Langthorne Road

Grove Green Road

Church and Sunday school.
1899. Arch. P.MORLEY HORDER. Roughcast and stone dressings, in an ARTS AND CRAFTS manner.  Gabled west  with flush mullioned Serbian windows . Buttresses. Segmental reveals around upper windows, windows segmental headed/square. Mullioned in timber/stone

Final resting place of around 170.000  RC EASTENDERS oblivious of the  CENTRAL LINE trains clattering between LEY and LEY’ONE. With ST.MARY’S KENSAL GREEN, the 2 RC ONLY cemeteries in GL.

Open in 1968. The demand was growing.  Villages were swallowed by the growing  metropolis.

A diverse range of communities, nations and languages, but mostly IRISH and ITALIANS.

A landscape packed with graves, with only a few trees and plants in between. Not like the classical Victorian cemeteries, landscaped and laid out with the dual purpose of being burial grounds and gardens.

Still in use. Soil has been piled on top of unmarked graves, to provide extra space.

Due to natural shifs of the ground son monuments have been toppled

An unusual, concrete modernist structure that stands out. 1965. LUCIA FERRARY, “mamma adorabile”. Stained glass window.

In bishops robes, holding a shamrock (metaphor of the Holy Trinity). A serpent coils around staff (the legend says that ST.PATRICK drove all snakes out

Patron saint of AMALFI

In former farmland, property of STRATFORD LANGTHORNE ABBEY, b. 1840. Opened 1842.

Ts heaped main building  build. 3 storeys. With lower wings to the rear. 2 courtyards, for men and women.

GF offices. FF, Master and Matron quarters, and dormitories. 2F Lying wards. In the rear wing, dining room, storerooms. Mint hen in the basement.

Enlarged in 1845. In 1864 an INFIRMARY b. to the West.

In 1870 a BOARD ROOM, West, now Mental Health, and STORES East, now part of Thorne Centre..

In 1930 control passed tomWEST HAM BC, renaming it CENTRAL HOME PUBLIC ASSISTANCE INSTITUTION, a home for the chronically ill, the aged, the inform. In 1938 it had 1.800 beds.

During WW2 part of EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICES. SIR CLAUDE FRANK (part of contingency plans, as the gov. had anticipated that 100.000 tons of bombs would be dropped on London during the first fortnight of the war, and a quarter of a million casualties, in LDN and the HOME COUNTIES).

1948.LANGTHORNE HOSPITAL, part of the NHS, specialised in geriatric care, with 831  beds for chronic sock, 475 for aged residents.
Upgraded and improved, the QUEEN MOTHER visited in ‘57, and in ‘60 the DUKE OF KEN5 opened a geriatric new wing. In ‘65 a SOCIAL CENTRE opened by DOWAGER MARCHIONNESS OF READING. WRVS Chairman.

In 1974, reorganisation: placed under the new authority, the NETH RH Auth. In ‘82 WF HEALTH auth. In ‘99,  LOSED

M-F doorways.

Sculptures over the door 

Young Alfred first attended Mayville Road School, Leytonstone (now Mayville Primary School), but his parents were told off by Father Flannagan for sending him to a secular school

This was  a factor contributing to Hitchcock's sense of isolation: religion. The Hitchcocks were Catholics, while most of their neighbours were Protestants."

13 Aug 1899, above the family’, greengrocerks shop. The family moved here in 1896. A row of 10 houses, recently build, after the housing boom 1880s-1900 (from fields and farms to packed terrace housing).

By 1904 they hat a telephone: WANSTEAD 569. Identified as “W” (William, his father) and “fruiterer”. The business was flourishing, supplying smaller shops and general stores with fruits and vegetables. They had another shop across the road.

”behind, ripening sheds, great bunches of bananas ripening by the warmth of gas flares. Smell. A bit older he went out, all day! with deliveries all over the area, by horse-drawn van. walnuts delivered in the outer coats and husked “ A.HITCH recalls the electric trams running down the HIGH ROAD. The maiden journey started in December 1906.

The family moved to SALMON LANE, LIMEHOUSE (between 1906 and 1908]. By 1911 ED.HEN. MICKELOROUGH run the business here (his wife was related to the HTCH).

517 was part of larger single property according to a 1951 map. By the 80s, demolished.

WF Plaque 1994

His early life appears to be somewhat solitary. Being several years younger than his brother and sister he was often not allowed to join them.

"This is shown by his early memory of them refusing to let him go with them on a bicycle ride to the Green Man (at the top of Leytonstone High Road) as he was too young...

In the Acacia Road Play Park on the corner of Montague Road and Acacia Road. The head is about two metres high and was constructed at the Eden Project in Cornwall. He originally had green grass hair and two eyes. But the grass died during a hot summer and one eye was damaged so now winks. There are other interesting artworks in play park. Look out for mosaics, some beautiful wrought iron gates and a cement path decorated by childrens' hand prints.

Harrow Road. A 10 metre long boat labelled Sea Bass in the play area in Harrow Road Park. Two slides have been fixed and a mock canon pokes out of one side. There is a series of sculptures with marine themes on the ground in front of its bow

2013. Mural by  ATEUSZ OBROBNY with ANNA MILL

Hitchcock was terrified of authority - policemen in particular. As recounted by François Truffaut in his ‘Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock’: “I must have been about four or five years old when my father sent me to the Police Station with a note. The Chief of Police read it and locked me in a cell for five or ten minutes, saying, ‘This is what we do to naughty boys.’ … I haven’t the faintest idea why I was punished. As a matter of fact, my father used to call me his ‘little lamb without a spot,’ so I truly cannot imagine what I did …” It is apparent that William Hitchcock was a strict disciplinarian, instilling the lifelong sense of guilt and fear of the police that underscore his son’s films.  The site of Harrow Rd Police Station opposite Harrow Green is now occupied by a Costcutter shop.

You can see SIR RICHARD CHILD monogram. He inherited the house in 1715 and was largely responsible for making it so palatial. His wealth derived from inheritance, as his father was Chairman of the E.I.C