HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"count": 1059,
"next": "https://surveyoflondon.org/api/v1/documents/?format=api&page=2",
"previous": null,
"results": [
{
"id": 370,
"title": "Recording the Whitechapel Pavilion in 1961",
"author": {
"id": 147,
"username": "JohnEarl"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1468,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.063433445665067,
51.51877834642124
],
[
-0.063594186790794,
51.51873089037533
],
[
-0.063397871263641,
51.51844488340427
],
[
-0.063227626374761,
51.518490989120856
],
[
-0.063433445665067,
51.51877834642124
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "191-193",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "191-193 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "PLACE",
"count": 5,
"search_str": "191-193 Whitechapel Road"
},
"tags": [
"theatre"
]
},
"body": "<p>It was a dauntingly complex task, as to my (then) untrained eye, it appeared to be an impenetrable forest of heavy timbers, movable platforms and hoisting gear, looking like the combined wreckage of half a dozen windmills! I started by chalking an individual number on every stage joist in an attempt to provide myself with a simple skeleton on which to hang the more complicated details. Richard Southern's explanations enabled me to allocate names to the various pieces of apparatus, correcting my guesses. (‘Stage basement’ for example was, I learned, an imprecise way of naming a space with three distinct levels). He also gave me a brilliant introduction to the workings of a traditional wood stage and to the theatric purposes each part fulfilled. </p>\n\n<p>The attached sketch attempts to give a summary view of the entire substage.</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2017/06/01/pav.JPG\"></p>\n\n<p>It is set at the first level below the stage, with the proscenium wall at the top and the back wall of the stage house at the bottom. In the terminology of the traditional wood stage, this is the ‘mezzanine’, from which level, all the substage machinery was worked by an army of stage hands. In the centre, the heavily outlined rectangle is the ‘cellar’, deeper by about 7ft below the mezzanine floor. Housed in the cellar are a variety of vertically movable platforms designed to move pieces of scenery and complete set pieces.</p>\n\n<p>It may be observed at this point that not all of this apparatus will have resulted from one build. A wood stage had the great advantage that it could be adapted at short notice by the stage carpenter to meet the demands of a particular production. The substage, as seen, represents a particular moment in its active life.</p>\n\n<p>There are five fast rise or ‘star’ traps for the sudden appearance (or disappearance) of individual performers (clowns, etc) through the stage floor. The three traps nearest to the audience are ‘two post’ traps, rather primitive and capable of causing serious injury to an inexpert user. Upstage of these are two of the more advanced and marginally safer ‘four post’ traps. In both types, the performer stood on a box-like counter-weighted platform with his (usually his) head touching the centre of a ’star' of leather-hinged wood segments. Beefy stage hands pulled suddenly (but with split second timing) on the lines supporting the box, shooting him through the star. In an instant, it closed behind him, leaving no visible aperture in the stage surface.</p>\n\n<p>Farther upstage is a row of ’sloats’, designed to hold scenic flats, to be slid up through the stage floor. Next comes a grave trap which, as the name suggests, can provide a rectangular sinking in the stage (‘Alas, poor Yorick’). Finally, a short bridge and a long bridge, to carry heavy set pieces, with or without chorus members, up through (and, when required, a bit above) the stage. These bridges were operated from whopping great drum and shaft mechanisms on the mezzanine. </p>\n\n<p>In order to get all these vertical movements to pass through the stage, its joists, counter-intuitively, have to span from side to side, the long span rather than the more obvious short span. This makes it possible to have removable sections ‘(sliders’) in the stage floor, which are held level position by paddle levers at the ends. When these are released, the slider drops on to runners on the sides of the joists and are then winched off to left and right.</p>\n\n<p>The survey of the Pavilion stage was important at the time because it seemed to be the first time that anything of the kind had been done, however imperfectly. Since then, we have learned of complete surviving complexes at, for example, Her Majesty’s theatre in London, the Citizens in Glasgow and, most importantly, the Tyne theatre in Newcastle, which has been restored to full working order <em>twice</em> (once after a dreadfully destructive fire) by Dr David Wilmore. Nevertheless, the loss of the archaeological evidence of the Pavilion is much to be regretted..</p>\n\n<p>I can have enjoyable fantasies about witnessing an elaborate pantomime transformation scene from the mezzanine of a Victorian theatre. The place is seething with stage hands, dressers and flimsily clad chorus girls climbing on to the bridges, while the stage is shuddering, having been temporarily robbed of rigidity by the drawing off of the sliders. Orders must be observed to the letter and to the very second, but there can be no shouting, however energetically the orchestra plays. Add naked gas flames to the mix…</p>\n\n<p>That's enough!</p>\n",
"created": "2017-05-30",
"last_edited": "2020-08-03"
},
{
"id": 858,
"title": "14 Cable Street and 2 Ensign Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1382,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.067887886383568,
51.51075590403737
],
[
-0.067820260884705,
51.510757696725335
],
[
-0.067799092133055,
51.5107515340712
],
[
-0.06778241302769,
51.51070532978045
],
[
-0.067790866405221,
51.51070372491158
],
[
-0.067758854100828,
51.51062354759984
],
[
-0.067881979388402,
51.5105982512014
],
[
-0.067897629153322,
51.51064676406128
],
[
-0.067859086602214,
51.510654849802144
],
[
-0.067875349403458,
51.51069988445148
],
[
-0.067887886383568,
51.51075590403737
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "2",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Ensign Street",
"address": "2 Ensign Street (with 14 Cable Street)",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 2,
"search_str": "2 Ensign Street (with 14 Cable Street)"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Plain Georgian shophouses at 4–10 and 14 Ensign Street were cleared in phases between 1911 and 1954, No. 10 having been the Black Horse public house since at least the 1780s. Minor redevelopment plans for sites around the western Cable Street corner with Well (Ensign) Street were repeatedly intended but not carried out from the 1920s to the 1980s. No. 2 at the corner hung on, held by Dr Morris Korn into the 1970s, his surgery squeezed alongside a café run by a Mrs Aranzulo. The four-storey brick block that is 14 Cable Street and 2 Ensign Street, seven flats over a shop, was built around 1998, half-heartedly emulating its neighbour to the south without the coherence of its predecessor.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Goad insurance map 1953: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 21689: Post Office Directories: Ordnance Survey maps: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n",
"created": "2019-03-05",
"last_edited": "2019-03-05"
},
{
"id": 480,
"title": "The Reminiscences of Doctor John Sebastian Helmcken (1824-1920)",
"author": {
"id": 22,
"username": "sarahannmilne"
},
"feature": {
"id": 18,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.070376872840044,
51.51411288775777
],
[
-0.070160905948437,
51.51421296101531
],
[
-0.070191890237181,
51.51424342945293
],
[
-0.070147651440662,
51.51426163662261
],
[
-0.070061827306772,
51.5141696705794
],
[
-0.070313812852204,
51.514054169773665
],
[
-0.070376872840044,
51.51411288775777
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "55-57",
"b_name": "St George's German and English School",
"street": "Alie Street",
"address": "St George's Schools, 55-57 Alie Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 9,
"search_str": "St George's German and English School"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Of German ancestry, John Helmcken's father and mother ran the White Swan Pub on Alie Street in the early-mid nineteenth century. Helmcken grew up there, attended St George's German and English School from the age of four, and latterly recorded his memories, which were edited and published by Dorothy Blackey-Smith in 1975 under the title '<em>The reminiscences of Doctor John Sebastian Helmcken</em>'. Below is an extract relating to the church and school:</p>\n\n<p>\"In Little Alie Street stood St George's German Church and School - the former old fashioned, with galleries on each side and above in the corners; a complete church with the Revd. Dr. Schwabe as Minister. The school was an ordinary schoolroom, with a stove in the centre and plenty light. A graveyard existed immediately at the back of the school and hardly separated from it, save by a diminutive fence. Sunflowers and others grew in it and somehow or other the boys considered it sacred and seldom played there at all. The bricks of the school were furrowed, by the boys sharpening their slate pencils there. The church was heated by a furnace fed from the outside; hot air passing into the church...</p>\n\n<p>I suppose I was like other little boys full of mischief, and so sent to a girls' school kept by an old Miss Somebody...However I was soon turned out of or taken away from the girls' school and sent to St George's German and English School, Vorweg the Master being a friend of my mother. So having dressed - made decent and my hair brushed, I set to crying, but this did not hinder my going. Father took me there and left me to cry in the schoolroom all day. After a short time I got used to the discipline and used to go off with alacrity at 9 o'clock in the morning and remain at school until 5 in the afternoon. As schools go now, this would be considered a very poor school indeed, as we were only drilled in English and German, Writing and Arithmetic and Geography. The school was partly supported by subscriptions, chiefly from the Germans - the cost to a scholar being I think about ten shillings per quarter plus books and so forth. There were about eighty boys of all sizes and grades...</p>\n\n<p>It was the prescribed duty of certain boys to wind up the church clock once a week - it had a winch. No boy ever went alone! As several went usually together, nice romps we had occasionally in the church, but for all this we felt uncanny in the place, particularly as in the vaults under the entrance to the church, lay buried, some of the enlightened pillars of the church and perhaps ministers etc. I never saw these vaults opened but once - someone had to be buried. A huge flagstone covering the vault had been removed, and descending into the dismal cavern, one saw tiers of leaden coffins, some encased with wood, others where it had rotted off. I did not stop there long - a lantern shed a dismal light - and the air felt cold and I shuddery.</p>\n\n<p>We all were expected to be in church twice every Sunday - and had benches fronting the altar and the Clerk, who was Vorweg our schoolmaster. Of course we could all sing and so were a sort of choir. During Lent the church was draped in black - pulpit, reading desk and all - and then we had to go to church twice in the week also. At Christmas it was bedecked with rosemary, holly and laurustinus. The services were all in German - the congregation Germans - chiefly from Hanover, at all events Low Germany and comprised among others many German merchants from the City and surroundings.\"</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2017-09-28",
"last_edited": "2021-08-05"
},
{
"id": 131,
"title": "Historic England list description for 24-32 New Road",
"author": {
"id": 11,
"username": "amyspencer"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1249,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.061778895601659,
51.515907735179454
],
[
-0.061778895601648,
51.515907735179404
],
[
-0.061774216593704,
51.51588703704752
],
[
-0.061769051532468,
51.51586418878201
],
[
-0.062041604442524,
51.515840628864325
],
[
-0.062051448740056,
51.51588417524411
],
[
-0.061778895601659,
51.515907735179454
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "32",
"b_name": "",
"street": "New Road",
"address": "32 New Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 2,
"search_str": "32 New Road"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Excerpt from Historic England list entry for 24-32 New Road (listed at Grade II):</p>\n\n<p>5 terraced houses. Early C19; numbers 24 and 26 with later shops. Yellow stock brick, all with stuccoed ground floors except number 28. 3 storeys and basements. 2 windows each. Numbers 22 and 24 - recessed square-headed entrances with overlights and panelled doors. Number 22 ground floor sash converted to shop window. Upper floors with gauged brick flat arches to recessed sashes; number 22 with late C20 glazing. Parapets. Interiors believed to retain some original features. Attached cast iron railings with urn finials to areas. Numbers 28-32 - recessed square headed entrances with overlights and part glazed panelled-doors; number 30 has an architraved surround with panelled jambs; number 32 with original patterned overlight. Number 28 ground floor sash converted to a shop window; numbers 20 and 32 have segmental arched sashes in shallow segmental arched recesses. Plain stucco first floor bands. Upper floors with gauged red brick flat arches to recessed sashes. Parapets. Interiors believed to retain some original features. Attached cast iron railings with urn finials to areas.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Historic England, National Heritage List for England, list entry number: 1242006 (online: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1242006, accessed 26 August 2016).</p>\n",
"created": "2016-08-26",
"last_edited": "2016-08-26"
},
{
"id": 691,
"title": "122 Whitechapel High Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 357,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.072906470279445,
51.5151978632323
],
[
-0.072840800408846,
51.51522217894417
],
[
-0.072667686791624,
51.51504017284175
],
[
-0.072728647366159,
51.51501760087987
],
[
-0.072906470279445,
51.5151978632323
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "122",
"b_name": "122 Whitechapel High Street",
"street": "Whitechapel High Street",
"address": "122 Whitechapel High Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 2,
"search_str": "122 Whitechapel High Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>This sliver of a building between Old Castle Street and Tyne Street is all that remains of a two-stage development of 1880-2 that included 118-120, the other side of Tyne Street, 118 demolished in 1959 and 119 and 120 c 2004. In 1880 the sites of 118-120 and 122 (there was no 121 by this time) were cleared at a cost of £400 by the Whitechapel Board of Works (the Metropolitan Board contributing £200), which described the entrance to Newcastle Street, through a low archway in No. 120, as ‘narrow and crooked with no footway’. The blank and scarred Old Castle Street flank wall of No. 122 shows the ghostly imprint in roofline and chimney breasts of No. 123, a rebuilding, with No. 124, in 1765-6 of dilapidated timber-framed houses on the east of Castle Alley/Moses and Aaron Alley, following a dispute over the party wall between the two houses ‘intermingled over and under each other’.[^1]These 1760s houses, largely rebuilt in 1860 following a serious fire, briefly adjoined No. 122 until they were demolished in 1883 in connection with railway engineering works, the site fenced off, with an open railway ventilator in part, until built over with roadway in 1899 and added to the public way to improve the entrance to Old Castle Street, which had been widened in 1878.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>The builder, and probable developer of Nos 118-20 and 122 in the 1880s, was Benjamin Cook of Stonecutter Street, Farringdon.[^3] The buildings are (or were) in a token Queen Anne manner, red brick with dentil cornices to the second floor, and some terracotta florets above the first-floor and brick aprons beneath the second-floor windows. The corners of 122 and 120 were canted around the entrance to Newcastle Street.[^4] Rag-trade tenants occupied most of No. 122 from when it was built until the Second World War, after which it was a café, the upper floors offices and workshops.[^5]By 1972 Reed Employment Agency had an office at No. 120, and in 1989 its founder, Alec Reed, established in No. 122 the charity Womankind to support women’s rights and channel development aid to women. Financed for three years by Reed the charity then moved to larger ofices. The National Alliance of Women’s Organisations also had its offices here when it was founded in 1989.[^6] The shop at No. 122, having been a stationers and bank, is currently an estate agent. The building was sold in 2005 by Warner Estates to its then tenant, Vishnu Patel, for £750,000, though permission given in 2008 to demolish the building and redevelop it with a six-storey block of flats with ground-floor shop to the designs of Clements & Porter architects was not implemented.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), P/HLC/1/14/3/1-2; P/HLC/1/14/4/1-2: Transport for London Group Archives (TfLGA) LT000612.030 </p>\n\n<p>[^2]: TfLGAr, LT000612/030: THLHLA, TH/2780: <em>Rochdale Observer</em>, 9 Dec 1859, p. 4: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes (MBW), 18 Oct. 1878, pp. 469, 22 Nov 1878, p. 667</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), District Surveyor's Returns (DSR), The National Archives, IR58/84815/3225, /3227, /3228-9: <em>London City Press</em>, 9 Nov 1867, p. 7: <em>Daily Telegraph and Courier</em>, 24 Feb 2881, p. 6: <em>South London Press</em>, 16 Dec 1882, p. 15: <em>Globe</em>, 9 May 1883, p. 2</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: DSR: MBW, 26 Nov 1880, pp. 708-09, 4 March 1881, p. 365</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: Post Office Directories (POD)</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: THLHLA, POD: LMA, SC/PHL/01/405/77/120/39/4:<em> Guardian</em>, 16 Feb 1987, p. 16: <em>Observer</em>, 5 March 1989, p. 35: <em>Guardian</em>, 22 May 1990, p. 3: <em>Guardian</em>, 1 Nov 1993, p. 46: <a href=\"https://www.womankind.org.uk/\">https://www.womankind.org.uk/</a> </p>\n\n<p>[^7]: London Stock Exchange Aggregated Regulatory News Service, via Nexis online: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n",
