a cosy cloudless blue. Cosy enough for me to start walking home. And get caught in a torrential downpour…

SUNDAY 23 MAY

All of a sudden the big planters in our Local Traffic Network (LTN21) have gone. Put in by the council under cover of Covid about a year ago, now lifted out by cranes like they were weeds. Wouldn’t mind a couple of them on the allotment.

THURSDAY 27 MAY

Work has kept me away from the allotment, bar a few fleeting visits. A lovely sunny day. Chive flowers dancing under the weight of bees upon them. Graham says the air smelt of summer last night. And Graham has a very good sense of smell.

They made a bee-line for the chives

The sunny spell continues and the bird song seems more abundant and vigorous as the days lengthen. May is the peak time for the dawn chorus and maybe next year I’ll try to get to the allotment before sunrise once or twice for a couple of early morning performances.

Thinning out the seedlings has risen to the top of the to-do list. It’s one of the more fiddly jobs and always feels like chucking the weakest chick out of the nest, even if thinnings are great in soups and salads. This year I tried practising a more socially distanced approach to sowing to reduce fiddly thinning syndrome.

SUNDAY 30 MAY

Yesterday, Brendan accidentally disturbed a robin’s nest among the bins at the back of his plot. Six little eggs abandoned and the parents never came back.

A Hanwell Walk 1 – the beauty of the Hanwell Hootie

The Hanwell Hootie is the largest free one-day music festival in London. Each year, early in May, live music events continue throughout the day in a host of small venues.

The Hootie was first held in 2013 to celebrate Jim Marshall, the Father of Loud, who died in 2012. Last year it was held online – the Isolation Festival – for obvious reasons that also mean this year’s Hootie is also cancelled, though there is a whisper that a smaller version may take place in September (fingers crossed).

To bridge the gap, this weekend I spent an hour or so with something loud on my iPod, while browsing through previous years’ Hootie souvenir programmes. Like we were strolling around, debating on which act to catch next. I even wore my Hootie T-shirt and wristband for that authentic touch.

Hanwell – the Home of Loud

In 1960, Jim Marshall, a drummer and drum teacher, opened a shop in Hanwell High Street with his wife Violet and son Terry, an event commemorated by a plaque on the pavement outside what is now Tony’s Barbers. Jim started off selling drums, and then included guitars. Several customers, including The Who’s Pete Townshend, said they wanted a guitar amp that was louder than UK models, but not as expensive as the more powerful American imports.

So, in 1962, Jim set up Marshall Amplification. With the help of Dudley Craven and Ken Bran he eventually came up with the Marshall JTM 45 and the Marshall sound was born: loud, distorted and with that distinctive crunch.

Up to 11

In 1963, the Makers of Loud moved across the road to bigger premises and from then on business boomed. Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton (who went to school with my aunt, doncha know), Jimmy Page and Ronnie Wood were soon using Marshall equipment. Before long, just about everyone was. They were certainly a familiar sight in rehearsal rooms in my playing days. The Marshall stack, a wall of noise, became de rigueur for rock bands when touring. And the ultimate accolade – yes, it’s a Marshall amp that gets turned up to 11 in This Is Spinal Tap.

Loud more golden than silence

The first Hanwell Hootie kicked off with Brian Poole of the Tremeloes unveiling a plaque near Hanwell Clock Tower. Was he able to resist an ironic reference to his former band’s hit Silence is Golden during this tribute to the Father of Loud?

The plan at that first Hootie was for 13 bands to play in three pubs – in the end just about every pub and bar in Hanwell joined in.

Meadow entrance. Photo courtesy of Hanwell Hootie

Look at the old souvenir programmes and you get a sense of how the Hootie has grown, long ago outstripping the capacity of Hanwell’s pubs and bars, with more venues being introduced each year.

At our first Hootie, there were some pubs we’d rarely visited before, including the Kings Arms pre-makeover. Some were full beyond anything they’d seen in years, like the Duke of York, where the Shock of Rock made some of the letters fall off the sign outside, so that it now reads the D_ke _f Y_rk.

St Mellitus. Photo courtesy of Hanwell Hootie

For me, it’s all about the excitement of watching a band up close, a reminder of when I too played live, back in the day. Marvelling at the interplay of bassist and drummer, guitarist and keyboard player, and the singer’s ability to hold the audience. Wanting to dance, not wanting to spill my pint. The all-encompassing spectacle of it all.

Bad Touch. Photo courtesy of Hanwell Hootie

And there’s more…

Fabulous Feasting, the Busking Bus and the Hootie Shuttle Bus – a free service that takes you to outlying venues and nearby train and tube stations. My first ever espresso martini, standing in the cooling rain by a canvas kiosk in Viaduct Meadow. Never mind the weather, here’s the Hootie!

Meadow stage. Photo courtesy of Hanwell Hootie

Local legacy

Do get a copy of the souvenir programme, even if you can’t attend the Hootie itself this year. For as well as being a guide to events on the day, it’s an excellent starting point for finding out about the rock and pop music legacy of the local area…

Some of the loudest bands of the 60s and 70s – Cream, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and the Who – all rehearsed at the imposing Hanwell Community Centre at one time or another. What would Charlie Chaplin and his schoolmates have made of that?
Brentford fan Rick Wakeman, and some of the Brand New Heavies and Jamiroquai, went to Drayton Manor School.
Doctor Feelgood’s Lee Brilleaux (brill name) grew up in Hanwell.
Cyril Davis, harmonica player and Ealing Blues Club founder, was a regular at the Viaduct pub.

