The Ordnance Survey's Explorer maps are divided into the kilometre squares of the National Grid, which stake out the paper at four centimetre intervals. [Number 174](OS-Explorer-174) covers an area from inner London out to the country of Essex and Hertfordshire, six hundred squares in all. The whole of the modern Epping Forest is there, together with almost all of the New River. Roman Ermine Street and its descendant, the Great Cambridge Road, course lengthwise along the sheet, and the ancient way to Colchester likewise runs across the southern edge. Near here the Ordnance Survey has recorded my own home, a short section of a pink rectangle, a carefully delineated plot behind.
Somewhere else on the sheet, a similar splash of pink (I should imagine) is home to John Rogers, film maker, author and Waltham Forest's psychogeographer-in-residence for their 2019 "London Borough of Culture". He has amassed over three years an extensive videography of his walks through the Lee Valley, and although I have met him only a few times, I have accompanied him along many miles of virtual space, and it must have been a comment in one of these that inspired me to take a more systematic approach to my own explorations.
The plan I had in mind was to fill the grid with memory: to visit every square over the course of a single year, entering or leaving each one on foot, and then to produce something, although quite what would remain to be seen.
Starting on New Year's Day, it took thirty-one of these trips to cover the grid: I was not done until well into December. Most likely it would be a weekend morning at Liverpool Street, from which the railways fan out over Hertfordshire and Essex; the walk would be longer or shorter depending on the season and the weather, heading across country to another station for the return journey, crossing grid line after invisible grid line, often consulting the map to check my path and plan the kilometres ahead.
Back home after each trip I would trace my route across sheet 174 in coloured pen. My wavering lines gradually obscured the map's neat blue squares, replacing the standardized symbols of the Ordnance Survey with a more amorphous knowledge. And over the months the map began to fall apart: tears spreading along the folds, defining a new grid, preparing for a final disintegration along new and unremarked lines.
Now I have finished the job. Sheet 174 lies in rectangular pieces, four folds across by ten down, and each one is ready to become a chapter of my essay. Their organisation respects my little project no more than they did the careful work of the Ordnance Survey: long days in the fields have been sliced up arbitrarily, outings in different seasons are forced together. I like it this way. Recalling some areas, I see them from different angles and in different weathers; for others, there is just a single impression.
And for some, already, the line sparks no recognition at all. I could never have filled the grid with memory, it was always going to leak through the net. The sheaf of defaced panels becomes more and more inscrutable as their author grows more distant. And what in there speaks of the land?
The road ends at a lone house in the woods. Party balloons are tied to the gates: a child's birthday. The autumn equinox is not long past and although it is dry, the warmth is draining from the air, and all the guests are indoors. The forest remains quiet.
A laminated sign requests that _chapel visitors follow the footpath_. I slow down unconsciously, as if I have entered sacred ground, but Goldings chapel is long converted into a luxury home, now for sale, and purchasers, not pilgrims, are the reason for the sign.
Up a steep tree-covered shoulder, a wide clear strip forms the drive of an unseen house, exactly following the line of the tunnelled railway beneath.
Rivers converge at Hertford: Mimram, Beane, Rib, Lea. London taps the four rivers for their portion not far downstream, at the Gauge House, and the New River is created.
Housing estates crown the ridges, separated by green floodplains, a handprint pressed through a crust of concrete.
Stopped at a bench overlooking the New Gauge House, I consider the Lea Valley, spread across the scene. The Kingsmead Viaduct bustles traffic across without pause for reflection, and certainly without the patience for pedestrians. My route must descend to the river and continue for another kilometre to the lowly footbridge reserved for our sort. The bell of the Carmelite monastery sounds like a call from a past age, but it is an illusion: the monastery is not twenty years older than the viaduct.
I find myself following a pair of friends bushwhacking across the water meadows. The path has been swallowed by rushes. We take different routes and I struggle over the iron fence to the New River. Finding the gate a few yards further down, they laugh.
