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Woodford Green resident Linda Gough explains how what began as an interest in family history some 30 years ago has now developed into a satisfying vocation reuniting families

Television programmes like Who Do You think You Are? and Long Lost Families have tapped into a very human interest in who we are and where we come from. Added to this, many families have mysteries to solve, missing people to trace and information and stories which they would like to check for accuracy.

I became interested in family history about 30 years ago, when I researched my partner’s family who came to England from Germany in the 1830s. This research, undertaken in school holidays when I was a teacher, involved a Tube ride from South Woodford to Holborn to visit St Catherine’s House, spending hours and hours heaving huge leather-bound record books from the shelves, searching the copperplate handwritten details and noting information in lined notebooks. Today, with the available technology, a great deal of research – though by no means all – can be done from the comfort of our homes.

I seem to have an ability to hunt down missing ancestors and fill in gaps in knowledge. I have had such fascinating ‘detective’ work to do. One of the most challenging ones was of a man born around 1870 who did not have a birth, marriage or death certificate. Everything the family thought they knew about him was untrue. They didn’t even have his proper name. This family story led to Victorian workhouses, illegitimate children and the Old Bailey.

I was able to tell an 87-year-old the name of her father, filling in the blank on her birth certificate. Her mother had never told her anything about her father. During my research with her, she did her DNA and with astonishing, even miraculous, luck, a DNA match led to her father and to four half-siblings, all in their eighties, living in America.

I was also able to reunite a man with his sister and mother who he had not seen for 65 years. This last gentleman kept in touch with me and phoned to tell me he had received his first ever Christmas card with ‘son’ on it from his mother last year. This was real job satisfaction for me.

Although we are not all related to royalty in the spectacular way Danny Dyer turned out to be, it has been interesting to see how so many people I have worked on are related to well-known people from the past. One person I recently did research for turned out to be the great-great-great grandson of famous bare-knuckle boxer Tom Sayers, who has his own Blue Plaque and is buried in Highgate Cemetery.

Genealogy became an absorbing hobby and it has now developed into a vocation. It has brought such interest and enjoyment to the families I have researched, as well as the occasional shock and sadness.

Karen Humpage announces the launch of her book featuring artwork and anecdotes of the cows that once roamed the streets of Woodford.

Woodford residents may already be familiar with my work. My paintings of the cows that used to wander the streets have been shown nearby during Art Trail Wanstead and the Wanstead Festival.

I recently finished writing my book on the subject, entitled Common or Garden Cows, which is due for release on 28 July. I’m very excited about the book coming out, and keen to know what everyone thinks about it. I’m hoping to organise a ‘meet the author’ afternoon in a local establishment, and possibly do some readings from the book. It’s too early to give definite details yet, so check my website for details nearer the time.

I’ve already had the seal of approval from Year 3 pupils at St John’s C of E school in Buckhurst Hill. I spent a lovely afternoon there recently talking about when the cows used to come to town and showing them my cow paintings. In turn, they all drew and coloured in pictures of cows causing traffic jams and getting into people’s front gardens.

Growing up in Woodford in the seventies – Rokeby Gardens to be precise, as shown here in the first cow picture I painted – I remember the cows ambling up the road munching all the privet hedges and liberating the rosebushes of all their flowers. It seemed quite normal at the time, but I suppose if it happened nowadays, there would be letters to the council! Not that cows would find much to eat in gardens nowadays. My bugbear of people losing interest in their gardens and turning them into car parks crops up in the book on more than one occasion!

Here follows an extract from the book, taken from the beginning of Chapter Three, entitled Traffic.

‘A commuter’s day would not start well if they opened their front door to find a cow or three standing in the front garden. Having to run the gauntlet past a large cow to the gate was not an exercise most people would relish unless they fancied themself as a contestant on It’s A Knockout. So, most people waited until the cows moved on, leading to many seemingly outlandish excuses as to why they were late for work.

