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=29",
"previous": "https://surveyoflondon.org/api/v1/documents/?format=api&page=27",
"results": [
{
"id": 714,
"title": "91 Whitechapel High Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 323,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.070926025643223,
51.5156896286145
],
[
-0.07096077352308,
51.51567498499606
],
[
-0.071097964586279,
51.515805467593566
],
[
-0.07111256240283,
51.515819331327066
],
[
-0.071071929135529,
51.51583663270373
],
[
-0.070968009665128,
51.51573832067838
],
[
-0.07097555764498,
51.515735631344555
],
[
-0.070926025643223,
51.5156896286145
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "91",
"b_name": "91 Whitechapel High Street",
"street": "Whitechapel High Street",
"address": "91 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7RA",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 2,
"search_str": "91 Whitechapel High Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>This slip of a building, barely 11ft wide, was a rebuilding in 1862 by Mears, builders of Whitechapel Road, to the designs of William Scurry (1804-71) and his son-in-law James C. Wright (1825-1921), architects of Salisbury Street, Strand, and Denbigh Street, Pimlico, for the confectioner and ice merchant Carlo Gatti, who had had a confectioners’ shop there since the mid 1850s. Gatti’s centre of operations in Hungerford Market had been close to Scurry & Wright, and they later rebuilt the Adelaide Gallery off the Strand for Gatti’s nephews.[^1] It is essentially three floors above a shop, with a single room front and back either side of a lateral staircase with a small rear extension to the ground floor.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>From map evidence and its description in 1775, when it had been a tobacconist and grocers, as being ‘large and convenient for a Manufactory’, it appears formerly to have extended back along part of the west side of Inkhorn Court.[^3] In the 1660s and 1670s, in the occupation of Ralph Mansell, a baker, it was a house with six hearths.[^4] It was in use throughout most of the 18th and early 19th centuries, as a cornchandlers, (Dollinson, Goldsbury, Cook, inter alios).[^5]</p>\n\n<p>In the early 1850s it had been the Albion Bazaar and Concert Room, a penny gaff theatre, which expanded into a two-storey building to the rear. A description of the theatre and its entertainment emerges from witness statements during two court cases in December 1854 and June 1855 when Simon Marriott, alias Charles Mallett, employed as a bouncer in the theatre, was accused of assault, and his accuser was subsequently accused of perjury.[^6] The theatre, reached through the shop, was only around 50ft deep and 13ft wide but held 300 to 400 people, with a stage over a dressing room at the far end, an ‘orchestra’ (a violinist and one or two others) in front. There were two shows a night, six nights a week, which started when enough clients had assembled, and the entertainment included singing, clog dancing and audience participation - Mallett was employed to stand on the stage and ‘hold the people while they were having the laughing gas’. Following Mallett’s initial conviction (his accuser was later charged with perjury), the judge expressed his hope that ‘the attention of the metropolitan police will be strictly directed to its frequenters’, and the theatre seems to have closed soon after.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>The theatre building was likely demolished when the mean tenements on the west side of Inkhorn Court were built in 1859.[^8] Following rebuilding and Gatti’s departure, by 1871, a tailor, his family and assorted employees, fifteen in total, were living there. In 1910 the printer Eli Woolf Rabbinowicz (1853-1932) published his Yiddish-English Dictionary from this address, while the premises were also occupied by a manufacturer of artificial teeth.