The station scores a direct hit on the grid: a tiny pink circle cut unequally into four. Getting off the train near the back, I have likely already covered three squares before I leave the platform. But I am not convinced, so I make a spiral orbit of the station, crossing the railway twice more before heading into the town.
Ware's high street must have once been packed and lively with coaching inns. We are a convenient day's ride north of London along the Great Cambridge Road. Now only a few still trade, though several older buildings still retain the arched passages which would once have led customers into their miniature worlds of hay and horse musk, roast meat and smoke.
I meet the Hertfordshire Way following a dismantled railway along the river Ash. I wonder where the railway might once have gone, whether it was a dead-end branch or a trunk route, but its secrets lie in another place, on another map.
The path curves gently as it heads south. I have learned to look out for those stretches which by fortune run along grid lines. When the path veers left, I share a square with Ballard's Wood and Thirsty Spring; when right, I tick off the missionary college at Easneye, unseen on its hilltop almost a kilometre away. I do not suspect it yet, but the weather improving, I will pass through thirty squares today: a record haul.
At Fillets Farm I pass two men in work clothes chatting by a barn door. It is now mid-December, and it occurs to me that I have not seen anyone working in the fields all year. Modern agriculture is dominated by machinery, humans swallowed by their tools. Much later I discover that much of the farm has been converted into offices: the people who work the land are once again elsewhere.
I round the corner of Gilston churchyard onto a confident, straight track. Perhaps it might have been a through way, and the church might have provided a centre for the village, but somehow that has not happened, and the track will peter out only three fields ahead, and the church will be left alone on the hillside, a mile from the big house at Gilston Park and two from the pub and the road to Harlow.
High Wych and Sawbridgeworth lie dead ahead of me, and I have an appointment with a friend, but the grid square to my right has few rights of way and I need to take the opportunity. Approaching Sayes Park Farm I hear gunshots and am quickly on the defensive. I'm always aware that I walk on remnant paths, suffered to exist only by the council. Have I committed some offence, straying from the path? Or staying on the path, have I blundered into some hoary dispute between landowner and local government? I rehearse my apologies, but there is nobody to apologize to. The farm is a base for training in clay pigeon shooting. *Safe but light-hearted*, is their motto. I am more likely to come to grief on the busy road up to High Wych, squeezed between its earthen banks.
The airfield is now for the most part laid to a single crop, but its wartime extent can be inferred from the tracks that remain: two runways and a curving perimeter road. Beyond the crossing point the runways are still used by a local flying club. Four public footpaths enter the field, but rather than meeting at a point, they form a rough rectangle, which the landowner has fastidiously cleared through rows of winter vegetables. Through the diligence of the council, the footpaths preserve a memory of the field boundaries that existed before the land was requisitioned, the farm track from Hunsdon village that then crossed it, and the corner of the long felled Wickland's Wood. I feel a fleeting urge to abandon the grid project and condense the whole thing down to this tiny orbit, to pace round and around it while all the memories of Hertfordshire and Essex seep out from the soil.
Back in February I had not realized how close Sawbridgeworth station was to this square, as it is just off the edge of the map. In the time I spent waiting for the train I could have added it to my collection, but now it is November and the oversight has meant an extra three kilometres of road walking. Finally I cross the railway bridge at Lower Sheering and double back on myself, along the River Stort Navigation. It is close to sunset, the weather has cleared, and the river shines as brightly as the sky. Smoke rises from a narrowboat moored by an old wrought iron bridge. Perhaps it is well.
The country south of Hertford is sprinkled with comfortable estates, often with names derived from the local villages: Bayfordbury, Brickendonbury, Haileybury, Wormleybury, Hertingfordbury, Hoddesdonbury, Broxbournebury. The shared suffix denotes a Saxon fortification, though the pattern is just a little too neat: perhaps some names have been moulded to fit. An academic strand also runs through. It was a common enough fate of country houses in the early twentieth century to be sold, or leased, to local institutions. Bayfordbury ended up in the hands of the University of Hertfordshire, and it is now a research campus in ecology and astronomy. But on the day I pass through, a Sunday at the end of September, the place is deserted and slightly oppressive. Signs instruct me to stay on the footpath at all times, but are less keen to explain where the footpath actually goes. I reach the old cedars beside the original house and make a dash for the exit along the main drive.
