#5: Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Mews
Ed Jefferson is attempting to visit every Mews in Greater London. This week: wooly mammoths, pissy snooker and Argentinian horse murder.
Ed Jefferson is attempting to visit every Mews in Greater London. This week: wooly mammoths, pissy snooker and Argentinian horse murder, but first…
They did an election in the UK this week. I spent some time trying to establish whether I could prove some sort of electoral effect of Mewses, but only got as far as establishing that Lanes are maybe a bit Tory if you look at their local councillors before losing interest. If you run a think tank or something why not pay me loads of money to make some other pointless graphs about this?
As it goes I voted Green for the first time on the basis that I live in a fairly safe Labour seat and wanted to vainly register an objection to the idea that it’s acceptable to e.g. express loud support for bombing civilians, be performatively unpleasant about trans people, and so on. Also the new Labour candidate sent round a leaflet explaining he was a good candidate because he used to be in the RAF where he “delivered aid”, which is an interesting way of looking at it I suppose. Anyway he won.1
Still, there was a Mews next to the primary school I voted in, so it was a good opportunity to take some photos without risking ending up on a list. Thanks Rishi!
MEWSES VISITED THIS WEEK
#41: Nigel Mews, Redbridge, IG1
In 1844 some workers who were digging up clay to make bricks to build railways discovered some bits of wooly mammoth. Not sure what a wooly mammoth was doing in Ilford as I don’t think they’d even built the shopping centre back then? Anyway eventually they built houses on the site, then the council knocked those down and built some different houses and called them Nigel Mews.
The Mews’s minor place in archaeological history was unfortunately overshadowed by the subsequent discovery, in a different part of Ilford, 20 years later, of the only complete mammoth skull ever found in Britain. Maybe that’s why they didn’t call it Mammoth Mews?
#42 Ardleigh Mews, Redbridge, IG1
Seems to have been built to service the rears of the pre-World War I houses of Ilford Lane. Lucky houses. A man parking his car outside the Mews asked me what I was looking for. I had no satisfactory answer to give him. Maybe I should get some Mews Letter business cards printed, or carry around copies of an FAQ?
#43 Postway Mews, Redbridge, IG1
Named, presumably, after the post office that was once on the southern side of the road - there is still a delivery office just to the south. It does now run past the side of a nice building once owned by the post office - a telephone exchange, so it should really be renamed ‘Phoneway Mews’. I’ll write to the council.
#44 Janice Mews, Redbridge, IG1
In 2019 an exciting announcement was made: “Things Made Public are set to transform Janice Mews, a disused empty space in Ilford into a creative workspace for start-up businesses.”
“The Muse will be a playground for makers, thinkers and doers, that combines co-working space, business incubation, cultural activity and food all under one roof.”
Planning permission for this was granted in October 2019, so I can make an educated guess about why, given what would happen in the following months, this endeavour might have stalled, unless some parked cars and Biffa bins constitute ‘cultural activity’.
#45 York Mews, Redbridge, IG1
Slightly deceptive Mews this - the vaguely ‘traditional’ houses that back onto the railway lines are mostly an afterthought, the Mews actually having been constructed to service the houses of York Road in the early days of the 20th century, because people would always need somewhere to keep a horse in their house, right? (The actual Mewsy bits have mostly been demolished and replaced with e.g. a chiropractic clinic, which I don’t think even treats horses.)
You can access Ilford train station at one end, and a 2012 report on how the area should prepare for the coming of Crossrail (i.e. the Elizabeth Line) noted that the Mews was an ‘uninviting pedestrian environment’ and proposed making it slightly less horrible by replacing the tarmac road surface with paving and planting some trees.
They did the paving, but instead of trees it has a ‘Metropolitan Police Enforcement Hub’, a sort of plastic hut with pretend bushes painted on the outside of it for some reason. All it appears to do is host sessions where police officers can go and listen to ‘views on local issues’, which I’m sure is a lot of fun for everyone concerned, and a lot better than a tree.