"created": "2018-07-04",
"last_edited": "2019-07-05"
},
{
"id": 799,
"title": "Toynbee Theatre",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 363,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.071925812853689,
51.51628044602403
],
[
-0.07209825445447,
51.51648373796319
],
[
-0.072014842692987,
51.51650807351777
],
[
-0.072028895096668,
51.516526827864084
],
[
-0.071985260710589,
51.51653955484268
],
[
-0.071954889431682,
51.51649902124257
],
[
-0.07174059591681,
51.51656152455521
],
[
-0.071639963606618,
51.51642721896221
],
[
-0.071877528223456,
51.51635792813221
],
[
-0.071838544476817,
51.51630589989327
],
[
-0.071925812853689,
51.51628044602403
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "28",
"b_name": "Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street",
"street": "28 Commercial Street",
"address": "Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 8,
"search_str": "Toynbee Studios, 28 Commercial Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>In December 1935 a grant of £10,000 was announced that enabled J. J. Mallon, Warden of <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/379/detail/\">Toynbee Hall</a>, to launch an appeal that resulted in the bulky New Building, usually known as Toynbee Theatre, on the site of the old St <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/376/detail/#st-judes-church\">Jude’s National Schools</a>. Designed by Alister MacDonald, the son of the former Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, it was built in 1937-8 by Griggs & Son Ltd, builders of Victoria Street.[^1] </p>\n\n<p>It was a functional Modernist building, four and five storeys high, steel-framed with white-tile and beige brick facings but no street frontage, tucked as it was behind <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/382/detail/\">St George’s House</a>, Gunthorpe Street. Staircase towers at the west corners lit by vertical strip-glazing served four floors of corridors and offices surrounding the two main rooms: a theatre to seat 400, with a stage 19ft deep and a proscenium opening 28ft 6in wide. Above the theatre was a music room, used in the daytime as a juvenile court room, on the second floor were classrooms, a laboratory and two art studios, and on the top floor a dining room and recreation room separated by removable partitions. A light steel framework was built over the roof enclosing it as an area for sports and play.[^2] </p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/12/24/102585.jpg\">The former music room at Toynbee Studios, December 2018. Photograph © Derek Kendall.</p>\n\n<p>The interior is more forgiving than the exterior. The theatre has half-height flush pine panelling stained to resemble an exotic wood and a shallow double-pitch ceiling with cyma recta curves and concealed lighting at its apex. The music room has a few Art Deco embellishments - a shallow coffered ceiling and full-height stained pitch-pine panelling with fielded panels (an abstracted linen-fold syle, reminiscent of an open book), the wood said to have come from the old Waterloo Bridge demolished in 1932. The panelling is separated by glossy semi-circular columns without capitals, and there are ebonised skirting boards.</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/12/24/102594.jpg\">The theatre at Toynbee Studios, December 2018. Photograph © Derek Kendall.</p>\n\n<p>In 1939 a pair of murals, one of The Furies, the other of, apparently, Pegasus and Athena, were painted on the curving proscenium wall flanking the stage by Clive Gardiner (1891-1960), Mallon’s brother-in-law, in a similar, though more tonally muted, manner to that he used in his poster designs for London Transport.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>The theatre reflected Mallon's cultural interests, more highly developed than those of his predecessors. It hosted the Toynbee Drama Festival, which continued after the war, and in 1946 the first children’s theatre in Britain was established there, supported by, inter alios, John Gielgud, Bernard Shaw and Alec Guinness.[^4] The theatre stood empty from 1959 but its parlous financial situation was resolved in 1962 when it was leased to the LCC, and opened in 1964 as the Curtain Theatre by the Inner London Education Authority.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>The Curtain Theatre closed under the Thatcher government in 1984 but in 1995 the building was leased by the charity Artsadmin and opened asToynbee Studios, a centre for individuals and small companies to develop new performing arts work, with an extra floor was added. Alterations were made to turn the adjoining former Toynbee Hall drawing room of the 1880s into a bar/café and a new entrance was created by glazing the remains of the old colonnade, now abutting Profumo House, that had run between the drawing room and the Warden’s Lodge.[^6] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), District Surveyor's Returns (DSR): Asa Briggs and Anne Macartney (Briggs and Macartney), <em>Toynbee Hall: The First Hundred Years</em>, London 1984, pp. 119-20: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/07/02782; GLC/AR/BR/19/02782; GLC/AR/BR/13/111025] </p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Briggs and Macartney, pp. 111-12: DSR</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Briggs and Macartney, pp. 112, 120: Roseberys London Fine Art Auction, 15 Dec 2015, Lot 656</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Briggs and Macartney, pp. 133-4</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: Briggs and Macartney, pp. 150-1, 155: David Chia Jun Weng, ‘The Performing Arts Story at Toynbee Theatre’, Toynbee Hall pamphlet, c. 2015: LMA, GLC/AR/PL/43/032</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: David Chia Jun Weng, ‘The Performing Arts Story at Toynbee Theatre’, Toynbee Hall pamphlet, 2015</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-12-13",
"last_edited": "2019-09-03"
},
{
"id": 871,
"title": "Expansions on Prescot Street for the tea office and coffee works (demolished)",
"author": {
"id": 14,
"username": "rebecca.preston"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1304,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.069869457142711,
51.51258378865529
],
[
-0.06950660421144,
51.512121667706516
],
[
-0.069478111577185,
51.512130555532515
],
[
-0.069341094752535,
51.511957536645845
],
[
-0.069486122416778,
51.51189676528385
],
[
-0.069527178527717,
51.51194539520137
],
[
-0.069585888426032,
51.5119311567419
],
[
-0.069559567943928,
51.511910840078386
],
[
-0.069569328998767,
51.5119016438785
],
[
-0.069825289223036,
51.51185497911268
],
[
-0.069930830059169,
51.51200246852669
],
[
-0.069714923949871,
51.51207129486504
],
[
-0.069748586678379,
51.512117463780626
],
[
-0.069782896356969,
51.51210399319554
],
[
-0.070024013079544,
51.51238632902739
],
[
-0.070141581896045,
51.51235434519941
],
[
-0.070216203746602,
51.51245148127667
],
[
-0.070170852543001,
51.512460091841156
],
[
-0.070181004677215,
51.512485990340465
],
[
-0.07007117524811,
51.51251225352792
],
[
-0.070078075053951,
51.512526402406536
],
[
-0.069869457142711,
51.51258378865529
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "100",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Leman Street",
"address": "100 Leman Street (Minet House)",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 13,
"search_str": "100 Leman Street (Minet House)"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>In 1925 L. G. Ekins designed a small, shallow two-storey extension to the tea department warehouse, extending two bays from the main building along Prescot Street with a third reaching over the original entrance to the yard.[^1] By 1934 he was planning three much larger steel-framed blocks, a coffee works and separate tea offices on the sites of 62–64 Prescot Street and 65–69 Prescot Street and a furnishing and hardware warehouse directly opposite at 9–14 Prescot Street.[^2] The plans for these were certified in 1935 and 1936, at which time some or all of the houses and workshops at 62–69 and 9–14 Prescot Street and the properties on the north side of the block at 32–44 South Tenter Street were in CWS ownership. Some were already demolished by 1935 but the Co-operative Union Ltd still occupied the ‘top floor offices and warehouses’ at Nos 66–69.[^3] Unlike Ekins’s furnishing warehouse, which in mass and style was a continuation of his Administrative Offices and Bank, the tea office and coffee works had the more utilitarian character of his interwar warehousing in Goodman Street and Lambeth Street to the east. Less immediately impressive than his Expressionist work (see below), these streamlined buildings, all now demolished, perhaps demonstrate his response to Modernism as well as the functional demands of the departments they housed. Work started on the tea office in about 1936 and both it and the adjoining coffee works were opened in about 1938.[^4] The tea office was square in plan with an open area at its core and rose seven storeys above a granite plinth, faced in dark red or brown bricks between bands of metal-framed windows, with a central entrance in Prescot Street. Within were display rooms, offices, a boardroom and, on the fourth floor, the publicity department and cinema.[^5] The coffee works, which abutted on its west side, was a smaller rectangular-shaped block of four storeys that completed the run of E&SCWS buildings west from Leman Street.[^6] The two buildings shared a granite plinth but above this the coffee works differed from its neighbour and was more obviously functional in design, with equal bands of glazing and dark brick running end-to-end on the Prescot Street and St Mark’s Street frontages, broken up with columns clad in white-glazed bricks.[^7] This block contained areas for coffee roasting and preparation, offices and a saleroom, while the basement was designed for bean and root storage.[^8]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), GLC/AR/BR/17/077204.</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/17/077326/02; District Surveyors Returns (DSR) serial no. 1935.0333.</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Metropolitan Borough of Stepney Valuation List, 1935, p.95, Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), L/SMB/C/1/3; LMA, DSR, serial nos 1935.0333, 1936.0491, 1936.0154, 1936.0093: 110–20 Leman Street plans (large), 1929, LMA, GLC/AR/BR/19/3339.</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: LMA, DSR serial no. 1936.0491, 1936.0093; ‘Changing the Skyline at Leman Street’, <em>The Producer</em>, June 1936, p. 182.</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: ‘Changing the Skyline at Leman Street’, <em>The Producer</em>, June 1936, p. 182; LMA, GLC, AR/BR/07/2914, E&SCWS tea offices.</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: THLHLA, Building Control file 23306, 62–64 Prescot Street; Great Prescot Street drainage plans, THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/119.</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: LMA, SC/PHL/01/396/73/10916 and SC/PHL/01/396/73/10917, photographs, 1973.</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: THLHLA, Building Control file 23306, 62–64 Prescot Street; L/THL/D/2/30/119, Great Prescot Street drainage plans: ‘Changing the Skyline at Leman Street’, <em>The Producer</em>, June 1936, p. 182.</p>\n",
"created": "2019-03-29",
"last_edited": "2020-09-11"
},
{
"id": 958,
"title": "Angel Alley",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 397,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.070631734980517,
51.516055421900404
],
[
-0.070694810837976,
51.5160316148736
],
[
-0.070694812656241,
51.51603160856848
],
[
-0.070694822071344,
51.51603161810757
],
[
-0.070705382817133,
51.51602803925736
],
[
-0.070776774733246,
51.516123324187696
],
[
-0.070694983149094,
51.516128965932744
],
[
-0.070631734980517,
51.516055421900404
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "84B",
"b_name": "84B Whitechapel High Street",
"street": "Angel Alley, Whitechapel High Street",
"address": " 84B Whitechapel High Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 10,
"search_str": "84B Whitechapel High Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Angel Alley, named after the Angel Inn at 85 Whitechapel High Street and reached via a simple doorway through No. 84, exists now only as an access passage to the Freedom Press and its bookshop (No. 84B). Its east side is formed by the Whitechapel Gallery’s extension of 1984–5, and the alley has terminated since 1899 beyond the Press in a slight dogleg that once led to a straight narrow path north to Wentworth Street.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>In the seventeenth century the southern half of the alley’s east side formed part of John Enion and Samuel Cranmer’s large holding that ran through to what became Osborn Street. This included a large house, probably that occupied on and off by Richard Loton and his son and grandson, Edward and Samuel, from the 1650s to the 1690s, and in the 1670s by John Wells, the brewer and business partner of Abraham Anselme, tenants of Loton’s Swan brewery in the 1660s and 1670s.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>Angel Alley’s late seventeenth-century occupancy was varied. Residents in the 1670s included Samuel Pepys’s lover Deb Willet and her husband Jeremiah Wells.[^3] In the 1680s and ’90s the mathematician Euclid Speidell lived here, his first name indicating that his father, who published on logarithms, as did Euclid, was also a mathematician. While he taught ‘next door to the cock in Bow Street’, in Angel Alley he published and sold his books.[^4] </p>\n\n<p>Until the early eighteenth-century advent of sugar refining, many Angel Alley residents were involved in the cloth trades. By the 1670s there were short rows of small houses on the east side by the High Street, and further north on both sides, probably mainly occupied by lowly clothworkers. Some were not so lowly. Peter Stone, a silk thrower who died in 1686, lived in a nine-hearth house here in the 1660s and ’70s, probably the largest house on the west side.[^5] Further south on the west side, by 1693 until his death in 1729, was John Cordwell, a citizen framework-knitter. He was implicated in another feature of Angel Alley, the practice of independent-minded religion. In 1719 Cordwell raised a subscription for a publication by Richard Welton, the high-church Tory Jacobite former Whitechapel rector who had been deprived of his living in 1715 for refusing to swear allegiance to George I. Government agents raided Welton’s chapel in Goodman’s Fields in 1717 and he and forty others were arrested. It was at Cordwell’s Angel Alley house that Welton was again apprehended in 1724; he soon departed for Philadelphia.[^6] </p>\n\n<p>Most nonconformity in Angel Alley and wider Whitechapel was of a quite different stripe. In 1672, under the Royal Proclamation of Indulgence allowing the licensing of Nonconformist worship, Richard Loton’s houses in Spitalfields and Angel Alley were licensed for worship led by John Langston and William Hooke, Congregationalist ministers; the Angel Alley licence was never taken up. Loton was a clothworker turned brewer who had been an energetic Parliamentarian and Independent in the 1640s.[^7] </p>\n\n<p>Around 1714 a congregation of Particular Baptists, who had previously met in Tallow Chandler’s Hall in the City and in Alie Street, built a small meeting house on the west side of Angel Alley under the pastor John Nichols who was succeeded from 1715 to 1729 by Edward Ridgeway. Tax on this meeting house was paid in 1743–5 by Samuel Stockell, ‘Sam the potter’, who was a ‘High Calvinist’ from the Petticoat Lane area, and minister of the Independent meeting in Redcross Street, Southwark, from 1728 till his death in 1750. The site in Angel Alley was still referred to as ‘ground belonging to the Meeting’ in 1766.[^8] </p>\n\n<p>The decline of the meeting house coincided with the rise in Angel Alley of sugar refining. Samuel Lane, a sugar refiner and distiller, had premises on the east side by 1719, on part of what had been Cranmer and Loton’s holding, that included a timber-framed house, possibly Loton’s. After Lane’s death in 1741 the sugar house was enlarged and improved by his son Joseph who died in 1753. By 1732 Cordwell’s house on the west side had been taken over by John Bromwell, another refiner who also had a sugar house in Leman Street. Bromwell rebuilt the Angel Alley sugar house on a modest scale and after his departure in 1741 it passed to John Arney. Burnt down in 1749, a common occurrence in the industry, it was rebuilt by John Titien, in partnership until his death in 1757 with John Christian Suhring, who by the time of his death in 1777 had extended the sugar house to occupy the whole site between Angel Alley and George Yard.[^9] </p>\n\n<p>A measure of increasing affluence in Angel Alley once sugar refiners established themselves is the description in 1765 of the household goods of the refiner Nicholas Beckman who had taken over Lane’s premises on the east side, with a ‘great Variety of rich Household Furniture … a very elegant wrought Epargne … large services … most beautifully painted in Landscapes and Figure … cut glass lustres with twelve arms to each’.