[^9] They gave way to ladies’ fashions, including by 1921 and into the 1930s Wolf and Marie Seifert, blouse makers and immigrants from Łódź via Zürich who lived on Whitechapel High Street from 1914 to 1930 with ten children, including Rubin (Richard) Seifert (1910–2001), who attended the Whitechapel Foundation School and returned to Whitechapel in later life as an architect. From the 1930s to the 1960s, No. 91 housed D&H Rose, fancy leather goods, then most recently, a café. In 2018 permission was granted for an additional storey and the removal of the staircase for a conversion of the upper floors into self-contained flats, all to plans by Clements & Porter, architects.[^10]</p>\n\n<p><div> </div></p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>The Builder</em> (<em>B</em>), 30 Nov 1861, p. 832 : <em>Blower’s Architect’s, Surveyor’s, Engineer’s and Builder’s Directory for 1860</em>, London 1860, p. 54: Census: <em>Building News</em>, 7 May 1869, p. 421</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online (THP)</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Ogilby & Morgan map of London, 1676: <em>Daily Advertiser</em>, 12 June 1775</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Hearth Tax returns (HT) 1666, 1674-5: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Land Tax returns (LT): Post office Directories (POD): <em>Chelmsford Chronicle</em>, 8 May 1847, p. 3</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: Old Bailey online, trials of Simon Marriott, aka <a href=\"https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18541218-162&div=t18541218-162&terms=charles_mallett#highlight\">Charles Mallett</a>, in 1854 and <a href=\"https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18550611-584&div=t18550611-584&terms=charles_mallett#highlight\">Louisa Harrisson</a> in <a href=\"https://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18550611-642&div=t18550611-642&terms=charles_mallett#highlight\">1855</a> </p>\n\n<p>[^7]: <em>Morning Post</em>, 14 Dec 1854, p. 8</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: LMA, MBP/PLANS/492</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: POD: Census: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: POD: Ancestry: Ewan Harrison, ‘Hazardous Speculations: Richard Seifert’s forgotten early career 1933–1958’, in Elain Harwood and Alan Powers (eds), <em>Twentieth Century Architecture</em>, vol.14, <em>Building for Business</em>, 2020, pp. 69–77 (61–3): THP</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-07-11",
"last_edited": "2020-10-29"
},
{
"id": 667,
"title": "Memories of the oldest parishioner",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1297,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.071935648282288,
51.51134524228436
],
[
-0.071874729442993,
51.51121363108998
],
[
-0.071816144948546,
51.51122339231668
],
[
-0.071776588646252,
51.51120578254433
],
[
-0.071762024560661,
51.51117337877791
],
[
-0.07177649375904,
51.511141452410264
],
[
-0.071834141993347,
51.51113011940239
],
[
-0.071816329795347,
51.51108571239466
],
[
-0.072075019832766,
51.51104549229583
],
[
-0.072193056743033,
51.51130853787665
],
[
-0.072151551976597,
51.51131487321276
],
[
-0.072147312228886,
51.51132649961524
],
[
-0.072142333320455,
51.51133343542439
],
[
-0.072015847069243,
51.5113547481352
],
[
-0.071996105248008,
51.51135617797319
],
[
-0.071982278923131,
51.511350687404345
],
[
-0.071975230627282,
51.51134004502751
],
[
-0.071935648282288,
51.51134524228436
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "Roman Catholic Church of the English Martyrs",
"street": "Prescot Street",
"address": "Roman Catholic Church of the English Martyrs",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 20,
"search_str": "Roman Catholic Church of the English Martyrs"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>The oldest parishioner of English Martyr's Church was interviewed about his life in Whitechapel by Sarah Milne in early 2018. </p>\n\n<p>\"I was born in 1925 in Cartwright Street. I've lived almost 93 years in the same parish. I was born there, baptised there, went to school there, married there, and so on and so forth...and I'll get buried from there!