Until the late 1950s this area was one of Victorian and Edwardian housing built between 1880s to 1910s to house the residents travelling in to central London by the newly arrived trains and tube networks.
The film centres on The Avenue Road Estate, Leytonstone East London currently undergoing a redevelopment regeneration to replace the municipally owned council estate social housing with a mix of privately owned affordable housing high rise and social housing low-rise. The London Borough of Waltham Forest is planning a roll out of new housing in line with the Mayor of London's Sadiq Khan's plans to build sufficient new homes for London's low paid and key workers. The award winning estate has been taken down incrementally over the past 200 years but the last remaining 5 blocks will house the current tenants until the construction work has been completed. More details can be found in the council's engagement plans on their website (https://www.avenue-road-estate-regeneration.co.uk/engagement)
The previously low cost housing in the east end of London housed key workers and those on low incomes following the huge house building initiatives in the period following the second world war. Leytonstone (part of the London Borough of Waltham Forest) was one of those identified as an area of regeneration in time for the 2012 London Olympics. Between the post war period, the nearby Stratford housed small businesses alongside its canal location which employed people in unskilled work in factories: food preparation, textiles. Today the Queen Elizabeth park is a leisure facility with open grounds, shopping centre and high rise housing. The Avenue Road Estate sits between Stratford and Leytonstone and the residents work both locally, from home in our post-Covid period and in social work roles (carers, teaching assistants etc). It is centrally located for good transport links to the "West End", the City (financial district) but also close to Epping Forest, Wanstead Flats green spaces.
My conversations with the tenants focused on regeneration and the changes that they had experienced living in the estate. The tenants expressed a post liberal view that the flats had seen better days and in their reflections they noted the amount of investment that the blocks had initially enjoyed (24/7 Caretakers/Janitors on site etc). Generally the residents thought that the flats had seen better days and were beyond the point of investment but I wondered what could have been had the local council invested in the blocks instead of investing in a joint scheme with a private developer whereby the area is jointly owned in a public/private set up. The current part time caretaker, Lorraine says in the film "It's not the buildings that matter, it's the people that make it worth living here" but my personal view is that the community is set for a change that will alter the area permanently and I hope that the resilience of the community will withstand the changes.
Avenue Road: Moving Stories – An exploration of the residents of the Leytonstone Estate shot in the summer of 2021. Link to film on YouTube:
@AvenueMemory on Instagram documenting the project.
So, my name is Lilian Gyening and I’ve lived here for, I think it’s coming up to 5 years.
I’m Lorraine Simon and I live at Gean Court. I am the very first person to live in my residence. So naturally, for me to move out, it will be very emotional.
My name is Lesley Adams. I live at Mulberry Court, Langthorne Road, Leytonstone East 11 4HW.
My name is Danny Shannon and I’ve lived here now for 50 years.
I moved here in 2003 in July so I’ve been here about 19 years.
Well, my name is Lorraine and I am the caretaker of the Avenue estate. I cover the whole area of this estate. Basically, when I first started was 7 years ago September the 1st.
And of course it was exciting, 3 bedrooms, your own kitchen your own bathroom and everything. Yes, it was very exciting. And yes, I was very pleased to be living here, the neighbours then were so nice and we all got on.
It feels like, you know, it’s not fit for purpose and modern day living. I now work from home. You know, space wise it doesn’t really work well. Looking at the plans for the new buildings, new layouts, the possible layouts and stuff, it’s quite exciting and even how the new flats are going to be really like, better for the environment, the space outside, the children (fades).
I think it’s a good thing. Because I think, these now. It’s time that they went. They’ve seen better days. And I think that they need to yes. They need to come down and start a whole new chapter.
So, it’s deteriorated which is quite sad. It never used to be like that. You’d be proud to say that you lived here.
It’s going to. 95% it is going to happen but I wouldn’t want it to happen. I wouldn’t want to move. Out of my house. You know what I mean? That’s my home.
I don’t know. If it’s all going to be knocked down. Some say it’s going to be repaired and what have you. And some say no it’s not. You know? So that’s it. You don’t know nothing.
If I stayed on the estate, I would want to have what I have now. Which is ground floor. And a back garden.
If they want to put you in a one-bedroom place it’s not going to work, you know what I mean? So we’ve just got to see what happens. I’ve got a big kitchen, table and chairs in the kitchen. You more likely not going to have that in regeneration flat.
When these were built, they won awards.
I’ll be in a single room, or a single bed. No. In a single flat. I won’t be in a two-bedroomed flat like it is now. So I do understand that. Yes.
The neighbourhood is nice. I love the neighbourhood. My family, some family members don’t live not too far out. And of course, you make new friends from different countries and different islands. And, we never had much problem here.
I suppose it depends on whereabouts on the estate they put you. I just think it’s nice to be in the community of people, who are close and downstairs as well.
If you get your good neighbours next to you, it’s good, fine. You get lots of noise and music but you just live with it. It’s part of me living here and it’s good.
You know, with music. Yes I had some neighbours who was, oh my goodness. But now they’ve gone. Thank God they’ve gone.
