River Lea
— — the slow green water behind the warehouses.
Not only on a wall.
“A 68-km river that begins as a spring near Leagrave in Bedfordshire and arrives, eventually, at the Thames at Bow Creek. The lower stretch runs canalised through the Lee Valley: moored narrowboats, reed beds, herons, the old reservoir chain. Londoners walk it without thinking of it as a river. Then a kingfisher crosses the towpath and remembers them.
River Lea, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Lea (also spelled Lee) rises from a spring near Leagrave in Bedfordshire and runs about 68 km south and east to join the Thames at Leamouth in east London. Its lower 43 km were canalised as the Lee Navigation in the 18th and 19th centuries. The river forms part of the historic boundary between the kingdoms of Wessex and the Danelaw, fixed in the Treaty of Alfred and Guthrum around 880 AD, and still threads through Hertfordshire and seven London boroughs.
Through the Lee Valley Regional Park, established in 1967 and covering about 4,000 hectares, the river runs alongside a chain of reservoirs that supply much of east London's drinking water. The towpath is part of National Cycle Route 1, walkable end to end in three or four days. Otters returned to the upper river in the early 2000s, and grey herons stand in the reed margins between Hackney Marshes and Tottenham Lock from spring through late autumn.
Walthamstow Marshes, just east of the river above Lea Bridge, are one of the last surviving fragments of unimproved Thames-side grazing marsh in greater London and a Site of Special Scientific Interest since 1985. On a weekday morning the sound carries: a sculler at Lea Rowing Club pulling past, a freight train on the Liverpool Street line, a moorhen at the towpath edge. The Olympic Park is two miles downstream, but the marsh keeps its older silence.