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"id": 198,
"title": "Sugarhouse at 30 Whitechapel Road, 1779-1826",
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"body": "<p>The Universal British Directory lists William Mears, bellfounder, at 32 Whitechapel Road (formerly no.267) in the late eighteenth century. Next door, to the west, at 30 (formerly no.268), was George Wolrath Holzmeyer, sugar refiner. He'd had his business there since 1779, having previously refined in Wellclose Square. He died in 1799 leaving his three daughters well-provided for. His young son was left the business, sugarhouse and utensils of trade. When the younger Holzmeyer came of age he too became a refiner but not at these premises. In his will Holzmeyer the elder described the property as a 'sugarhouse and dwelling house'. We can assume the dwelling house fronted Whitechapel Road and the business was located to the rear, accessed from Fieldgate Street and Plummers Row, giving rise to the various addresses given for the business. Refining was continued by William & Joseph Wilde to around 1812, then the business was taken over by John Henry Wagentreiber who traded to about 1826. [^1]</p>\n\n<p>The Post Office Directory for 1846 shows Jeremiah Hooper, butcher, at 30 Whitechapel Road.</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Mawer, Sugar Refiners & Sugarbakers: www.mawer.clara.net</p>\n",
"created": "2016-11-21",
"last_edited": "2016-11-22"
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{
"id": 539,
"title": "Facade retention",
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"street": "Whitechapel High Street",
"address": "Central House, 59-63 Whitechapel High Street",
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"body": "<p>In February 2016, a development company, Frasers, purchased Central House from LMU for £50 million, a price the University noted was ‘significantly above the expected market level’.[^1] The Cass vacated on 31 August 2017, relocating to Calcutta House. Initial plans for a retail, hotel and office tower of around thirty storeys, with outline designs prepared by Arney Fender Katsalidis, were scaled back in 2018 in favour of an office-block scheme by Allford Hall Monaghan Morris. This was approved and carried forward by BAM Construction in 2019–20. It retains the north, south and west walls of Central House and adds six storeys in somewhat mirroring form, though in steel and darker hued, a parti that claims inspiration from Rachel Whiteread’s Fourth Plinth.[^2]<img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/01/02/screen-shot-2018-01-02-at-172103.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p><em>Sketch proposal for '61 Whitechapel High Street' showing west and south elevations. © Frasers Property. </em></p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>Building Design</em>, 23 Feb 2016</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>Architect's Journal, </em>22 Feb 2016; <a href=\"http://61whitechapelhighstreet.com\">http://61whitechapelhighstreet.com</a> Accessed 20 Nov 2017; <a href=\"http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/projects/listing/one-campus-one-community/completed-and-ongoing-estates-projects/completed-projects/the-cass-at-calcutta-house/\">http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/projects/listing/one-campus-one-community/completed-and-ongoing-estates-projects/completed-projects/the-cass-at-calcutta-house/</a> Accessed 20 Dec 2017: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n",
"created": "2018-01-02",
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"id": 660,
"title": "Three o'clock walk",
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"id": 231,
"username": "Mariame_Amouche"
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"body": "<p>This is an extract from a longer piece of observational writing about a walk undertaken in 2018 by Mariame Amouche, a first year architecture student at the University of Westminster:</p>\n\n<p>It was at that moment that I realised that the street was filled with a mass of brick built terraces that were nearly identical to one another. I noticed how every domestic building had stairs, providing a boundary that segregated public and private space. Iron railings protectively surrounded each building as if they were guards trying to steer the passing pedestrians away from the domestic premises. Peeling paint loosely clung to the front doors of old homes, juxtaposing the glassy automatic entrance of the <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1206/detail/\">high school building</a>. Against the front entrances of houses, worn-out sofas and stained mattresses lingered waiting for their new owners to give them a new home. I was mesmerised by these houses which were still so important to the character of the street, passed down by the communities of the past.</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/05/23/name.png\"></p>\n\n<p>This is an observational sketch made in 2018 by Sebastian Dawber, also a first year architecture student at the University of Westminster.</p>\n\n<p>Carry on walking with Mariame <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1261/detail/\">here</a>.</p>\n",
"created": "2018-05-23",
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"id": 503,
"title": "235 Whitechapel Road (formerly the Lord Napier public house)",
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"body": "<p>By the 1780s and into the 1840s a shop on this corner was occupied by Joseph Bond and then William Bond, wireworkers and bird-cage makers. After a period housing tripedressers, the premises were given over to beer retailing in the 1860s and came to be called the Lord Napier public house. Rebuilding in 1909 was to plans by S. A. S. Yeo, architect, for E. Lacon & Co. Ltd, brewers The small red-brick pub was given presence through the Baroque pedimental treatment of its single-bay façade, but pub use ceased in the mid 1930s. Subsequent retailers here included Kossoff’s kosher bakery from the 1960s to the 1980s, later taken over by Grodzinski, then Zam Zam Gift Shop, referring to the holy water of a well in Mecca.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, Land Tax returns: Tower Hamlets Commissioners of Sewers ratebooks; District Surveyors Returns: Post Office Directories: The National Archives, IR58/84806/2337.</p>\n",
"created": "2017-11-17",