Gone but not forgotten

Peter Cook’s Guitar World, where I would spend many a happy half hour guitar gazing, closed in 2015. The Flying Pig guitar shop, next door but one to Tony’s Barbers, closed some years before that.

Long Live Loud!

For sure, the Hanwell Hootie will carry on growing (much like Hanwell itself). We’ll carry on watching it evolve each year. Meanwhile, I’m just so pleased we’ve been able to witness these early ones, still new and marvellous.

The show must go on

In September 2021, we had a scaled-down version – Hootie in the Meadow – followed in 2022 by business as usual. Last year, in 2023, the Hootie had a break because of the Coronation.

But now it’s back – on 11 May 2024!

For more information:

Hanwell Hootie – Live Music in Small Venues in the Home of Loud

Marshall History – marshall.com

Hanwell’s rubbish

Hanwell isn’t rubbish. It just has rubbish – pockets of litter and the like – around its streets and green bits.

Zen and the art of noticing litter

In the past year we’ve walked around Hanwell a lot more. We’ve spent more time being in its spaces, rather than just going through them. You notice the surroundings more on foot than in a car, and that includes litter and fly-tipped monstrosities.

So let’s go for a rubbish walk… (OK, no more throwaway lines). The first thing we see is an empty soft drink can some no-longer-thirsty soul has flicked over the garden wall. Nice. On the way up to the Boston Road random items placed on walls hope to find a new home. That’s not littering, though, even if by next morning said items lie in the gutter, soaking wet and chewed through. Rubbish strewn across a pavement after a fox or crow has picked through it doesn’t count either, in our book.

We’re trash, you and me. We’re the litter on the breeze…

What gets the goat is people who nonchalantly drop sweet wrappers in the street. Those who heave Boris bikes into the river, or dump old mattresses by the roadside. Those who let man’s best friend poo on the pavement by the school gates but don’t pick it up.

Who are these people? Why are they so thoughtless, so inconsiderate? At what point in life does a person become dropper instead of picker-upper?

Schools do educate their pupils and take them on litter pick-up trips. When I was a kid, being a litter-lout was an act of rebellion, a phase you grew out of pretty quickly. Who can forget those 1970s ads? PC George Dixon of Dock Green warning us to Keep Britain Tidy or else…

Once (and only once) I confronted a litter-dropper who had considered his actions. He explained that if people like him didn’t drop litter, road sweepers wouldn’t have a job. Oh, OK. I’ll torch your house then, to keep firefighters employed.

Too posh to pick

At the entrance to Churchfield rec, at the bottom of Manor Court Road, there’s a poster tied to the rose garden fence that says “Don’t be too posh to pick”. Luckily, the charming illustration makes it clear we’re talking litter, not noses…

Most dog walkers pick up their dogs’ poo, of course, yet in this very spot we did once see a guy do the ‘pretend pick-up’. He clocked that we’d seen his pooch unload, so he leant down and went through the motions, so to speak. But he had produced no bag, and there was no pick-up. Right by a dog poo bin, too.

They say litter is simply recycling resource in the wrong place, as a weed is a plant in the wrong place. Sometimes though litter has a weird charm, in a forgotten alley or in one of those nowhere areas behind strung-out old shop parades amid broken crates and abandoned shopping trolleys. Or maybe it’s just me.

But litter isn’t just a dispiriting sight, it can also be dangerous. At the bottom of High Lane we come across an information board that describes some of the wildlife around and goes on to request “DO NOT LITTER. It is unsightly and can injure or kill wild animals.”

You often see walkers perform random or organised acts of litter collection in the area, and particularly along this stretch. There’s the Brent River Park rangers too, and the Brent River & Canal Society, who all do brilliant work.

Our rubbish walk has brought us to the allotment, where nothing disturbs the robin’s song and the rustle of breeze through plum blossom. Apart from the occasional cry of seagulls wheeling above Greenford Recycling Centre. Oh, and something at the tip that makes a noise like a great dragon exhaling fire with a thunderous clatter and wheeze, every once in a while.

For many months now tip visits have been by appointment only. This may have led to some fly tipping, but it has always been a problem, everywhere. By 2017, according to MyLondon, fly tipping in the borough of Ealing was on an industrial scale and had made Hanwell the filthiest it had been in 35 years.

Pick me up before you go-go!

While digging the plot I sing Wham! to the attentive robin: “Do the litter bug. Do the litter bug. Do the litter bug. Do the litter bug…”

Recycling resource in the wrong place is also a problem at the allotment, at least behind the fence near our shed. It’s mostly plastic bags and old beer cans, and has been there for years. Whoever put it there must have done so from inside the allotment, and was definitely being inconsiderate. Why else would you dump it where it can’t be reached through undergrowth at its thorny densest?

Those allotment fence beer can dumpers weren’t too posh to drop, and I’m not too posh to pick. I’m gonna fight my way through the undergrowth and clear the rubbish myself.

But it’s already April. I have to consider the robin, who may well have built a nest in that thickest part of the thicket.

Maybe next year, then.

Links to more

MyLondon article

www.mylondon.news/news/west-london-news/fly-tipping-left-ealing-filthiest-12645400

Brent River & Canal Society

www.brcs.org.uk

Ealing park rangers

www.ealing.gov.uk/info/201132/parks_and_open_spaces/639/park_rangers/1