</p>\n\n<p>On my maternal grandparents' side I am Irish. I'm English on my paternal grandparents. Funnily enough I know far more about my Irish grandparents than I do about my English grandparents. Believe it or not, my Irish grandfather, Tom Penny, was born in County Cork in 1818. My mother was the youngest of their thirteen children, so I am, as far as I know, the only surviving grandson. Most of my mother's family...I grew up as a child calling people uncle and aunt, but when I got to know a bit more about the family, I realised they weren't uncle and aunt, they were cousins. There was such a lengthy time span you see. And dear old Tom, that is a story in itself. He was born in 1818, joined the British army in Cork in 1843, which I believe was one of the famine years, served twenty years in India in the army, he was discharged because he suffered a wound in the right thigh caused by a jiggle-ball, and he came back to Ireland and married my grandmother and as far as I can make out, they came to live in England in 1863. And they had several addresses in this local area. The strange thing was, he was a very pious Church of Ireland man, whereas my grandmother was a very pious Catholic, a very unusual arrangement. They married in Cork Registry Office, and he laid down the law that she could continue practising her faith but under no circumstances were any of his children to be baptised Catholics. So, they stuck to that arrangement until he died in, I think it was about...1905, when there were just two children left in the house, all the others had been married and gone off. The youngest being my mother, the next oldest sister Nell, and the story is that before they laid the old man out, the grandmother had the two kids round the church and baptised Catholics. All the rest of them were Protestants. They were baptised in English Martyrs in Prescot Street. My grandmother lost no time in doing what she always wanted to do...</p>\n\n<p>My mother and father got married in Tower Hill Church. My mother wouldn't get married anywhere else! My father was Church of England as far as I know. I don't know a great deal about him. I was only five when he died. He died in December 1929, which was when the Great Depression started, the worldwide depression, which was a terrible terrible time for my mother because she had three children. I was the eldest at five, my next youngest brother was three and a half, and my youngest brother was a baby in arms, so it was a dreadful time for her, I mean there were no backup systems, no help at all, all that was available was parish relief. The system was that if people applied for assistance, they would come into the house and you had to sell anything that was not relative to everyday living, that was classified as luxury and that got sold off before you was awarded any help, you know? A terrible terrible time. And of course it was the time when there was mass unemployment, and when we were rolled down the ladder in terms of getting any employment was concerned, I mean the only thing available was domestic service, but that didn't occur in this area. So it was a very grim time, a very very grim time. My mum fought tooth and nail because she was almost being pressurized to give the three kids to the Crusade of Rescue, who looked after orphan children and the like. And she was well against it and she fought tooth and nail to keep us all, and a sterling job she did. </p>\n\n<p>She did eventually...round about 1935...she managed to get a job with the local council as a bath attendant at Mile End, then it was the day of the public baths, I mean nobody, nobody had a bath in this area, nobody at all. It was a pretty hard job, the sort of thing when you went in it was a two class system, the working-, lower price was tuppence and then fourpence meant you had an extra towel or something, and first class was classified. There was a row of cubicles with baths in, and the attendant was outside with the handle controlling the water.\" </p>\n",
"created": "2018-06-01",
"last_edited": "2021-08-05"
},
{
"id": 398,
"title": "Our air raid shelter ",
"author": {
"id": 141,
"username": "norman"
},
"feature": {
"id": 520,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.057451908164031,
51.520162779025306
],
[
-0.057385151743417,
51.52014697732775
],
[
-0.057385151743417,
51.52014697732775
],
[
-0.057364829396847,
51.52012670800705
],
[
-0.057170213282674,
51.52016963984626
],
[
-0.057098750275007,
51.52004461290751
],
[
-0.057044351749301,
51.52005556326038
],
[
-0.056960904550882,
51.519899865751334
],
[
-0.057272372805932,
51.51983178447637
],
[
-0.057281839102929,
