Lea Bridge: from Black Marsh to Gleaming Towers
Claire gave her talk using the Zoom virtual meeting system, hosted by The Waltham Forest History and Heritage Network. You can see a recording of her talk, with the following questions and answers (extraneous passages edited out) on YouTube
Claire is an extraordinary researcher, uncovering aspects of our past that have been unsuspected. She put great effort into providing a series of illuminating illustrations to accompany her thought-provoking talk. The fullest account of Claire Weiss’s (ongoing) research is in this article: ‘Leabridge Farm and the Black Marsh Silk: a first history’
Claire Weiss gives an update on how a remote mediaeval farm on Lea Marshes which for centuries supplied produce for London, was affected by the eighteenth-century Lea Bridge Turnpike, the nineteenth-century railway station, the waterworks and gasworks, and twentieth-century urban sprawl. She traces the transformation of the site from crop-growing and horticulture through an artisan period of silk-dyeing culminating in a century-long period as an industrial and commercial site, ultimately transforming from 2016 into Leyton’s newest entity: the ‘Lea Bridge Town Centre’.
Waltham Forest History and Heritage Network 
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