please empty your brain below

I think the M41 (now downgraded to A3220) in Shepherds Bush/White City was also part of the London Motorway box, (Ringway Box) and the A40M at Paddington, (now called Westway). Both roads still exist. So construction did occur elsewhere than just the East End.

In your photos the semi-abandoned churchyard looks quite pleasant but I imagine in reality a lot different.
If you've included 'decimate' and 'well-hung' to increase the number of comments you get today, here is my +1.
I find local history interesting and your posts are always a welcome read.

Articles and posts like yours can easily lead me off elsewhere to perhaps a more in-depth look at the place concerned. Or a link in a post may send me in a totally different direction that is equally interesting. Many a time a five minute read has ended up taking over an hour!

The NLS maps, especially the detailed OS maps, always contain a wealth of information and are very good for a snapshot of an area at that time. The OS map you link to is a good example of this as it shows a London surveyed in great detail just after the war and shows a lot of the war damage – either as blank gaps in rows of houses and areas that have been cleared, or labelled as ‘ruin’.

An example of going off in another direction is ending up here:
prefabmuseum.uk/mapping-the-uk-post-war-prefabs
after seeing the rows of prefabs on the map below St Mary’s Church.
Here's a marvellous Pathé newsreel called 'Doodlebug Village' about the prefabs in Franklin Street, very close to St Mary's, which were also wiped away by the new road.
Love these closer looks at local areas. It's so important to know the history of where you live, to give a sense of continuity and belonging - even if one only stays there but a short time.
Really interesting

That bit of the East Cross Route between the tunnel and Bow Flyover has always slightly intrigued me, as when compared to the (former) motorway sections north of the Bow Flyover and south of the river which were bulldozed through, it always looked more like a widened existing road (which to an extent it was) rather than an new construction, I'll be fascinated to see what was there before.
John, - the A40(M) was, and is, a radial route.
I get how attention-drawing "well-hung" is, but "decimate" seems a pretty normal word.
Mikey C - not sure if you've seen but you can see what was there before following one of DG's map links and changing the overlay transparency in the key to reveal the current satellite image.
timbo - the section of the Westway from the A3220 White City roundabout and into Central London was part of the London Inner Ring road which never got completed.
"decimate" is rarely used these days in its literal sense of reducing something by (only) 10%
"Henry VII's version of Brexit" -- like it!
The last few lines of Chaucer remind me of the claim that the main reason the ruling classes finally switched from French to English was that they were fed up with Parisians taking the piss out of their anglo-norman dialect.
I would also like to say thanks for the OS map link. As on the map i could see the prefab i used to live in at St Marks Gate(Victoria Park). My grandma's house on the Island, or Fish Island as the estate agents now call it plus my primary school.

All long gone now, the school (Atley Road) was just one amongst many other buildings and roads that the East Cross Route erased from the face of the Earth.
Additional research: Jack Warner, the kindly copper of Dixon of Dock Green fame, was a child soloist in the choir at St Leonard's.










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