51.5198457992335
],
[
-0.057510183674525,
51.51979460999542
],
[
-0.057612401717062,
51.51977401899527
],
[
-0.057799568433219,
51.52008839297032
],
[
-0.057451908164031,
51.520162779025306
]
],
[
[
-0.057548041923775,
51.52000904200745
],
[
-0.05753215107996,
51.5199815011314
],
[
-0.057585595210164,
51.51996949919713
],
[
-0.057536388591122,
51.519884217752235
],
[
-0.057561162003418,
51.5198786543838
],
[
-0.05751392250335,
51.51979894591583
],
[
-0.057335517633486,
51.51983860864988
],
[
-0.057344903465109,
51.519858110469535
],
[
-0.057364830684365,
51.51985365150651
],
[
-0.057387997106671,
51.51989693261775
],
[
-0.05731968525021,
51.519912116173
],
[
-0.057400572419345,
51.52004119539844
],
[
-0.057548041923775,
51.52000904200745
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "331-335",
"b_name": "Albion Yard (formerly Albion Brewery)",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Albion Yard, 331-335 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 11,
"search_str": "Albion Yard (formerly Albion Brewery)"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>I was a child living on Brady Street when the Blitz started. My family were lucky in that we avoided the bombs by using the basement of a local brewery as an air raid shelter. The brewery was called Mann Crossman and Paulin as I recall. It was very convenient for us. When the sirens sounded they opened the gates, everybody rushed to the brewery and we all poured down into the basement, which smelled appallingly from the beer barrels. I was 6, all I can remember is the smell...</p>\n",
"created": "2017-06-13",
"last_edited": "2020-10-20"
},
{
"id": 646,
"title": "131 New Road",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 855,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.062971692840364,
51.51805395530643
],
[
-0.062996500048733,
51.51809460743645
],
[
-0.062928973753036,
51.51811064672678
],
[
-0.062903884232114,
51.51806955002815
],
[
-0.062971692840364,
51.51805395530643
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "131",
"b_name": "",
"street": "New Road",
"address": "131 New Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 1,
"search_str": "131 New Road"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Nos 129–131 New Road originated as a one-room deep house of the 1790s, probably built for Thomas Amey and once 1 New Road. The house was divided or more substantially rebuilt in the 1860s and No. 129 (formerly two bays) was reduced to two storeys and refenestrated after bomb damage. No. 131 housed Gedaliah Lichtenstein, a watchmaker and jeweller, from 1936 to 1960. It has since accommodated the Gulistan Kebab House then Al Ikhwan Fried Chicken.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, Tower Hamlets Commissioners of Sewers ratebooks: Post Office Directories: Ordnance Survey map, 1873: Historic England Archives, DD000633: Rachel Lichtenstein, <em>Rodinsky’s Whitechapel</em>, 1999, p. 20: information kindly supplied by Rachel Lichtenstein</p>\n",
"created": "2018-05-09",
"last_edited": "2018-05-09"
},
{
"id": 587,
"title": "My father, Mr Plunkett and Dorothy",
"author": {
"id": 220,
"username": "paul2"
},
"feature": {
"id": 100,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.068968833472809,
51.515616059521406
],
[
-0.068737704294811,
51.515680956092304
],
[
-0.068527540402549,
51.515346704146836
],
[
-0.068562611770617,
51.51533710360096
],
[
-0.068539450238496,
51.51530618760308
],
[
-0.068739635718426,
51.51524968774128
],
[
-0.068968833472809,
51.515616059521406
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "1",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Assam Street",
"address": "Naylor Building West, 1 Assam Street (and 14-24 White Church Lane)",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 4,
