I've often read about the Borough of Newham in London. You see the signs if ever you go to London City Airport and I have stayed in the area half a dozen times or more. It was only recently, whilst doing some research for something detailed below, that I realised that the name was created when the boroughs of West Ham and East Ham were joined together. Obvious really. As a child looking up football clubs on a map, I used to also struggle with the idea of West Ham being in East London.
I suppose that I would not have taken an interest in something like that, which was of no concern to me really, if I hadn't finally taken an interest in something that should have been an interest to me - my middle name.
I was embarrassed to be given McLeod as my middle name. I knew that it was my grandmother's maiden name but I used to get teased so much about it that, for a few years I was even in denial. I managed to get it excluded from the school register by telling the teacher I only had one Christian name and even my GCE certificates exclude it.
I was even more embarrassed years later when I correctly told a young work colleague that my grandmother had been in the Salvation Army and the teasing started again. The bit I got wrong, unintentionally was, until recently, to tell people that she came from Scotland - I was actually at least two further generations away from having Scottish blood.
Of my four grandparents, I was always much more interested in the Manx ones - the Crowes from Kirk Michael and the Quines from East Baldwin. I had visited my father's birthplace (and the Lambden grandparent's birth place in St Mary Bourne near Andover in Hampshire) but never asked many questions about the McLeod's (my father's mother's family).
But whilst scanning a collection of my late parent's old papers during the winter I noticed that my grandmother was born in West Ham. Furthermore, the district within West Ham was Stratford where the Olympics were to be held. My family history research extended to a single lunch time when I looked up some old census records on the internet and a picture quickly established.
My grandmother Eveline Frances McLeod (birth certificate above ) was born at 30 Maryland Road in Stratford in 1882.
The map above shows that the walk from the house where she was born to the Olympic Stadium was 1.8 miles but, as the crow flies (not the Crowe!), it would only be half a mile to the perimeter fence of the games village.
On the Friday before last I took a walk only to find that the row of houses had been demolished and there was an industrial unit there (picture below).
I then walked to Cromfield Road nearby where in 1891 my grandmother's mother, already widowed, was living. The houses on one side of the road had been demolished but on the other side I think they would probably have been similar.
On the Sunday of the Olympic marathon I set off on a 17 mile run around the east end and visited the area again. I was in danger in getting lost and the tracking on my Garmin (below - left of picture) shows I had to keep turning around as I reached roads that were closed off on the edge of the Olympic Park. It also shows how, when I reached the River Lea, I started running northwards instead of southwards and I had to retrace my steps.
My grandmother's mother was called White and she was also from the East End (thanks to my sister-in-law Doreen I understand that here family were undertakers). I'm not sure if I will travel the East End in search of some whites.