[^10] After Beckman left, his premises were taken over by Frederick Rider, a refiner who went bankrupt in 1773 also in possession of a substantial estate at Woodford. Rider’s property, including the sugar house, had at £1,350 one of the highest insurance values in Whitechapel in 1767. It included a two-storey house, 34ft by 19ft, four rooms of which were fully panelled, three with marble mantelpieces. There was also a three-storey timber building for servants’ rooms, possibly Loton’s former house, plus a large coach house and stable. The roomy brick house and new sugar houses were enlarged again by William Pycroft and Samuel Payne, Pycroft later operating with William Wilson. By the late eighteenth century, Angel Alley’s sugar houses tended to form parts of larger businesses with premises elsewhere. Associated facilities appeared, such as the sugar cooperage of two brothers, Jonas Gandon (1756–93) and Peter Gandon (1761–1814), whose father Jonas (1726–?) had a leather business in Hooper Square in the 1760s. The brothers began in a small way on the alley’s west side near the corner with Wentworth Street in 1790, and by the time of Peter’s bankruptcy in 1805, the site included a house on Wentworth Street, a three-storey workshop and warehouse, 175ft long and 40ft wide, with a long narrow yard on its east side fronting the west side of Angel Alley. Gandon decamped to Osborn Place, Brick Lane, to more general coopering, continued there by his descendants till the 1840s.[^11]</p>\n\n<p>Suhring’s west-side sugar house survived as a refinery under a succession of owners – his nephew John Gask let it in 1777 to Jeremiah Glover, who expanded the premises, which grew again from 1783 under Richard Samler (d. 1816) and Thomas Ferrers, Samler being part of a family with extensive sugar houses in the City and elsewhere in Whitechapel.[^12] </p>\n\n<p>Pycroft’s east-side sugar house was sold in 1806 when the premises extended east to Osborn Street. It was last used as a sugar house about 1826 by Walton, Fairbank & Co. who also had premises in Lambeth Street.[^13] By 1852 it had been taken over by Ind Coope, whose former Coope sugar refinery on Osborn Street adjoined its north side. A beer-barrel warehouse, which survives, was built on the Angel Alley side of the site. Sugar refining was moving further east and south, where there was room for expansion. Other businesses took over the buildings in Angel Alley.</p>\n\n<p>John Kelland’s City Saw Mills, first established on Wenlock Basin, City Road, in the 1820s, and on Wentworth Street by 1834, expanded to take over a long narrow site that snaked down the west side of Angel Alley, previously that of the Gandons’ cooperage. By 1843 Kelland had premises that consisted of buildings several storeys high including mills, machinery rooms, stables and an engine house at the south-west corner, the source of a devastating fire that year. The site was cleared in 1882.[^14] </p>\n\n<p>Angel Alley suffered decline in the nineteenth century, like most of the streets and courts north of the High Street. Many houses fell to use as ‘low’ lodging houses, charging 3 <em>d.</em> a night. On his visit to ‘the Back of Whitechapel’ in 1861, John Hollingshead deplored the impression he gained that the ‘best paid occupation appears to be prostitution and it is a melancholy fact that a nest of bad houses in Angel-alley, supported chiefly by the farmers’ men who bring hay to Whitechapel market twice a week, are the cleanest-looking dwellings in the district. The windows have tolerably neat green blinds, the doors have brass plates, and inside the houses there is comparative comfort, if not plenty.’[^15] The East London Association ‘established for the suppression of vice, etc’ pursued prosecutions of brothel-keepers and succeeded in closing twelve establishments in Angel Alley and Wentworth Street by the end of 1862. In an effort at mitigation, a lease of four houses at the north-east end was acquired in 1875 at the Rev. Samuel Barnett’s suggestion by Edward Bond and the Earl of Pembroke, for improvement and letting to respectable tenants.[^16] One was occupied in the 1880s by the Salvation Army ‘slum sisters’, later at 78 Wentworth Street, but the houses were demolished around 1892 when Gustav Wildermuth’s lodging house was built in Wentworth Street.</p>\n\n<p>Further south in Angel Alley the George Yard Mission had expanded into a building on the west side by 1876. In 1886 the Mission erected two new buildings opposite replacing old houses: Shaftesbury House, used as a library, office, kitchen and caretaker’s rooms, and a new infants’ school. Opened by the Duchess of Teck, these were the work of the architect John Hudson, the infants’ school having some architectural presence, its windows elaborated with pediments. Its basement was used originally for boys’ industrial classes, the ground floor as day and infant schools and in the evenings for clubs and benefit societies, the first floor for what would now be called youth work with young men and women, including ‘ambulance classes’, as well as Bible classes. The second floor had three rooms for a crèche and nursery, open in its early days from 7.30am to 8pm. The flat roof was intended for use as ‘a prettily arranged encampment for babies’ in the summer’.[^17]</p>\n\n<p>Angel Alley was reduced to the rump that it is today in 1899 when the Whitechapel District Board of Works expanded its George Yard depot across its northern part. The George Yard Mission buildings were sold off in 1923: Shaftesbury House became 84C Whitechapel High Street and was in use as a tailor’s before it was badly damaged during the Second World War and demolished around 1947. The infants’ school survived until about 1982 when it was demolished to make way for the extension of the Whitechapel Gallery.</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), L/WBW/11/9</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA),LMA/4453/F/01/001: Hearth Tax returns 1674–5 </p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Ancestry: Kate Loveman, ‘Samuel Pepys and Deb Willet after the Diary’, <em>The Historical Journal</em>, vol.49/3, Sept 2006, pp.893–901 {p. 896}</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: <em>The Mathematical Gazette</em>, vol.18/231, Dec 1934, p.310: LMA, Land Tax returns (LT): <em>London Gazette</em>, 18–21 June 1688, p.2</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: Hearth Tax returns 1666, 1674–5: The National Archives (TNA), PROB11/384/253</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>Weekly Journal or British Gazette</em>, 23 February 1724: <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB)</em>: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: Keith Lindley, ‘Whitechapel Independents and the English Revolution’, <em>The Historical Journal</em>, vol.41/1, March 1998, pp.283–91: G. Lyon Turner, <em>Early Nonconformity under Persecution and Indulgence</em>, 1911, pp.237,254,440: Charles Ray Palmer, ‘Revd William Hooke, 1601–1678’, <em>Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society</em>, vol.8, 1914, pp.56–81 {76–7}: <em>ODNB, sub </em>Hooke and Langston</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: F. J. Powicke, ‘The Salters’ Hall Controversy’, <em>Congregational Historical Society Transactions</em>, vol.7/2, November 1916, pp.110–24 {p.114}: Walter Wilson, <em>The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses in London</em>, vol.3, 1810, pp.309–17; vol.4, 1814, pp.424–6: Joseph Ivimey<em>, A History of the English Baptists … 1668 to 1760</em>, vol.3, 1830, pp.533–41 </p>\n\n<p>[^9]: TNA, PROB11/710/246; PROB11/1032/1581754: LMA, LT; MDR/1739/5/54</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: <em>Public Ledger</em>, 23 Aug 1765, {p.3}</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: LMA, LT: Ancestry: Post Office Directories (POD): <em>Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser</em>, 16 June 1774: <em>Bell’s Weekly Messenger</em>, 15 Dec 1805, p. 397: <em>Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser</em>, 17 Feb 1806, p. 3: Derek Morris, <em>Whitechapel 1600–1800</em>, 2011, p.25</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: LMA, LT; O/203/9; CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/314/482462</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: POD: <em>Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser</em>, 17 Feb 1806, p.3: LMA, LT</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: POD: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 25 March 1834, p.4: <em>The Globe</em>, 18 Sept 1843, p.3: <em>Perry’s Bankrupt Gazette</em>, 18 Jan 1862, p.9: <em>East London Observer (ELO)</em>, 5 Aug 1882, p.8: LMA, MBW/1838/5</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: <em>Morning Post</em>, 21 Jan 1861, p.4 </p>\n\n<p>[^16]: <em>Shoreditch Observer</em>, 6 Dec 1862, p.2: ed. C. S. Loch, <em>The Charities Register and Digest</em>, 1890, p.575</p>\n\n<p>[^17]: <em>ELO</em>, 30 April 1887, p.7: Loch, p.428: Census: <em>The Builder</em>, 8 May 1886, p.698: London County Council,<em>Creches or Day Nurseries: Report of the Chief Officer of the Public Control Department</em>, 1905, pp.14–15</p>\n",
"created": "2019-09-12",
"last_edited": "2021-03-30"
},
{
"id": 479,
"title": "The Reminiscences of Doctor John Sebastian Helmcken (1824-1920)",
"author": {
"id": 22,
"username": "sarahannmilne"
},
"feature": {
"id": 34,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.071793967944249,
51.513658648815735
],
[
-0.07171660366296,
51.51356325546861
],
[
-0.071785458230957,
51.51353968533075
],
[
-0.071865525294463,
51.513635775949055
],
[
-0.071793967944249,
51.513658648815735
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "21",
"b_name": "The White Swan",
"street": "Alie Street",
"address": "The White Swan, 21 Alie Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 4,
"search_str": "The White Swan"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Of German ancestry, John Helmcken's father and mother ran the White Swan Pub on Alie Street in the early-mid nineteenth century. Helmcken grew up there and latterly recorded his memories, which were edited and published by Dorothy Blackey-Smith in 1975 under the title '<em>The reminiscences of Doctor John Sebastian Helmcken</em>'. Below is an extract relating to his childhood:</p>\n\n<p>\"[Great Alie Street] was a highly respectable street, the Bowmans, Goodmans, McMurdos [?] - some government offices and a number of houses that at some distant period had been occupied by grand people. Dr Graves lived exactly opposite our house. There was a blacksmith's shop at the rear and a carpenter's shop, belonging to Mr Branch, had been a stately mansion, with grounds surrounding: the front was still covered with a grape vine, which bore fruit abundantly, but did not always ripen.</p>\n\n<p>There were the four streets - Alie, Leman, Prescott and Mansell, all respectable streets, and named after four [sons-in-law?] or grandsons of Goodman, who had been interested in the West Indies, but the estate or part of it was now in chancery. The Goodmans in my day had some coloured servants - and coachman. At the end of Little Alie Street was a place called Goodman's Stile, I suppose which used to be a stepping place into Goodman's Fields. In the rear of these four streets, was a large quadrangular field, unenclosed and barren, called by us the 'Tenter Ground' and here soldiers from the Tower of London used occasionally to be exercised, whilst young Goodman interested himself in breaking in trotting or other horses. This was our playground.</p>\n\n<p>On our side of the street stood Bowman's sugar refinery, and at the rear of our house, (having a black door leading to it) was a square - surrounded by sugar refineries, belonging to the Bowmans, Cravens and others. Immense buildings occupying acres! These were all ruined by Free Trade. How many times did I play in and about the refineries altho forbidden to do so! I learned all about sugar refining without knowing it. Later on I saw waggon loads of beetroots carried into the buildings. Sugar was to be made from beetroots. The experiments failed and one after the other the refineries shut down. </p>\n\n<p>There was a broad yard to our house, paved with flag stones, and huge walls on each side, the walls of other houses or boundary walls. Here was a good place to play ball and what not and a quiet place for mischief too, at least it would have been, had not neighbouring windows overlooked it! Alie Place was a good place too, but Mrs Graves would not allow play there; that is to say when the boys became boisterous she ordered us all home - and we obeyed; sulkily if you please.\" </p>\n",
"created": "2017-09-28",
"last_edited": "2020-05-06"
},
{
"id": 615,
"title": "St Mary's Station",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 838,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.065140866189073,
51.51749259191283
],
[
-0.065233008086083,
51.51761193654102
],
[
-0.06501106090109,
51.51767073337619
],
[
-0.065011060901121,
51.51767073337608
],
[
-0.064826272017719,
51.51772204093931
],
[
-0.064714455817846,
51.51756528371057
],
[
-0.064653750501144,
51.51759910925953
],
[
-0.064619266144142,
51.517650076859034
],
[
-0.064602821596206,
51.51769910144263
],
[
-0.064665853515323,
51.51768072204304
],
[
-0.064724720688734,
51.517704100767936
],
[
-0.064771776731905,
51.51775193254255
],
[
-0.064586301294839,
51.51780638365135
],
[
-0.064354447256943,
51.517458232080315
],
[
-0.065004001704955,
51.51728162312535
],
[
-0.065140866189073,
51.51749259191283
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "100",
"b_name": "Ibis Budget Hotel (formerly Brunning House)",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Ibis Budget Hotel, 100 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 5,
"search_str": "Ibis Budget Hotel (formerly Brunning House)"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>St Mary’s Station<strong> </strong>was built in 1883–4 on the site of Meggs’ Almshouses for the Metropolitan and District Railway’s extension to Whitechapel. The booking office on the west side of the site was a single-storey six-bay building with a louvre-vented hipped roof behind a balustraded parapet. The east part of the site was left open near the road to ventilate the steam railway. After electrification it was built over for the Rivoli Cinema. The station closed in 1938 when the addition of an eastern (Gardiner’s Corner) entrance to Aldgate East Station caused it to be deemed superfluous. Its platforms were bricked-up and used by Stepney Borough Council as a public air-raid shelter from 1940, but the booking office was destroyed in the Blitz. Below ground level original ornamental cast-iron columns, staircase balustrades, a lattice-sided footbridge and brick-arch and composite-girder ceilings survive, disused and inaccessible to the public.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: The National Archives, HO 207/859: London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyors Returns: Goad maps</p>\n",
"created": "2018-04-19",
"last_edited": "2020-10-20"
},
{
"id": 535,
"title": "Davis Feather Mill (c.1856-c.1960)",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 13,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.070300598211778,
51.51553175369474
],
[
-0.069909685041584,
51.51566601870094
],
[
-0.069762598214758,
51.51551508304666
],
[
-0.06980073408505,
51.51550203175569
],
[
-0.069734850402611,
51.515430598241764
],
[
-0.0696935021834,
51.515445550776434
],
[
-0.069553336995274,
51.515279095645894
],
[
-0.069960309630875,
51.51513532543541
],
[
-0.070300598211778,
51.51553175369474
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "59-63",
"b_name": "Central House, London Metropolitan University",
"street": "Whitechapel High Street",
"address": "Central House, 59-63 Whitechapel High Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 18,
"search_str": "Central House, London Metropolitan University"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>A prominent local business, the Davis Feather Mill occupied a site behind Gardiner’s Corner from the mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Its collection of factory-warehouses spanned between Whitechapel High Street and Manningtree Street, with elevations to both streets.</p>\n\n<p>The establishment and success of the feather mill can largely be attributed to one man, Isaac Davis, born in Whitechapel in Catherine Wheel Alley in 1830, his father a Jewish feather merchant. Davis’ close personal acquaintance with the difficulties of life in nineteenth-century Whitechapel spurred him on to enter into an apprenticeship with a London-based cigar manufacturer, which was followed by a period working in American cigar factories. He returned to Whitechapel in 1856 with money in hand and the ambition to reform and expand his father’s East London business in order to bring the high-quality feather beds of the rich to within reach of the poor. He set up shop at 63 Whitechapel High Street in the same year. The young entrepreneur began by importing vast quantities of feathers from around the world in such a way as to dominate the market. He then innovatively deployed steam technology to clean the feathers, and shrewdly purchased second-hand feather beds for rehabilitation and upgrade. He was reported to have caused ‘something like a furore’ on account of the low prices of his goods. By 1890, Davis effectively monopolised the feather-bed market, having also diversified into quilts, rugs and other household furnishings.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>The transformation from humble family business to a large-scale commercial success was enabled through a similarly significant expansion of premises. Over two decades, Davis acquired 59–62 Whitechapel High Street and the patchwork of properties behind this, stretching back to Manningtree Street. The most extensive redevelopment of the site occurred in the mid-1880s when Davis employed the local architect John Hudson to design a new factory-warehouse. The three-storey block was said to be ‘magnificent…containing all the latest improvements and built throughout with a view to the health of the large number of hands now employed.’[^2] The mill was however prone to fires; only a few days after its re-opening in 1888, it was severely damaged. Sporadic fires afflicted the premises in subsequent years leading to semi-frequent rebuildings, yet the business continued to flourish, operating on the site until about 1960 despite suffering a direct hit during the Blitz in 1940.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>Isaac Davis died in 1913, having fulfilled his youthful ambition to become a public benefactor. At the Great Synagogue (Duke’s Place), his father and grandfather had acted as Beadle and Assistant Beadle respectively and Isaac himself was a generous supporter of many local Jewish causes including the Jews’ Hospital, Jews’ Orphan Asylum and the East London Synagogue.[^4]</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/01/02/screen-shot-2018-01-02-at-145101.png\"></p>\n\n<p><em>Portrait bust of Isaac Davis by Alfred Drury, A.R.A. published in the 'Jewish Chronicle', 4 April 1913.</em></p>\n\n<p>[^1]: eds. W. Rubinstein, M. Jolles, H. Rubinstein, <em>Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History</em>, 2011, p.203; <em>The Observer</em>, 17 March 1888</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>The Observer</em>, 17 March 1888</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Morning Post</em>, 29 March 1888; PODs 1933, 1958</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, 4 April 1913; <em>East London Observer</em>, 20 Sept 1913</p>\n",