“I remember the cows well. We used to live in Beverley Crescent and I once had to call work to say I’d be late as three cows were in our front garden and I couldn’t get out of the house. They thought I was mad!”

The daily drudgery of waiting for a bus could be alleviated by the spectacle of a cow joining the commute. Not privy to the tradition of queuing, a cow could fill a whole bus shelter, leaving the poor commuters resigned to standing out in the inevitable rain. “There was a wooden bus shelter on Lake House road…in it waiting for a bus was an enormous cow just standing there minding its own business.”’     

Sue Page from the Redbridge Heritage Centre invites you to a reminiscence session at Woodford Green Library this August, to share your memories of food, glorious food

Our eating habits have changed a lot over the last 80 years. If you lived through the Second World War, you will remember the dietary restrictions brought about by rationing, which began in January 1940. If you lived in Woodford, you would have had to register with a particular retailer in the area to purchase bacon, cheese, fats and sugar.

Rationing meant some foodstuffs were traded on the Black Market.   A Woodford café owner was charged in 1946 with obtaining rationed foodstuffs “in excess of points allocated”. He had received 480 tins of salmon and 24 tins of syrup illegally. Hopefully, he wasn’t going to serve them together!

You may have eaten in a British Restaurant, communal kitchens which were created in 1940 to help people who had been bombed out of their homes or who had run out of ration coupons. They disbanded in 1947. There was a British Restaurant at the Memorial Hall in South Woodford, opened by Mrs Winston Churchill. The food at these restaurants was relatively cheap and filling.

Many foods continued to be rationed after the war and people were urged not to waste any. A letter to the editor of the Woodford Times newspaper in 1946 from “Disgusted of Horns Lane” stated that 11 complete loaves of bread had been found in the pig bin. He demanded the punishment of the miscreants for “wasting the staff of life”.

During the 1950s, some shops converted to self-service, although in Woodford there continued to be independent food retailers. The butcher, baker and greengrocer all existed side by side with the supermarkets. Packaging became more eye-catching and food became more plentiful. Pressure cookers and food mixers made home cooking easier. Woodford LEB advertised state-of-the-art new cookers with auto-time controls. In 1957, Dairy Cookery Week was organised by the Electricity Board and free demonstrations on cooking with milk, cream, cheese and butter took place in Woodford. No such thing as cholesterol in those days!

The 1960s saw an increasing variety of products hitting the supermarket shelves. The range of breakfast cereals also increased with the arrival of Coco Pops and Sugar Smacks. The 1960s may have been when you had your first Vesta Curry – foreign food became popular as travel increased.

In the 1970s most people owned a fridge and many also owned a freezer. This meant people were able to buy and consume more convenience food. This trend continues today with microwaves and fast food outlets changing the way we eat.

Counselling and psychotherapy training institute TA East will be hosting a listening post at South Woodford Library this summer. Victoria Baskervill explains what it means to be truly listened to.

We all need to talk, be listened to and be in contact with each other, to thrive in this world.

“Listening is about being present, not just about being quiet.” Krista Tippett, Becoming Wise, 2016.

In contemporary society, we often don’t have or take the time to stop and listen to the birds sing, to hear children’s laughter, or to look up from our phones and really listen and hear each other.

There have been moments in both my personal and professional life which I can pinpoint being truly listened to, heard and understood. Sometimes, these have been chance meetings with strangers, yet I have come away feeling ‘met’.

Carl Rogers, a pioneer of humanistic theory, explored ‘listening’ in his early work. From his findings, he surmised that when we truly listen, we hear a deeper narrative underneath. He talked passionately about the power of listening as a way of understanding relational dynamics with self and others, and a way to make personal change.

As a psychotherapist, I have worked with many clients who don’t feel listened to, resulting in low self-esteem and negative patterns. Yet, I have been deeply moved by the power of listening in the consulting room, resulting in a profound quality of relationship.

Rogers described a special way of being and listening, that to truly listen and hear the other, we need to enter into the other’s world. He coined this idea as ‘empathy’, the ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person’s situation; a theory that has been embraced by many other psychotherapists.

