Places Features

The River Lea

The Lea makes its way into Essex in three separate flows.

There's the river Lea proper, The Lee Navigation and, away to the west, the New River meandering along the 100 foot contour carrying drinking water to London. Through the Lea Valley Countryside Park, flooded gravel workings are attracting threatened species such as the otter and the bittern. The beautifully camouflaged bittern overwinters in the park hidden in the reed beds which have been deliberately planted to encourage the birds.

The river has always been a source of power for industry. At Waltham Abbey the monks had a mill powered by a race off the Lea. The Abbey itself was destoyed by Henry VIII's henchmen but the church survived after it was given to the people. It's a fascinating mish-mash of architectural styles and it is on the site of a church built by the last Saxon King Harold. A stone marks Harold's grave although conjecture is that he is actually buried near Hastings.

Waltham Abbey

Unique

The river provided power for another unique factory much of which survives today as a tourist attraction. The Royal Gunpowder Mill at Watham Abbey produced gun powder until the end of the Second World War.

The main production buildings have a most unusual shaped roof, designed to blow straight off in an explosion rather than damage structure of  the building. During our visit a party of schoolchildren were using the site for an evacuee experience complete with cloth caps and labels.

Further down the river lies another remnant of our military past. The Royal Small Arms Factory at Enfield was built to provide reliable guns with interchangeable parts for the Crimean War. The war ended before production started but the factory went on to produce weapons such as the Lee Enfield: nothing to do with the river that powered the machinery, but named after engineer James Lee.

Today the factory has been converted tastefully into a retail and business park. The former machine shops house a library, a gymnasium and a supermarket. The head pond remains now as an ornamental lake fronted by tastefully built new flats.

Technologies

The Lea Valley was also home to newer technologies. In Enfield itself, the Thorn company led the British television age but the factory has vanished, as have brand names such as Ultra, Ferguson and the connected rental companies such as Radio Rentals and D.E.R. who made television possible and affordable for the masses.

Enfield Island Library

In Duck Leas Lane, Ponders End, an unimposing white painted brick building belies its importance. The Edison building was home to the company which perfected the light bulb, invented the diode valve and, by coincidence, the vacuum flask.

The Lea Valley was home to the factories of mass destruction and the post industrial revolution but all have gone. British Industry it seems was an ethereal thing in the greater scheme of things.

One family business though has bucked the trend. G.R. Wright's mill had been in the family since the 1860s, although there has been a mill there for much longer. Milling is now powered by electricity, rather than by the river.

The company's smart maroon lorries roll in and out all the time. The company has survived by specialising in cake and bread mixes and speciality flours for our increasingly cosmopolitan tastes including chapati and pizza flours. It is refreshing to see a company with such a pride in its image and its heritage with David Wright still living in the beautiful miller's house on site.