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| Right-of-way-deterring gateposts at Dagnam Park. |
The Ingrebourne Way is a walking and cycling trail
that very roughly follows the Ingrebourne valley north-south through the London
Borough of Havering. Starting at the pretty hamlet of Noak Hill in the north,
right on the edge of the countryside, it runs through Harold Wood and Upminster
to Rainham, linking several green spaces in Thames Chase Community Forest and
connecting at Rainham with further trails across the marshes to Purfleet. Throughout
its length it either duplicates or parallels the London Loop, providing
alternative routes and circular walks.
You can cover all the sections of the Ingrebourne Way that
are significantly different from the Loop on the 13 km route described here,
starting by bus stops at Noak Hill Road on the northern edge of the Harold Hill
estate and finishing at Upminster Bridge station. Some of the walk duplicates
the Loop but there are interesting excursions through Dagnam Park and the new
woodland at Harold Court, as well as a different way through Pages Wood that
includes an impressive view. South of here the Way mainly follows roads through
Upminster but passes several historic buildings.
The next station back down the Loop before the Ingrebourne
Way diverges is a long way away at Chigwell, so the best advice to start the
walk is to catch the bus from Romford or Harold Hill stations to Wincanton
Road, Noak Hill. There are various other bus stops along the way, and the trail
passes busy Upminster station before ending at Upminster Bridge station, the
same point as London Loop section 22.
More about the Ingrebourne Way
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| Start of the Ingrebourne Way at Noak Hill. |
As mentioned along London Loop 21, the river
Ingrebourne rises in Essex, just south of Brentwood, and is the furthest
downstream of all the tributaries flowing through Greater London that join the
Thames on its north bank. ‘Bourne’ means a stream, but the origin of the prefix
is obscure: it may be a proper name. The river is joined just after it’s passed
under the M25 by a longer tributary, the Weald Brook, which rises in what’s now
Weald Country Park near South Weald. A second major tributary, the Paynes
Brook, joins near Harold Wood station: the London Loop and the Ingrebourne Way
both follow parts of this. From Harold Wood, the river flows in a slight bow,
first southeast then southwest, via Upminster Bridge, Hornchurch Country Park
and Rainham, joining the Thames on Rainham Marshes, a total distance of 43.3
km.
As seen many times in London Underfoot, fear of flooding
has largely kept developers away from the water’s edge, and the idea of a green
trail following the river has been around for a long time. Hornchurch Urban
District Council, one of the predecessors of today’s London Borough of Havering,
acted on the idea as far back as the early 1960s by creating three successive
‘parkways’ along the river south of Upminster, quite likely the earliest
dedicated off-road walking and cycling infrastructure in what’s now London and
today part of both the London Loop and Ingrebourne Way (see Loop 23 for details).
Access extended as more stretches of riverside became
public parks, and proposals for a continuous route were being considered in the
1980s, though there were still numerous obstacles. As the London Loop developed
in the 1990s, its promoters the London Walking Forum understandably focused on
the Ingrebourne corridor as a way to return the trail to the Thames in the
east. But there were still diversions into surrounding streets at several
points when the Loop officially launched. The designation of much of the area
surrounding the river as part of Thames Chase Community Forest in 1990 helped,
and some of the diversions have been smoothed out, but the path still isn’t
entirely continuous.
Today’s Ingrebourne Way finally emerged as a fruit of
increased cycle funding in the early 21st century, although in a
rather different form than what might originally have been envisaged. Launched
by Havering council and the sustainable transport charity Sustrans in 2013,
it’s primarily a cycle route, designated National Cycle Network (NCN) Route
136, although also of course open to walkers and pleasant to walk too, as much
of it is off-road and not too busy with bikes. But the need to accommodate
cyclists and manage their impact has resulted in both roundabout diversions and
road-based sections longer than many walkers will find comfortable. Quite a bit
of it doesn’t actually follow the river, and the riverside stretches are
largely shared with the Loop.
Here’s a brief overview of the various walking options.
1.