TA East is a counselling and psychotherapy training institute. The training is delivered in the spirit that all people are OK, everyone has the capacity to reach their full potential and all people can change. And we are now inviting the Redbridge community to come along and be listened to, heard and understood by another, demonstrating the value of empathy and being listened to. Sessions will last for 30 minutes. These will not be counselling sessions, though they will be facilitated by trained and trainee counsellors and psychotherapists.

“People are just as wonderful as sunsets if you let them be. When I look at a sunset, I don’t find myself saying ‘soften the orange a bit on the right-hand corner’. I don’t try to control a sunset, I watch it in awe as it evolves.” Carl Rogers, 1969.

Library Development Officer Christine Thompson invites South Woodford’s children to take part in a space-themed reading challenge this summer and read six library books over the holidays.

The Reading Agency’s annual Summer Reading Challenge is aimed at children aged four to 12 years and helps get almost three quarters of a million children into libraries to boost their reading skills and confidence.

Children’s reading can ‘dip’ during the summer holidays if they don’t have regular access to books and encouragement to pick them up.

In 2019, children across the UK will be able to take part in this year’s Summer Reading Challenge, entitled Space Chase, an out-of-this-world adventure inspired by the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. It is also the 20th anniversary of the annual reading challenge itself. Children taking part will join our super space family, the Rockets, for a thrilling mission to track down books nabbed by mischievous aliens. There will be loads of fun, loads of prizes and, of course, a medal for each child who completes the challenge. Visit the new Eat It exhibition by Redbridge Museum to gain an extra sticker.

This year’s theme will feature bespoke artwork from top children’s illustrator Adam Stower, and will celebrate adventure, exploration, reading and fun. Taking part is easy. The aim of the challenge is for children to read any six library books of their own choice during the summer holiday. Children can read whatever they like – fiction, fact books, poetry, joke books, picture books, audio books or even eBooks – just as long as they are borrowed from the library. The scheme promises to encourage reading that is out of this world.

A number of events will be taking place at South Woodford Library alongside the challenge, including a galaxy jars workshop, star gazing activity, solar system magnet-making and a crazy comic workshop. This year there will also be a junior book reviewer competition for seven- to 10-year-olds taking place in partnership with Thy English Academy. Pick up your review sheet at the library. Younger children who are not yet reading can earn stickers and a certificate of their own for visiting the library and borrowing books throughout the summer.

Library staff, with the support of teenage and adult volunteers, will be on hand to listen to children read and to help them discover new authors and explore a wide range of books.

Yuki Negishi is a pianist of “rare poetry, passion and virtuosity”. Having lived in Tokyo, New York and Amsterdam, she now calls South Woodford home, and is inviting fellow residents to hear her play.

I recently moved to South Woodford with my IT director husband Michael, and noticed there weren’t many classical concerts in the area, despite the many beautiful churches with grand pianos. St Mary’s Church is a short walk from my house, and the first time I visited, I was struck by its splendid pipe organ and perfect acoustics.

I quickly felt the potential for a regular recital series, which could give local residents easy access to some great music, and an ideal opportunity for me to try out new recital programmes.

Music has been my entire life; I am Japanese, born in Tokyo, but spent seven years in New York City between the ages of five and 12 due to my father’s business. There, I was fortunate to be accepted to the world-famous Juilliard School of Music as an honorary scholarship student aged 10. I had two important years studying with Richard Fabre, who was a student of Rosina Lhévinne from the great Russian piano school who mentored Van Cliburn and John Williams, among others. These years paved the way for my future aspirations.

