First look: masterplan to transform Walthamstow ex-industrial zone with new homes, creative businesses

The streets in the Blackhorse Lane area of Walthamstow were a hive of industry in the mid-1900s, with small businesses based in modest workshops making everything from fireworks to fancy boxes, picture frames to fizzy pop.

After the Second World War the dolls house makers and bicycle manufacturers were driven from the area by the destruction of wartime bombing, and the transformation of the land into an industrial zone, which in its turn was outrun by technology. Now the E17 suburb is going back to its roots.

Ultimately the big idea, under the Blackhorse Lane Action Plan, is to build about 2,500 homes north of Blackhorse Road station and attract a new generation of makers, designers, artists and start-up entrepreneurs.

It’s intended to breathe life into an area which had disappeared off the map as the property boom in the rest of Waltham Forest borough passed it by.

With the remnants of its slightly forbidding industrial estates, even local estate agent Andrew Goad, director of The Stow Brothers, who has operated there for 16 years, has to admit: “Nothing really happens around here and it still looks very industrial, which people don’t want.”

But what Blackhorse Lane does have is the space to build the homes these small business start-ups need if they are going to stay local.

HOMES READY TO RENT BY THE END OF THE YEAR

The first rental properties will be finished this year. According to CBRE’s annual Borough by Borough report, published this month, Waltham Forest has experienced the strongest house price growth of any London borough over the past five years, with prices rising to an average £416,926.

Over the next five years CBRE forecasts prices will rise another 17 per cent. The price boost has been two miles down the road in and around Walthamstow.

Developers of all sizes, hungry for land, are piling into the Blackhorse Lane area to create an interesting mix of homes for rent, shared ownership, private sale, and student housing.

They are also, under “encouragement” from Waltham Forest council, to include workspaces for small and creative businesses on their sites.

The council is calling Blackhorse Lane a “creative industries zone”, investing in existing small workshop spaces in the area as well as using its planning powers to make sure developers include workspace in their schemes.

These developers include housing associations Catalyst Housing and Swan Housing, which have teamed up with the Greater London Authority to build 330 affordable homes on the former Webbs Industrial Estate in Blackhorse Lane.

BIG-NAME ARCHITECTS COME IN TO HELP

A heavy-hitting international architect, CF Møller, the Danish firm behind Phase Two of the Darwin Centre at the National History Museum and the Sammy Ofer wing of the National Maritime Museum, has been hired to design the project.

Alongside the homes will be studios for artists and artisans, a small park and some shops — although since this project was only announced in August further details are scanty.

The largest development, of about 1,000 homes, is also the most advanced. When complete the seven-acre brownfield site right by Blackhorse Road station will have more than 500 student flats, and 499 properties for sale and rent.

Already up and running is Gnome House, a printmaking studio-cum-community centre, with space for artists and classes and groups for locals.

The first phase of homes, called Fizzy Walthamstow, will complete at the end of this year, a range of rental flats to be managed by Fizzy Living.

A one-bedroom furnished flat starts from £1,550 a month, with two-bedroom, two-bathroom flats from £1,805. Average rent in Waltham Forest, says CBRE, is £1,346 a month. These “build to rent” flats have the advantage of long-term leases plus extras like free wifi.

Taylor Wimpey is building the private homes. A disappointing 64 will be affordable for first-time buyers.

The first homes at the development, named Eclipse, went on sale in September in advance of completion next year. One-bedroom flats start at £329,000, with two-bedroom flats from £435,000.

Right beside Eclipse stands one of Blackhorse Lane’s few pubs, The Standard. A popular live music and alternative comedy venue, it had closed and the site was sold to a supermarket in 2011, but happily planning permission granted to Turkish Food Centre this summer allows for a basement music venue, a bar, a food store and 50 flats.

Legal & General is involved at Blackhorse Mills, a build to rent scheme on the former Ferry Lane Industrial Estate.

Planning permission was granted this summer and work began in September, to a design by another big name, Assael Architecture.

The £180 million project will include up to 440 flats, ranging from studios to three-bedroom homes, plus a gym, private dining rooms, flexible working space, roof terraces and a residents club room. There will also be 20,000sq ft of office space for creative and start-up businesses.

One in four of the flats will be rented at subsidised levels to key workers. Legal & General says the rest will be “targeted for the mass market” and pointed out that while rents at build to rent schemes might seem high, the value for money is in all the extras.

“Blackhorse Mills will offer residents reduced energy bills, no letting fees, and free services such as gym, wifi and car club membership. Roof solar panels will provide the building with communal lighting and power.

“Residents will be offered longer and more flexible tenancies, from six months to five years. They can also decorate their own homes and keep pets — options traditionally only linked to home ownership.”

Another project to watch out for is a collaboration between Transport for London and Barratt London. They are drawing up plans for a 1.8-acre site close to the station for 350 homes. It is hoped work will start in 2019, with the homes — half of them affordable — completed in 2022.

Equipment Works is a proposed £130 million mixed-use regeneration project by developer U+I, transforming warehouses at the junction of Blackhorse Lane and Forest Road into 337 new homes, including 24 per cent affordable, plus space for start-ups and small businesses, shops, and cafés.

TRANSPORT GOOD, FOOD BAD, WETLANDS SUPERB

Blackhorse Road station provides good transport links in Zone 3 on the Victoria line and London Overground.

However, the area’s dire on the foodie and shopping front. Waltham Forest council and the GLA are investing locally, but it’s a slow train.

More significant is the £10.6 million Walthamstow Wetlands project.

This has opened up to the public 10 Victorian reservoirs, making up London’s largest man-made body of water, as a 520-acre wetland nature reserve threaded with nature trails and dotted with play areas and wildlife habitats.

WHAT ELSE CAN I BUY?

The streets around Blackhorse Road station are lined with neat terrace houses, originally built for local factory workers and now popular with today’s first-time buyers and second steppers. A budget of about £500,000 will buy a three-bedroom house.

Haart is currently selling a three-bedroom mid-terrace house in Shakespeare Road, 10 minutes’ walk from the station for £525,000. Call 020 8012 1079. Meanwhile, eMoov has a three-bedroom end-of-terrace house in Blackhorse Lane for offers over £550,000. Call 03339 394816.

Warner Estate, dating from about 1900, is named after developer Thomas Courtney Warner who built many of the streets around Blackhorse Lane.

Warner houses are quality, red-brick properties, often with front gardens, smart porches and plenty of detailing. Churchill Estates has a two-bedroom flat in a Warner house in Pretoria Road for £485,000. Call 020 8012 3019.

Central Estate Agents has a two-bedroom ground-floor flat in a Victorian house for £390,000, and a two-bedroom garden flat in Coppermill Lane for offers over £350,000. Call 020 8012 5239 for both.