On Bank Holiday Monday evening, the 27th May, a group of local residents and activists are intending to meet at the Antelope pub in Church Road , Leyton E10 – opposite Marsh Lane – for a summer evening stroll across Marsh Lane Fields. this will include a site visit to the Dagenham Brook crossing by the Eton Manor Cottage, where work is due to begin on the next day (Tuesday) to rip up all the paths that were laid and a lot of the plants and shrubs that were planted last year, using Olympics compensation money for the loss of Drapers’ Field. The Council then intend to remove the two existing bridges (the present vehicle access bridge was strengthened about four years ago and recently refurbished, the other is a cycle/pedestrian bridge put in as a safe route to school for children), to be replaced with a single road bridge capable of taking wide, heavy loads .

If you would like to join us for the walk, please aim to be at the Antelope by 6.45pm at the latest, so we are all assembled and ready to set off at 7.00pm sharp. We are going to walk on from Marsh Lane Fields through Seymour fields to the Hare & Hounds pub on Lea Bridge Road , where members of the Save the Lea Marshes campaign group (formerly Save Leyton Marsh) will hold a regular meeting of the group.

The meeting at the H&H will go on to discuss other areas of Leyton Marsh – the botched reinstatement of Porter’s Field Meadow, the Application by LVRPA to turn the Golf Course into a campsite, the Application for more stables (thirteen, all for privately-owned livery horses) in the paddock north of the Riding Centre – which since 2003 has been more than 50 per cent covered with stables (including some unpermitted developments for which LBWF recently granted LVRPA a retrospective certificate of lawfulness of use). The meeting will also and also deal with some internal organisational matters to do with the running and funding of the group and its email communications.  You might be interested in some of it! and would be very welcome to attend. But you are very welcome just to come just for a stroll and site visit to Marsh Lane Fields (and return to Church Road rather than going on to the Hare & Hounds) if you prefer.

c/o Save Lea Marshes