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"id": 215,
"title": "The Aldgate Exchange",
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"b_name": "Oceanair House, 133-7 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7PT",
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"body": "<p>In 1997, part of the ground floor of Oceanair House fronting on to Whitechapel High Street was converted to pub use by the Thorley Taverns pub group. The pub was called The Aldgate Exchange and it survived until early 2014.</p>\n",
"created": "2016-12-16",
"last_edited": "2020-10-13"
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"id": 475,
"title": "Lloyd's Bank",
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"body": "<p>Gulam Mostofa Chowdhury, interviewed by his neighbour Jil Cove, August 2017</p>\n\n<p>I miss the Lloyd’s bank that used to be across the road on the big junction as I liked the building, I thought it was really nice. Now there are luxury flats being built there, which local people won’t be able to afford. I like some of the changes that have happened in the area as there are now more people from different parts of the world and we all seem to get on with each other.</p>\n\n<p>We do have a problem of drug dealing on our street so I think more police walking around would be helpful and also more cameras. But I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.</p>\n",
"created": "2017-09-13",
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"title": "Mount Terrace",
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"body": "<p>The terrace which extends east from New Road to the northern tip of Turner Street owes its name to Whitechapel Mount, an artificial hill formed as part of the fortifications built round London in the 1640s. A row of thirteen plain brick houses survives as the last mark of the City Corporation’s more extensive development of the site in 1806–7. Known as Mount Street until 1939, the road now called Mount Terrace was developed on both sides with two rows of seventeen houses. It was bounded at the north by Mount Place, a row of sixteen houses on the south side of Whitechapel Road, and to the west, seven houses in New Road that were originally (and confusingly) known as Mount Terrace.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>The development has a hectic planning history owing to the proximity of the London Hospital and the watchful guard over its vicinity kept by its House Committee. Secured by the hospital in 1750 by a City lease which expired in 1801, the site comprised the Mount bounded by houses west.[^2] Negotiations for a lease renewal were unsuccessful; it emerged that the City intended to develop the land. As the medical staff desired the hospital to be ‘as open and free to the air as possible’ to aid the recovery of patients, the prospect of nearby building development was received with trepidation.[^3] Initial opposition to the scheme subsided after (Sir) William Blizard and Thomas Blizard, hospital surgeons, persuaded the City to adopt a plan for two parallel rows of houses set ‘at a wide interval for gardens never to be built upon’.[^4] No drawings survive, yet a description in the committee’s minute books suggests that this compromise was to build no more than two terraces separated by central gardens; one row facing Whitechapel Road and the other overlooking a new street to the south.</p>\n\n<p>The scheme fell quiet until 1805, when the Mount was cleared by Joseph Needham. In a curious turn-around, its reasons unclear, the agreement with the hospital was not honoured: the City Surveyor, George Dance the Younger, was asked to prepare a plan and elevation for advertising the site on building leases. His much denser plan proposed a row of houses in Whitechapel Road and a street to the south lined with terraced houses, enclosed at the west by houses facing New Road. Renewed opposition from the hospital was inevitable, yet an agreement was reached in 1806. The plan was altered with the formation of Turner Street, a public thoroughfare that cut between the houses and the west end of the hospital. This was accomplished by a new lease agreement with the City, in which land for the projected street was added to the hospital’s long-term lease of the adjoining site. Whilst the hospital failed to secure the paired terraces separated by gardens initially agreed, this revised plan represented a partial victory: it preserved ventilation and improved access to the hospital’s as yet undeveloped estate to the south.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>The houses were built by a consortium of tradesmen, of whom the main players were William Green, bricklayer of Brick Lane, and Edward Colebatch, a master carpenter based in the Minories who had recently been elected carpenter for the hospital.[^6] John Green (bricklayer), William Mason (builder), John Briscoe (glazier), William Smith (mason), John Wildman (plumber), Edward Davis (painter), and William and Thomas Godward (plasterers) were also involved. Joseph Barnes, most likely related to the local family of builder developers, might have been the sole builder of the terrace in New Road, which he insured in November 1806.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>Mount Terrace (formerly Mount Street) comprised three-storey fourth-rate houses, each with modest two-bay brick frontages of fifteen feet, standard rear-stair two-room plans and basements (<a href=\"https://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/view-item?i=121426\">Link to photograph</a>). The terrace that faced New Road was similar, aside from its first-floor arcading (<a href=\"https://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/view-item?i=121428\">Link to photograph</a>).[^8] Mount Place (144–174 Whitechapel Road from 1898) comprised third-rate terraced houses with wider frontages of eighteen feet and mansard attics.[^9] From an early date, Mount Place was peppered with shops: it is thought that Spiegelhalter & Co., clockmakers and jewellers, was founded in 1828 at No. 6 (164 Whitechapel Road), where it remained until its move to Mile End Road.[^10] After its forecourt was developed with single-storey shops around 1867, the row wore the appearance of a shopping parade, with many businesses connected to the local rag trade. In 1910 the terrace housed tailors, leather merchants, and a fireworks company, C. T. Brock & Co., famous for grand displays at Crystal Palace. Its frontage was renovated in 1934–9 with the addition of a prominent central clock and stuccoed shop fronts (<a href=\"https://collage.cityoflondon.gov.uk/view-item?i=124139\">Link to photograph</a>).