"search_str": "Naylor Building West, 1 Assam Street (and 14-24 White Church Lane)"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Inside my grandfather's shop at 28 White Church Lane there was a long wooden counter running down the left hand side. Behind it, running right down and along the wall, were shelves stacked with large bales of woollen cloth that were woven in the mills of Yorkshire.</p>\n\n<p>My grandfather had retired by the time I used to visit the shop. My father ran it, assisted by Mr. Plunkett (never knew his first name, it was always ‘Mr. Plunkett’). The doorway at the back of the shop led up some rickety stairs to the small office, where the secretary Dorothy could be found (always ‘Dorothy’, never knew her surname). The thing I remember most about that office was the large telephone switchboard - the classic one with all the wires and plugs. I used to happily spend hours playing with it. Thinking about it now, I’m not even sure it was connected to anything, but might have been left over from the previous occupants.</p>\n\n<p>Both my father and Mr. Plunkett were experts at cutting the measured cloth in a straight line using a large pair of shears. I still have them:</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/03/01/paul-kleiman-shears.jpeg\"></p>\n\n<p>Just along the street from the shop there was a gap between the buildings which I’m pretty certain was bomb damage.</p>\n\n<p>The neighbourhood was, then, a very Jewish neighbourhood. I remember there was a constant stream of people coming into the shop. Sometimes to buy, sometimes to just say hello and chat.</p>\n\n<p>The photos here - <a href=\"http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2101018/Rabbis-rags-rainy-Whitechapel-Stunning-photos-celebrate-Jewish-life-post-war-East-End.html\">http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2101018/Rabbis-rags-rainy-Whitechapel-Stunning-photos-celebrate-Jewish-life-post-war-East-End.html</a> - capture a lot of what I remember. My father could well have been in some of those photos.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-03-01",
"last_edited": "2021-01-04"
},
{
"id": 563,
"title": "Gun makers in Whitechapel",
"author": {
"id": 215,
"username": "Derek_Morris"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1309,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.070687538281745,
51.511027633471706
],
[
-0.070676597770463,
51.510998213207614
],
[
-0.070815652134293,
51.51098997442266
],
[
-0.070814343457121,
51.51102094757437
],
[
-0.070687538281745,
51.511027633471706
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "50",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Chamber Street",
"address": "Arch 50 Chamber Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 2,
"search_str": "Arch 50 Chamber Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Insurance grew in popularity during the eighteenth century and was taken out by people from all social classes from labourers to the Duke of York. There are probably over a hundred policies taken out by men and women in the gun making trades in Whitechapel.</p>\n\n<p>At present the Sun Fire Office policies (LMA, Ms 11936) are covered by two indexes: LMA, Ms 24172 covers 1775-1787 – the 1970s University project, The Place in the Sun project has so far covered on line 1782 to 1841.</p>\n\n<p>For anyone who wants to follow up gunmakers or any other trade in Whitechapel before 1784 (the current earliest date of the SUN online) should be aware of the vast index on cards of over 600 trades held by the library of the Museum of London, which is only open to very serious researchers. This, probably the most under-used archive because of its very low profile, is the indexing project that started in 1986 and finished in 2009.</p>\n\n<p>In about 1986, Francis Collard, then head of the Furniture Department at the V&A museum in South Kensington, asked Stuart Turner, a fellow NADFAS [National Association of Decorative and Fine Art Societies] member for help in compiling information about cabinet makers and joiners ca. 1730 for a nationwide index of such trades for publication. His input was derived from the policy registers of the Sun Insurance Office held in the Manuscripts Section of Guildhall Library. As his work became known, other curators and interested parties asked for the trades with which they were particularly involved to be added to this list. Eventually over 600 trades were indexed.</p>\n\n<p>NADFAS quickly dropped out of the project but a dedicated team led by the late Miss Myrtle Mumford continued the work until 2009. The group worked at Guildhall Library and copied the full details of policies from the registers and transferred them on to 8” by 5” cards for filing, which have been copied to the Museum of London, the V and A, the National Maritime Museum and the Tower of London. Access to these cards is by appointment only but they very useful for research into a wide variety of topics the emphasis being on trades.