"created": "2018-01-02",
"last_edited": "2020-10-03"
},
{
"id": 525,
"title": "The Waste: a history of Whitechapel Road's market",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1698,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.062755898137067,
51.51857235799611
],
[
-0.058216859270041,
51.51960039921044
],
[
-0.058148482851386,
51.51948612756745
],
[
-0.061091729886378,
51.51883423152082
],
[
-0.061616259170046,
51.51871888429734
],
[
-0.06270768344222,
51.51847582817058
],
[
-0.062755898137067,
51.51857235799611
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Whitechapel Market, Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "PLACE",
"count": 48,
"search_str": "Whitechapel Market, Whitechapel Road"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p><em>All day long and all the year round there is a constant Fair going on in Whitechapel Road. It is held upon the broad pavement, which was benevolently intended, no doubt, for this purpose. Here are displayed all kinds of things; bits of second-hand furniture, such as the head of a wooden bed, whose griminess is perhaps exaggerated, in order that a purchaser may expect something extraordinarily cheap. Here are lids of pots and saucepans laid out, to show that in the warehouse, of which these things are specimens, will be found the principal parts of the utensils for sale; here are unexpected things, such as rows of skates, sold cheap in summer, light clothing in winter; workmen’s tools of every kind, including, perhaps, the burglarious jemmy; second-hand books – a miscellaneous collection, establishing the fact that the readers of books in Whitechapel – a feeble and scanty folk – read nothing at all except sermons and meditations among the tombs; second-hand boots and shoes; cutlery; hats and caps; rat-traps and mouse-traps and birdcages; flowers and seeds; skittles; and frames for photographs. Cheap-jacks have their carts beside the pavement; and with strident voice proclaim the goodness of their wares, which include in this district bloaters and dried haddocks, as well as crockery. And one is amazed, seeing how the open-air Fair goes on, why the shops are kept open at all.</em>[^1]</p>\n\n<p>By the 1880s, when this was written, trading on Whitechapel Road’s open spaces was long established, if not exactly by benevolent intent. It was informal and undocumented, simply tolerated by the Manor of Stepney, which owned what was generally known as Mile End Waste (waste or common manorial land). That name applied to around 300 to 400 yards along an exceptionally wide road either side of Mile End Gate, a tollgate just east of Whitechapel’s parish boundary for a turnpike that had been established in 1722. Covenants in seventeenth-century manorial leases of building plots on Mile End Green (which included the eastern part of Whitechapel Road) provided for the paving of footpaths in front of buildings and cleaning of the ditch beyond, along with the planting of elm trees at 10ft intervals between the footpaths and ditches. They did not preclude trade.</p>\n\n<p>In the 1850s there were stalls and costermongers’ barrows along the north side of Whitechapel Road from St Mary (Davenant) Street to Charrington’s Brewery in Mile End Old Town. Some sections of the waste were given over to the setting-out of furniture and, street junctions aside, paved cart roads separated the ground at several points. There was a urinal at Court Street and an omnibus stand in front of the Blind Beggar. The Grave Maurice and the London Hospital public houses had seats and tables out in front. The south side was far less busy, but furniture and ironmongery was displayed on parts of the waste east of the London Hospital.</p>\n\n<p>The status quo was destabilised after 1855 by the newly formed Whitechapel District Board of Works. It laid down gravel and placed iron posts across the waste at intervals and then in 1858 laid claim to control of the waste and its market, attempting to enforce the removal of a temporary structure in front of the site that is now Whitechapel Station. This usurpation of manorial rights was successfully resisted in 1860, 71 property holders, among whom Henry Wainwright was a leader, having petitioned the Lord of the Manor for protection, a strong indication of the extent to which shopkeepers displayed their own wares on the waste.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>Undeterred, the Board pushed ahead with plans to pave the waste. That work was carried out in 1863 through Henry R. Fricker, the Board’s Surveyor. Granite-cube paving was laid on several sections of the interstitial space between the road and the footways. Despite the Board’s regularising intentions, something truly like a fair did arise. Sheds of canvas screens as long as 50ft and 10ft high were erected on framing-rod uprights rammed between the paving cubes, with naphtha lamps on other rods to light stalls with ball pitches, coconut shies, quoits and a shooting gallery. The Manor tolerated this use for many years up to 1898 when there were prosecutions to enforce its cessation.</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/04/17/trinity-hospital.jpg\"><em>Trinity Hospital, showing use of the Waste by costermongers in the 1890s (from C. R. Ashbee, 'The Trinity Hospital in Mile End: An Object Lesson in National History', 1896)</em></p>\n\n<p>In 1904 Stepney Council sought to take control of the market on the waste in both Whitechapel and Mile End to regulate nuisance traders. Terms were agreed with the Manor in 1909 and the Council acquired strips on both north and south sides from Vallance Road east into Mile End where gardens were laid out in 1909–10.</p>\n\n<p>Thus regulated, trading west of Mile End Gate came to be called Whitechapel Market, though it is still regularly referred to as ‘the Waste’. It was noted in the 1970s for clothing, jewellery, flowers, second-hand records and hi-fi equipment. By the 1980s, when there were 124 pitches between Vallance Road and Cambridge Heath Road, the market was being transformed by a transition to Bangladeshi stallholders. They remain predominant, and there is still much clothing, as well as a range of foods hard to come by elsewhere.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>The market’s street furniture was renewed as part of the High Street 2012 project. Alan Baxter & Associates and East Architecture Landscape Urban Design oversaw standardisation of demountable market stalls, and the additions of perforated metal screens to face the road and catenary lighting along the pavement on a row of standards, as well as new bollards and seating.</p>\n\n<p>The grandest and finest piece of furniture on Whitechapel Market stands in front of No. 259. It is the King Edward VII Memorial Drinking Fountain, ‘erected from subscriptions raised by Jewish inhabitants of East London 1911’, as is related on a medallion on the tall monument’s north side. The idea for this fountain originated with the writer Annie Gertrude Landa (née Hannah Gittel Gordon, and also known by the pseudonym Aunt Naomi). Her husband, Myer Jack Landa, a journalist, had learned of the death of King Edward VII in 1910 through a crossed line with Home Secretary Winston Churchill, securing a scoop for the <em>Daily News</em>. It is also doubtless relevant that, concerned about open and aggressive antisemitism, he published <em>The Alien Problem and its Remedy</em> in 1911. The fountain was unveiled in March 1912 by the Hon. Charles Rothschild and presented to Stepney Borough Council. The bronze sculptural elements are by William Silver Frith. The structure comprises a Hopton Wood stone pylon on a plinth surmounted by a figure of the Angel of Peace. Semi-circular bowls face east and west below winged figures of Justice and Liberty flanked by cherubs sporting attributes of the King’s enthusiasms. A portrait medallion of the King on the south side was stolen in the 1980s. The fountain was renovated in the early 1990s with a grant from the Heritage of London Trust. The missing medallion was replaced, but to a different form, with a profile looking west rather than east as its predecessor had. Seraph spouts were reinstated.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>Whitechapel District Board of Works formed a Sanitary Committee in late 1892, one of the first duties of which was to improve the condition and provision of public conveniences, heretofore made of iron standards and plates, with the exception of a single underground facility on Leman Street. Attention turned directly to Whitechapel Road and a site on the corner east of Bakers Row (Vallance Road) was selected for new underground conveniences (in front of 197–199 Whitechapel Road). For males only, these were built with stairs down at either end in 1893, by Walter Gladding under the supervision of the Board’s surveyor; they were reconstructed for Stepney Borough Council in 1935. It was 1900 before equivalent female conveniences were built in front of 241 Whitechapel Road.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>Deemed redundant by 1991, the male toilets were sold in 1993 reconstructed in 1996–8 with a single-storey tile-clad, steel and breeze-block superstructure (199A Whitechapel Road) for a restaurant (Taja) above a beauty parlour. This was done for Harun Quadi and Ruhun Nahar Chowdhury, to designs by Clements & Porter Architects (Ingerid Helsing Almaas, job architect) by the London Construction Company of Ilford. In 2006 the superstructure had to be removed after serious damage by a bus. Chowdhury commissioned plans for a replacement building from MacCormac Jamieson Prichard. These were approved, but not seen through.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>K2 telephone kiosks of 1927, as designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, stand in front of Nos 249 and 331 Whitechapel Road, protected by listed status. There is a listed iron cannon bollard on the east side of Fulbourne Street at its north end near the corner with Durward Street. This bears the date 1818 and has been said to be a parish boundary marker. However, it is not on or near a parish boundary and, marked ‘CHt CH – MIDD’, has evidently been moved from a site in the parish of Christ Church Spitalfields.</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Walter Besant, <em>All Sorts and Conditions of Men</em>, 1882 (edn 2012), p. 98</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: London Metropolitan Archives, M/93/263,286,427–430: John Rocque, 'Map of London etc', 1746: 8 Geo I c.30</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Ordnance Survey map, 1873: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), L/WBW/1/5, pp. 390–2, 529; Stepney Borough Council Annual Report, 1909–10: <em>Reynold’s Newspaper</em>, 6 March 1898: <em>East London Advertiser</em>, 24 Nov 1978: <em>Time Out</em>, 13 Dec 1979: Transport for London Group Archvies, LT000682/089</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Historic England, London historians file TH151: eds William D. Rubinstein, Michael Jolles, Hilary L. Rubinstein, <em>The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History</em>, 2011, p. 543: newsreel of unveiling <a href=\"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aanvqQlVeBE\">www.youtube.com/watch?v=aanvqQlVeBE</a>: <em>The Independent</em>, 10 Aug 1991</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: THLHLA, L/WBW/1/19, pp. 61, 104, 130–1, 301; L/WBW/1/22, pp. 503–5; L/WBW/7/1, pp. 12–14, 43: District Surveyors Returns</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: see interviews elsewhere on this website: THLHLA, Building Control files 17606–7</p>\n",
"created": "2017-11-30",
"last_edited": "2020-10-20"
},
{
"id": 901,
"title": "The new Royal London Hospital",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1055,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.059603168139066,
51.51814636262423
],
[
-0.05875064513042,
51.51833756100746
],
[
-0.05880027021497,
51.518428132403216
],
[
-0.058410175950557,
51.51851717894338
],
[
-0.058335119342649,
51.518387426557936
],
[
-0.058167883621195,
51.51840165384316
],
[
-0.058022191519375,
51.51770291533161
],
[
-0.058048225832449,
51.51770082847909
],
[
-0.0579567547367,
51.51754022786524
],
[
-0.057495813231092,
51.51758034522329
],
[
-0.057465726563153,
51.517443962991116
],
[
-0.057673016552398,
51.517425768571606
],
[
-0.057646690264841,
51.51729977054202
],
[
-0.057699256976843,
51.517294411534294
],
[
-0.059206618543123,
51.51716361286622
],
[
-0.05935638144775,
51.51742122218897
],
[
-0.059104959322273,
51.51744251080535
],
[
-0.059176189888187,
51.51756734317978
],
[
-0.05939181053717,
51.51754735040721
],
[
-0.059446707065502,
51.517822454567046
],
[
-0.059415919392695,
51.51782446306142
],
[
-0.059603168139066,
51.51814636262423
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Stepney Way",
"address": "The Royal London Hospital",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 13,
"search_str": "The Royal London Hospital"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>A 1992 report on health services in the capital by the pathologist and administrator Sir Bernard Tomlinson recommended the closure of St Bartholomew’s Hospital in Smithfield and the transferral of medical and teaching facilities to the Royal London Hospital, with a minor injuries unit at Smithfield. Tomlinson’s recommendations sparked contention and were only partially implemented, yet the merger in April 1994 between Barts, the Royal London Hospital and the London Chest Hospital generated the impetus for reorganisation and large-scale redevelopment. The merger represented the start of a protracted and complicated story, partly so due to uncertainty over the future of Barts. The East London and City Health Authority determined that it was more economical to concentrate critical medical services on a single site, and selected the Royal London Hospital for expansion. A new general hospital in Whitechapel was intended to augment the state of public health in Tower Hamlets, a borough with significantly higher sickness, mental illness and mortality rates than the national average.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>In 1995 the newly formed Royal Hospitals NHS Trust commissioned management consultant MHA to produce a strategy for transferring services from Barts and the London Chest Hospital to the Royal London Hospital, in association with specialist hospital architects Llewellyn-Davies, cost consultant Davis, Langdon & Everest, and services engineer Troup Bywaters & Anders. These consultants recommended retaining and reconfiguring the main hospital building, yet identified a large redevelopment area. The site of the nurses’ homes to the south-east of the hospital was identified for a six-storey clinical centre providing operating theatres, diagnostic services and surgical wards. A day-care and outpatients’ centre was proposed for the rectangular site skirted by Stepney Way, Cavell Street and Newark Street.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>The Trust subsequently invited the Health Management Group (HMG), John Laing Construction and Millennium Hospitals to develop plans. With a projected cost of approximately £260 million, the scheme for a new hospital was set to be the largest healthcare PFI project undertaken in the United Kingdom. Deterred by its likely cost and complexity, Laing withdrew from the competition in May 1996. HMG emerged as the favoured bidder, with a scheme developed by David Hutchison Partnership. Their proposal was formed on similar lines, with the retention of the main hospital building, along with the Alexandra Wing and the Grocers’ Company’s Wing, and the construction of a medium-rise 1,100-bed hospital to the south-east.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>The closure of Barts was prevented by the new Labour Government in 1998 after an inquiry headed by Sir Leslie Turnberg, who recommended its adaptation into a specialized cardiology and oncology centre. The specification for the new Royal London Hospital was consequently reduced to 900 beds. By 2003 two consortia were in competition for the project, which covered work at Barts and the Royal London Hospital. For the Whitechapel scheme, Bouygues Group engaged Nightingale Associates to draw up a submission with the assistance of Terry Farrell & Partners. This consortium was pitted against the Swedish contractors Skanska and fund managers Innisfree, which enlisted HOK International, an American firm recognized for its work at the Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Led by design director Larry Malcic, the HOK International team gained preference.