
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


Where can you find a hill that looks like an Inca monument but which is in fact an old nitroglycerin factory? The answer can be found in the Lee Valley, a green and watery wedge that grows and flows from Hertfordshire and Essex through northeast London to The River Thames. Occupying a liminal space between rural countryside and the industrial, the Lee Valley presents a surprising landscape - where nature has come back reclaim the monuments of an industrial past.
Helen Mark travels down the Lee Valley and its waterways to explore how for centuries it was a crucial thriving hub of industry before falling into decline until more recently experiencing regeneration of its natural spaces. She visits the Royal Gunpowder Mills, Kings Weir Cottage, Glasshouses, The Waterworks and the Lee Navigation to meet people who work on and live by the Lee Valley's historical waterways; people like Barbara the wife of one of the navigation's last weir-keepers.
Presenter: Helen Mark
By BBC Radio 44.8
8383 ratings
Where can you find a hill that looks like an Inca monument but which is in fact an old nitroglycerin factory? The answer can be found in the Lee Valley, a green and watery wedge that grows and flows from Hertfordshire and Essex through northeast London to The River Thames. Occupying a liminal space between rural countryside and the industrial, the Lee Valley presents a surprising landscape - where nature has come back reclaim the monuments of an industrial past.
Helen Mark travels down the Lee Valley and its waterways to explore how for centuries it was a crucial thriving hub of industry before falling into decline until more recently experiencing regeneration of its natural spaces. She visits the Royal Gunpowder Mills, Kings Weir Cottage, Glasshouses, The Waterworks and the Lee Navigation to meet people who work on and live by the Lee Valley's historical waterways; people like Barbara the wife of one of the navigation's last weir-keepers.
Presenter: Helen Mark

7,583 Listeners

1,057 Listeners

5,463 Listeners

1,801 Listeners

1,747 Listeners

1,042 Listeners

2,085 Listeners

1,976 Listeners

477 Listeners

38 Listeners

66 Listeners

282 Listeners

266 Listeners

252 Listeners

157 Listeners

106 Listeners

253 Listeners

102 Listeners

4,166 Listeners

3,187 Listeners

719 Listeners

235 Listeners

101 Listeners

26 Listeners

486 Listeners