[^11] The row survived until the early 1990s, when it was demolished with the adjacent terrace facing New Road. Mount Terrace’s south side was demolished with Nos 80–84 New Road (even) in 1919 after the site was acquired by the London Hospital for redevelopment.[^12] The north side was shortened at its east end c.1960–70s to make way for the rebuilding of the hospital’s Alexandra Wing on an extensive scale. The surviving houses bear City insurance plaques on their façades.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London County Council, <em>Names of Streets and Places in the Administrative County of London </em>(1955), p. 526; <em>Lockie’s Topography of London</em>, 1810, for the Phoenix Fire Office.</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Royal London Hospital Archives and Museum (RLHA), RLHLH/A/5/13, p. 243; RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/3, p. 282.</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/13, pp. 264–5.</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/13, p. 299.</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), COL/CC/CLC/02/021, No. 25; LMA, COL/CC/CLC/02/021, No. 37; LMA, COL/CC/CLC/02/021, No. 28.</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/14, p. 242.</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: LMA, MS 11936/438/798002. </p>\n\n<p>[^8]: RLHA, RLHLH/S/3/5, ‘Existing Buildings in Mount Street’, June 1919.</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: LCC, <em>Names of Streets and Places in the Administrative County of London </em>(1929), p. 551.</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: David and Hilde Bibby, ‘Spiegelhalters and Fehrenbachs: A Black Forest Clockmaker Dynasty in London and Neukirch’ (online: <a href=\"https://www.yorkbeach.co.uk/family_history/spiegelhalter/dynasty.htm\">https://www.yorkbeach.co.uk/family_history/spiegelhalter/dynasty.htm</a>).</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: MBW Minutes; Goad; Post Office Directory, 1910; District Surveyor Returns (DSRs).</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: DSRs; British Listed Buildings Online, 1989 planning permission, delisted 1994.</p>\n",
"created": "2016-12-08",
"last_edited": "2016-12-08"
},
{
"id": 104,
"title": "'The London Hospital: Laying the Foundation Stone of a New Wing', The Essex Standard, 8 July 1864",
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"body": "<p>Excerpt from <em>The Essex Standard,</em> 8 July 1864:</p>\n\n<p>The London Hospital 'has found its increased accommodation more than outstripped by the rapid growth of population around it, particularly in the large parish of West Ham, in our own county, where year by year acres of marsh land bordering upon the Thames have been absorbed for railways, docks, ship yards, iron works, and factories of various kinds, each employing its hundreds of thousands of hands, and necessitating the provision literally of miles of new streets for the accommodation of this vast aggregation of artisans and of the trading classes following in their wake. Nor is the number of the population the only cause of the increase of applicants for admission: the manufacturing and commercial operations of the neighbourhood are constantly resulting in accidents to life and limb, and so strongly marked is this characteristic that the serious casualties treated within its walls outnumber those of the three other largest hospitals of the metropolis.'[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: The Royal London Hospital Archives, RLHLH/A/5/32, p. 110. </p>\n",
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"body": "<p>Over time, the hospital was increasingly inundated with patients arriving from the local area and remoter parishes such as West Ham. Since the completion of the wing extensions of 1830–42, the volume of patients had more than doubled. By the 1860s, more than 30,000 people were treated as inpatients and outpatients each year. Overcrowding was not confined to the wards, as medical officers and nurses endured cramped conditions with little promise of rest. Due to prolonged shifts and a lack of dormitories, nurses were frequently seen to be ‘overcome with sleep’ and the matron insisted that her staff could not be increased without additional sleeping accommodation. By 1862 the situation had become untenable and a report on overcrowding pronounced ‘a very serious defect in the arrangements of the London Hospital’.[^1] </p>\n\n<p>The hospital turned to its surveyor, Charles Barry Jr, to prepare plans for an extension to the outpatients’ department. Acting as hospital surveyor from 1858, Barry approached his responsibilities in an efficient manner from offices in Sackville Street, proposing to attend committee meetings for an extra charge in addition to a nominal salary and commission rate. Barry designed a long single-storey building that would run parallel to the existing surgical and physicians’ outpatients’ departments housed in the west wing. Yet plans for this extension were stalled as the House Committee contemplated a solution for the longer term. The matter was delegated to a building committee, which promoted substantial alterations and argued that ‘the entire system is one of undue pressure, subversive of sanitary arrangements, inconvenient to the professional staff, (and) unfair towards the patients and the servants of the hospital’.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>The proposed solution was to build a three-storey wing with a basement and an attic, extending west parallel to Whitechapel Road. Barry’s plan promised room for about seventy beds, with separate wards allocated for children, obstetric cases, and Jewish patients. The hospital had received a series of requests for the reinstatement of separate Jewish wards since their closure, but was limited by the pressure on hospital spaces. The wing extension enabled the hospital to arrange Jewish patients in separate wards on one floor, near to a kosher kitchen.