please empty your brain below
Whale I'll be, what a tail!

Jamesthegill | 29.07.23 - 7:07 a.m. | #

The Report of the Departmental Committee on Traffic Signs (HMSO, 1946) recommended the removal of the red triangle from "No Through Road" signs (also "Hospital" and "Keep to Nearside Lane Except when Overtaking") as they "should properly be regarded as informative signs" rather than warning signs.

Tim W. | 29.07.23 - 7:21 a.m. | #

Whale stranded in 1685 in the Dagenham Breach? I didn't think the Breach happened till 1707!

Crispy | 29.07.23 - 8:12 a.m. | #

So why is the sign showing the road name so high, the one opposite is 'normal' height.

Still Anon | 29.07.23 - 8:23 a.m. | #

There is a Whalebone Lane in Stratford. It runs along the north side of Stratford Park.

paul robert draper | 29.07.23 - 8:57 a.m. | #

I had my first Black Velvet but not the last in the Moby Dick and used to go and see double features in the Odeon Whalebone Lane in Beacontree Heath many moons ago. I think it’s now a Supermarket. A blast from the past. Thanks dg.

Dave B | 29.07.23 - 8:57 a.m. | #

Between ages 4 and 18, I lived on Whalebone Lane North. At the time it was the main thoroughfare from the rest of the country towards the A13 and Dartford aswell as the huge Ford factory so it was always crowded with HGVs and buses with with workers who lived in the Marks Gate estate across the A12.The opening of the M25 couldn't come soon enough.
For a short while The Moby Dick Pub also acted as a catholic church on Sunday Mornings, a outreach of the nearest parish, before opening for business.

John G | 29.07.23 - 9:19 a.m. | #

The whale bones were used as cattle scratching posts before ending up in a skip.
Rescued by the museum, there’s a sign saying do not touch!

Tony | 29.07.23 - 10:15 a.m. | #

There is also a photo of the bones at the gates to the house here.

Londonist has an article which they have illustrated with a photo of (unlabelled, but what appears to be) a whalebone arch in Whitby.

And here is what Defoe wrote in the first volume of his Tour of Great Britain published in 1724: “passing that part of the great forest which we now call Henault Forest, came into that which is now the great road, a little on this side the Whalebone, a place on the road so called, because a rib-bone of a great whale, which was taken in the river of Thames the same year that Oliver Cromwel died, 1658, was fixed there for a monument of that monstrous creature, it being at first about eight-and twenty foot long.”

Andrew | 29.07.23 - 10:18 a.m. | #

There whalebones in Barnet!

Eric | 29.07.23 - 10:54 a.m. | #

There is also a Whalebone Court tucked away behind the Bank of England.

Tom | 29.07.23 - 11:13 a.m. | #

I went to the very last Saturday Morning Pictures at the Odeon (nee Mayfair) Whalebone Lane, just before it closed. Replaced by a Wallis supermarket, which morphed into International, Gateway then Somerfield.

Kim | 29.07.23 - 11:49 a.m. | #

Why the people name these ways in reverse of their hierarchy of importance beats me.

Patrickov | 29.07.23 - 2:25 p.m. | #

I used to live just off Whalebone Grove and did a whole Junior school project on precisely this topic. Such memories.

Steve W | 29.07.23 - 2:53 p.m. | #

I wrote about the bones and the lane in 2008, I note at the time I hadn't found the bones, but I did go visit them at the museum a few years later.

affable-lurking.org/2008/03/18

David | Homepage | 29.07.23 - 4:23 p.m. | #

I've a visit to Valance Museum planned for next week so I'll look out for the whalebones - thanks!

Cornish Cockney | 29.07.23 - 4:24 p.m. | #

If Albany Road marks the location of where Whalebone House - the one destroyed during the war - used to be, the bomber crew seem to have been pushing their luck! With Albany Rd laying just to the south side of the A12, there was a pretty large heavy anti-aircraft gun battery* also just off Whalebone Lane N, probably less than half a mile away on the north side.

*It's still there, and - apart from graffiti - appears to have been kept fairly complete.

RogerW | 29.07.23 - 7:27 p.m. | #

Both the first place I lived, and the first place I worked, were on Whalebone Lane South

Dominic H | 30.07.23 - 12:12 a.m. | #

Beacontree or Becontree?

RogerEssex | 30.07.23 - 10:12 a.m. | #

There is a similar vintage "Turn left one-way only" sign, with its red circle still attached, in Hanover Terrace Mews. Google street view shows the steps to No 1. It is tucked in behind.

JonF | 02.08.23 - 2:54 p.m. | #











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