Wansteadium

A plan to demolish the row of shops including Wanstead Hairdresser’s on Woodbine Place has been submitted to Redbridge Council.

The plan would replace the kebab shop, the barbers and children’s clothes shop Bambini with a three-storey block containing shops at street level and offices above. Wansteadium believes shop owners knew nothing of the plan until planning notices were put on lamp-posts on Wednesday.

The planning documents say of the plans:

Overall, the design achieves a balance between timeless simplicity and contemporary refinement, reinforcing the prominence of the High Street frontage, while complementing and elevating the character of
the local context.

It is believed a hairdresser’s has stood on the spot in the current building for at least 100 years. The row of shops is part of the Wanstead Conservation Area, but the documents indicate Redbridge planners are open to a redevelopment. One of the documents discusses the importance of the corner site, currently Churchill’s, but adds “the single storey shops to the rear lack the same visual interest”.

It says: “Being located at the corner at a visually prominent location, the buildings add little to the conservation area and its character. Their scale and appearance does not represent the important corner location.”

If approved, combined with the development currently under way on the Evergreen Field, the overall effect will be of a massively changed central Wanstead.

Redbridge has told residents it wants to make all Wanstead streets 20mph zones, in line with many other London boroughs.

The proposal has an inevitability about it – the case made for reducing accidents is a strong one, however much motorists might get frustrated by the limits.

While most of the roads in the new zone are residential streets, the limit will be felt more on more major roads like New Wanstead, Hermon Hill/Chigwell Road and the High Street.

But some Hermon Hill residents will be among those cheering the proposal most loudly – we have documented a number of serious prangs in the past few years where cars have gone off the road, most recently this.

Hermon Hill traffic plea renewed

The proposal includes speed humps on Hollybush Hill, Spratt Hall Road, Nutter Lane, Rutland Road, Grove Park, and Elmcroft Avenue, and speed cushions on Chigwell Road, Hermon Hill and New Wanstead.

Wansteadium’s only thoughts are – whether this is a real consultation at all, and whether the decision has actually been made. And secondly, well even if it has, it’s nice to be asked. We’re not always extended that courtesy. The consultation is online here.

There’s been a pretty hard pruning of one of Wanstead’s magnificent cedar trees, on the junction of New Wanstead with Hollybush Hill. Cedar trees CAN recover from prunings like this, we’re told by a friendly tree surgeon, but it will be years before it has anything like its former shape. It puts Wansteadium in mind of Aslan on the stone table.

Anyone in other parts of the country who believes this message from the Nationwide Building Society should take it with a pinch of salt. It was following a very similar promise that the society decided to close the Wanstead branch, five years ago. Want a recap?

Retrospective planning permission for the illuminated signs on Wanstead High Street at the Wanstead Coffee Shop (formerly Caesar’s Palace) might not seem like a big deal, but it’s a real test of whether Redbridge officials have any fight left in them to preserve the Wanstead Conservation area.

Longtime readers will know that shops are not permitted to have “internally illuminated signs”, ie no plastic with lights coming through. Any lights need to be shining on to the sign rather than coming from inside it. It’s a small thing but the effect it makes on a high street is noticeable.

However, planners were thwarted in their objections to the digital advertising boards on the high street on these grounds, overruled by the Planning Inspectorate.

So this retrospective application (the sign have been up for months) is one of the first real tests of their resolve. Their decision will be instructive – if they give way on it, the last vestige of the conservation area would seem to vanish. On the other hand, is this a strong enough reason to put a cost on a local business?

Each year in a ritual as celebrated as the last conker of autumn or the first loft conversion of the New Year, we mark the season’s first frost. It was today. Happy Frost Day to readers old and new.

2025 – 18 November
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