</p>\n\n<p>Myrtle and her team undertook a massive task as they went through all the Sun policy registers, covering the years 1710-1863, a total of 1262 volumes (GL Ms 11936 and 11937). Of the trades researched, some are covered countrywide, others are only included if they relate to London. The cards contain financial information not available in the SUN on-line index. These cards fill over 50 large drawers and are organized by trade not location. For London trades the contact is the librarian at the Museum of London.</p>\n\n<p>One advantage of their index is that if you have identified a fore bear as say as a piano tuner or barometer maker, you can quickly see if their name appears in the index, and more particularly, if other members of the family appear in the index. It will be some years before the Sun indexing project makes the policies in Ms 11936 available on-line but will not be tackling Ms 11937: the index to areas outside London and the Home counties.</p>\n\n<p>_____________________________________________________________________________________________________</p>\n\n<p>James Yeomans is an interesting example of a gun maker who was profiting during the war with the French (1793-1802) and began to invest in local property. He was also operating from two places in Chambers Street and Great Prescot Street. It also looks like he was using both 45 and 46 Chamber Street. I have found many examples of this practice; it was clearly more efficient to buy or rent the next door property than look for a larger property in the area. We frequently find wash rooms, kitchens and sheds built in back yards.</p>\n\n<p>Refs for Yeomans:</p>\n\n<p>29/3/1792 of 45 Chamber Street insured for £100 his utensils and stock in a shed behind 5 Great Prescot Street (LMA, Ms 11936, 385, 598225).</p>\n\n<p>21/4/1794 of 46 Chamber Street insured for £300 his household goods and stock for £300 (LMA, Ms 11936, 397, 626956).</p>\n\n<p>13/4/1803 of 46 Chamber Street now insured a number of properties: 40 and 41 Charles Street for £480, a wash house behind for £20, 5 Leman Row, Leman Street for £100 (LMA, Ms 11936, 426, 747098).</p>\n\n<p>13/4/1803 of 45 Chamber Street now insured a number of properties: 1 Gowers Row, Leman Street occupied by Siser for £300, a house in Wells Yard for £100 (LMA, Ms 11936, 426, 747097)</p>\n\n<p>Other gun makers operating on Chamber Street include:</p>\n\n<p>Joseph Loder, gun stock maker - 29/2/1779 of Chamber Street, Goodmans Fields, insured his utensils and stock in a timber warehouse behind Greenfield Street for £1,000. An example of one of the larger merchants, with property across the Whitechapel area (LMA, Ms 11936, 273/410290)</p>\n\n<p>Edward Elliott and Elizabeth Barnett, gun stock makers - 12/10/1780 of 25 Chamber Street, Goodmans Fields, insured their household goods for £200 and stock for £400. Interesting example of a woman involved in gun making. It might be possible that she was a member of the important Barnett family in the Minories (LMA, Ms 11936, 287/433948).</p>\n\n<p>Robert Alexander, gun stock maker - 27/3/1779 of Lambeth Street, Goodmans Fields, insured his household goods for £100 and stock for £200 (LMA, Ms 11936, 273/411652).</p>\n\n<p>Other gun makers of Whitechapel include: </p>\n\n<p>Ezekial Baker, gun barrel maker - 3 May 1790 of 8 Field Gate Street, Whitechapel (a brick house) insured his household goods and stock for £300 (LMA, Ms 11936, 368, 567945).</p>\n\n<p>Edward Pursell, gunmaker - 28/10/1780 of 12 Little Prescot Street, insured his household goods for £100 and stock for £700 (LMA, Ms 11936, 287/434949).</p>\n\n<p>John Pratt, gunmaker - 7/6/1782 of 39 Mansell Street, insured his brick warehouse behind his house for £200 and his stock for £2,100, so he was clearly important in this trade (LMA, Ms 11936, 303/460666).</p>\n\n<p>Joshua Bryant, wheelwright, gun carriage maker, dealer in timber - 3/12/1788 of 27 Whitechapel Road insured his household goods for £400 (LMA, Ms 11936, 357, 551079). He was preceded in this property by Messrs Arundel and in 1790 and 1800 the land tax is £90, so a sizeable operation.