Noak
Hill Wincanton Road bus stops – Chequers Road. At its north end, the
Ingrebourne Way isn’t currently connected with any other recognised walking and
cycling trails. It starts on Chequers Road, Noak Hill, at the gate at the top
of Lower Noke Close, the old drive through Dagnam Park. This is off the London
Loop, but I’ve described an 800 m link from the point where Loop section 21
enters the Harold Hill estate, also conveniently close to the Wincanton Road
bus stops with a good service from Romford and Harold Hill stations. This is
one of those rare stretches of the Loop that wanders far from railways: the
first station back is at Chigwell, almost 15 km away. The official start of
section 21 is also at a bus stop, at Havering-atte-Bower 4.4 km back, and with
one of the least frequent services in London. Even the official Loop guide
suggests you might want to use Wincanton Road as a break point instead. The
link from here to the Ingrebourne Way is simply along the road, but Noak Hill
is well-supplied with cute rustic cottages, several of them listed, so there’s
plenty to look at along the way.
2.
Noak
Hill Chequers Road – Harold Hill Central Park. The Way runs straight
through Dagnam Park past manor house ruins and a fishing lake surrounded by
woodlands, well worth a diversion from the Loop, which it rejoins by the
Portrait Bench in the middle of Central Park after 2.4 km. Total distance from
Wincanton Road to Central Park is 3.2 km via the Way, 1.7 km via the Loop section 21, which takes a more direct course alongside the Paines Brook.
3.
Central
Park – Paines Bridge. The Way and the Loop section 21 share the same path
for just over 1 km through the green margin alongside Paines Brook as far as
the A12.
4.
Paines
Bridge – Pages Wood. At first the Way follows streets but then starts to
climb up Shepherds Hill through the new woodland at Harold Court Woods.
Entering another new woodland, Pages Wood, there are spectacular views from the
top of the slope before the trail plunges down to rejoin the Loop at the bottom
of the valley and turn with it alongside the Ingrebourne. Some may prefer this
3.2 km stretch for the view alone; the Loop alternative, comprising the end of
section 21 and beginning of section 22, is slightly shorter, at 2.9 km, with
about as much along streets, though it does include the break at Harold Wood
station, Harold Wood Park and rather more of the Ingrebourne.
5.
Pages
Wood – Upminster Hall Severn Drive. The Way and Loop 22 share the same
route for 2.5 km, and once you’re out of Pages Wood it’s all along roads and
streets.
6.
Upminster
Hall Severn Drive – Hornchurch Stadium. The Way simply follows Hall Lane
here into Upminster, passing the station, though there’s an opportunity to
swerve off along the grass of Upminster Hall Recreation Ground at one point,
and several historic buildings including the fascinating Tithe Barn with its
museum. South of the station, a short hop through back streets is followed by a
pleasant stroll through Upminster Park, then more back streets bring you back
to the Loop, now on section 23, at the gates of Hornchurch Stadium. Total
distance is 3 km, shorter than the Loop’s 3.7 km, but as the latter returns to
the Ingrebourne again on an off-road walkers-only path through woods and
fields, it’s likely to be the preferred choice for walkers so long as
accessibility isn’t an issue. To end the walk here you simply follow the Loop
‘backwards’ to Upminster Bridge station, 650 m away. Noak Hill to Upminster
Bridge via the various Ingrebourne Way alternatives is 14 km; sticking to the
Loop, it’s 11 km.
7.
Hornchurch
Stadium – Rainham. Although the Way meets the Loop at the stadium gates,
officially it doesn’t rejoin the walking trail straight away. To facilitate
cycling, it continues a little further along the street to reach the riverside along
South View Drive. There’s little point to this detour for those on foot who
want to continue to Hornchurch Country Park or Rainham. The Way now mainly follows
the same paths as the Loop, though occasionally in the Ingrebourne Valley Local
Nature Reserve and Hornchurch Country Park it takes a wider parallel path a
short distance away. As these differences aren’t significant I haven’t bothered
to provide an alternative description of the rest of the Way but if you really
wanted to follow it religiously, it’s very well signed. Total distance to
Rainham is 7 km.
8.
On to
Purfleet. The Ingrebourne Way
officially ends at Rainham station, though by now it’s met National Cycle
Network Route 13 which continues through Rainham Marshes to Purfleet. The
London Loop takes a similar though not identical route to Purfleet and I’ve
described this as well as briefly mentioning the cycleway alternatives under
Loop section 24.
As a trail designed to accommodate cyclists, the
Ingrebourne Way is highly accessible, along broad paths with good surfaces –
sometimes hard tarmac, sometimes softer bonded gravel—and no stiles. But there
are a few more climbs and descents than on the Loop, which slightly ironically
spends rather more time on the low, flat ground close to the river.