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>HOK’s initial scheme was criticized sharply in 2004 by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE), which objected to its bulky massing, confusing planning, and lack of coherence with its immediate vicinity, particularly the main hospital building fronting Whitechapel Road. The design of the new hospital was considered to repeat ‘mistakes made in large projects in the 1960s’, which would be costly to remedy. CABE also voiced concern that the internal configuration of the new hospital had been compromised by a focus on the proximity of certain departments, at the expense of other factors such as natural daylight. Another issue was the unavailability of the large and underused Post Office site to the north-east, which deprived the new hospital of a street front. These objections were coupled with remonstrances from Ken Livingstone, who threatened to apply mayoral powers to obstruct planning permission. HOK withdrew its proposal to concentrate on revisions, amid reports that Nightingale Associates and Farrell & Partners were seeking to usurp their scheme. HOK returned to CABE three months later with an amended design incorporating a public square on the south side of the main hospital building, necessitating the demolition of its east wing. The revised scheme gained the partial support of CABE and, after additional alterations, was granted planning permission in March 2005.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>The project was divided into two main components – the construction of a new hospital and the renovation of the main hospital building fronting Whitechapel Road. These schemes were accompanied by a number of subsidiary projects: a four-storey outpatients’ block to the west of the new block, a multi-storey car park on the site of the disused dental institute in Stepney Way, and a nursery building on the site of the boiler house in Pasteur Street. This ambitious scheme was realised partially by the construction of a new hospital building in 2007–12. This block occupies an extensive site formerly occupied by the east wing of the main hospital building and a series of nurses’ homes. The building has also engulfed a swathe of the London Hospital estate, bounded by Raven Row to the north, Milward Street to the east, Stepney Way to the south, and East Mount Street to the west.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>The new hospital comprises a bulky cluster of three towers; a squat eleven-storey north tower and two nineteen-storey towers connected by a bridge straddling Stepney Way. The upper floors of the reinforced-concrete frame are clad with grey sun louvres and sheer blue glazing in an assortment of tones, with navy blue reserved for the north tower. An underpass between the central tower and the south tower serves as a continuation of Stepney Way to Cavell Street, with a pick-up and drop-off point for patients and visitors. Parking for ambulances is provided to the east of the north forecourt and along Milward Street, adjacent to the accident and emergency department. The roof of the central tower is capped with a helipad and an emergency unit for the Helicopter Emergency Medical Service (HEMS). The new building opened in March 2012, after twelve weeks of transferring patients, departments and equipment from the former hospital via a scaffold bridge. A formal opening by Queen Elizabeth II took place in February 2013. At the time of writing (2019), the hospital contains 675 beds arranged over 110 wards, and twenty-six operating theatres.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>The north block of the hospital is fronted by a paved forecourt and a car park on the south side of Whitechapel Road, accessed by East Mount Street. A set of revolving doors at the north-west corner of the block serves as the main public entrance to the hospital, opening into a lobby and a corridor that drifts southwards to Stepney Way. Two separate canopied entrances on the north front provide direct access to the children’s hospital, the women’s centre, the renal and urology department, and the accident and emergency department. On the ground floor, most of the combined footprint of the north and central blocks is dedicated to an extensive accident and emergency department, comprising distinct areas for initial examinations, paediatric care, imaging, treatment and resuscitation. This department is a leading major trauma centre that attends to approximately 160,000 cases each year.[^8]</p>\n\n<p>A covered forecourt with Wade’s statue of Queen Alexandra announces the main entrance to the south tower. A lobby with a reception area screens ground-floor clinics. Staircase and lift lobbies are scattered throughout the blocks, largely connected by a central north–south corridor piercing each block from the first floor upwards. The lift cores present the principal mode of public circulation in the hospital, providing access to different departments and facilities. Light wells over the first-floor radiology department form a cleft between the north and central towers, securing a therapy garden for the second-floor outpatients’ department. The second floor also contains prayer rooms for Christian, Muslim and Jewish patients and visitors. Operating theatres are located on the third, fourth and sixth floors, and contain specialized equipment such as the da Vinci system for pioneering robotic surgery and virtual reality technology. The fourth floor contains ten operating theatres assigned to specific types of surgery, and two emergency theatres. The women’s centre and children’s hospital occupy the sixth, seventh and eighth floors of the hospital. The ninth floor is dedicated to the renal and urology departments. The upper storeys of the central and south towers contain inpatient therapies and wards, skirting the exterior of the building to secure natural light and views. The fifteenth floor and part of the fourteenth floor are currently unoccupied and unfinished, following a controversial agreement with the Department of Health to reduce costs. Plant rooms are installed at the peak of the building, along with facilities for the HEMS, including offices, an operations room, storage for equipment and training, and a water tank. The 28m2aluminium helipad, accessed via a sloping walkway, was produced by Bayards, a Dutch construction company.[^9]</p>\n\n<p>The functionalism of the interior spaces of the hospital has been relieved by the installation of artworks under the auspices of Vital Arts, a charitable organisation based at Barts Health NHS Trust. Artworks have been dispersed throughout the building, concentrated in foyers, corridors and public areas less affected by rigid controls on hygiene, which restricted decoration of the wards. The ground-floor foyer to the children’s hospital and women’s centre is adorned with LED signs and bright screen printed tiles with patterns inspired by Islamic art, designed by Morag Myerscough. The children’s wards were fitted with colourful over-bed trays, bedside cabinets, and bed curtains with an inward-facing design, each printed with whimsical views of London created by the artist Ella Doran. In another collaboration with Myerscough, the architects Cottrell & Vermeulen were commissioned to create a playspace and a garden for the seventh-floor children’s wards, both completed in 2013. A double-height atrium was redesigned as an ‘oversized living room’, with giant prefabricated installations including a chair, a television and a lamp introducing focal points for children’s activities and games. The terrace between the north tower and the central tower was converted into a roof garden designed to evoke an ‘enchanted forest’ with a shingle-clad den, a tepee and a pergola, enclosed by wicker fencing to mask the ubiquitous blue glazing. Elsewhere there are signs of continuity and tradition, such as the entrances to the south block referred to as Cavell and Lückes. The south concourse on the ground floor of the central block contains the London Hospital Bell, donated by Thomas Lester of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry to mark the opening of the institution’s first purpose-built hospital in Whitechapel Road in 1757.[^10]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>Building Design</em>, 13 August 2004: St Bartholomew’s Hospital Archives & Museum, SBHSHA/7/1a. </p>\n\n<p>[^2]: ‘Building Renewal: Healthcare’ supplement, <em>Building</em>, Vol. 260, No. 7881, 24 February 1995, pp. 4–29. </p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Building</em>, 17 May 1996, p. 7: <em>Hospital Development</em>, Vol. 35, No. 8, September 2004, pp. 6. </p>\n\n<p>[^4]: <em>Building Design</em>, 7 November 2003, p. 2; <em>Building Design</em>, June 2003, p. 2: <em>AJ</em>, Vol. 203, No. 13, 4 April 1996, p. 7:<em>BMJ</em>, 14 February 1998; <em>BMJ</em>, 4 July 2017: Bernard Tomlinson, <em>Report of the Inquiry into London’s health service, medical education and research </em>(London, 1992): <em>Construction News</em>, 17 October 1996. </p>\n\n<p>[^5]: <em>AJ</em>, Vol. 220, No. 17, 4 November 2004, p. 5: <em>Building Design</em>, 6 August 2004, pp. 1, 9; 13 August 2004, pp. 8–9; 27 August 2004, p. 1; 12 November 2004, p. 4; 19 November 2004, p. 3: <em>Hospital Development</em>, Vol. 35, No. 8, September 2004, p. 6. </p>\n\n<p>[^6]: RLHA, RLHLH/S/1/3; RLHLH/A/5/15, pp. 318–21: <a href=\"https://www.bartshealth.nhs.uk/the-royal-london-our-history\">https://www.bartshealth.nhs.uk/the-royal-london-our-history</a>. </p>\n\n<p>[^7]: Care Quality Commission (CQC), ‘Barts Health NHS Trust Inspection Report’, 12 February 2019 (online: https://www.cqc.org.uk/location/R1H12/reports). </p>\n\n<p>[^8]: CQC inspection, 12 February 2019. </p>\n\n<p>[^9]: CQC inspection, 15 December 2016 (online: <a href=\"https://www.cqc.org.uk/location/R1H12/reports\">https://www.cqc.org.uk/location/R1H12/reports</a>): <em>Guardian</em>, 8 March 2006 (online: <a href=\"https://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/mar/08/health.politics\">https://www.theguardian.com/society/2006/mar/08/health.politics</a>):<em>Telegraph</em>, 5 March 2006 (online: <a href=\"https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1512102/Hospital-to-mothball-250-beds.html\">https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1512102/Hospital-to-mothball-250-beds.html</a>); 18 July 2015 (online: <a href=\"https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/11748960/The-PFI-hospitals-costing-NHS-2bn-every-year.html\">https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/nhs/11748960/The-PFI-hospitals-costing-NHS-2bn-every-year.html</a>): Bayards (online: <a href=\"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nITPonlhiwc\">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nITPonlhiwc</a>;<a href=\"https://www.bayards.com/en/about-us\">https://www.bayards.com/en/about-us</a>). </p>\n\n<p>[^10]: <em>Icon</em>, No. 119, May 2013, pp. 59–60: <em>Building Design</em>, No. 2050, 1 March 2013, p. 2: http://www.vitalarts.org.uk. </p>\n",
"created": "2019-04-29",
"last_edited": "2021-02-23"
},
{
"id": 839,
"title": "Former Mercantile Marine Office, 18 Ensign Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1370,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.067783647338447,
51.51017527172947
],
[
-0.067575803709333,
51.51021492278667
],
[
-0.067558594183028,
51.510218286467044
],
[
-0.067466520880171,
51.51002935056337
],
[
-0.06767269738543,
51.509992670709266
],
[
-0.067723633842387,
51.510108640950456
],
[
-0.067752148490552,
51.510104986424565
],
[
-0.067783647338447,
51.51017527172947
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "18",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Ensign Street",
"address": "18 Ensign Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 8,
"search_str": "18 Ensign Street"
},
"tags": [
"Board of Trade",
"John Hudson",
"merchant navy",
"Walter Gladding"
]
},
"body": "<p>The Mercantile Marine Act of 1850 introduced regulations to improve conditions and discipline in the merchant navy, formalising some of the anti-crimping arrangements introduced by the Sailors’ Home. Mercantile marine offices were set up in ports and run by the Board of Trade to register the engagement and discharge of crews and for the examination of masters and mates. One such office was immediately established in the Well Street Home, moving to the ground floor of the new Dock Street building in 1865. This became controversial in 1868 when an adjacent clothing store was established, to protect sailors from ‘slop’ transactions. Independent clothiers felt undermined by the seemingly official nature of this competition. Clothing sales in the Home were thus moved to a back yard in 1871 and the Mercantile Marine Office moved out in 1872 to be amalgamated with another office that had been near America Circus in a new building at St Katharine’s Docks.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Facing lease renewal and dis-satisfied with the premises in the docks, the Board of Trade approached the Sailors’ Home in 1892 about a return of a Mercantile Marine Office. A 50-year lease of the south wing of the 1830s building and the Home’s stable yard further south was agreed, the Home undertaking to redevelop. The Home’s architect, John Hudson, now working as a partner in Wigg, Oliver and Hudson, prepared plans for premises to accommodate the engaging and discharging of crews and the examinations of masters and mates that were overseen by the Local Marine Board, which was also to be given a meeting room. Walter G. Gladding was the builder for the suitably mercantile classical three-storey and basement building that went up in 1893–4. Its ground-floor front is distinguished by polished granite, for Doric pilasters supporting a continuous fascia and flanking four entrances to separate the distinct uses. The red-brick faced upper storeys have stone cornices and cement-rendered Ionic pilasters and half columns with first-floor Serliana in an elevation the asymmetry of which is somewhat disguised by the busy-ness of its embellishment. The basement was a waiting room for the seamen, and the ground-floor spaces were used for their engagement and discharge. The first floor housed the Local Marine Board’s and other offices, the second floor the examination room, and space above was used to store deceased seamen’s effects. There was a hydraulic lift. White-glazed brick to the rear, butting up to St Paul’s Church, was used at the insistence of the Rev. Dan Greatorex.[^2] An ARP shelter was formed in the basement in 1939.[^3] </p>\n\n<p>Joseph Havelock Wilson, founder of the National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union (renamed the National Union of Seamen in 1926) had set up an office in Wellclose Square before 1900. This moved to the east side of Ensign Street directly opposite the Mercantile Marine Offices in the 1930s, spreading from No. 15 to Nos 11–17, all cleared in the 1960s. The Department of Trade and Industry was still using No. 18 for signing–on crew and other purposes into the 1980s. Conversions for studios, flats and offices followed from 1985 to 1998. Open City, organizers of the Open House London annual festival of architecture, was based in the building from 2013 to 2020.[^4] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: The National Archives (TNA), MT9/63/M1082/1872; MT9/91/M10699/74: Post Office Directories (POD)</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: TNA, MT9/508/M3895/94: National Maritime Museum (NMM), SAH/1/7, pp. 475–500; SAH/1/8, pp. 3–66 </p>\n\n<p>[^3]: NMM, SAH/3/2, p. 251</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: POD: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n",
"created": "2019-03-01",
"last_edited": "2021-03-10"
},
{
"id": 102,
"title": "Listed building description of 88 Whitechapel High Street",
"author": {
"id": 25,
"username": "Aileen"
},
"feature": {
"id": 320,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.070675600100611,
51.515794184070096
],
[
-0.070769995134563,
51.515756153916136
],
[
-0.070851493267144,
51.51583890762329
],
[
-0.070808897803058,
51.51585538579538
],
[
-0.07083471028347,
51.5158819522166
],
[
-0.070898937798067,
51.5159677448042
],
[
-0.070852952784197,
51.51598194280654
],
[
-0.070675600100611,
51.515794184070096
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "88",
"b_name": "88 Whitechapel High Street",
"street": "Whitechapel High Street",
"address": "88 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 5,
