Angel Cottage (2a Windmill Lane) stood on the corner of Windmill Lane and Angel Lane, it was built in 1826... when Stratford was a rural area not yet connected to London by rail. It was destroyed over the weekend. Nobody - as yet - knows who was responsible. English Heritage have advised Newham Council to hand the matter over to the police.

Technorati Tags: London, property, real estate

The Olympics will turn us into couch potatoes, produce no long-term boost to local employment and is turning out to be the "catalyst for mass evictions and impoverishment". Monbiot looks at recent Olympic history and finds a shameful track record of social cleansing. He also finds signs for our own acts of shame in Clays Lane in Newham and Waterden Crescent in Hackney... where gypsies and travelers and a long-standing allotment will be swept aside. More here.

London's poor lose out over Olympics [June 6, 2007]

Technorati Tags: London, Olympics, property, real estate

On Plashet Road, in Newham.

[Photo by Nicobobinus]

Technorati Tags: estate agents, London, real estate agents

Sometimes the Telegraph can seem a little Thames Gateway-obsessed - but, you've got to hand it to them, they know how to do these redevelopment features. Here's Sheila Prophet with a very nice state-of-play piece, looking at Brent Cross Cricklewood, Paddington Basin, King's Cross, Elephant & Castle, Convoy's Wharf Deptford, Silvertown Quays, oh, okay, and Greenwich Peninsula. She also asks, "Should you invest?" Elephant & Caslte, King's Cross (above) and Silvertown (below) get something of a thumbs up.


Ah smell that? That's the smell of money, Mrs Turveydrop... [October 3, 2006]

Technorati Tags: design, London, property, real estate

He was visiting a zero carbon home in Bow, accompanied by Ruth Kelly in a kind of Batman and Robin formation, when he spotted - amongst the insulation and woody-burners - a telly:

Mr Harris, from ZEDfactory, said just because someone lived in a zero carbon house, it did not mean they had to adhere to a certain lifestyle. "We are not saying you have to live without a car or have to eat local organic food - people are their own free agents," he said.

Mr Brown apparently then stroked his chin and mumbled, "It's a nice big telly", before Kelly croaked "Holy sustainable development, Vatman... say something sensible that might impress the Cameron clan but keep property developers onside." Find out if Brown and Kelly get out unscathed by reading the full instalment here.

According to figures released by the Halifax, and celebrated in the Newham Recorder, Newham house prices have risen 281% in the last ten years, outstripping every other area in London. Amazingly, even after these gains, the average house price in the borough is "just" £189,660, making it the second cheapest London borough (after Barking & Dagenham). With the Olympics affecting prices in the area, it suggests there's still plenty more room for growth in Newham.

East London Olympic price elevator - going up! [August 11]
A call to Newham residents - please sniff your neighbours [August 10]

There's news in today's Times that the organisers of the 2012 Games have lifted the threat of 95 CPOs just north of Stratford. Clearly, it's good news if it means 95 businesses aren't forced to relocate, and if the London Development Agency has managed to find a cheaper alternative venue for its temporary carpark (95 businesses were being threatened for the sake of a temporary carpark!)... but lawyers aren't in the business of applauding win-win wins. The lawyer representing the interests of the 95 (plus a further 200 threatened with CPOs) isn't impressed. They're only doing it for the money, he says. So? And, in any case, the remaining businesses will in all likelihood be forced out when their leases rocket at renewal time. Well he might have a point there.

East London vision [October 31]
Livingstone compared to Mugabe for Olympic land-grab [October 6]

Saturday's Financial Times carried a lengthy and poetic architectural conjecture about post-Olympics east London. Architects from Arup Associates and Fletcher Priest both beat the FT journalist to the punch, insisting that Stratford City will be no Canary Wharf, and that planning is community-up. The picture painted is still a little confusing, but with its grid system and high-speed train link to Europe, it's an exciting one. Read the full feature on the other side of this link.

Things are hotting up in the east, where the proposed compulsory purchases (to make way for the Olympic village) are being met with fierce resistance. A few months ago, we reported on the case of salmon smoker Lance Forman, whose business was established in the East End exactly one hundred years ago... the work of Jewish immigrants who brought the curing tradition to London from Eastern Europe. Since then - as every other smokery has relocated to Scotland - H Forman & Son has stayed put (in Marshgate Lane) and flourished, surviving both fire and flood, to become one of the world's leading exponents of a subtle culinary art, and providing food to Fortnum & Mason and some of the country's top restaurants. Lance Forman complains that the forced move will cripple his business - the land has been (it is suggested) undervalued, it takes time and money to build a site capable of his very specialised business, and the area the London Development Agency intend to shift him to will leave the company with an insurmountable traffic burden (effectively stopping him makin deliveries to London restaurants within the necessary time). According to the Independent, here, angry victims of the proposed compulsory purchases clashed with Livingstone at a London Assembly meeting, and compared his behaviour to Mugabe's. As we said back in July, this is just one of hundreds of East London businesses facing compulsory purchase. They'll lose, the big building firms will win... good for Londoners?

Catching up on our friends at Londonist yesterday revealed this fascinating story about London's own South East Asian mafia drug fields - otherwise known as Newham. Apparently, with as many as 82 cannabis factories discovered locally since April, Newham Vice has appealed to locals to go out and sniff the air for skunk.