[^3] The new wing was divided roughly into two parts. A three-storey maisonette with bedrooms and servants’ quarters was carved from the west end of the wing for the house governor, a resident officer who managed the daily workings of the hospital and its expenditure. Each floor of the east side of the building comprised a central corridor flanked by wards or offices. The basement secured a new surgical outpatients’ department, with an extensive waiting hall to make the customary ‘lengthened detention’ less onerous, and a consulting room flanked by rooms for dressing injuries. An attic dormitory for night nurses addressed fears that a lack of supervision compromised their efficiency and ‘quality’. The intermediate floors were given over to wards, with the exception of a new committee room and secretary’s office positioned on the ground floor.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>The exterior of the west wing reflected its disjointed plan. On the north elevation facing Whitechapel Road, a projecting bay capped with a pediment marked the junction between the wards and the house governor’s residence. The west elevation had a raised entrance porch to the house governor’s maisonette, which overlooked a private walled garden at the south. A significant innovation in the new wing was the construction of a narrow tower to contain sanitary facilities, specifically a water tank at its peak and water closets below. At Barry’s insistence, the building was constructed with fireproof concrete floors and staircases. The House Committee initially hesitated over the additional expense, yet was persuaded by the surveyor’s warnings that the hospital could be criticized for failing to introduce fireproof floors, which also possessed soundproof and ‘verminproof’ qualities.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>The new wing was constructed in 1864–6 by Hill & Keddell, contractors based in Whitechapel Road. It was financed partly by charitable donations, including substantial gifts from local businesses and the brewer Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, chairman of the House Committee. Many of the hospital’s staff and supporters were recognized in the naming of the wards: one was named ‘Buxton’, and ‘Davis’ commemorated the present and former vice-presidents. A ward was named ‘Blizard’ in memory of the hospital’s eminent surgeon. The foundation stone was laid in July 1864 in a ceremony that saw Whitechapel awash with crowds and decorated with bunting. The building was bestowed with the first name of the new bride of the Prince of Wales, an association intended to inspire ‘respectful admiration’.[^6] Its opening was not accompanied by such celebration; formal inauguration had to be abandoned due to another outbreak of cholera. In July 1866, patients were moved into the new wing to provide space for cholera patients.[^7] </p>\n\n<p>The completion of the Alexandra Wing allowed various improvements to be effected elsewhere in the hospital, as rooms were modified and reassigned. These alterations were also carried out by Hill & Keddell and continued until 1868. In the basement, an ophthalmic ward was set up and the medical outpatients’ department extended into rooms formerly occupied by its surgical counterpart. On the ground floor, the entrance vestibule was extended and a large receiving room added at its west. Bedrooms, sitting rooms and offices were provided to improve conditions for the medical officers and their pupils.[^8]</p>\n\n<p>Rowland Plumbe and Joseph George Oatley oversaw various alterations to the Alexandra Wing in the twentieth century, including the formation of a coroner’s court in the basement and a single-storey extension at the west. An endowment by James Hora, a vice-president of the hospital, led to the opening of the Marie Celeste maternity department in 1905. Due to persistent pressure on vacant space for hospital expansion, the house governor’s private garden was not destined to survive. By 1960 it had been converted into an ambulance station, with a covered parking bay and ramped entrance into the hospital. This in turn was short-lived, as the Alexandra Wing and the adjoining ambulance station were cleared for redevelopment in 1974.[^9]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/31, pp. 110, 200; RLHLH/A/5/32, p. 30; <em>General State of the London Hospital </em>(London: School Press Gower’s Walk, 1854), p. 8: Ward visitors and Mrs Nelson, matron, cited by Clark-Kennedy, <em>London Pride</em>, p. 110. </p>\n\n<p>[^2]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/31, p. 200; RLHLH/A/5/32, pp. 30, 257–8. </p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, 23 June 1905, pp. 14–15: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/31, pp. 30, 110, 481. </p>\n\n<p>[^4]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/32, p. 30. </p>\n\n<p>[^5]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/32, pp. 30, 143–4. </p>\n\n<p>[^6]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/32, p. 104. </p>\n\n<p>[^7]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/33, p. 46–7; RLHLH/A/5/32, p. 78: <em>Medical News</em>, 9 July 1864, p. 61. </p>\n\n<p>[^8]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/33, pp. 128, 164, 197. </p>\n\n<p>[^9]: <em>London Daily News</em>, 19 July 1905: Goad Maps.</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>I went to school here. The school moved to Loughton, Essex in September 1965. The School was founded by Rev. Ralph Davenant who was the Rector of St Mary Matfelon which was situated where Altab Ali Park is today.</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>The estate was built by the Peabody trustees on a site acquired from the Metropolitan Board of Works in one of London's first slum clearance schemes. The blocks were designed by Peabody's architect, Henry Astley Darbishire, and the estate was opened in 1881. On 8 September 1940, the second night of the London Blitz, one block took a direct hit, and nearly 80 people were killed. In 1995 a war memorial listing their names was placed on the external wall of Block L.</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>A view of the London College of Furniture building, later part of London Metropolitan University, from a digitised colour slide in the collection of the Tower Hamlets Archives:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/762606042773676033\">https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/762606042773676033</a></p>\n",
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{
