Property

Walthamstow’s most famous son, the artist and socialist William Morris, once called his hometown ‘a suburban village on the edge of Epping Forest, and once pleasant enough, but now terribly cocknified and choked up by the jerry [cheap housing] builder’. That was in 1890, and while the majority of Walthamstow still pretty much fits that description, Orford Road in the village area of Walthamstow is one of London’s best-kept secrets, offering some real property bargains and a multi-racial community, where East End wide boys rub shoulders with Turks, Pakistanis, Jamaicans, Vietnamese, Chinese, Ghanaians, Nigerians and Eastern Europeans.
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Situated in Zone 3, Walthamstow is 25 minutes away from Oxford Circus via the Victoria Line. The City is only 20 minutes away on the South East rail line that goes to Liverpool Street. Upper Walthamstow, or ‘the village’ as it is known to locals, was designated a conservation area by the Borough of Waltham Forest in 1967, and centres on the twelfth-century St Mary’s Church. The Vestry House Museum (Vestry Road; 020 8509 1917/www.lbwf.gov.uk) is custodian of the area’s history. Its collection includes a Victorian parlour, costume gallery, an old-fashioned police cell and the first motor car to be built and driven in London (by Frederick Bermer in 1904) as well as Walthamstow’s archives.

The village features many listed fifteenth-century timber-framed houses and almshouses from the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. All of these give the area a ‘ye olde England’ feel which is made all the more idiosyncratic by the fact that it is set right in the middle of a rough and ready part of east London. It is, on the whole, populated by twenty- and thirtysomething middle-class liberals who like the idea of settling in a leafy suburb but couldn’t bear to live in nearby Chingford or Highams Park.

Restaurants are good here. The crown jewel is the excellent Trattoria La Ruga at 59 Orford Road (020 8520 5008). The content of the Ruga menu depends on whatever are the freshest and tastiest ingredients the chef can buy on any given day, usually excellent cuts of game, fresh seafood and seasonal fruit and vegetables. The manager, ‘Pete the Greek’, is a local legend. Another Italian restaurant, Mondragone (No 25, 020 8923 1113), is La Ruga’s cheap and cheerful cousin. A bit further up Orford Road is The Village Kitchen (No 41, 020 8509 2144), which is good for breakfast, while Chilli and Spice at 223-225 Hoe Street (020 8520 7080) offers authentic Pakistani curry.