Reflected across the railway line, Brickendonbury is also a place of scientific activity: the speciality of the Tun Abdul Razak Research Centre turns out to be rubber. But the public footpaths avoid the house, and last month I walked the opposite edge of the estate. I pass by the end of the mile-long Morgan's Walk without turning.
The road passes under an old railway bridge, but the railway is long ripped up, before even Dr. Beeching's watch. The Victorian railways followed the easier route of the Vale of St Albans, the pre-Ice Age Thames whose course runs east to Ware, west to Welwyn. But the axis of the town shifted in the 1920s when a north-south railway was opened through Hertford, which ignored the gentle topography of the Lea Valley. The Hertford, Luton & Dunstable withered, and Hertingfordbury station is now a private home encircled by bridleways.
At the end of Gypsy Lane, Great Amwell, the council has signed a "Roadside verge path" along the Stanstead Road. I have walked a fair amount of road this year without pavement, but none which has official recognition in this way. It seems that the council's responsibility ends with the sign, since this verge is no wider, less overgrown, or in any way friendlier to the pedestrian than any other in the county, and though it is now relieved by the parallel A10, it's still busy enough that I'm glad to turn off.
Behind Leafy Oak Farm I take care to walk as close as I can to the field edge. Not because it harbours rare or interesting plants, nor do the cattle look particularly fierce, but because right here I cut---just---across the corner of this grid square. Cut in half by the bypass, without pedestrian through routes and uncomfortably situated in the debatable land between Hertford, Great Amwell and Ware, it is an important tick. Imagining the grid lines emerging from the hedge and meeting a few yards into the field, I pause at the appropriate spot. Maybe I am wrong. The cattle won't tell.
Rye Meads is an unwelcoming place for the square bagger. The New River Path and the River Lea towpath both cross it, separated by the railway, but without any side turnings for the whole distance across. The other option is the road walk from Rye House up to St James's, Stanstead Bury, and to drop down to Roydon Station. But I have covered over thirty kilometres today and cannot push any further. I pick up this square with a wiggle through a housing estate, and leave the others for another day.
I pass Roydon station at the end of a meandering walk some months later. There is a train back to London in a few minutes, but I cannot take it yet: as the evenings draw in, the two unvisited squares beyond Rye Meads are becoming more of a risk. In the faltering light I make a loop up to St. James's and look over the marshes where the Lea and Stort meet. I imagine them flooded, as would have been a regular feature when the church was built: once harnessed, the river proved the greater attraction and the village left St James' isolated on its knoll. The congregation being elsewhere through the godfearing Victorian age, there was never a need to replace the Georgian box pews, and they are now a rarity; but late autumn attracts few antiquarian visitors and today the church is locked and silent.
Harlow Town station is somewhere to be picked up, not somewhere to leave on foot. If you insist on walking out, you must squeeze through a narrow and barely signed alley between an office building and a car park. Next to be negotiated is a busy arterial road which takes no interest in either town or station. Then you are in a large park with asphalt paths splaying in all directions. The town centre is a mystery, a rumour: I will never find it.
A gap in the hedge and a short descent, and I am surprised by a row of Victorian cottages. The hamlets of Netteswell Cross and Marshgate, together with Spurriers Farm, survive encased within Town Park, as in amber. All the fields and farms around are built over.
The station is at the northern limit of Harlow, bounded by the Stort Navigation, so the only entrance is to the south. Back in February I had thrashed though private car parks, CCTV in operation, to find a crossing. The patch of ground beyond looked to be wasteland but the map clearly showed a path. And at the bottom of the slope I found a secret wonder: a graceful footbridge, dilapidated but still futuristic, by turns ascending straight and sharply banking before vaulting the rails, a holding loop above a frozen pond, touchdown on the flat, icy meads. It felt like I had escaped something, a getaway break to the country.