#46 Rigby Mews, Redbridge, IG1
One of the cars parked here the day I visited belongs to something called ‘Rhythmic Care’, which I’m sure provides very worthwhile services to the elderly and others needing home care, but is called ‘Rhythmic Care’, which is weird.
If you are visiting a nearby Turkish restaurant DO NOT get confused and park here instead of in their actual car park or you will end up posting threads on Money Saving Expert and the “FightBack Forums” trying to get out of paying a fine, apparently.
#47 Heron Mews, Redbridge, IG1
The Mews runs down the middle of what was the grounds of the mansion of Ilford Lodge, a minor country pile owned by various not very notable figures until in 1880s it got flogged off so that the land could be developed into, give, or take, the residential streets that are still there.
Morland Road, to which Heron Mews connects to the northeast, takes its name from a road in Croydon where one of the building firms involved had their HQ, and at the other end is Balfour Road, named for MP and property developer Jabez Balfour.
Sorry, complete crook, MP and property developer, Jabez Balfour who founded various companies including what grew to be the country’s biggest building society through a) his connections to the temperance movement, which was hugely influential at the time and b) his fun habit of completely fiddling the books. Despite using such cunning business tactics as ‘employing your tailor as your auditor’, in the end his empire collapsed and he pissed off to Argentina before he could be prosecuted.
This almost worked - there were no extradition treaties, and by the time the federal courts eventually declared that Britain could have him back, he had been up to his old tricks and had convinced enough people that he was going to make them rich that local courts were reluctant to hand him over. Eventually one of Scotland Yard’s finest had to essentially trick him onto a train out of Argentina. By this point the British were so intent on getting him back to the UK that when a local official rode a horse onto the track in an attempt to stall them, the train just ploughed on through him. Diplomacy. Back in the UK, Balfour got 14 years of hard labour on the isle of Portland. Let that be a lesson: temperance - not even once.
#48 Opal Mews, Redbridge, IG1
At some point in its history Opal Mews was divided into two separate alleyways running off of Ley St, in the shadow of Ilford shopping centre. The one actually signed as Opal Mews is car parking and rear access for the businesses it runs behind. All life is here, from ‘Little Smurfs Learning’ (defunct) to ‘Gilderson & Sons Funeral Directors’ via ‘Ideal Letting Homes’ and a Sri Lankan takeaway.
The other half, unsigned, separated by a fenced off stretch, is home to some crumbly looking warehouse units and New World Snooker - “Smells like urine - 1 star” or “old school vibe - 5 stars” depending on how you like your snooker halls, I suppose.
Unclear why or when this division happened - the oldest map on which I can see the mews on is from the 1960s and there’s a little line between the two halves even then. Long forgotten mews feud? A mystery for the ages.
#49 Kingsley Mews, Redbridge, IG1
A 6 storey residential block, built circa the early 2000s, with a car park out the front. Judging by a listing on a property website one of the flats contains an exercise bike, a polar bear cuddly toy and quite a small looking bath, and has Super Mario stickers on one of the walls. This is all I can tell you.
#50 Carriage Mews, Redbridge, IG1
Housing estate presumably taking it’s name from the neighbouring Ilford traction maintenance depot, where various trains go to sleep at night, or go in a special carriage washing machine. Not that anyone here can be that bothered about trains given how many parked cars I walked past.
Also it’s one of those estates with no way to get out once you’ve walked all the way through it other than to turn around and go back the way you just came because you wouldn’t want anyone walking past your house on their way somewhere would you, in case they were a bad criminal or a dangerous pervert. Just posting this Ring camera footage of someone walking past my house on Nextdoor and the Neighbourhood Watch WhatsApp Group, does anyone know why someone is walking past my house? Why don’t my family talk to me?
Total mewses visited: 50/2380
The Mews Letter is written, researched, produced and directed by Ed Jefferson so everything in it is his fault - apart from the facts about the real world, which he can claim barely any responsibility for. See more stuff at edjefferson.com.
Maybe he’s absolutely fine, I just thought this was quite a funny attempt to (presumably) thread the needle of having to appeal to voters who might have quite different opinions as to whether the military is bad or good.