London County Council

• During the second world war, German forces dropped 28,000 bombs and almost 3,000 V1 flying bombs and V2 rockets on London.
• Within the London County Council area (roughly covering today’s inner London), more than 73,000 structures were totally destroyed.
• City authorities were faced with the gargantuan task of figuring out quite where to put the millions of tonnes of rubble.

When rubble choked the city of London

• Between December 1940 and 1946, 2.2 million cubic metres of concrete, brick and stone rubble were dumped on Hackney Marsh and 270,000 cubic metres on Leyton Marsh, raising the ground level by three metres.
• The rubble lies hidden under plants and soil with only occasional surface fragments of concrete and the odd brick hinting at the site’s wartime origins.

• Venture to neighbouring Leyton and Clapton and where the rubble came from becomes far more visible.
• Street after street showcase gaps where houses are missing in otherwise neat terraces.

• It effectively choked the city, blocking miles of roads and rendering vital services inoperable.
• By the end of September, the city-wide War Debris Survey and Disposal Service was established.
• The service turned its sights eastwards, to the wide-open marshland of east London.
• A 1942 memo written by the Ministry of Home Security (now held in the London Metropolitan Archives) notes:
  Sites for tips should be studied and selected.

How Hackney Marshes became a footballing utopia

• Though unmarked by commemorative plaques, the pitches themselves have become a vast footballing heritage site, the “utopia,” as founder of Hackney Wick Football Club Bobby Kasanga has put it, “of grassroots football”.
• The Hackney and Leyton Football League, founded when the pitches opened in 1946, remains London’s largest and oldest league.
• UK photographer Simon Di Principe used to go to the marshes as a kid, with his mother, to watch his father play.
• The marshes endure as a subtle reminder of the losses the people of London incurred during the second world war.

Jonathan Gardner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.