Another advantage of its being a cycle route is that the
Way is particularly well-signed to NCN standards. Look out for the number 136
in white on a red rectangle alongside walker and cycle symbols on fingerposts,
waymarks and other signs. On roads the signs usually have a blue background,
while in the green spaces they may be on a green background. They’re often
supplemented by signing painted on road and path surfaces. Unlike most walking
routes, you should be able to follow the route using the signing alone, with no
need for a written description, but just in case I’ve provided one anyway.
You’ll see the Loop signing too where the two routes coincide.
There’s no official text guide to the trail, although a
useful free ‘local travel map’, Havering
/ Ingrebourne Way, was published by the council and Sustrans in 2013 which
is still downloadable as a PDF. This shows the
Way, connecting cycling routes and even the London Loop. The trail also appears on Sustrans online mapping. The Way is shown on
Ordnance Survey Explorer maps in the standard manner for a cycle route, with a
line of orange dots for off-road ‘cycle tracks’ but only intermittent use of
the number 136 in white on a red rectangle where it follows roads and streets.
Noak Hill and Dagnam Park
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| The imaginatively named Thatched Cottage, Noak Hill. |
I’ve already introduced the Royal Liberty of Havering
in my commentary on London Loop sections 20 and 21. There I explained that two
separate estates occupied the Harold Hill area in the 14th century: Gooshayes,
‘goose enclosure’, to the west and Dagenhams or Dagnams to the east. The latter
had itself originally been two estates, Dagenhams and Cockerels, named after
former owners. The De Dakenham family (possibly from the town of Dagenham, not
too far away) were granted land in the area by Henry III in the early 13th
century.
After World War II, these greenfield sites were compulsorily purchased
by the London County Council to build one of several large housing estates in
locations surrounding London but – until the capital itself was expanded in
1965 – outside its official boundaries. 7,631 homes were built in Harold Hill between
1948 and 1961. Thankfully, swathes of former countryside and parkland were
incorporated into the design and it’s these that we’ll explore in the early
stages of the walk.
Noak Hill was the village attached to the Dagnams estate,
sitting atop the hill to the north. The settlement could easily have been swallowed
by the new development, but fortunately it was left alone and still retains its
own distinct rural character today as a genuine London village, with several
heritage buildings.
One of them is the Bear pub, a little to the left along
Noak Hill Road from the bus stop and passed by the Loop. The current building
has a Victorian core that was substantially extended in the 1950s, but there’s
been a pub on the site since the late 17th century, when it was called
the Goat. It was once well-known locally as the home of a real bear, kept as an
attraction in a cage in the pub garden among less exotic fauna such as
peacocks, and known for its consumption of beer and crisps. In fact, there were
two successive bears: Rhani, a Himalayan
black bear who died sometime in the mid-1960s, and her successor Honey, a brown
bear who went to Linton Zoo in Cambridgeshire when her owners retired in 1974.
To reach the Ingrebourne Way proper you’ll need to follow
Noak Hill Road northeast, crossing Carters Brook and passing a succession of
picturesque cottages that are now listed buildings. The aptly named Thatched
Cottage and its neighbour, Old Keepers Cottage, are both early 19th century
buildings; the latter isn’t thatched but is prettily weatherboarded. Opposite,
set back from the road is late 18th century Holly Tree Cottage; on
the same side and also set back are a pretty early 19th century pair
known as Meadow Cottages. Opposite, on the roadside, of similar date and particularly
pretty, is the long, low range of Rose Cottages with their weatherboarded
western extension. A little off the route in Church Road is the 1842 St Thomas
Church, which Nikolaus Pevsner described as “modest and attractive”. A Radha
Krishna temple has stood on the same street since 2008.
The church contains various monuments to the Neaves, the
family who fashioned the estate into its final form. Before this there were
several successive manor houses in the park, including an Elizabethan moated
manor, which Samuel Pepys visited several times in 1665. Richard Neave, a
well-off merchant with the West India company, bought Dagnams in 1772: he later
became a baronet and a governor of the Bank of England. In 1812, he had the old
house demolished and replaced by a grand Georgian mansion, surrounded by
gardens and grounds designed by Humphrey Repton. Neave’s son Thomas continued
to expand the family’s holdings, amalgamating the estate with neighbouring
Goosehayes.
Their successors began selling off the estate piecemeal
after World War I and finally quit the manor house itself in 1940 when it was
requisitioned for military use. Towards the end of the war, the house suffered
a direct hit from a V2 rocket which cracked the walls. The LCC initially
undertook to preserve and restore the house when it acquired the remains of the
estate after the war. But the caretakers illegally stripped lead from the roof
and this, together with the bomb damage, resulted in so much deterioration that
the building had to be demolished in 1950.