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"body": "<p>Substantially rebuilt in 2013–18 for Crossrail (the Elizabeth Line), Whitechapel Station has an intricate and accretive history, several indicators of which have recently been erased.</p>\n\n<p><em>East London Railway</em></p>\n\n<p>The origins of the station lie with the East London Railway Company, formed in 1865 to see through a scheme initiated by William Hawes, to connect north and south London by adapting the Thames Tunnel and linking to other lines at Liverpool Street and New Cross. Sir John Hawkshaw was the project’s engineer. The southern section was built first, the northern stretch did not open until April 1876. Thomas Andrew Walker was the contractor for the line. Premises at what is now 277 Whitechapel Road were acquired in December 1873 for a ‘principal station’. The site of No. 275 was added, but when the station was built in 1874–5 that proved surplus to requirements. The three-storey four-bay Italianate building at No. 277 has twin elliptically arched public entrances; the band below the first-floor windows and the parapet was lettered. An illuminated canopy was built across the front in 1930. That was replaced by twin leaf-like steel-and-glass projections around 2000, those also now removed.</p>\n\n<p>Under lettable offices, the entrance lobby and a short flight of stairs led to an inner booking hall, on a more north-westerly axis in line with the tracks and with a glass roof on iron openwork trusses. There was a booking office to the west and a waiting room to the east. Through an arched opening in the end wall, dog-legged staircases led down to the platforms. The brick back elevation of the booking hall had an odd grandeur, with a triple arch below a tall semi-circular parapet perforated by five oculi, perhaps to mitigate the effect of smoke and soot on the top-lit booking hall while also admitting some light. All but the front block was demolished in 2016.[^1]</p>\n\n<p><em>Metropolitan District Railway</em></p>\n\n<p>The Metropolitan and Metropolitan District railway companies had considered building a line east of Aldgate prior to the formation of the East London Line in connection with the bedevilled plan to complete the ‘Inner Circle’. The idea was revived in 1873–4 by George G. Newman of the legal firm of Newman, Dale and Stretton, with a plan for a spur to link to the East London Railway at Whitechapel. Through the Inner Circle Completion Company this gained support from the Metropolitan Board of Works. The Metropolitan and District companies took the scheme over in 1877, the former’s Chairman, Sir Edward Watkin, only interested on account of the Whitechapel link, and brought in Hawkshaw to devise a route. Watkin became Chairman of the East London Railway Company and the relevant Act was granted in 1879. The line opened as far as St Mary’s Station on the south side of Whitechapel Road in March 1884 and on to Whitechapel in October 1884. Hawkshaw was the senior engineer working in collaboration with his pupil John Wolfe-Barry, to whom close engagement appears to have devolved, with Robert Davison as resident engineer. The contractors for the works of 1883–4 were Lucas & Aird. Train operations were subject to a complex joint working agreement between six different railway companies.</p>\n\n<p>The site that is now 275 Whitechapel Road, sold by the East London Railway Company in 1876 and set to be used for the Working Lads’ Institute in 1882, had been reacquired, along with land to the rear of Nos 269–271 for a second Whitechapel Station. That was built in 1884 by Lucas & Aird, working with Holliday & Greenwood, probably just for the front block, to designs by Wolfe-Barry.</p>\n\n<p>This station was a simple single-storey booking hall with a front of twin arches and a cornice (originally flanked by lettering, METROPOLITAN DISTRICT RAILWAY above, WHITECHAPEL TERMINUS below), the eastern arch for entrance and circulation directly to the platform, the western for egress via stairs from a basement-level passage. Internally, there are arched timber roof trusses, as there were in the now demolished booking hall and passage beyond. The space above the building was soon made use of for advertising. A single-storey and basement hipped-roof block behind Nos 269–271, still extant, originally housed offices for a booking clerk and parcels, a ladies’ waiting room and lavatories above a porter’s room, an inspector’s office and stores. To start with there was just one platform, that now to the north, under an iron and glass canopy, with lay-byes or sidings (as this was a terminus) along the south side of what is now Durward Street to the north-west, and where the southern platform was to follow to the south-east. Thomas (Fulbourne) Street, Court Street and Woods Buildings had all to be sustained by bridges. The Court Street footbridge is supported by octagon-section built-up steel stanchions and girders of the 1880s, similar though smaller in scale to steelwork at Mansion House Station. [^2]</p>\n\n<p><em>Whitechapel & Bow Railway</em></p>\n\n<p>Extension of the District Line eastwards to Bow for a link to suburbs beyond was a joint enterprise by the Metropolitan District and London, Tilbury and Southend railway companies. The Whitechapel & Bow Railway Act of 1897 led to works that began in 1899. The line opened in 1902. Cuthbert Arthur Brereton, a partner of Wolfe-Barry, was the engineer and the contractor was John Price. There was substantial demolition, underpinning and reconstruction behind and at 279–317 Whitechapel Road and the station was reconfigured for the new line to run over the low-level East London Railway Company’s tracks of the 1870s. That meant removal of most of that line’s platform canopies to throw plate-girder bridges across. A covered footbridge over the District Line immediately west of the East London Line with stairs down westwards gave access from Whitechapel Road to the Metropolitan and District Line platforms until 2016 when it was removed. The Fulbourne Street and Woods Buildings bridges and the superstructure of the Court Street bridge were replaced in 1899–1902 in plate-girder form with arched-plate flooring. The Woods Buildings footbridge was removed in 2013–15.