THE Lea Valley is today associated with the park by the same name and, incrasingly, with the Olympics, but as a new series of books written by historian Dr Jim Lewis, reveal, the region has played a crucial but often forgotten role in the development of British industry.

THE contribution of the Lea Valley to Briitsh manufacturing, transport and public health is Britain's “best kept secret” according to former Walthamstow resident Dr Jim Lewis.

In the first three books in a new series about the Lea Valley, Dr Lewis describes the region's contributions to water and waste, to arms manufacturing and to the manufacture of planes, buses and battleships.

The Lea Valley, which stretches from Ware, Hertfordshire, through Walthamstow and Leyton to the River Thames in Newham, was to become important in the 19th century, an age of change and innovation in the devleopment of mass transport and long-distance communciation.

In Battleships, Buses and Bombers, Lewis describes the achievements of Walter Hancock, who designed a light boiler for use in steam engines and Frederick Bremer, who, in Connaught Road, Walthamstow, built the first ever British car to be powered by an internal combustion engine.

The Walthamstow Associated Equipment Company (AEC) which was based on the corner of Forest Road, and Blackhorse Lane is also described. It produced thousands of buses and during the First World War produced vehicles which were sent to the front.

The Stratford Locomotive Works, based on the site of what is to be Stratford International station, repaired hundreds of thousands of trains before being disbanded in 1991, while the achievements of Alliott-Verdon Roe, who built and flew the first all-British flight on Walthamstow marshes a 100 years ago, are well-known.

Water and Waste tells of Sir Joseph Balzagette's achievements in designing the revolutionary Abbey Mills pumping station, in West Ham, which help to eradicate cholera and typhoid from Lodnon.

The grand Abbey Mills station was builty in the form of a cross, with a central lantern, mansard roof and dormer windows.

Although it has now been replaced by a £152m station nearby, the original building still stands and is Grade II listed.

From Gunpowder to Guns focuses on the importance of the Lea Valley in the production of arms, including the Royal Small Arms Factory, the first in Britain to manufacture weapons with interchan geable parts and the Gunpowder Mills, in Waltham Abbey, which was manufactured weapons in both world wars before becoming a Government research facility.

Dr Lewis has been praised for his works by a number of academics and journalists.

Dr Lewis said: “I appear to wake people up to the historic significance of the region.”

The Lea Valley Series books are published by Middlesex University Press and are available now at a recommended retail price of £9.99.