</p>\n\n<p>William Gameson, founder - 5/4/1803 of Chamber Street in the 1790s insured his household goods and stock for £200 (LMA, Ms 11936, 426, 745788).</p>\n\n<p>Thomas Tucker, gun stock maker - 9/12/1789 of 20 Somerset Street insured his household goods for £600 and stock in his timber shed in the yard for £600 (LMA, Ms 11936, 364, 563644y).</p>\n\n<p>Thomas Squire, gunmaker - 2/2/1814 of 12 Castle Street insured household goods for £250 and stock for £450. He also insured for £1100 property in Stratford and in Tenters Street, Whites Row (LMA, Ms 11936, 462/889913). On 17/11/1814 he increased the insurance to £2000 (LMA, Ms 11936, 462/899621). After 1814 Squire increased his property holdings: 12/2/1821 of 12 Castle Street insured household goods for £250 and stock for £750 and property: 34, 35 Shepherd Street and 13 Butler Street, White Row insured for £400 4 and 5 Butler Street for £300 7 Tenter Street for £150 3 Freeman Street for £150 4 houses Stratford for £400 (LMA, Ms 11936, 487/981420).</p>\n\n<p>Ann Fearnley, gunmaker - 9/2/1815 of 6 Union Street, Whitechapel, insured her house for £700, her household goods for £600 and her workshops and stock for the considerable sum of £1,600, a total of £3,100 (LMA, Ms 11936, 464/904086). 11/5/1815 of 6 Union Street, Whitechapel, she increased the total insured to £4,100 (LMA, Ms 11936, 468/906843). On 15/4/1816 she reduced the total insurance to £2,900 (LMA, Ms 11936, 467/917669). A good demonstration of short-term changes in the quantity of stock in her workshops, but still a sizeable business.</p>\n\n<p>John Stinton/Stenton gunmaker - 5/4/1813 of 108 Chamber Street insured his household goods for £300 and his workshop and stock for £300 (LMA, Ms 11936, 462/881162).</p>\n\n<p>Edward Payton, gunmaker - 15/3/1815 of 44 Leman Street insured for £100 his tools in the workshop of Stenton, gunmaker 108 Chamber Street (LMA, Ms 11936, 466/904914). An interesting example of a sub-contractor?</p>\n\n<p>Henry Dersh, gun stock maker - 8/7/1813 of 11 Gow[ers] Walk was lodging in the house of a dress maker and insured his household goods for £100 (LMA, Ms 11936, 464/883704).</p>\n\n<p>Edward Bowstead, gunmaker - 24/3/1814 of 43 Chamber Street insured his household goods for £200, his stock for £300 and a house in Bethnal Green for £100 (LMA, Ms 11936, 464/891842). 5/1/1815 of 43 Chamber Street increased his insurance to £2400 (LMA, Ms 11936, 464/901456).</p>\n\n<p>Samuel Lowe, gun stock maker - 24/3/1814 of 30 Buckle Street insured for £500 his stock in a workshop and yard behind the house of Egg, gunmaker, at 35 Mansell Street (LMA, Ms 11936, 464/891852). 25/9/1815 now of 20 Somerset Street, Whitechapel, insured for £300 15 Mulberry Street, Whitechapel and 12 Dawson Place, Chicksand Street (LMA, Ms 11936,466/909948).</p>\n\n<p>William Frazer, gun stock maker - 28/2/1816 of 1 Goodmans Court, Minories, a brick and timber house, insured his household goods for £200 (LMA, Ms 11936, 466/915884).</p>\n\n<p>William Dodd, gunmaker - 4/7/1816 of 24 Rosemary Lane, insured his household goods for £110 and his stock for £240 (LMA, Ms 11936, 468/921018).</p>\n\n<p>David Keeley, gun maker - 1/12/1824 of 8 Woodford Place, Little Prescot Street insured his household goods for £100 (LMA, Ms 11936, 502/1023516).</p>\n\n<p>William Barnett, gun maker - 15/7/1824 of Charles Court, 1 Chamber Street insured his house for £120, household goods for £120, stock for £110 and a house in Bethnal Green for £450 (LMA, Ms 11936, 494/1017983).</p>\n\n<p>John Edward Barnett, gun maker - 22/10/1817 of 67 Great Prescot Street, insured his household goods, pictures and jewels for £1,050 (LMA, Ms 11936, 474/934700). 1/12/1825, now at 134 Minories insured his house in Stoke Newington for £1,000 and his household goods for £1350 (LMA, Ms 11936, 501/1039374, and 501/1039373). John Edward Barnett's insurance indicates a house with high value contents, reflecting his higher status.</p>\n\n<p>Thomas Barnett and son, were important gunmakers at 134 Minories. 15/5/1809 insured house, warehouse and stock for £8,000 (LMA, Ms 11936, 444/830741). 12/4/1821 insured his stock for £1,000 (LMA, Ms 11936, 487/978836). 