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>From 1902 circulation to and from Whitechapel Road was combined by knocking through from the District Line’s passage to the booking hall of the 1870s at No. 277. The station entrance at No. 275 was given up, and that single-storey front building was adapted for use as a shallow shop with the Whitechapel Working Men’s Temperance Club’s billiard room behind. In 1923 there was a new shopfront for Appleby & Matty’s gown shop. Other shop uses followed, a mezzanine was inserted, and at the time of writing the whole unit is a coffee shop.</p>\n\n<p><em>Later changes</em></p>\n\n<p>To the far north-east, south of Durward Street and behind 12–14 Vallance Road, a four-bay electricity sub-station was built in 1904–5 for electrification of the District Line. From 1933 and after mergers all running was taken over by the London Passenger Transport Board. Decoratively tile-lined pedestrian interchange subways were formed in 1935–6 to improve internal circulation between the East London and District lines, Balfour Beatty and Co. Ltd being the contractors for the Board’s engineers. In 1951 a relay room and staff facilities were added to the east of the substation by Whyatt (Builders) Ltd.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>Air-raid damage to the District Line in 1941 included the loss of sections of the platform canopies east of Court Street. From 1939 there had been plans to build a ‘booking-on centre’ at Whitechapel Station, to provide facilities (mess room, locker room, etc) for staff on the eastern parts of the District Line. Eventually, in 1968, this scheme was seen through where the bomb damage had occurred, to plans by the London Transport Architect’s Department. A large single-storey block of eight-by-four bays on a precast concrete deck was placed above the platforms. Latterly known as the Group Station Managers’ Building, this was reroofed in 2014.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>The northernmost bridge carrying the District Line over the East London Line was replaced in 1983 with the removal of adjacent platform canopies. Elliptically arched brick bridges of the 1870s that carried Winthrop Street and Durward Street were replaced in 2015–16. Despite this and other alterations, the East London Line’s robust brick retaining walls of 1875, built with deep recesses between buttresses, segmentally arched at their heads, as inverts and in section, survive and are due to be made newly prominent in 2018.[^6] North of Durward Street, the East London Line cutting remains open.</p>\n\n<p>The reconfiguration of Whitechapel Station for Crossrail in 2013–18 has been carried out by BBMV JV (a joint venture of Balfour Beatty, Morgan Sindall and Vinci Construction) as contractors, with BDP, architects, and Arcadis, engineers. The front block of 277 Whitechapel Road has been retained. For rebuilding of the ticket hall behind, from 2016 to 2018 public access has been via a temporary station on the west side of Court Street; this replaced a small 1950s building. The capacious new station concourse, principally entered from 277 Whitechapel Road, will be an openwork steel-framed structure supported by struts on the brick walls of the 1870s cutting with which it will be aligned, slung low to allow light down to the East London Line platforms before rising in the form of a ‘floating’ bridge across the District Line. There will be a secondary entrance to the north, from a new public square. The long concourse is to have a sedum-planted roof. For the Crossrail tunnels, 30m below ground level, shafts were sunk either side of the East London Line off Durward Street, and on the west side of Cambridge Heath Road. The line is due to open in December 2018.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Transport for London Group Archives (TfLGA), LT002009/452–4; LT000407/204: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), District Surveyors Returns (DSR); MBW/2634/19/02: <em>The Builder</em>, 15 April 1876, p. 365: R. K. Kirkland, ‘The East London Railway’, <em>The Railway Magazine</em>, June 1953, pp. 413–415</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 7 Feb 1873, p. 198: LMA, Acc/0224/13; DSR; MBW/2643/28/02; ACC/1297/MDR/05, p.148: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), L/THL/D/2/30/171: TfLGA, LT002009/456,466: London County Council Minutes, 10 Oct 1899, p. 1313: THLHLA, Building Control file 17204: Goad insurance map, 1890: T. C. Barker and Michael Robbins, <em>A History of London Transport</em>, vol. 1, 1963, pp.225–32</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: TfLGA, LT002009/466: DSR: <em>East London Observer</em>, 7 June 1902: <em>Engineering</em>, 1 May 1903, p. 582: <em>The Times</em>, 13 Sep 1910, p. 11</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: DSR: Post Office Directories: THLHLA, Building Control file 17204: TfLGA, LT000172/006/013; LT000172/055/008</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: TfLGA, LT001068/024; LT000111/057/007; LT000509/156: THLHLA, Building Control file 17204</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: TfLGA, LT000828/013; LT002009/449,457</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: https://learninglegacy.crossrail.co.uk/documents/archaeology-archive-whitechapel-station/: Andy Shelley with Richard Brown, <em>From Brunel to British Rail: The railway heritage of the Crossrail route</em>, 2016: Dan Harvey, ‘Work at Whitechapel’, <em>Modern Railways</em>, vol. 70/777, June 2013, p. 98: BBC, <em>The Fifteen Billion Pound Railway</em></p>\n",
"created": "2017-11-28",
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"body": "<p>No. 65a Whitechapel High Street has its origins as a building of c1897. Prominent from the west, it was well finished with lavish use of Portland stone dressings on red brick. It appears to have been built for a Mr Jenkins with Aaron Cooperman; Abraham Goldenfeld, a warehouseman, was the first occupant.[^1] The building was substantially refurbished in 2010-12 by Julian Harrap Architects (Robert Sandford, job architect), with PAYE as contractors. Applied stucco was removed and the red brick restored. Lion masks in the frieze and the parapet with its pediment and ball finials were reinstated. This work was the first part of the High Street 2012 project, ninety per cent funded from Tower Hamlets Council with English Heritage through a Heritage Lottery Fund Townscape Heritage grant. The project had been conceived when it was anticipated that the 2012 Olympics Marathon would pass by. [^2]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: The National Archives, IR58/84814–5/3198–3205: Post Office Directories.</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>East London Advertiser</em>, 22 May 2014 - http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/heritage/harrup_architects_get_riba_award_for_restoring_high_st_2012_back_to_1900_1_3612037: information kindly supplied by Robert Sandford</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>The building at 17–18 Vine Court was erected in 1969–70 for Alfred Cox Ltd, for parking under workrooms for making surgical and orthopaedic appliances. Haines and Warwick Ltd of Ilford were the builders.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 41744</p>\n",
