Enfield’s Forgotten Island

Photographic time travel: Discover the past, present and future

Exhibition at Dugdale Arts Centre

Continues until 11/01/25. Free entry 

Enfield Island Village is an urban village in the Borough of Enfield, located at the place where Greater London, Hertfordshire and Essex meet. It is bounded by rivers and canals, including the Lee Navigation, a 250-year-old canalised river which flows into the Thames.

To celebrate the heritage of an area facing significant environmental and economic challenges, senior young leaders from the Enact community worked with Pinhole London to identify historic images of the canal through local archival research at Enfield Local Studies and Archives. 

Across a number of sessions and through the medium of pinhole photography, participants identified the original location of historic images, created their own personalised interpretation featuring themselves, and developed their photos at a temporary darkroom installed at the Enact community centre. 

This photographic time travel honours the Lee Navigation’s rich heritage and aims to maintain it by inspiring a future generation of local leaders to recreate the images once again next century.