We've published 50 posts, on a wide range of ... well, Forest Gate-related issues, past and present, to date.
We are upto an average of 200 -250 hits per day on the site, which given the relatively small geographic area of its focus and the fairly eclectic nature of the content, isn't bad.
We've established a complementary Twitter account (@E7_NowAndThen) which now has in excess of 380 followers. This is used largely to announce new postings on this blog, and many of the Tweets are retweeted and favourited - many with generous comments - which is satisfying.
Although we always invite comments, suggestions, recollections, additions, corrections to Blogs posted,;we've had relatively little feedback, which is slightly disappointing. All comments submitted are subject to being overseen by a moderator before being published. The ONLY ones which are screened out are attempts by (often dodgy) commercial organisations to hijack the site for their own purposes, or responses which are potentially unlawful, or abusive (very few).
Below is a list of the hyperlinks to the eight most viewed posts, together with photos representative of the article.
Upper Cut Part 1
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| First week's bill at the Upper Cut - magic! |
Christmas Day in the Forest Gate Workhouse
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| The Forest Gate Industrial School, later maternity hospital and now flats - scene of description of Christmas day in the Workhouse |
Forest Gate good (and not so good) pub guide
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| Forest Gate Hotel - part of the local pub trail |
Rise and decline of local Jewish community
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| The old West Ham synagogue, Forest Lane |
Fire guts famous gym This was the first blog
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| Arnie and Wag, outside Bennett's gym (now, sadly in tatters) on Romford Road, c 1966 |
Booming Woodgrange Road
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| Saturday markets at the junction of Woodgrange and Sebert Roads, early signs of the Woodgrange Road boom |
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| An undated woodcut of the Old Spotted Dog |
Food hygiene in Woodgrange Road
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| A long-established local eaterie, featured in the food hygiene story |
24-hour Forest Gate gourmet trail One of the most recent posts, which has had a relatively huge hit rate in its short time on the site
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| CoffeE7 - the beginnings of the Forest Gate gourmet trail and still less than 18 months old |
The titles of the posts are fairly self-explanatory, and eating, drinking and being merry seem to provoke most interest! Also, not surprisingly, older posts get quite high hit rates, because they have been around longest and so have had more opportunities to be viewed.
To reinforce the popularity of the eat drink and be merry point, the least viewed posts (by a long way!) are the two on Forest Gate's local cemeteries, and their inhabitants. Clearly, not much merriment there, but we think they are interesting!
Perhaps surprisingly the local good schools guide, with summaries of the Ofsted and other inspection reports of all local schools bombed a bit, in terms of viewership.
Our small number of posts on Clapton FC (Walter Tull, the club history etc) haven't attracted too much attention. I guess the club isn't huge and they have their own sites etc - but the are local, and having their best season for years - so give them watch - on line, but more importantly in the flesh, while the good times are here (as I, do elsewhere, unfortunately).
As regular visitors will know, we've produced a monthly update on who featured at the Upper Cut Club 47 years ago, each month. This has provoked a wildly varying range of numbers of viewers, which it is difficult to understand, other than because of the popularity of the acts performing. The two biggest sets of interest have been over the Jimi Hendrix gigs and the Stax tour with Otis Redding, Sam and Dave etc that we featured recently. We have a couple of interesting photos to update these with.
The first is a poster of the first Jimi Hendrix gig (Purple Haze, written while waiting to go on stage), on Boxing Day 1966. The Emporium, next to CoffeE7 is selling a limited number of these, in frames (all repro, of course), a photo is reproduced below, for aficionados.
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| Jimi plays the Upper Cut, after writing Purple Haze |
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| Ticket to ride - or at least see the Stax tour, with Otis, half price! |
Additionally, we'll try and Tweet a couple of photos, from the archives, each week from now, as nudges to view older pieces and to bring the photos to the attention to new audiences, perhaps.
Finally, some interim thanks. It's been great fun, and an opportunity to meet up and discuss all kinds of weird stuff with lots of interesting people. We welcome all of this. Many thanks to the authors, whose books we've plundered for information - and we don't object if we are the subject of the same (though a touch of acknowledgement would be welcome).
A very special thanks however must go to the over-worked staff at Newham Archives, whom we drive mad on a regular basis - particularly to Jenni, now back from a period of absence.
Enough of the introspection. Proper stuff and service will resume next week!
