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

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?

Olympic regeneration in the Lower Lea Valley could be held up by the presence of a long decommissioned nuclear reactor, according to this article in the Times. A fact that was apparently not mentioned to the IOC when London was presenting its bid to host the games. This is hardly Chernobyl though - the reactor was built by Queen Mary College's department of nuclear engineering and the "core was the size of a bucket and produced virtually no energy". Still it only took one bite from a irradiated spider to give Peter Parker some pretty exceptional crimefighting skills. Just think of the consequences for the Olympic movement.

According to the Telegraph, Multiplex and the other developers in the consortium behind the Stratford City development plan are working hard to hide internal disputes about how to move forward. The plan - including a massive retail and housing scheme in a 180 acre site designed around the new Channel Tunnel link - is central to London's 2012 Olympic bid. Now there are questions about whether every member of the consortium is fully committed... looks like trouble (particularly if you're one of the growing number of private investors who've picked up property in the area on the back of the regeneration plans).

Wembley kills off Multiplex boss [May 27]