"search_str": "88 Whitechapel High Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>788/0/10224 WHITECHAPEL HIGH STREET 16-MAY-07 88</p>\n\n<p>II Shop of 1950s, with two signs of 1934-5 by Arthur Szyk, in early C19 building.</p>\n\n<p>The special interest of 88 Whitechapel High Street is limited to the two Arthur Szyk signs, one on the exterior and the other above the first floor lift shaft.</p>\n\n<p>SIGNS: The external decorative sign is situated over the entrance of the shop and is a metal relief, painted gold and fixed to the wall.</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2016/08/05/sol-whitechapel100371.jpg\">Shopfront of 88 Whitechapel High Street showing decorative sign by Arthur Szyk, 1934-5, and entryway to Gunthorpe Street. Photographed by Derek Kendall, February 2016</p>\n\n<p>The design is a Magen David, or Star of David, supported by two lions of Judah rampant and wielding sabres. Beneath is a pair of medallions, decorated with Menorot or seven-branched candelabra. The clawed feet of the lions rest on a thin turned base which is fixed to the wall.</p>\n\n<p>The most striking interior feature is a second sign, similar to that on the shop front, above the lift entrance on the first floor, depicting traditional Jewish symbolism often found on Torah Arks. The relief is painted in thick white paint. The design is two Lions of Judah holding the Luhot (the Tablets of the Law) inscribed with the first Hebrew letters of each of the Ten Commandments, topped by a Crown (the Keter Torah or Crown of the Law). At the base is a Magen David, with a heart at its centre. The clawed feet of the lions rest on a frieze of volutes and swirls. Originally, there were signs on each floor, and all but this one were destroyed in a fire in the second half of the C20.</p>\n\n<p>EXTERIOR: 88 Whitechapel High Street is a typical stock brick building of the C19, stuccoed to the front, which is not of special architectural interest. It is of four storeys and three window bays, and the roof is concealed behind a parapet. The shop front, which is of some interest, is faced in polished granite and the door and the window surrounds are brass. There are two display windows, one to Whitechapel High Street, the second on the return to the alley. Each has a single, wide aperture between a fascia and stall riser, both of veined marble. Above the marble fascia is an eight-light aperture with brass surrounds in an Egyptian-inspired shape with battered sides. This mirrors the profile of the opening to the alley, creating the impression of symmetry. Viewing the elevation as a symmetrical composition draws out the prominence of the sign, situated in the centre of the two openings to the window and the alley. There is white mosaic above the granite facing.</p>\n\n<p>INTERIOR: Inside, the shop retains a number of features from its C20 refurbishment which are of some interest. These include dark wood panelling, largely concealed behind the modern free standing shelves, a staircase leading to the basement with a plain square newel post and a prominent dentil cornice. The interior of the rest of the building, excepting the second sign, is not of special interest.</p>\n\n<p>HISTORY: 88 Whitechapel High Street dates from the early C19, though the shop front, windows and sections of the interior have been refurbished on two occasions in the mid C20. The first was by H P Sanders in 1934-5 for the Jewish Daily Post, a short-lived successor to the Jewish Express, as recorded in the Drainage Files at Tower Hamlets Local Studies Library. This involved the refurbishment of the upper storey offices and the erection of several signs, depicting Jewish emblems, two of which survive (one externally and one internally). Having been established in 1926, the Jewish Daily Post ceased circulation in August 1935 shortly after the refurbishment. The second reconfiguration dates from the 1950s when the ground floor shop was refurbished for Alberts Menswear who moved there in 1942, after their premises nearby was damaged in an air raid. In recognition of the building's continuing Jewish connections (Alberts were part of the Jewish rag trade), this refurbishment incorporated the older sign into the design of the shop front. The shop front design is in the fashion of the 1930s, as seen in the Egyptian-inspired Art Deco lights and the use of red neon, which continued in many commercial premises after the war.</p>\n\n<p>The signs at 88 Whitechapel High Street were designed by Arthur Szyk (1894-1951), a noted artist of Polish-Jewish origin. Szyk's authorship was ascertained by his biographer, Joseph Ansell, and further enquiries have revealed that Szyk's daughter remembers the artist working on the commission which she recalls was instigated by a Mr Solomon. Leaving London in 1940, Szyk became one of America's leading political artists by producing anti-Nazi cartoons during World War II. He was also a celebrated illustrator who created many works in the tradition of illuminated manuscripts. One such work was his Haggadah (the Passover story) published in London in 1940, after publishers in Poland and Czechoslovakia were reluctant to support the anti-Nazi work. For this reason, Szyk was in London sporadically from the early 1930s until 1940 when he toured Canada and the United States and eventually settled in the US after WWII. Szyk's work has recently been the subject of exhibitions at the Library of Congress and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, both in Washington DC. The signs are related to Szyk's other work, for example the design of the internal sign is also used in the title page for the Haggadah which Szyk created shortly after Germany annexed Austria in 1938, although it did not appear in the final version. This is, however, the only composition by him executed in sculptural form.</p>\n\n<p>The area around Whitechapel was the home of the majority of Jewish émigrés in the C19 and early C20 following the Pogroms of the 1880s in Eastern Europe, and is an area of great significance to the history of the Jewish people in Britain nationally as well as locally. Near to 88 Whitechapel High Street, the synagogue at 19 Princelet Street, the Jewish soup kitchen on Brune Street and the Jewish memorial to Edward VII on Whitechapel High Street (all Grade II) are testimony to the distinctively Jewish character of the area in the late C19 and early C20.The 1930s were a particularly significant decade in the area as evidenced by the anti-fascist demonstrations at Cable Street in 1936, which initially took place at Aldgate just metres from 88 Whitechapel High Street.</p>\n\n<p>SUMMARY OF IMPORTANCE: The two Szyk signs are of considerable special interest. Firstly, the elegant designs are unique and by an artist who is of considerable importance in the Jewish history of the C20. Szyk is not known to have designed any other relief panels and this is his only work in any medium in the UK. Secondly, the signs at 88 Whitechapel High Street are thought to be one example of a very small number of historic Jewish commercial signs in the country. The signs at 88 Whitechapel High Street use recognisable and distinctive Jewish emblems or language to announce the identity of the proprietors and are a prominent advertisement of ethnicity, suggestive of the proprietors' confidence that the design would be well-received in what was a distinctively Jewish area. This is of special historic interest in the context of the 1930s, when persecution of Jews increased in Europe and tensions in the East End of London resulted in clashes. The early C19 building at 88 Whitechapel High Street is by no means special in a national context, and the shop front, while interesting, is not remarkable.</p>\n\n<p>SOURCES: Joseph Ansell, Arthur Szyk: Artist, Jew, Pole (2004), 88. Post Office Directories, 1933-1945. Information from Kathryn Morrison, Sharman Kadish and Charles O' Brien. N. Pevsner, B. Cherry and C. O'Brien, Buildings of England: London East (2005). K. Morrison, English Shops and Shopping (2003) 60-61, 207. S. Kadish, Jewish Heritage in England (2006), 16-17.</p>\n\n<p>Selected Sources</p>\n\n<p>Books and journals</p>\n\n<p>Ansell, J, Arthur Szyk Artist Jew Pole, (2004), 88</p>\n\n<p>Kadish, S, Jewish Heritage in England, an Architectural Guide, (2006), 16-17</p>\n\n<p>Morrison, K, English Shops and Shopping An Architectural History, (2003), 207</p>\n\n<p>Pevsner, N, Cherry, B, O'Brien, C, The Buildings of England: London 5 East , (2005)</p>\n\n<p>National Grid Reference: TQ 33959 81431</p>\n",
"created": "2016-08-05",
"last_edited": "2020-08-18"
},
{
"id": 16,
"title": "Altab Ali Park",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 296,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.069238538289603,
51.51610506120929
],
[
-0.069007097235987,
51.5162239535272
],
[
-0.068282200256798,
51.51654369745104
],
[
-0.068157401560378,
51.51641994527148
],
[
-0.067807959279103,
51.51600137496063
],
[
-0.068541180339468,
51.515783257348254
],
[
-0.068555919008956,
51.51580580160597
],
[
-0.068713893455475,
51.515872451567986
],
[
-0.068778503699218,
51.51586114158782
],
[
-0.068817146392177,
51.515922550138725
],
[
-0.068888047037903,
51.51596428315636
],
[
-0.069016085124709,
51.515921053627785
],
[
-0.069107698271647,
51.51601562404751
],
[
-0.069243279190738,
51.515974904669626
],
[
-0.069238538289603,
51.51610506120929
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "Altab Ali Park, including the site of the parish church of St Mary Matfelon",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Altab Ali Park",
"feature_type": "OPEN_SPACE",
"count": 32,
"search_str": "Altab Ali Park, including the site of the parish church of St Mary Matfelon"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>On 4 May 1978 Altab Ali, a 25-year old clothing machinist of Bangladeshi origin, was murdered in Adler Street, Whitechapel, beside the park that was then called St Mary’s Gardens, a name that recalled the Church of St Mary Matfelon (the medieval ‘white chapel’) which had stood on the site until 1952.</p>\n\n<p>This attack galvanized resistance to racism in the area and beyond. A decade on, Tower Hamlets Council commissioned David Petersen, an artist–blacksmith, to make the park’s wrought-iron gateway arch to commemorate victims of racist violence. Put up in 1989 at the park’s Whitechurch Lane corner, it playfully combines Mughal and Gothic ornamental motifs. Following a local campaign, the Council renamed the gardens Altab Ali Park in 1994. Five years later the south-west corner of the park gained a Shaheed Minar (Martyrs’ Monument), a semi-circular concrete plinth with five white steel screens, representing a mother and children, the former to the centre bow-headed in front of a blood-red circle. This is a smaller version of a Shaheed Minar in Dhaka, Bangladesh, designed by Hamidur Rahman, which commemorates activists of the Bengali language movement killed in 1952. Long desired and petitioned for, a Whitechapel monument began to be planned in earnest in 1996, though not at first with this site in mind. The Bangladesh Welfare Association marshalled contributions from 54 organisations and worked closely with the Council. Another copy of the Dhaka monument was made in Oldham in 1996–7. Its designers, the Free Form Arts Trust, were brought in and commissioned to make Whitechapel’s structure larger. Landscaping and the plinth were handled by the Council, and Arts Fabrications made the monument. It was unveiled on 17 February 1999 by Humayun Rashid Choudhury, Speaker of the Bangladeshi Parliament.</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2017/12/06/dp179974-cropped.jpg\"><em>Altab Ali Park in 2014 (photograph by Lucy Millsom-Watkins)</em></p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Since 2000</em></p>\n\n<p>Further landscaping followed in 2002 with a new diagonal path through the churchyard that bore an inscription of part of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, ‘The shade of my tree is offered to those who come and go fleetingly’. The lettering disappeared when another relandscaping of Altab Ali Park was undertaken in 2011. The layout that followed was designed by muf architecture/art as ‘a matrix of the religious and the secular’,[^1] and celebrated as ‘a grand collage’.[^2] It includes a raised green terrazzo walkway and bench that marks parts of the outline of the site’s Victorian church. Stone fragments carved by apprentices at the Building Crafts College were scattered to suggest the lines of the preceding church. Further south, hillocks, boulders and tree stumps articulate the land east of the Shaheed Minar and, with a small platform, open up a longer view of the monument.</p>\n\n<p>On 4 May 2016, Tower Hamlets Council launched Altab Ali Commemoration Day as an annual event.</p>\n\n<p><em>Earlier history as a churchyard</em></p>\n\n<p>Whitechapel’s first churchyard is said to have been extended westwards up to Church Lane at an early date and then to have been enlarged southwards in 1591 when the south aisle was built. Further southerly extension, even crossing the parish boundary to the south-east, to make the churchyard almost co-extensive with the present-day park was achieved in 1627 and 1665. By the 1650s, perhaps much earlier, the churchyard was walled round, but the southern extension was possibly not walled before the 1750s. Land immediately east of the church was given over by the 1650s to a large property set back from the road that was probably the rectory. It was certainly such when it was replaced in brick some time before 1682, most likely by the Rev. Ralph Davenant. This house was built up to the street in front of a private walled garden.[^3] The rectory was again rebuilt in the early 1760s for the Rev. Roger Mather, on a smaller footprint set back from the road, double-fronted with full-height canted bays.[^4] It took its final form in 1838 in another rebuilding, this time for the Rev. William Weldon Champneys and to plans by John Samuel Erlam of Pink and Erlam, architects. They produced a deeper double-pile building, again double-fronted with a thinly classical façade with outer pediments. Two of Champneys’ five sons born here went on to eminence, Basil Champneys (1842–1935) as an architect, and (Sir) Francis Henry Champneys (1848–1930), as an obstetrician. The vicarage was destroyed in 1940.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>Notable burials in the churchyard included those of Richard Brandon, 1649, said to have been the executioner of Charles I, Sir John Cass, 1718, and Richard Parker, the Nore mutineer, 1797.[^6] Levelling and landscaping of the churchyard in 1800–5 included a footway from the church’s west door to new gates at the Church Lane corner, south of which a small watch house was built. Iron railings on dwarf walls replaced earlier churchyard walls in the early 1820s and, to the east, in 1839. In the same years a fire-engine house was added to the south of the watch house and then enlarged to replace it. The vestry ceded control of the engine house and its two engines to the newly formed Metropolitan Fire Brigade in 1866. The Commercial Road Fire Station that opened in 1875 made the facility redundant.[^7] </p>\n\n<p>Despite the existence of another parochial burial ground to the east on the north side of Whitechapel Road since 1615, the churchyard was badly overcrowded in 1839. The surgeon George Alfred Walker found it ‘extremely disgusting … so densely crowded as to present one entire mass of human bones and putrefaction.’[^8] In 1846 appearances were said to be ‘very far from creditable to the parish’.[^9] Burials ceased in 1854. A record from 1875 lists eighty-seven gravestones and monumental slabs in the churchyard.[^10] These have since been largely removed or tidied to the site’s edges, with the notable exception of a chest tomb for the Maddock family of timber merchants, a stout early nineteenth-century monument of Portland stone with a marble armorial panel, a pyramidal top and an urn finial. This remains <em>in situ</em> at what was the south-east part of the churchyard – land to its east was the rectory garden. Some other surviving gravestones were recorded in 2011. [<em>B</em>, 15 Aug 1846, p.388] With closure pending, the churchyard was planted with trees and shrubs in 1850–1 under the supervision of Samuel Curtis who had landscaped Victoria Park.[^11]</p>\n\n<p>The rebuilding of the church in the 1870s presented an opportunity to widen the adjacent stretch of Whitechapel Road, so in 1878 the still existing stone-coped red-brick boundary wall went up along a new setback line. It was designed by Ernest C. Lee and built by S. (Sydney) & E. Jacobs of Leman Street, using Allen’s Suffolk bricks identical to those used to face the church. It was originally topped by short piers, ornamental iron railings and two gabled aedicules, one of which housed a war memorial from 1917.[^12] Two former entrances from the Whitechapel Road are now blocked, the larger one still marked by remnants of stone steps.</p>\n\n<p>A drinking fountain had been put up in 1860 on the Whitechapel Road railing near the old church’s east end, ‘from one unknown yet well known’, as it is inscribed, perhaps a reference to Champneys given the date. With a gabled ragstone surround to a Norman arch with pink granite colonettes and back panel, the form of the inner parts closely imitated at a larger scale London’s first free drinking fountain, put up at Snow Hill in 1859. When the church was rebuilt the Whitechapel fountain was to have been rehoused in an apsidal recess, centred between seats in an equivalent position, but it was instead moved round to Church Lane in 1879, then, making way for the Clergy House in 1894, moved again a bit further north where it has stayed in front of a surviving section of the railings of the 1870s.[^13] A K2 telephone kiosk was placed to the fountain’s right around 1927 and a K6 kiosk followed in the 1930s. The former remains <em>in situ </em>and listed.[^14]</p>\n\n<p><em>St Mary’s Gardens</em></p>\n\n<p>When the churchyard wall was built in 1878 it was proposed that tombstones and human remains should be moved to free part of the grounds for an ‘ornamental garden’.[^15] The transformation of the churchyard into a recreation ground was set to be carried out by William Holmes, of Frampton Park Nurseries in Hackney, but the work was delayed by the fire in the church in 1880. The objective was achieved in 1885 when the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, with whom Holmes worked elsewhere, assisted in opening the churchyard as public gardens with an improved layout, seats, a caretaker, and an admission charge of a penny. Basil Holmes, the Association’s Secretary, and seemingly unrelated, made a survey of the graveyard in 1897. Public use was not sustained and in 1938 new proposals were made for improving the churchyard to be a public garden with ‘a few seats and shrubs to humanise this derelict spot’. These were blocked by the Rev. Mayo who was concerned that any such garden would ‘become the resort of undesirable characters’.