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We are part of the Earth and it is part of Us



The Lea Marshes and Millfields area is inside Greater London but seems to be the edge. It's an area of natural beauty with an astonishing history.

Alfred the Great secured the first English Naval Victory on the River Lea. Queen Boudicca and her army of British/Celtic tribes would have rested and watered in the Marshes area after destroying the Roman City of London. The Hackney Marsh plays host to thousands of footballers each year, as well as Kingfisher Birds and monster Carp and Bream fish. How many footballers are aware that beneath their feet are the bricks and masonry of the London Dockside warehouses and homes that were destroyed just 70 years ago when London fought for its life against the waves of German Bombers.




This site offers a tour of this area with The Wanderer as your guide.









Please leave your comments and feel free go to the discussion page and
start a topic of your own.




Wind Turbine. stakes claim to land and sky.

To the Letters Editor, Hackney Gazette,

Someone said wind Turbines are good for the environment. What does this mean? Do they improve the environment? Do they change a bad environment into a good environment? One Turbine on Hackney Marshes could change the way we feel or don't feel about the environment forever. Please read on:
Climate change is one gigantic effect; an event; a happening! It comes as a result of many, many activities, but mainly it is just those 'things that people do' that changes our World. Will it be possible to persuade people to change their behaviour and the things that they do in order to save their own breathing and living space? Who can be trusted to do the persuading? Is their anyone who does not have their own axe to grind; their own power or career or personal fortune to expand?

The most honest and persuasive character, along-side of us in this situation is Mother Nature herself. The free-space of an open blue sky and the green busy work of nature in trees, meadows and grassland say more about the meaning and value of life than any lecture or tele-ad campaign. We have a small piece of countryside on our doorstep which is capable of speaking to us and our children about these matters. It is Hackney Marshes, which seem so much bigger than they really are because they are part of the greater Lea Marshes. They are misrepresented as a collection of Football Pitches but that is only a small part of their glory. The open free-space of sky and countryside of the Lea Marshes is about to be split and bound by towers of concrete and steel.
High-rise building projects are planned which will divide the marshes and dominate the skyline of the south and north end of Hackney Marshes. Residents of the new Tower-Blocks will be grateful for the views they enjoy. Developers will profit from the last bounce of the housing bubble in this part of the world, but what of the Wind Turbine which will dominate the skies? I fear that the slim beauty of the turbine that we once saw as a symbol of hope and an alternative future will become a symbol of domination. As the landscape dwindles under its mighty span we will feel the chilly shadows of a new kind of eco-fundamentalism. This new religion will have money behind it and it is ready primed to persuade us that we must sacrifice the places we love in order to survive in a place we don't recognise.