I take a detour, a short road walk. Northward from a place named The Wilderness the map marks a wide byway through the forest, green dashes against green stipples, green nettles under green beeches: an old droveway perhaps. But the squares have boxed me in. I have already seen the other end of this track, and today's route draws me to the east. I pause for lunch and return the way I came.
Entering Cowheath Wood the footpath is decorated with a laminated map. It is a working forest, and walkers are admitted on the condition that they do not stray. Through the centre of the wood runs a wide track churned up by heavy tyres, dry now, fallen conifers lying across the banks and ditches running either side. It is not inviting. The path cuts across the track like an exposed squirrel, flees dead straight for the opposite boundary of the wood, though there is no exit there, merely seeking somewhere it might be left alone, more or less. Turning left at the fence it soon meets a small stream, and relaxes. Forest machinery will not trouble these slopes.
The Hertfordshire Way's marks lead me along a boardwalk through the marshy Danemead nature reserve to the point where Ermine Street crosses the Spital Brook The Hertfordshire Wildlife Trust have installed an information board at the gate, which explains the unique and interesting aspects of the site, all of which I have now forgotten. Across the way a competing board, provided by the Woodland Trust, invites me to discover Hoddesdonbury Wood and its own particularities. Highfield Wood, which also extends to this point, is extended no such courtesy, and its conservation status remains uncertain.
The north-western expansion of Cheshunt has long since engulfed the village of Hammond Street, and approached from there along the ridge there are side turns to a series of quiet residential areas. But I have arrived from the north, along a road named Park Lane Paradise, and from this direction the houses are protected by a long fence: a modern palisade keeping the forest folk out. There is no way through to the village. At length, however, I find a place where someone has succumbed to the lure of Paradise, removed a fence panel and made their escape between the hawthorns.
The track through Broxbourne Woods runs over a low ridge and heads down toward the Wormleybury Brook, just touching the corner of this square as it goes. The way is covered with sweet chestnut shells, in shades from green to dark brown, furry-spiky; the chestnuts themselves are already hidden away somewhere, thousands of squirrels' larders beneath the crackling carpet of beech mast.
I have reached the top of Hammond Street, the summit of Cheshunt Common. A right turn here would take me, in twenty minutes, to the point in Broxbourne Woods where I was two hours ago; following the road straight for the same time would bring me to Newgate Street, to a mythical time from well before lunch. But I must turn left, towards Goff's Oak. The clocks go back next weekend, and I have a lot of ground left to cover.
...And it is already a year later, and the clocks go back again next weekend, and I find I have written less than half of these pages. The project takes on a new aspect as my memory becomes more unreliable. The map shards lie in their envelope, and when I have a mind to, I take one out randomly to scrutinize it for places that spark a recollection. I do not know when I will resort to outright fabrication, or even if I will know when that has happened. Perhaps, reader, following your own course through these words, you know something I don't: something I have yet to write has already betrayed me.
I get lost on the derelict golf course. It has been closed for two years and the desiccated ground is covered with tall thistles and thorns, hard and dark. I am forced back several times. At length I emerge somewhere along Rayley Lane and head north into the traffic.
The road has no footpath and the verge is only just wide enough to walk down. Among the blades the fast food detritus blooms bright in the sun, red for fries, blue for fish.
The lane is blocked by a new-looking gate, but there is a footpath down at Delved Bridge, so I feel justified in cutting across the dried mud of the neighbouring field to bypass it. But the bridge proves to be more of a culvert, with thick undergrowth continuing on both sides of the lane, and I have crossed it before I realise. There is no way down to the stream bank on either side. Watched by cameras on the gate to the adjoining airfield I sigh and start the hot trudge back to the road.
It is another kilometre before a trackway leads off the road to the left. There is no sign and no visible path to match the right of way, so I follow the field edges as far as the embankment of the M11. There is little shade on these fields, and I have not brought enough water. Under the embankment I cross the tiny Cripsey Brook that runs down to Delved Bridge: here little more than a moistness, a memory of a current. But it is enough to support a dozen trees and I sit under one for a while, fanning my beaded forehead, the constant fry of traffic behind me.
