The two corners of Pretoria Avenue on the High Street are taken by the Turkish Shop and the Co-op Pharmacy. The road would not be that interesting if all there was to it were those shops and the car-park on the left side as one leaves the High Street, but for people who are interested in these things, directly facing you on the corner with Mission Grove is 13 Pretoria Avenue, a historic regency villa made of white Suffolk brick called Clock House. It was built in 1813 for Thomas Courtenay Warner on the site of an older property called the Black House from which Blackhouse Lane, corrupted to Blackhorse was named. (The Lane from St James Street to the Tube Station is now called a Road, but continues as Blackhorse Lane for some distance past the junction with Ferry lane and Forest Road.)
Clock House is now flats. In the 1880s T. C. T. Warner, one of the largest landowners in Walthamstow, began to develop the Clock House estate. The Warner Estate Co. Ltd. (registered in 1891) formed its own building department, the Law Land Building Department Ltd. in 1897, which became Courtenay Building Ltd. By 1900 the company had built up most of Blackhorse Road between Edward Road and Pretoria Avenue, inlcuding Courtney and Cornwallis Roads, and completed a substantial terraced business development of shops and offices at the west end of High Street.
The study 'Walthamstow: Introduction and domestic buildings', A History of the County of Essex: (Volume 6 (1973), pp. 240-250), notes that most usual type of domestic building of 1870–1914 was a long terrace of two-storey houses, slate-roofed, of yellow brick sometimes varied with red dressings. Bay-windows and doorways with plaster ornament were a common feature, seen at its most typical in Lansdowne Road (1894–7). But the terraces built by the Warner company, which often bear the mark 'W', are notable for the quality of their workmanship and are in distinctive styles, often in bold red brick, with gables, recessed porches, and tiled roofs. In Pretoria Avenue they tend to have little flower pot motifs as ornament. Some people have also retained the traditional Warner green window frames and doors.
As I mentioned in respect of Leucha Road, also built by Warner, and now a prevervation zone, many of the roads were named after people in Warner's family or places which meant something to him personally. I am not sure what the specific Pretoria connection is, however.
There are still quite a few Warner Houses on Pretoria Road, as well as a totally inappropriate set of 3 blocks of council flats at Hammond Court in Maude Road (which back onto Blackhorse Road. I am pleased to say that large chunks of the neighbourhood on Pretoria Avenue can no longer be viewed on Googlemaps, as someone has insisted that the images be removed.
Where Pretoria Avenue meets Northcote Avenue, stands Bonner's Fish and Chip Shop, one of the best chippies in Walthamstow. The fish is fried beautifully and they serve very generous portions.
Past that is also a blur according to Google, but I can reveal that the road does still exist. There is a convenience supermarket and off-licence called Pretoria Stores at number 70-72 and to its left, a launderette. The avenue (and it is an avenue - with some magnificent London Plane trees) then proceeds past Hitesh News and Convenience Store, Stoneydown Park, the curiously unwelcoming Disability Centre, Stoneydown Primary School and a mysterious humming building, until it goes over the railway (Gospel Oak-Barking line), past the poorly designed and managed Essex Close estate and joins Forest Road. The shop at Forest Road on the corner is H C Briggs' Camping Store. By which point the architectural interest has waned for me.