"created": "2018-04-19",
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"body": "<p>A warehouse of 1852 here became a cigar factory in the 1890s. The site was redeveloped in 1938–9 to house a five-storey factory for Buck & Hickman Ltd. It was built by Killby & Gayford Ltd as engineering shops to replace premises the firm had in Vallance Road.</p>\n\n<p>From around 2000 to 2015 the lower storeys housed the Rhythm Factory, a well-known bar and music venue. The premises re-opened as The Stable in 2016. [^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: District Surveyors Returns: Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives, ‘Buck & Hickman Ltd’</p>\n",
"created": "2016-06-27",
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},
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"title": "Builders and architect",
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"body": "<p>Fieldgate Mansions was nominally built by Davis Brothers, ie Israel and Hyman Davis; though Hyman died in 1902 part way through the course of the project. The building scheme was a large project by the London Hospital estate, and the builders seem to have been instrumental in securing the Hospital’s regular architect Rowland Plumbe’s part in taking forward the Mansions. [^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Hospital estate records, LH/A/9/41, p 200 (July 1903).</p>\n",
"created": "2016-07-07",
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"body": "<p>Liptrap may have had a small coal-gas making plant - or seem to have enquired about one to Boulton & Watt in 1811 (note in Boulton & Watt archive, Glasgow).</p>\n",
"created": "2020-10-08",
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{
"id": 946,
"title": "Gardiner's Corner reconstruction",
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"body": "<p>Traffic was an abiding headache on Whitechapel High Street. It had been for centuries and the confluence of the Leman Street–Commercial Street axis with the west end of Commercial Road from the 1870s exacerbated problems on critical routes to and from the City, as always, and now also to and from the docks. The cessation of the Haymarket in 1928 reduced congestion, but unquestioning acceptance of predictions of growth in car usage and the wider contexts of highway planning soon came into play. The influential Royal Academy traffic plan for London of 1938 by Sir Charles Bressey and Sir Edwin Lutyens proposed three concentric ring roads, including an inner arterial ‘loopway’ round the City. This found its way into the <em>County of London Plan </em>of 1943 as an ‘A’ or inner (but sub-arterial) ring road with a great pentagonal roundabout at the strategically important intersection at Gardiner’s Corner. Already in 1941 Stepney Borough’s Engineer and Surveyor, B. W. Stuttle, had promulgated London’s first reconstruction plan for his borough, advocating the use of existing road networks, against the wider new network thrust of the County plan. After the war, the Ministry of Transport advanced plans for the ‘A’ ring road as arterial. The Gardiner’s Corner roundabout, now being drawn as a hexagon, was incorporated as a key element of the London County Council’s reconstruction scheme for the Stepney and Poplar Comprehensive Development Area.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>By 1952 the LCC’s Highways Committee had reshaped the roundabout to be an elongated rectangle, keeping somewhat to existing roads to reduce costs. Further revised by 1955 with a schematic model, this approach kept Whitechapel High Street intact, with Braham Street and Beagle Street widened to the south, the west end of Commercial Road diverted northwards through 50–54 High Street (and Drum Yard) for a short east end, and Mansell Street as the west end. By 1957 further parts of the war-damaged western part of the intended island (Nos 1–21) had been cleared. As CPOs were issued, zoning intentions were for future use here to mix warehousing, offices, light industry and shopping. In 1960 the LCC Architect’s Department under Hubert Bennett prepared schemes for three pedestrian subways: at the west end of the High Street; at the Red Lion for Aldgate East station; and at the new end of Commercial Road. These, with ramps as well as stairs, were to keep people on foot from slowing down traffic, though lip service was paid to safety. A new model envisaged a flyover across the island’s eastern parts to link Commercial Road directly to the High Street’s west end, the west part of the island modelled as having three north–south slab blocks on a podium and the east part (Drum Yard) a Miesian tower, evidently ephemeral ideas at the time.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>Traffic volumes had almost doubled since the war by 1964 when the highway and subway works were at last begun to designs prepared under the LCC’s Chief Engineer, Peter F. Stott. Completed in 1966, the work was done by Fitzpatrick & Sons (Contractors) Ltd. The overall cost of £1,500,000 for the project was split equally between properties and works. Road circulation was clockwise with Whitechapel High Street made a one-way road for eastbound traffic, railings forcing pedestrians to use the subways. The cleared western part of the island was put to use as a car and lorry park.[^3] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), LCC/CL/HIG/02/149: <em>The Times</em>, 17 May 1938, pp.33–38: J. H. Forshaw and Patrick Abercrombie, <em>County of London Plan</em>, 1943, pp.51–4,147 and plate 4: D. L. Munby, <em>Industry and Planning in Stepney</em>, 1951, pp.378–84: Kathryn A. Morrison and John Minnis, <em>Carscapes: The Motor Car, Architecture and Landscape in England</em>, 2012, pp.342–8: information kindly supplied by Simon Pepper</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: LMA, LCC/CL/HIG/02/103; COL/PL/01/165/C/025; SC/PHL/02/0677 (55/2/TP/46F/0221-5 and 60/3362–6)</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: LMA, GLC/DG/PTI/P/05/041; GLC/DG/PUB/01/231/U0963; COL/PL/01/165/C/026–7</p>\n",
