Lammas Lands Boundary Markers Project event
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Lammas Lands Boundary Markers Project
Grand reinstatement 23 March 2003
12:25 outside Lee Valley Ice Centre Lea Bridge Road, Leyton E10
In bygone days, until 1935, commoners' cattle grazed on Walthamstow Marsh from old Lammas day, 12 August until Old Lady Day 6 April. Hay was grown between spring and lammas day and the local gentry had the right to take and sell the hay from carefully defined strips of land known as Lammas strips. In the middle-ages this hay was very valuable often sold in London as well as locally. The Lammas strips were demarcated by boundary markers sometimes bearing the crest or initials of the owner to show who owned the crop.
Until recently two such boundary-markers remained on the marshes near Coppermill Lane, and one on the outer marsh by the former aqueduct. Then the markers disappeared. Later they turned up again - one at the Lea Valley Park's South Ranger base in Leyton and half of the other at the Pump House Museum.
The New Lammas Lands Defence Committee was recently granted a grant of £1700 to have two cast-iron replicas made of these two last original Lammas Strip boundary markers, in order to place the replicas in their original positions. This project coordinated with the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers, the Lea Valley Regional Park Authority's Ranger Service and the Community Outreach Team of the London Waterways Partnership(based at the Lea Rivers Trust), who obtained the grant for this project.
On the afternoon of Sunday 23 March the NLLDC intend to install the replicas (made by the beehive Foundry in Hackney) with the permission of English Nature, the national body responsible for conservation on Walthamstow Marshes. We warmly invite all residents of Walthamstow and neighbouring parishes to join us for his historic ceremony - the first boundary markers to be placed on the Marshes for over fifty years.
wear appropriate clothing, wellies or stout footwear. LLDC will supply digging equipment and bubbly!
more info 0790 415 9398
 
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