Since crossing the Cornmill Stream, in the previous square, I have been following the high fence which separates the woods belonging to the people of Waltham Abbey from those belonging to the Royal Gunpowder Mills. The Mills' portion is apparently awaiting restoration and as a result is unsuitable for casual visitors, although I am informed that the owners run a popular landtrain tour. On this side of the fence, seemingly identical in aspect, no restoration is considered necessary. I press on, sniffing for signs of untreated gunpowder.
The path passes a carved granite monolith close to the edge of the wood, at the end of a dead straight track. I am crossing the Greenwich Meridian, the base-line of the global grid of longitude and latitude, the mother grid to which all the world's maps defer. But this grid does not consist of squares: the lines of longitude converge at the poles, the lines of latitude are not always straight. To make a map like mine, with its regular four-centimetre cadence, compromises must be made. If I were to visit the four corners of any square on the map and carefully measure each side, I would discover none of them were exactly the same length, and none exactly a kilometre long either. The Ordnance Survey's National Grid is an updated fiction, discarding the mucky earth for an airy ellipsoid, a convenient planet where squares are squarer and angles righter.
Leaving the last terraces of Walthamstow, I pass the Walthamstow Pump House Museum, which although housed in an old pumping station is more focused on transport. The exhibitions are closed on this damp February day, but the volunteers are about, restoring, cleaning, rebuilding. The tiny coffee van is doing a decent trade despite the lack of paying visitors.
The road runs into an industrial area and ends at a large gate. At the other side of the Allied Bakeries facility, Argall Avenue will take the exact same bearing, heading straight for the river crossing at Lea Bridge. This is the Black Path, a route that divides the industrial estate, still running from the higher ground at Walthamstow across the marshes to Hackney. Its straight line can be seen cutting diagonally across the fields of the first Ordnance map, and in this form with official protection it has dictated the layout of the later industrial estate. Yet sixty years before that map, the path from Walthamstow to Hackney did not cross the land later covered by these obedient factories. Before the concept of rights of way, the fields had been differently arranged, and people accordingly chose a different diagonal. Footpaths flexed according to the needs of the land, but they could also wither in the face of more convenient routes, or be stopped up by fences or railways.
In this part of Essex, away from the city, a public right of way can be found in practically every grid square: a right inscribed on a definitive map and strenuously protected. Yet the original purpose of these paths is lost, and their antiquity debatable. The English footpath network is an accident of circumstance, and has become a thing in itself, though with little physical form, which exists now solely because it existed last year and because we suffer it to continue. A tradition in the truest sense.
Leaving the straightened Roding, I follow Woodford Bridge Road round past the pet hospital and into the streets of Clayhall. The streets are wide and straight, laid out all at once as part of London's great prewar expansion. Leaving the cobble-brick sea of the East End, here people found a haven of gardens (Highcliffe Gardens, Highwood Gardens; Babbacombe, Widecombe Gardens; Windermere, Ambleside, Grasmere, Derwent, Coniston, Keswick Gardens) evoking the wild country, but laid out in neat rows, awaiting the keen rake. Gardens to be proud of.
And between the gardens, the lanes, which were here before the houses, whose names are practical and direct (Beehive Lane, Redbridge Lane, Wanstead Lane), which still curve around the memory of fields.
Nearing the corner of Clissold Park I turn left at the New River Cafe, which is not an updated River Cafe, but rather marks the New River which flows culverted beneath. Avoided by newer buildings, the channel slices across the street plan to provide a little space for allotments. Cut the city, and it bleeds the field.
Along Petherton Road Victorian developers brokered a compromise. The grassed-over channel became a median, a desirable garden feature. Its trees still protect residents from the gaze of their neighbours.
The river itself has a few more miles left, will cross the Regent's Canal at the Angel and run as far as Sadler's Wells, but these places are off the map. What remains of today belongs to the Snooty Fox and Canonbury station, Stratford and home.