[^16] </p>\n\n<p>War intervened. Once the ruined church had been cleared, and with the unfenced land indeed attracting uses that aroused criticism, the London County Council set out in 1957 to buy the churchyard to be a public open space, preparing a scheme for planting and landscaping. Legal delays as to title meant that it was 1964 before progress could be made. Parks Department works were carried out by Kinman Ltd, contractors, and St Mary’s Gardens opened in 1966. The upper parts of the boundary wall had been taken down, the Whitechapel Road entrances bricked up and railings put up along Adler Street. Around 75 to 100 gravestones, most already undecipherable, were set round the boundaries where others were already placed, and the footprint of the seventeenth-century church was set out in concrete blocks flush with the ground. First intentions had been to mark the medieval ‘white chapel’, but without funding for archaeology this was impossible. Complaints about vagrancy in 1968 led to the removal of shrubberies (‘a favourite haunt’), additional tarmac paving and replacement seating. The gardens were extended south to Mountford Street in 1969.[^17]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>Building Design</em>, 11 March 2011, p.4</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>London Evening Standard</em>, 16 Nov. 2011</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Richard Newcourt, <em>Repertorium Ecclesiasticum Parochiale Londinensis</em>, vol. 1, 1708, pp. 698–9: William Faithorne and Richard Newcourt, map of London 1658: William Morgan, <em>London etc Actually Surveyed</em>, 1682: John Strype, <em>A Survey of the Cities of London and Westminster</em>, vol. 2/4, 1720, p.46: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), P93/MRY/090; P93/MRY/091, pp.20,365–74; A/DAV/01/013/2 and 51; Q/HAL/308; GLC/AR/HB/02/375</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: LMA, Collage 22156: Richard Horwood, map of London 1792–9</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: LMA, DL/A/C/MS19224/441: <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) sub</em> Champneys</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>ODNB</em></p>\n\n<p>[^7]: LMA, P93/MRY1/090: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), L/SMW/A/1/1: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 6 Oct 1865, p.1110; 9 March 1866, p.302: Horwood</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: G. A. Walker, <em>The Grave Yards of London</em>, 1841, p.12</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: <em>Gentleman’s Magazine</em>, vol. 189, Dec. 1850, p.645</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: LMA, P93/MRY1/092</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: Historic England, Greater London Historic Environment Record, MLO3933: Post Office Directories</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: <em>The Builder</em>, 3 Aug. 1878, p. 812: British Pathé, <em>Whitechapel’s War Heroes</em>, 1917</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: THLHLA, LCF00550; P10077, P10099; L/THL/D/1/1/117</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: LMA, SC/PHL/02/1193</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: <em>The Builder</em>, 3 Aug. 1878, p.812</p>\n\n<p>[^16]: <em>Hackney and Kingsland Gazette</em>, 26 Sept. 1881, p.4: <em>East London Observer</em>, 22 Oct. and 10 Dec. 1938; 3 June 1939: LMA, CLC/011/MS11097/1–3; CLC/011/MS22290, No.133: Isabella (Mrs Basil) Holmes, <em>The London Burial Grounds</em>, 1896, p.296</p>\n\n<p>[^17]: LMA, GLC/AR/HB/02/375; SC/PHL/02/1193: THLHLA, L/THL/D/1/1/117; L/THL/G/1/10/7: <em>East London Advertiser</em>, 1 Oct. 1965</p>\n",
"created": null,
"last_edited": "2021-03-30"
},
{
"id": 624,
"title": "Former Royal Oak public house (with Wilcox’s New Music Hall and the Vine Court Synagogue)",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 873,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.063739503777729,
51.51804861845898
],
[
-0.063683451117025,
51.51797300209851
],
[
-0.0637089382797,
51.51796483346984
],
[
-0.063836182144524,
51.51792452272944
],
[
-0.063835842009052,
51.51792462190747
],
[
-0.063877274830691,
51.51791330545044
],
[
-0.063934479931202,
51.51800468952643
],
[
-0.063739503777729,
51.51804861845898
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "118-120",
"b_name": "Former Royal Oak public house",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Former Royal Oak public house, 118-120 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 9,
"search_str": "Former Royal Oak public house"
},
"tags": [
"Royal Oak"
]
},
"body": "<p>A public house on the east side of Vine Court’s entrance may have been the Morocco Slaves in the early eighteenth century. It became the Royal Oak, possibly in the 1750s when an establishment of that name might have been obliged to abandon a more easterly location near Whitechapel Mount for the formation of New Road. The Royal Oak was run by the Cragg family in the first half of the nineteenth century, James Cragg, William Cragg and then from the 1830s Richard Riley Cragg, who sought a music licence in 1849.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Zebedee Wilcox, a ginger-beer maker with a shop on the site of 124 Whitechapel Road, took the licence in 1868 and converted an upstairs room to use as a music hall. This was a success so he took what had been a skittle ground and a yard to the rear beside Vine Court and in 1869–71 designed and built under his own supervision what he called Wilcox’s New Music Hall, a room about 31ft wide by 55ft deep with space for up to 700 people. There was a platform stage at the far or south end with balconies on the other three sides under an enriched plaster ceiling and a hipped roof. This originally bore a large lantern ventilator, removed in 1943. Opened in December 1871, this claimed to be ‘the most comfortable and the finest sounding hall in London’.[^2] The ‘lofty, handsome building’ had a grand chandelier and decorations by Francis Johnson, a local (Charlotte Street) paperhanger. Buvelot Rattigan officiated, and the Manager was Pat Corri. The place was a success, but Wilcox, perhaps in poor health (he died in December 1873), soon sold up. In July 1872 the music hall closed, ostensibly to permit the building of a ‘handsome frontage’ and completion of the decoration of the hall’s interior.[^3] If not already at that point, by November the proprietor was George Robinson, who since 1868 had been running Wilton’s Music Hall, latterly in competition with Wilcox. Robinson pulled down the old pub and had it ostentatiously rebuilt in 1873. An intended conversion of the music hall to tavern use was abandoned.</p>\n\n<p>The Royal Oak is no longer in use as a pub, but it stands as a fine example of blowsy Victorian pub architecture, and was listed in 1973. Was Robinson, like Wilcox, his own architect? The wide five-bay three-storey front is of red brick, but so lavishly embellished with stucco architraves and pilasters that this is easily overlooked. There are lacy upper-storey iron balconettes on elaborate corbels, and a half-round attic window beneath a pediment is flanked by half-figure caryatids. The west bay stands over a full-width carriage entrance to Vine Court with brick jack-arching. Two slender ornamental cast-iron colonnettes survive in ground-floor interiors.</p>\n\n<p>Though Robinson's motive in closing Wilcox’s might have been to protect Wilton’s, he left Grace's Alley in April 1873 to base himself at the Royal Oak. But he sold up in 1874 with a defensive advertisement, his ‘colossal building’ having been received with scepticism. Numerous short-lived proprietors followed. Music-hall use appears not to have returned. Up to 1887 the hall was used by the Netherlands Choral Society, a club for Jews of Dutch origin. What were called ‘music rooms’ were deemed unfit to be licensed for that purpose in 1888. Nevertheless, Samuel David Isaacs, proprietor of the pub, carried out alterations in 1890 to adapt what was still called a music hall for Yiddish theatre. Led by Eliyohu Zalman Yarikhovski, who had translated Verdi’s 'La Traviata' into Yiddish, the Oriental Working Men’s Club staged shows here until January 1892 when, unlicenced, it was shut down and Yarikhovski, his brother Benjamin, and others were prosecuted.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>There followed another conversion of the music hall, this time for synagogue use. The <em>Kovno Chevra</em>, founded in 1874 by Lithuanian immigrants, were looking for new premises since the room above stables in Middlesex Street that they were using had been condemned. They found new accommodation here in what became Vine Court Synagogue through an agreement of June 1892 with the brewers Hoare & Co. that excluded use of the cellars. Its committee of management, and the lessees when the synagogue opened in September 1892, were: Benjamin Ritter, a picture-frame maker of 17 Balls Pond Road, Dalston; Wolf Goldstein, a chandler of 12 Chicksand Street; Mark Sallant, a cigarette maker of 70 Brunswick Buildings, Goulston Street; Morris Harris, a tailor of 9 Spelman Street; and Lewis Lewis, a general dealer of 37 Fashion Street. Lewis Solomon, the Federation of Synagogue’s architect, had overseen minor alterations to the already suitably galleried room by June 1894, the works paid for through a mortgage to the Federation and carried out by John Gilbey, a Whitechapel Road builder. Solomon also saw to repairs after a ceiling collapse in 1909 that obliged re-consecration, and further works were carried out in 1924 by Lewis Cohen of Mile End Road. An entrance at the north end of the west elevation gave direct access to the gallery, which had an iron <em>mehitzah</em> over panelled fronts. The Ark on the south wall, flanked by British Royal family prayer boards and under a pair of round-headed windows, was decorated with crowned <em>Luhot </em>(Tablets of the Law) with framing griffins. By Whitechapel’s standards this was a large synagogue and its congregation grew through amalgamations, for example with the apparently Zionist-leaning Jerusalem Hevrah; Whitechapel Road Synagogue merged in 1932, bringing around 200 members to a congregation that regularly comprised around 400 people, further enlarged by transfers from Greenfield Road Synagogue in 1946. Another reopening took place in 1947, after repair and improvements following bomb damage. Thriving into the 1960s, but no longer ‘thronged week by week’, Vine Court Synagogue closed in 1965.[^5]</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/04/23/vinectsynagogue.JPG\"><em>The former Wilcox's New Music Hall and Vine Court Synagogue from the south-west in 2003</em></p>\n\n<p>The Royal Oak became Roosters around 1980, then closed in the 1990s. There are now flats above a restaurant (the Alhambra) and a shop (Salma Designer Abaya House) which also occupies the lower part of the former music-hall–synagogue as 17 Vine Court. Light-industrial (rag-trade) use had been introduced there by the 1970s. Around 2005 the hall was all but wholly rebuilt as a taller three-storey and attic block for twelve flats; one earlier round-headed window survives at the north end of the Vine Court elevation.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Land Tax returns; Tower Hamlets Ccommissioners of Sewers ratebooks; MR/LV/06/049; MR/LV/07/049; MR/L/MD/0315</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>East London Observer</em>, 27 Jan 1872, p. 4: <em>The Era</em>, 11 April 1869, p. 7; 7 Jan. 1872, p. 13</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>London and Provincial Entr’acte</em>, 6 July 1872, p. 3: <em>The Era</em>, 16 June 1872, p. 7: Post Office Directories (POD)</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: LMA, MR/L/MD/1781; ACC/2893/192; ACC/2893/333/001; District Surveyors Returns (DSR): Metropolitan Board of Works Minutess, 29 Nov 1872, p. 634 and 31 Jan 1873, p. 148: <em>The Era</em>, 7 June 1874, p. 2; 16 Jan 1892, p.8; 26 March 1892, p.16: <em>The Builder</em>, 29 March 1890, p. 239: POD: <a href=\"https://www.wiltons.org.uk/heritage/history\">https://www.wiltons.org.uk/heritage/history</a>: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, 9 Sept. 1892, p. 6: David Mazower, ‘Whitechapel’s Yiddish Opera House: The Rise and Fall of the Feinman Yiddish People’s Theatre’, in (eds) Colin Holmes and Anne J. Kershen, <em>An East End Legacy: Essays in Memory of William J. Fishman</em>, 2017, pp.159–60</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, 9 Sept. 1892, p. 6; 11 June 1965, p. 6: LMA, DSR; ACC/2893/190–4; ACC/2893/333/001–4: Gina Glasman, <em>East End Synagogues</em>, 1987, p. 18: Sharman Kadish, <em>The Synagogues of Britain and Ireland</em>, 2011, p. 135: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: POD: Tower Hamlets planning applications online </p>\n",
"created": "2018-04-23",
"last_edited": "2020-11-03"
},
{
"id": 95,
"title": "The Ladies Swimming Bath and Recreation Hall, c.1893 to 1938",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1447,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.073620345272929,
51.51568885255038
],
[
-0.073978291920849,
51.515581075868006
],
[
-0.074105154053684,
51.51572542989613
],
[
-0.073829058934223,
51.51581988475423
],
[
-0.073816416255057,
51.51580549883457
],
[
-0.073765536685163,
51.515822645959325
],
[
-0.073818338832879,
51.51587274604106
],
[
-0.073896057393162,
51.515850404112115
],
[
-0.073900642179228,
51.51585546922409
],
[
-0.073811510459007,
51.51588294615875
],
[
-0.073751379811388,
51.51582774828753
],
[
-0.073609777363084,
51.515693181519985
],
[
-0.073620345272929,
51.51568885255038
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "25",
"b_name": "The Wash Houses, London Metropolitan University, former Whitechapel Baths",
"street": "Old Castle Street",
"address": "The Wash Houses, London Metropolitan Univeristy, 25 Old Castle Street, London E1 7NT",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 19,
"search_str": "The Wash Houses, London Metropolitan University, former Whitechapel Baths"
},
"tags": [
"cholera",
"library",
"swimming",
"washing",
"women"
]
},
"body": "<p> </p>\n\n<p>For several years women and schoolgirls were only given access to the swimming baths on Wednesdays, so that they might ‘acquire the art of swimming’. However the increasing demand for a ladies swimming bath prompted a new scheme to be commissioned. Architect Bruce J. Capell of 70 Whitechapel Road was appointed to this end in 1893 and £13, 000 was borrowed to fund the building work. Robert Booth acted as engineer and William Goodman was the building contractor. [^11]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>The ladies swimming bath was officially opened in spring 1897 although a plaque claimed July 1st 1896. Neither date represented a full opening however, for work was completed only in January 1902. A new floor to cover the first-class swimming baths was finished in 1904 allowing for the Baths to be granted an entertainment license for music and dancing. In 1910 a cinematography box was inserted at the gallery level of the second-class baths allowing for projections into the first-class swimming baths. The floored over hall could seat 1,000 people according to a schedule of 1921. [^12] Up until the outbreak of the Second World War, this hall was well used by different community groups and businesses, accommodating plays, concerts, film nights, bazaars, lads brigades, boxing, political rallies and the Jewish Sabbath meetings of the Zionist Society. [^13]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>Capell’s design further extended the Goulston Street entrance frontage, this time to run almost in line with the new swimming baths before receding back on a sharp diagonal to meet the existing party wall to the south. The ladies swimming bath was created within the area formerly occupied by the men’s second-class slipper baths and was lit by two large skylights. The female first- and second-class slipper baths remained largely in place on the ground floor. The men’s slipper baths were instead moved to a new first-floor area situated above the new entrance. The additional floor also allowed for more generous living quarters for the superintendent, whose sitting room was endowed with a projecting bay window in red brick. The first-class baths and the new ladies’ baths were lined with polished marble; the floors and dressing compartments in an artificial ‘Victoria’ stone. [^14]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>One local speaking of his experiences in the 1920s noted that, ‘the baths were like a community centre for Jews, especially elderly Jews’ in their preparation for the Sabbath. Local schoolchildren, Jewish and non-Jewish, were also long-standing beneficiaries of the Baths, often receiving free use of the pools, entering on markedly reduced ticket rates as well as enjoying frequent swimming galas. The swimming baths were also used by the city’s plentiful swimming clubs for adults. In September 1890 for example the first-class pool hosted the galas of the Jewish Working Men’s, City Police, Falcon Club and African Swimming Clubs. [^15]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>A drawing of 1938 by the Borough Engineer and Surveyor shows the washing places within the wash house removed, replaced by additional women’s slipper baths after resisting any material alteration for almost a century. Next to these, a new ‘establishment laundry’ is depicted, purposed to wash and dry the hired towels and drawers. All entrances to Old Castle Street are closed off. Evidence of the implementation for this plan is lacking; it was probably interrupted by the outbreak of the Second World War. However the existence of such a proposal indicates the declining usefulness of the old ‘wash house’.</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: THLHLA, L/SMW/D1/1, p.154-5, p.373; LCC Mins, 27 June 1893, p.669; 26 Jan 1897; 12 Oct 1897, p.1121; 9 Nov 1897, p.1185</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: THLHLA, L/SMW/D1/2, p.134; LMA, GLC/AR/BR/07/0377, 28 Jan 1902; 25 Nov 1904; 1 Dec 1910; 4 Jan 1911; 26 May 1911; 16 May 1911; 19 Dec 1911; Schedule of 1921; THLHLA, L/SMW/D1/2, p.229</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: For example, see applications: THLHLA, L/SMW/D1/2, p.183, p.233, p.235; LMA, GLC/AR/BR/07/0377, 15 July 1940; THLHLA, L/SMW/D1/2, p.242</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: THLHLA, L/SMW/D1/1, p.353</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, 3 Aug 1990; LMA, GLC/AR/BR/07/0377, 12 April 1938; THLHLA, L/SMW/D1/1, p.116</p>\n",
