Outside Ilford Depot

Outside Ilford Depot
Click on picture [148] for an enlarged version
Click on picture [148-2006] for an enlarged version

From: "Terry Bateman" <Terry.Bateman@terrybat11@aol.com>

I was just surfing the net when I came across your brilliant trolleybus website. I am presently sitting in the old trolleybus depot at Ilford and was amazed to see the old pictures.

At the moment the old depot is home to Ilford's dust carts with a small function hall on top of the old building [which I run); I say at the moment because Redbridge Council have just put the site up for sale which is sad as my mother used to take me on a trolleybus to Barkingside when I was a baby [I am now 48].

I recently took several pictures of Ley Street depot and here is one taken from roughly the same spot as that showing the trolleybus. I have showed my mother all the pictures of Ilford on your web site and it has bought so many happy memories back for her, thank you for such a brilliant website.

From: "Morris Hickey" <morrishickey75@btinternet.com>

The former Ilford Council Tramway was one of a number of municipal systems in the area transferred to the London Passenger Transport Board on 1 July 1933 together with the London County Council trams and a number of company operations. Other municipal undertakings were at Barking, Croydon, East Ham, Erith, Leyton, Walthamstow, and West Ham. Of these only the Ilford depot [with an extension built for trolleybus operation] is still in existence.

English Heritage has been approached with the view to granting the building listed status. This has been rejected on the grounds that the buildings have little architectural merit, and that a recent modification [the doorway entrance on the Ley Street frontage at the Perth Road end] built by Redbridge detracts from the general design.

Thus it would appear that English Heritage is concerned more with aesthetics than with historical significance. Well I happen to find nothing aesthetically pleasing about a collection of old stone columns and lintels displayed on Salisbury Plain, but I do not deny their historical significance.