"created": "2019-08-15",
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"title": "The White Chapel Building (former Sedgwick Centre)",
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"body": "<p>After the formation of the Gardiner’s Corner gyratory system and the building of Central House in the mid 1960s there was a hiatus before attention turned to land use on the four-acre traffic island on the rest of the High Street’s south side. Comprehensive redevelopment was still intended in 1972 when, a much larger area southwards newly deemed obsolescent in the face of dock closures, the Greater London Council combined with Tower Hamlets Council and the City Corporation to consult about plans. This led to an exhibition in 1974 that presented three options, two of which involved rerouting traffic again, the efficacy of the gyratory already in doubt as highway planning shifted emphasis from reconstruction to traffic management. Public responses favoured the most expensive option, the pedestrianization of Whitechapel High Street with vehicle traffic rerouted along a widened Braham Street. But there was insufficient money to implement this. After further consultation with Tower Hamlets and the City, the GLC announced a much more modest approach for the island at Gardiner’s Corner in 1976. There was emphasis on providing homes, shops and a sports centre, and on ‘carefully’ controlling the amount of office building. In 1978 three large plots of land between Mansell Street and Commercial Road were offered up for development on a 99-year lease in what the GLC called an ‘important and valuable location’.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>It had become evident that offices, mainly insurance businesses, were spreading east from the City, but the GLC still urged the provision of shops and intended to impose a six-storey height limit. It also envisaged closure of the north end of Commercial Road, though instead it was the north end of Leman Street that closed. Wingate Investments Ltd, Harold Hyam Wingate’s property firm that had become a subsidiary of the builders George Wimpey and Co. Ltd, made an offer that the GLC accepted. This proposed an office block on the west end of the site, with a public-benefit sop, shops and a leisure centre further east.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>Diagonally north-west of Gardiner’s Corner in the City, the Sedgwick Forbes insurance-brokerage group had built Aldgate House on Aldgate High Street in 1971–5. This huge granite-clad block was the City’s first big deep-plan office, innovatively designed by Fitzroy Robinson & Partners, architects, with tall storey heights for services. These architects combined with what had become the Sedgwick Forbes Bland Payne Group to take forward the Wingate/Wimpey scheme and in 1980 the GLC sold all the Gardiner’s Corner lands to Avongrove Ltd, Wingate Holdings Ltd and the Sedgwick Group Ltd. </p>\n\n<p>The Sedgwick Centre was built on the western plot (the site of 1–21 Whitechapel High Street) in 1982–4 as a close sibling of its City neighbour, similar even down to the heavy cornice, but bringing a scale heretofore alien to this part of Whitechapel High Street. The contractors, naturally, were Wimpey Construction UK Ltd. Clarke Nicholls and Marcel were engineers, Schmidlin, a Swiss firm, supplied windows and curtain walling, and J. Whitehead & Sons Ltd were consultants for the polished-granite cladding. The grid-like eight-storey elevations allowed for what was called ‘raised (computer) flooring’. Concealed within was an atrium and the promised shopping centre was in a basement ‘plaza’, entered, tellingly, from the west or City side; the building turned its back on Whitechapel. Underground, however, basements extended eastwards to link to Aldgate East Station and beyond to other parts of the Gardiner’s Corner site.[^3] </p>\n\n<p>The Sedgwick Group was taken over by Marsh & McLennan in 1998 and in 2001 Tishman Speyer Properties UK Ltd, a subsidiary of an American property company founded in 1978 by Robert Tishman and Jerry Speyer, bought all the Sedgwick Gardiner’s Corner properties. The Royal Bank of Scotland took occupancy of the Sedgwick Centre from 2005, the basement shopping centre closed and the building was renamed the Marsh Centre and then Aldgate Union in connection with plans for sites to the east. But Tishman Speyer sold up to RBS, which sold on. Derwent London (otherwise Derwent Valley Central Ltd) took on the former Sedgwick Centre, RBS moving out in 2015. Fletcher Priest Architects oversaw alterations and refitting and there was another rebranding in 2017, significantly against the Aldgate-obsessed grain in naming the block the White Chapel Building. A north porch was formed with signage proclaiming this, and a two-storey west pavilion went up in 2018 below more ‘White Chapel’ signage. Tech-sector occupancy was intended and achieved; the upper floors became the headquarters of the Government Digital Service, part of the Cabinet Office. The new west entrance was to have given access to lower-level use by Fotografiska, a photography centre or museum and a branch of a business founded in Stockholm in 2010 by brothers Jan and Per Broman. This was planned in 2017–19, but abandoned in 2020 on account of uncertainty generated by Brexit and Covid-19.[^4] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), GLC/DG/PRB/35/013/056; /023/441; /025/334; /028/403; /031/055; GLC/DG/PUB/01/379/U2256; /282/U1622</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: LMA, GLC/DG/PRB/35/032/335; B/GH/LH/07/025</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/34/005000/169: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control files 25380–1: Tower Hamlets planninig applications online (THP)</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: THP: <a href=\"http://www.publictechnology.net/articles/news/government-digital-service's-new-whitechapel-home-revealed\">www.publictechnology.net/articles/news/government-digital-service’s-new-whitechapel-home-revealed</a>: <em>British Journal of Photography</em>, 17 Aug 2017: www.fotografiska.com/london/</p>\n",
"created": "2019-08-15",
"last_edited": "2020-09-11"
}
]
}