From filmmakers to food caterers, beauty brands to breweries and manufacturing to pottery, Lea Bridge’s Argall Industrial Area is home to over 400 businesses. Amongst these businesses are an abundance of designers, makers and manufacturers. Lea Bridge has a rich local history and developed from predominately marshland to an important industrial area in the 19th Century. The history of industrial activity in the area has left several inter-war and post-war industrial buildings within the Argall Industrial Area that have stood the test of time.

Industrial expansion north of the railway first started in circa. 1930s. Argall Avenue’s industrial buildings continued to expand after the Second World War with a series of new buildings appearing between the late 1930s and 1960s. The 1960s to 1980s saw further expansion and modification to the industrial estate on Argall Avenue including the re-alignment of the Black Path that passes through the area – a historic route connecting various markets in Hackney and Walthamstow that is still discernible in the modern landscape. Today, Lea Bridge’s Argall Industrial Area is bursting with creativity.

During Open House Festival 2024, in collaboration with William Morris Design Line we are hosting an Open Weekend of events to celebrate Argall Industrial Estate as a destination of design, making and manufacturing.
Across the weekend, studios, creative workspaces, workshops and factories in the area are opening up and showing how things are created, made, remade and repaired. Discover the often unseen spaces of making and manufacturing and explore what is designed and made on your doorstep, here in Lea Bridge.