Europe has always been my dream destination to continue my studies, London specifically, for its central location geographically and culturally. After studying for three years in Amsterdam, I came here in 2001 to complete my Masters and Artist Diploma at the Royal College of Music. I regularly perform as a soloist and chamber musician in all sorts of venues and festivals, in countries such as the UK, Japan, China, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, Romania, Poland and the USA. As a pianist, there is so much repertoire to explore – I probably won’t be able to go through all of them in my lifetime! But my affinity lies with the Romantics: Schubert (though he is more late-Classical), Schumann, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms and also the Frenchman Debussy. I also love the Russian composers such as Rachmaninoff, and more recently Kapustin, who infuses classical and jazz. His music is pure jazz when you listen to it, but there is no improvisation, they are all written out in musical score!

I will be releasing a solo CD comprising some of my favourite composers through the Quartz label in 2020. Alongside this, I will continue performing with my newly established Solomon Piano Quintet. I hope to bring these projects to St Mary’s regularly throughout the year. The first one was in March with a solo programme of Schubert and Chopin sonatas. The next one will be on 10 July, with lots of Chopin, Kapustin and the American Romantic composer Amy Beach. I do hope you will be able to join me at one of my recitals.

PC Daniel Thomas is pleased to report a significant fall in the number of burglaries in the South Woodford area, and encourages residents to help fight crime by securing their homes

My name is PC Daniel Thomas and I am the Dedicated Ward Officer (DWO) for South Woodford. I am one of two police officers who cover South Woodford and we also have a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) dedicated to this area.

I know that many of you have been worried about theft-related crimes in South Woodford, particularly burglary. Interestingly, the majority of residential burglaries take place between 4pm and 8pm. But there are many things we have done and are continuing to do to reduce the number of burglaries, and I am pleased to say the numbers have indeed fallen substantially over the past six months. In November 2018, there were 18 recorded burglaries in the South Woodford ward. In May 2019, this fell to just two. We have worked very hard to reduce this number, but there are also things you can do to make your home more secure.

Burglary is an opportunist crime and burglars will target homes they believe are empty. We recommend leaving a light on when you go out, especially if you are going to return after dark. This will give the impression that your home is occupied. Timed lights can also help with this. This is the cheapest and most effective way of securing your home beyond locks and closing windows. I know all of this sounds obvious and most of you probably do it anyway, but on our patrols, we come across many homes in darkness in the evenings that may seem inviting to unwanted ‘guests’!

Alarms, CCTV and video doorbells are other effective ways of securing your home. If you have a side gate that leads to a garden, you should ensure this cannot be easily compromised. Make it hard for thieves to climb over by installing spikes and not leaving wheelie bins in front.

Another crime we have experienced recently in South Woodford is the theft of motor vehicles. This has been driven by an increase in keyless entry cars. The solution to this is relatively straightforward. There are pouches that can be bought online for a small amount of money that block the signal the key fobs are transmitting, preventing criminals from remotely accessing the signal.

As a Safer Neighbourhoods Team, we are very busy dealing with a wide variety of issues in your area. This ranges from crime, community events, neighbour disputes, mental health assessments and antisocial behaviour. We also like to meet as many of you as possible – you are our eyes and ears. We patrol South Woodford on bicycle and foot only as this makes us more accessible and helps us deal with local issues.

The South Woodford Society has launched a crowdfunding campaign to establish a community orchard outside South Woodford station. Louise Burgess explains the benefits for the community… and cider drinkers

As evidenced by our street names of Primrose, Mulberry and Cowslip, the south-east side of George Lane used to be a flower-filled space, with market gardens and a dairy. We are aiming to put some of this country feel back into South Woodford by building a community orchard, refurbishing the current small green spaces and improving the planting.

Our campaign is crowdfunded, using an online funding platform for ideas that bring local places to life. Projects are matched to funds from councils, foundations and companies that might want to help. We are hoping that our funding will be met by a donation from the Mayor’s Fund, organised by the Mayor of London.

We’ll work to re-imagine this area. As these spaces are currently a little neglected and run-down, we are proposing to refurbish this area and enhance our pride in our community.