The surrounding parkland was kept for recreation, though
suffered from neglect over many decades, and almost none of the former gardens
and other fine features created by Repton survive. By the early 2000s, ‘The Manor’,
as the site is known locally, had a bad reputation as a wasteland plagued by
illegal motorcycling and other anti-social behaviour. Concerned local people
formed the Friends of Dagnam Park which successfully campaigned for designation
as a Local Nature Reserve (LNR) in 2005. The group has continued to support the
park and contributed to its becoming a much better looked-after space, with
some help from a Veolia Trust grant.
The Ingrebourne Way begins by following the old main drive.
At first there are hedgerows and fields, but soon, amid a cluster of woods, are
some obvious structures: a cobbled terrace on the left and, a little further,
some low walls on the right, the only remains of the manor house and its
associated buildings. The terrace is the former stable yard, once surrounded by
stable buildings surmounted by a bell tower, with a walled garden immediately beyond
to the east. These structures survived a little longer than the house: they
were demolished in 1959, though the foundations of the garden walls persist
below ground.
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| Some of the very few visible remains of the manor house in Dagnam Park. |
The low walls are from the side of the main three-storey house,
which faced northwest, in the direction we’ve just walked. The only other
surviving fragments of the house are three stained glass roundels originally in
a semi-circular fan above the front door, now in a church in Nowton, Suffolk.
Just off the route, originally at the back of the house
and now surrounded by woodland, is a remaining landscape feature, the Round
Pond, originally a bathing pool. Perhaps the best-known surviving relics,
though, are the twin white cast iron gateposts either side of the drive. The
gate that once hung between these was usually left open so that the public
could pass through, but once a year it was shut to pre-empt claims that a public
right of way existed. Even today, the Ordnance Survey map only shows the
northern part of the drive as a public footpath, which appears to reach a dead
end at the edge of the manor house site.
Beyond this, the drive runs through a pleasing expanse of
open parkland and grassland, with the modern red brick buildings of Drapers
Academy secondary school, completed in 2012, rising ahead. Its design, by FelldenCleggBradley
architects, nods to its setting by mimicking the layout of 18th century
English country houses. But before reaching it, the Way deflects right past a
small car park: the drive itself originally continued all the way through what’s
now the built-up area of Harold Hill, along the route of Settle Road and Dagnam
Park Drive to the old Roman road to Colchester, now the A12.
The Way, meanwhile, passes another pond, now known as The
Manor Fishing Lake and well-used for that purpose, but originally known as
Green Pond, a cattle pond that predated the Neave era. Repton prettified this,
and may also have added some of the plantation woodland around its banks. To
the south of the pond, off the trail, are the still water-filled remains of a
square-shaped moat, likely dating from the 13th or 14th centuries,
which once surrounded the Cockrells manor house. It’s now a Scheduled Ancient
Monument. The woodland further along, Hatters Wood, is ancient semi-natural,
once one of the estate’s working woodlands, with a reputation for the quality
of its timber. It’s through these lush surrounds that the Way descends and
finally leaves the site.
Harold Hill Central Park
The Ingrebourne Way deftly avoids all but a short
dip into the streets of Harold Hill here, soon entering Central Park and
rounding the ancient woodland of Long Wood to join the London Loop by the
Portrait Bench, with its silhouette figures of people with local connections,
most recognisably Henry VIII. The park was created from farmland attached to
the Gooshayes estate and you can read more about it under Loop 21. There’s more
in that post too about the route from the park along the Paines Brook to the
A12 Colchester Road, where the trails divide again.
The Way simply follows the A12 but to save too much
exposure to traffic fumes and noise I’ve suggested that instead you take the parallel
Retford Road, one of the streets laid out in the 1950s as part of the Harold
Hill development. The streets south of the A12, in the neighbourhood known as
Harold Park, are older: development started here in the 1920s when Iles &
Co built a bungalow estate known as Sunnytown on the northeast of Harold Court
Road. This is the road you now follow as it becomes a surfaced track across a
bridge where the Ingrebourne Way finally meets the Ingrebourne itself for the
first time. But there’s no riverside route here, so instead continue under the
Great Eastern railway line (also introduced under Loop 21) and into Harold
Court Woods in the old parish of Upminster.
