To coincide with the London 2012 Olympic Games, Stratford finally has a museum, albeit a pop-up one – the People’s Museum and Gallery of Newham.
Developed by Eastside Community Heritage, the People’s Museum and Gallery of Newham occupies an old shop just down Stratford High St from the bus station. Using donated material and documents sourced from local archives it tells the story of Stratford before Lord Coe was even a twinkle in his mother’s eye! Through static displays and found objects you’ll discover, for example, that the area suffered terribly during World War II – there were over 1200 bomb casualties, 48000 people were evacuated and over 1600 homes were destroyed. The sad tale of Ronan Point is also covered – the gas explosion and subsequent partial collapse of a tower block in Canning Town killed four people and also signed the death knell for high-rise tower blocks, which have only recently started to reappear as the price and scarcity of suitable land has necessitated building upwards again.
The area’s industrial past is also revealed – at one time Newham was a mecca for manual workers, employing many tens of thousands in huge factories that had developed in the area because of the ease of access to raw materials from the nearby docks. These included Tate & Lyle, the sugar refiners, and Yardley, who older readers will remember made soaps and perfumes. This large industrial base led to some peculiarities specific to Stratford – for example, three-quarter height buses were specifically manufactured to serve the local factories because of the necessity to pass beneath the low railway bridges on Carpenters Road.
The People’s Museum and Gallery of Newham also delves into Newham’s strong political heritage – the Kier Hardie housing estate in Canning Town is named for a local MP who was a founding father of the Labour Party, and the General and Municipal Workers Union (GMWU) was initially formed in 1889 to protect the workers of the Beckton Gas Works. The museum also gives visitors a window on the arrival of the various groups of immigrants who have made the area their home over the decades – East Ham and in particular Green St are referenced, the latter being a mecca for shoppers of south Indian or Sri Lankan descent today.
The museum also contains a small screening room – here you can take a seat and watch footage of older residents of the area recounting their memories of the area. This room also accommodates an ‘archive club’ every Wednesday afternoon from 2 until 3:30pm where visitors can examine old photographs and documents, or indeed bring their own to show others. A series of special events are also scheduled for this new space – you can see details of these on the Hidden Histories website, of which the People’s Museum and Gallery of Newham is a part. This new museum will be open until the end of October 2012 so you have plenty of time to plan a visit!
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[...] sought to rediscover the complex history of this particular part of London – the temporary People’s Museum and Gallery of Newham (shamefully the only readily accessible local history resource in the entire borough) made an [...]