Lilian laughs. Oh. We’ve had it all.
Yes, we’ve had it. But now it’s peaceful and you know. There’s more… Well, when I say foreign people, no disrespect but there is more people who we don’t really interact because of different cultures.
(Lilian). Different cultures. I think it’s more of a language barrier more than like, you know, a cultural …
I don’t really actually know lots of people. I say hello to lots of people.
You got good neighbours all along here. They look out for one another and if they’ve got any problems, they generally come and knock at my house or something like that. And see, and I will tell them who to phone or what to do.
Every Christmas, I try and do something different. It’s gone from being igloos, from Father Christmas’ House. And last year I did the chimney. And they always come back; they still come back on Christmas. And they love it.
The residents should have, like greenery, where it’s caged off where they still have to use a fob to get in it and basically use it as a vegetable patch so it helps other people to learn how to grow vegetables, flowers. And they can grow them or teach the people how to grow them so that everyone on the estate has got fresh fruit and veg.
I suppose it’d be nice really for the children to be safe on the estate. You’ve got a park there, a park over there. Having one park, you know what I mean? So that everyone can see their children instead of having different places.
I’d get rid of all that play area, completely. They could have. I don’t know. If you have too many benches, you get all the drunks and the drug dealers and what have you. They would definitely come in.
My name is Tasnim. And I’m 15 years old. My favourite place to daydream, at home, is probably in my room on my own. And my favourite thing to relax is probably to listen to music. If I could live anywhere in the world it would probably be Hawaii because of the beaches. And if I could live anywhere in London it would probably be Central. My favourite thing to do in my area is just walk around and pretty much just listen to music.
My name is Ashley and I come from Debden. My favourite thing about my house is that it has a back garden. I like gardening. It’s one of my hobbies.
My name is Chace and I am 15 years old. My favourite thing to do to relax in my house is to listen to music. Usually I prefer to stay at home. The thing that would make my house better is if I had more room so I had more time to myself.
My name is Ethan Ruddock. I am 14 years old and I attend Leytonstone School. My favourite place in my home to daydream is my bedroom. It’s quite quiet and easy to relax. If I could live anywhere, I would probably choose a quiet rural area. Somewhere that is quiet and isolated from other people. I am quite a loud person but I do like my space.
My name is Jago Murphy and I’m 14 years old. I don’t really like my area, as it’s very boring. And, also very loud at the same time. And it’s also quite dodgy and dangerous, with quite a lot of crime.
My name is Zeki and I’m in year 10. My area is Walthamstow and I have lived here my whole life. I really like living here because the people are very diverse, there’s a lot of things to do. It’s a very active community and you can always trust that when you’re walking down the street you can see people you recognise.
Another thing that is altered on this estate and is caretakers. We always had a caretaker. Every block had its own caretaker live-in. Weekends, if there was any complaints this caretaker would be on duty for the weekend or that caretaker would be on duty. When I first lived here, at 3 o’clock in the afternoon, caretakers would have to go and put uniform on and walk around the estate, to make sure everything was spotless and things like that. There wasn’t no dumping.
The caretakers are brilliant and they do their best; but I think it’s just the people who live on the estate. Some of them just don’t look after things like they should. So that’s obviously, you know. It deteriorates. I think a lot of people now, because of the regeneration. They just don’t bother. They give up sometimes, they just don’t bother as much as…
Yes, some people look at the tenants and think that because you live in a tower block that you haven’t got work. Some of these people get up early in the morning and go to work. Some are night workers.
For me, in order for these flats, new builds to be sustainable…and no dead ends. That’s another thing. The stairwells here. I do my utmost best not to walk. And even when the lifts were broken down, like. We had incidents where, I think we was having the lifts, new lifts put in and we had to use another side and that lift played up because it was overworked.
Anything could happen. That’s how you felt. If someone was coming down and they were up to no good. You had no escape route. Yeah.
And, when I first started. When I was in the bin room on one occasion. Somebody was in the lobby of Gean Court and they fired a gun and I was really scared. Since then they’ve decided to have fire wardens in which has sort of like, lessened the actual rough sleepers, drug dealers and it’s been a lot quieter.
Being on the ground floor I think you are more vulnerable. Back a few years ago, we nearly got broken into. Because in the summer you like to leave your windows open but we can’t at the moment. Cameras do not reach me, back or front.
Well, it’ll be the last place that we will ever live, like, and we want to feel like we can stay here forever.
Well, I know you have got to go quite high. For the residents to move into. But not to go too high. I mean, you take all the tower blocks that they built all over the borough, pulled them all down. Just to build houses. And now, they’ve got to start building up again. ‘Cause of the people that’s here. To me, that’s a bit wrong.
I mean the area itself is not bad at all. A lot of people look at the block and say oh no, I don’t want to live there but it’s not the block, it’s the residents. If you get on with the residents, if you make friends with some of the residents. That’s the whole idea of living in a tower block. It’s the residents that make it worth living here, not the looks or the style of the block.