Harold Court Woods
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| One of the surprisingly rare sightings of the river Ingrebourne along the Ingrebourne Way, on Harold Court Road. |
In mediaeval times, the rough ground rising from the
south of the Ingrebourne to Shepherds Hill in the far north of Upminster parish
was managed as common: Upminster Common in the west and Tylers Common in the
east. In the early 18th century some of this was inclosed and improved as
farmland, including Goodhouse Farm immediately to the south of the river, which
even boasted vineyards. In 1870, the farm became the home of William Richard
Preston, a rather dodgy French-born Brentwood solicitor and property
speculator. Preston was one of the partners who, as explained under Loop 21,
had bought Gubbins Farm in nearby North End in 1866 with the intention of
turning it into the proposed Harold Wood New Town.
Despite lack of progress with the development plans,
Preston contrived to live in some style, building himself an elaborate white
brick Italianate mansion known as Harold Court, surrounded by extensive
grounds. He was finally declared bankrupt in 1881 and fled to Australia. Among
the unfinished business he left behind was a sewage disposal contract with the
Billericay Rural Sanitary Authority. The issue was resolved when the Authority
agreed to buy the northeastern part of the site at a reduced price: the sewage
works, first opened in 1884, still operates today.
In 1882 the house became a home for pauper children from
Shoreditch and Hackney, and in 1891 the estate was bought by the Essex County
Lunatic Asylum. By 1911 it housed 72 “male lunatics” who could not have enjoyed
much in individual attention given that the staff consisted of a husband-and-wife
management team and two attendants. In 1918 it became Essex’s tuberculosis
sanatorium, then a general hospital attached to Brentwood under the NHS in
1948, renamed Harold Court Hospital. The last of many institutional occupants
was Brentwood College of Education, under which it was turned into a teacher
training college in 1960. This finally closed in the 1980s and the house was
sold off for conversion to private flats.
The surrounding estate, meanwhile, passed to the Forestry
Commission as Harold Court Woods, part of the developing Thames Chase CommunityForest, which the Ingrebourne Way first enters here. Though over 40,000 trees
have been planted since 2001, the site isn’t just being managed as woodland,
but as with several other areas in the forest is intended to have a more mixed
and open aspect, including meadows. Among the more unusual new plantings is a
traditional ‘Apostles’ Circle’ of 12 horse chestnut trees encircling a single
central tree: this is a little off the trail along the bridleway to the right
soon after the railway line. The mansion is also on the right as you climb the
hill.
Pages Wood and Hall Lane
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| Spectacular views from the track that sweeps down from Shepherds Hill in Pages Wood. |
Leaving Harold Court Wood, Harold Court Road
continues as a track through more former common land now used as farmland: the
farmhouse of Ivy Lodge Farm is on the left, now a veterinary surgery. Then you
reach the road at the top of Shepherds Hill, with the next Forestry Commission
site, Pages Wood, immediately opposite. This northern part of the site was
originally Pages Farm, also carved out of Upminster Common. The signed official route twists and turns a
little to use a safe crossing, but as you approach the main track, you’ll see
the buildings of the old Pages Farm ahead of you. The pebble-dashed farmhouse
dates from 1663, while the barns and outbuildings are from the late 18th
and late 19th centuries: all are now Grade II listed.
The London Loop also runs through Pages Wood so I’ve said
more about it and about Thames Chase Community Forest on Loop section 22. The
Loop follows the valley, but the Ingrebourne Way gives you a very different
experience by entering on top of the hill and then plunging down towards the
river. The views here are bracing, southwest ahead towards the Thames, with the
North Downs on the opposite bank visible on good days, and eastward on your
left towards the hillier parts of Essex.
At the bottom of the hill, the Way meets the Loop and at
last follows the Ingrebourne for a while although it’s soon forced away from
the river and across a tributary. After leaving Pages Wood, there’s quite a
long section following roads and streets, over the Southend Arterial Road, past
the Strawberry Farm and along Hall Lane, described in more detail in Loop 22. The
paths separate again inside the built-up area of Upminster at the junction of
Hall Lane and Avon Road. Here you may prefer to stay on the Loop, which returns
to the river on a green walkers-only route – but if you’ve already done that,
there’s a bit more of Upminster to see by following the Ingrebourne Way along
the road.
Upminster
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| Contemplating the hills of Essex from Upminster Hall fields. |
I’ve introduced Upminster in some detail under Loop22, but the Ingrebourne Way will take you past a few more places of interest. Upminster
Hall Playing Field, a public recreation area on the left soon after the
junction with Avon Road, is on the grounds of Upminster Hall, one of three
mediaeval manors in the parish. It was the property of Waltham Abbey from just
before the Conquest to the Dissolution, when Henry VIII gave it to his chief
minister Thomas Cromwell. From 1685 it was the property of the Branfill Family,
who began selling it off in the early 20th century.