South Woodford station has just had a new step-free entrance on the westbound side of George Lane, which has been a great support for the community, but we are hoping Redbridge Council and TfL will take this opportunity to work with us to brighten up the rather utilitarian look of the new entrance and the surrounding area. This area includes two small sections of green space, and the larger of the two spaces, at the corner of Primrose Road, will be the site for an orchard to provide free fruit for the community with additional bee- and user-friendly planting.   

We would like the broken brick planters by the local car park (junction of Mulberry Way and Primrose Road) to be refurbished by the council and we would like to add some Christmas lights to an already established fir tree, to create a welcoming aspect to this corner of South Woodford during the darker winter months.

The rather neglected subway under the railway line would benefit from repair and redecoration, and the installation of CCTV for security will also be requested, although this is in the gift of the council and TfL and is not in the scope of this current project.

We have the backing of the council’s Head of Civic Pride, Councillor John Howard, and our local councillors to carry out this work, and we will be engaging with local businesses and schools to include the views of their pupils, customers and staff in how the project is carried out and maintained.

There are many benefits, not least the increase in the residents’ community wellbeing, which will result in less crime and greater security in the local area. High-level planters should discourage antisocial behaviour and increased use of the area by residents will also prevent abuse.

New community orchards help to address the nation’s allotment shortfall, promote community production and ownership of fruit and help us rediscover the pleasures of eating organic fruit grown close to home.

The Orchard Project will collect our fruit and give back cider in return – for every 3kg of apples, we will get back a 330ml bottle of the limited edition Local Fox Cider. The fruit can be collected from late August and previous locations have included Walthamstow, Herne Hill, Richmond and Perivale.

The fruit can be of all shapes and sizes as long as it is unsprayed and from London. The most important thing is that fruit is separated into blemish-free and those with slight blemishes – even the odd bug is fine!

Community orchards also help to green the urban environment and create habitats for wildlife, increasing our city’s biodiversity.  In an era of climate change and peak oil, planting trees, which should provide a large yield year after year for decades to come, is a logical move, helping to build food security and community resilience.

Avon House School in Woodford Green is looking to make contact with as many former students and staff as possible as they prepare to mark their 100th anniversary during the forthcoming academic year.

“We would be delighted for you to join our alumni network… It doesn’t matter when you left us, whether you are in further education, in employment or retired, whether you still live nearby or have moved away, there are still ways you can connect with the school and stay in touch,” said a spokesperson. “To celebrate our 100th anniversary, we will be organising an exciting programme of events and are happy to assist former students in organising their own events, or getting back in touch with their peers.”

Visit swvg.co/avonhouse or call 020 8504 1749

Sainsbury’s marked its 150th birthday in May, with staff from across the business invited to volunteer for a cause in their local community to celebrate the milestone. In South Woodford, supermarket workers have pledged time to help improve, among other things, the Salvation Army centre on Daisy Road.

“Some of my colleagues will be weeding, painting and cleaning the carpets,” said store manager Mark Twell, who also donates food for the centre’s lunches for the elderly. “Others will be working to improve the alleyway that runs from our store up to M&S, planting hanging baskets and repainting the railings… We are also keen to brighten up the outside wall space with art, and I am open to suggestions from the community for any murals they would like to see painted.”

Call 020 8989 8224

More than 20 people took part in a clean-up day at Eagle Pond in June. Councillor Jo Blackman (Wanstead Village, Labour) organised the litter pick with the City of London Corporation – which owns the site off Snaresbrook Road and provided waders and boats on the day – after a number of residents expressed concerns about the state of the pond.

“It’s great to see what a difference we can make when we work together. A group of residents are now joining forces to make lasting improvements,” said Councillor Blackman.

Another clean-up day is set to take place in the autumn, with pond visitors urged to take their litter home with them and not to feed bread to the ducks, which can lead to waterfowl malnutrition, cause pollution and attract pests. Residents are also encouraged to pick up one piece of litter each time they pass the pond. “Small things make a massive difference, and we can all make a small change to help our environment.”

Visit swvg.co/blackman