"created": "2016-07-27",
"last_edited": "2021-02-10"
},
{
"id": 632,
"title": "Redeveloping the public lavatories on Whitechapel Road",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1698,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.062755898137067,
51.51857235799611
],
[
-0.058216859270041,
51.51960039921044
],
[
-0.058148482851386,
51.51948612756745
],
[
-0.061091729886378,
51.51883423152082
],
[
-0.061616259170046,
51.51871888429734
],
[
-0.06270768344222,
51.51847582817058
],
[
-0.062755898137067,
51.51857235799611
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Whitechapel Market, Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "PLACE",
"count": 48,
"search_str": "Whitechapel Market, Whitechapel Road"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Harun Quadi settled in the East End in the early 1980, having originated in Comilla, Bangladesh. He describes how he acquired and developed the former below-ground public lavatories at 199A Whitechapel Road, and his plans for their redevelopment.</p>\n\n<p>\"I came in this country in 1973 [from Chittagong], I was a junior engineer for United Steamship Company, and that company sent me for further education in South Shields and in London.</p>\n\n<p>My home country is Comilla but I studied at Chittagong. I studied at Marine Academy in Chittagong, from there I finished my basic marine training then I was employed by Cunard Steamship Company in London.</p>\n\n<p>I finished my training as marine engineer. Two years training in Marine Academy Chittagong, and after the training then I had the apprenticeship for two years in a workshop, marine workshop. Then I was employed as a junior engineer in Cunard Steamship Company, London. Then Cunard Steamship Company, I worked four years with that company they sent me for a higher education as a marine engineer. I did my Marine engineer class one-two-three-four and chief engineer, in South Shields and in London. 1978 to '84 I completed my education.</p>\n\n<p>I lived in North London first, I was there for two years and after that I bought a house in auction in 23 Casson Street, London, E1 [in 1982]. That was a derelict house, I bought that house because I thought I'm an engineer, I could repair the house and make it for my own living and business.</p>\n\n<p>I bought it for £55,400 and it is a five storied building, it was derelict and about ten rooms was there, only one toilet at that time. It was cold and it was just only birds living there. As an engineer I got confidence and I employed one or two builders and I worked with them as well, I made that whole house habitable. That was my first venture, that was ten rooms and five floors. I lived in one of the floors and rented out all the four flats, four rooms for flats. They're not self-contained flats but it was like flats.</p>\n\n<p>I've owned [Bengal Cuisine] for the last 25 years, and then I bought two [derelict] properties in 1993 [one on Whitechapel Road and one on Commercial Street] which were [both former public] toilets.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Finding a business opportunity </strong></p>\n\n<p>In 1993, I was looking for some kind of development project and I thought that I could develop better than anybody else because of my engineering experience. Then I saw these two toilets were misused, they are full of rubbish, they are misused and say, it was in the market but nobody thought the idea of what it can be.</p>\n\n<p>Most of the people thought it could be storage, it could be toilet again but I got the information from the council, at the same time I studied it, I thought it could be business premises.</p>\n\n<p>[I didn’t know] what business but I [realised that] these two premises are in a very important location, I could [develop] them into some businesses then definitely the price will be improved, the property will be improved.</p>\n\n<p>199A [Whitechapel Road] at that time, it was only a toilet, there was no address on it. We applied for the address, we got the address which is 199A Whitechapel Road.</p>\n\n<p>I bought it for £15,500. There was many other people thinking of buying it, but the point is that they thought only to make it as a storage and they would not go more than more than the tag price but I thought that if the price went up enough, I would have gone more.</p>\n\n<p>Above-ground there was only railings there, [and] two entrances, one in each end.[It] was not being used at the time. Probably, at 1993 it [had been] unused for ten years probably, and it was a congregation place for drunk and addicts there. The whole place was full of rubbish, like cans and garbages, market garbages, and drunk population used to be there.</p>\n\n<p>People were very frightened of going there to do something. Even after I got the planning permission, I started doing cleaning it, cleaning it up and they were getting together the drunk people there, saying that, \"You cannot do anything here, this is our place and we are claiming it and we'll stay here and we'll not go anywhere\", but I just took things easily and slow and steady. I convince them that they have to move.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Developing the site</strong></p>\n\n<p>I cleared it up and after that I applied for the planning permission. The planning permission to [convert it to] a business premises [not to build] was not easy. [Then], we got into [an] idea that we could make one story building on the ground floor. I applied for TFL permission, then we got a planning permission also. It could be 1997-8. Until that time, it was empty.</p>\n\n<p>[The architects were] Clements & Porter [who were], at that time, very young, enthusiastic architects in this area. They were looking for a job and they said that, \"This is wonderful project, I'll take it.\" I felt good that they're taking the venture with me.</p>\n\n<p>[A] One-story building was a challenge. We [had] to convince the local authorities, the councilors, the people. There was investigation [as to] whether it is feasible because it is middle of the pavement. It is not in easy place, middle of the pavement very unusual planning permission also.</p>\n\n<p>[The planners were] difficult to persuade. First, our next-door neighbour was saying, \"That is right in front of my shop then it is going to shade me\". Then I got all the information what is the regulation of the shading. We found out that we're 20 feet away, minimum 20 feet away from the other building. We have taken all the light readings also. Those readings, even I may call it tall building, it doesn't shade according to the planning regulation. At the same time to be more sympathetic towards our neighbour we made it glazing so that one side to another side it is transparent also. That problem we overcome by rules.</p>\n\n<p>We [gained] planning permission A3 for restaurant. Basement it was toilet, and that from the toilet we have clear it up, and then basement was part of the restaurant kitchen, and the ventilation part, down with the kitchen is elementary, so fan was there. [In] the basement, this little part my wife made it with a little [beauty] parlour there.</p>\n\n<p>Building was not very difficult. We had an Indian Sikh builder and our architect was Clements & Porter. She was good in supervision the building also reasonably good. It was blocks. Most of them are breeze blocks. I think breeze blocks looks very temporary. We cladded with tiles, black and white tiles. We put black and white tiles which was resembling to the next building to the building. I found out later that black and white tile was not a good idea, because black and white tile still [makes it look like a] toilet [while] we are going to make a restaurant, so people probably might mistake with the toilet.</p>\n\n<p>I think I completed the building work over 1998. Because restaurant business was reasonably good, but again, as a restaurant, we put a service restaurant. Service restaurant was not very good there, that was a market store, all around, so other peoples are there. That was not very suitable for a service and more expensive restaurant. It could've been very cheap and fast food restaurant could've done a lot of better.</p>\n\n<p>[The construction] cost about £200,000. We got a grant of £60,000. That's really boosted, helped to build the building.</p>\n\n<p><strong>The accident</strong></p>\n\n<p>[In] about 2002 or 3 [the restaurant] met an accident. At night some coach banged on it. The building was just partially damaged but council came down they said, \"No, it is not safe so we will take take it down\". I was not in the country, I was abroad and in the meantime this accident happened.</p>\n\n<p>It was a shock. I saw the pictures that were sent to me. I hurried to flied back to London. What to say? I couldn't do much. The council put barriers all around and after the council slowly cleared all the ground and barriers still remained, but then that barrier remained about four-five years. People started [chuckles] throwing rubbish inside the barrier because of the market. We had a hard time to clear all this rubbish almost every day.</p>\n\n<p><strong>New design ideas</strong></p>\n\n<p>Then my wife went to architect MacCormac. She got the planning permission, old planning permission back. They were reputed architect also. They made a very good restaurant design again there in 2004 or 5. After it was cleared. They got planning permission easily this time just because it was a restaurant before. Very similar type of building, but better design.</p>\n\n<p>Now, I forgot to say I [thought that I] could do something better. I don't want to just keep on running a restaurant. It's a beautiful site, good site. It could be beautiful for any other things. I want to make, basically, a good building. That building, it could be restaurant, it could be any other businesses, if some more enthusiastic or some more energetic company comes, a resourceful company comes, they can use it in a very much better way than me.</p>\n\n<p>I hired an architect, Neil Bell from Sweden. He designed us 14 storied building there. He said that we can make a Japanese board hotel. 50 rooms, Japanese Board Hotel. I was very excited about it. Then I discussed with various planners. I went to the planning office with my architect also. They said they didn't know, 14-storied building it could be very difficult. He was saying that, \"Look, it is the gateway to the city\", and the Council Office says they thought that, \"Gateway? No, it's not the gateway\".</p>\n\n<p>Then when we saw that we cannot do a 14-storied building, it was only imagination. Looked very, very well. I gathered some sponsors also to build it up. Whatever the money cost, we could have raised it. Then Neil Bell was saying that why not do something smaller than the building next door building. [There are] some five six-storied buildings, we [wanted to go] as high as them.</p>\n\n<p>We are now trying to make around one, one and a half, two-storied building, so that [the] planners like it.”</p>\n\n<p>Harun Quadi was interviewed by Shahed Saleem on the 17th January 2018 at No.12 Brick Lane</p>\n",
"created": "2018-04-30",
"last_edited": "2020-10-20"
},
{
"id": 609,
"title": "How the Wash Houses were used",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1447,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.073620345272929,
51.51568885255038
],
[
-0.073978291920849,
51.515581075868006
],
[
-0.074105154053684,
51.51572542989613
],
[
-0.073829058934223,
51.51581988475423
],
[
-0.073816416255057,
51.51580549883457
],
[
-0.073765536685163,
51.515822645959325
],
[
-0.073818338832879,
51.51587274604106
],
[
-0.073896057393162,
51.515850404112115
],
[
-0.073900642179228,
51.51585546922409
],
[
-0.073811510459007,
51.51588294615875
],
[
-0.073751379811388,
51.51582774828753
],
[
-0.073609777363084,
51.515693181519985
],
[
-0.073620345272929,
51.51568885255038
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "25",
"b_name": "The Wash Houses, London Metropolitan University, former Whitechapel Baths",
"street": "Old Castle Street",
"address": "The Wash Houses, London Metropolitan Univeristy, 25 Old Castle Street, London E1 7NT",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 19,
"search_str": "The Wash Houses, London Metropolitan University, former Whitechapel Baths"
},
"tags": [
"cholera",
"library",
"swimming",
"washing",
"women"
]
},
"body": "<p>East End historian and guide David Charnick recounts some of the history of the former Whitechapel Baths and Wash House on Old Castle Street.</p>\n\n<p>“Well. We're on Old Castle Street and we're looking at the wash house entrance to the old Whitechapel Baths and Wash House or, as it was known at the time, the model establishment. The date on the front is 1846. That's when Prince Albert himself came here to lay the foundations stone, but the building didn't actually open until 1847. At that point, it still wasn't finished anyway. There was still work to be carried out.</p>\n\n<p>As the name implies, baths and wash houses, you got two functions. The baths were what were called slipper baths. In other words, they were individual bathtubs in cubicles. The main entrances of those were on the other side from where we are now on Goulston Square, which was just off of Goulston Street. You had first and second class baths. First class baths, you got two towels instead of one and a bit more hot water and a nicer cubicle. Second class baths were just as accommodating. Then, you had the washhouse side, which again was small cubicles.</p>\n\n<p>These were where obviously the women of the family, the mothers, would bring the laundry to do. Each little cubicle would have two troughs at the end. One of them was for warm water for general washing. The other was hot water heated by steam, which was for your boil washed to get rid of the stubborn stains, et cetera. In between, at certain point, you would have what they called ringing machines, which are basically hand operated tumble dryers.</p>\n\n<p>You put your wet clothes into there, shut the lid, turn the handle and then, they would get partially dry. There were also some, what we called clothes horses that would come out from the wall where you could air your clothes and dry them properly before you took them home.</p>\n\n<p>The building was demolished later in the 20th century. Not totally sure of the date because some say the 1980s, some say early 21st century, but certainly was demolished and made way for the new building that sort of peeps up behind it, which is the former Women's Library.</p>\n\n<p>There was [also] a swimming pool. Plunge baths as they used to call them in those days. They had the trouble with the model establishment is that although they did charge a small fee for baths, it was by no means enough to keep the place going and it actually closed in 1871. It was up to its neck in debt and the local authority, the Whitechapel Board of Works, they took it over on the grounds that the money could be raised by charitable means to clear the debts. When it reopened in 1878, it had a large plunge pool for men and then, later a second one was added for women. No mix bathing in those days.</p>\n\n<p>When it actually came into being, It was created by one of a number of groups that were appearing in the early 19th century to encourage public bathhouses. This was The Society for the Committee for Promoting the Establishment of Baths and Wash Houses for the Labouring Classes, which was created in 1844 at a public meeting at the Mansion House in the City of London. Its Principal was the Bishop of London. They actually opened two wash houses before this one, but they were in converted buildings.</p>\n\n<p>This was to be the model establishment. This was to be the prototype that was to be followed by others. By 1852, the society was reporting that there were representatives from various European cities and indeed cities from the US who were coming to visit, taking notes of what was being provided here, et cetera and then going back to their own countries and starting their own. The people here weren't bothered about that. They wanted people to copy them.</p>\n\n<p>They wanted to be, as I say, the prototype to encourage more of such establishments to be created. It was essentially a charitable body. It was only taken over by the local authority of the Whitechapel Board of Works in the late 1870s. One of the people behind that was Samuel Barnett who was a major philanthropist in the area.</p>\n\n<p>A variety of people, [used the baths]. As I say, you had to pay a small fee. Although, when there were outbreaks of cholera in the area in the 1840s, they made the baths free for access.</p>\n\n<p>It would presumably have been a weekly visit. Because people around here, even people in regular work weren’t earning a great deal. There was a limit to how much they could pay on luxuries of bathing. Although, people were well aware of the necessity for bathing, I mean we tend to think of this idea of cleanliness next to godliness, but it wasn't actually a Victorian sentiment. One of the major diseases prevalent in Victorian times and indeed prior to that was typhus fever, which is a sort of umbrella term for a number of fevers that are spread by parasites that goes from human body to human body.</p>\n\n<p>Particularly in things like jails when they didn't use to have individual cells, they had communal cells and so, parasites would run around. The need to clean your body and to wash your clothes to get rid of these parasites was paramount to avoid the spread of typhus. There was an awareness of how important these things were. Everything was done to encourage people to use them. Abolishing taxation on lanolin, which was used to make soap and things like this. There was a lot of movement in the 19th century to make bathing and cleanliness much more affordable.\"</p>\n\n<p>David Charnick (www.charnowalks.co.uk) was speaking to Shahed Saleem on 23.02.18. The text has been edited for print.</p>\n",
"created": "2018-04-17",
"last_edited": "2021-02-10"
}
]
}