Opposite is red brick Upminster Court, built in 1905-06 for
shipping and coal merchant Arthur Williams by architect Charles Reilly, on
farmland formerly attached to Upminster Hall. It’s a good example of a ‘Wren
Revival’ Edwardian country house, surrounded by noteworthy gardens. The house
is Grade II listed and the gardens registered by Historic England, but neither
is open to the public. After World War II the property was owned by Essex
County Council and later the London Borough of Havering, and variously used an
education and care centre; it’s now a commercial training facility operated by
a private firm.
Much of the estate was sold in the 1920s to Upminster Golf
Club, which still spreads on both sides of the road. One fragment not given
over to golf, slightly off the route but well worth a look, is a 45 m-long
thatched barn dating back to the 15th century and originally part of
the home farm. The building, now a Scheduled Ancient Monument, is known as the
Tithe Barn although there’s no evidence it was ever used to collect tithes. It
was bought by Havering council’s predecessor Hornchurch Urban District Council
in 1937 and continued in agricultural use for a while. Since 1976 it’s been a
museum managed by the Hornchurch & District Historical Society.
 |
| Upminster Tithe Barn, apparently never used to collect tithes. |
It’s currently known as the ‘Museum ofNostalgia’ and houses a collection of 14,500 agricultural and household objects
dating from Roman times to the present. Further along the drive past the barn
is Upminster Hall itself. The Grade II*-listed timber-framed building, parts of
which date from the 15th century, is now used as a golf clubhouse.
Embedded in the big private course is a council pitch-and-putt facility, as if
that’s the only form of golf the less wealthy local residents are permitted.
South of these you enter the residential area north of the
station, laid out from 1906 by developer Peter Griggs, who was also responsible
for much of surburban Ilford. Big houses line Hall Lane, while the side streets
are all named ‘Gardens’ though there’s precious little green. You soon pass
Upminster station, dating from the opening of the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway
(LT&SR) main line from London Fenchurch Street in 1885. The original
buildings and entrance still stand: they’re at track level along Station
Approach just off our route, past the station on the left. The entrance on the
main road bridge was added in 1932 when the station was expanded by the London,
Midland and Scottish Railway.
In 1902, the largely underground Whitechapel and Bow
Railway between Whitechapel and Bromley-by-Bow, a joint venture between the
LT&SR and the Metropolitan and District Railway, enabled trains on what’s
now London Underground’s District Line to work through to Upminster. Underground
services were curtailed at Barking when the rest of the District Line was electrified
in 1908, but resumed in 1932 when a new pair of electrified tracks reached
Upminster. Today the station is operated by c2c, the National Rail successor to
the LT&SR, though still also offers District Line services.
 |
| Upminster Station. |
The Ingrebourne Way dodges through side streets (Branfill
Road, named after the last family owners of Upminster Hall) and finally returns
to green surroundings in Upminster Park – though there’s an option here to visit
Upminster Windmill if you haven’t already, as it’s only a short detour along St
Mary’s Lane. I’ve said more about it under Loop 23. The park was originally ‘glebe’
land – farmland providing a living for a priest – attached to the parish
church, St Laurence’s.
As the town expanded, the need for recreational
facilities grew and in 1929 the Urban District Council bought the land from the
Church Commissioners, levelling it to create grassed playing fields crossed by
tree-lined avenues. During World War II it was once of the few London parks
that weren’t given over to allotments and other war-related uses, though there
were bomb shelters near to where the Way enters the space today. At just under 7
ha, it’s a small but valuable space which has benefited enormously in recent
years from the activities of a Friends group.
 |
| Upminster Park: valuable green space on former glebe land. |
The church itself is across the park to the left: topped
by a typical Essex leaded and shingled spire, it’s at core a 13th century
building, though it was extensively rebuilt and altered in 1863 and 1928. It’s
off the route of the Ingrebourne Way, which instead heads east through the park
and along more streets to meet the London Loop again by the entrance to
Hornchurch Stadium. To end the walk here, simply follow the Loop backwards
across the Ingrebourne to Upminster Bridge station, which has a few heritage
features discussed under Loop 22. Otherwise, join London Loop section 23
following the river southbound along the succession of Ingrebourne parkways mentioned
above, with much of interest still ahead.
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