18/5/1825, stock and property insured for £8,300 (LMA, Ms 11936, 502/1031112).</p>\n\n<p>William Hegley, gun maker - 24/12/1817 of 4 Chamber Street insured his household goods for £200 and his stock for £100 (LMA, Ms 11936, 473/936793). In 1824 Hegley's address is the Workhouse, Whitechapel Road, but I think his insurance policies show he was still active as a gun maker, owned property, so perhaps he was the Warden of the Workhouse and not a poor resident. 23/9/1824 he insured the stock in his manufactory behind 5 Old Montague Street for £500, a house 14 Chamber Street for £200, a house 5 Spencer Street, Commercial Road for £200 House and offices at Funning Hill [?], Berkshire for £300 (LMA, Ms 11936, 500/1021152). Then with John Furze and Charles Francis on 31/8/1825 he insured 1 and 2 Providence Street, Commercial Road for £200 (LMA, Ms 11936, 500, 1035379).</p>\n\n<p>John Leigh, gun maker - 27/1/1825 of 46 Lemon Street insured his household goods £150, and a house in Essex Street, Globe Fields for £150 in 13/2/1822 (LMA, Ms 11936, 501/1026769, Ms 11936, 491/989406).</p>\n\n<p>Samuel Lowe, gun stock maker - 12/2/1810 of 30 Buckle Street insured his house for £150, household good £100, stock for £100 and insured 4, 7, 29 Buckle Street for £450 (LMA, Ms 11936, 449/891071). Moved by 1821 to 35 Mansell Street (LMA, Ms 11936,466/909948).</p>\n\n<p>John Bayley, gun smith - 19/3/1779, of 9 Crown Court, Cartwright Street, Rosemary Lane, insured his household goods and apparel for £100 and stock for £100 (LMA, Ms 11936, 272/411336).</p>\n\n<p>Daniel Goff, gun maker -<strong> </strong>30/10/1782, of 39 Mansell Street, insured his household goods and apparel for £300, stock for £400 and two houses in Victualling Office Square for £400 (LMA, Ms 11936, 304/466268)</p>\n\n<p>Another example of a successful gun maker diversifying into investing in property. Goff was living and working in the house of John Pratt, gunmaker, 39 Mansell Street, who in 1782 insured for £3000, his household goods, workshop and stock; SUN 303/460666, 1782. It is not yet known if Goff had been apprenticed to Pratt, was a business partner or was related in some way.</p>\n\n<p>Ambrose Pardoe, gun maker - 8/10/1777, of 19 Chamber Street, insured his household goods for £170 and stock for £30 (LMA, Ms 11936, 261/389438).</p>\n\n<p>Cornelius Radley, gun maker, gun smith, chandler - 15/12/1777, of 25 Peter Court, Rosemary Lane, insured his household goods for £70 and stock for £130 (LMA, Ms 11936, 263/392416). 23/9/1778, of 25 Peter Court, Rosemary Lane, insured his utensils in a shop in a dwelling house in Swallow Gardens, Rosemary Lane for £100 (LMA, Ms 11936, 269/402890). 20/12/1779, of Swallow Gardens, Rosemary Lane, insured his utensils in a “house let in tenements” for £80 and his stock in the yard of Bailey, victualler, 12 Chamber Street for £220 (LMA, Ms 11936, 278/422245).</p>\n\n<p>This is a very interesting set of policies, which demonstrate that although Radley was a modest tradesman, whose situation changed from year to year, he was very carefully insuring every year his modest household goods and stock. The 1781 land tax has a Henry Bailey in Chamber Street, but no evidence yet that he was a victualler. It also demonstrates how the yards of taverns were used for a great variety of purposes, including allowing tradesmen to store goods, either in the open or possibly in small sheds or warehouses.</p>\n\n<p>Evan Andrew Touse, gun maker - 21/8/1778, of Swallow Gardens, Chambers Street, insured his household goods and apparel for £150, stock for £610 and a workshop for £40 (LMA, Ms 11936, 267/401872). £40 represents a sizeable workshop: reflected also by the value of his stock. The land tax has an Andrew Touse/Towse in Swallow Street between 1770 and 1781 [and possibly longer] with “2 houses, shop and yard”. </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-01-15",
"last_edited": "2020-08-04"
},
{
"id": 578,
"title": "Return to Newnham Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 95,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.072288312836018,
51.512824307605015
],
[
-0.072121612943253,
51.512858159153865
],
[
-0.072025478409202,
51.512890409815434
],
[
-0.072011859946938,
51.51286535896135
],
[
-0.071966433437302,
51.51287497358547
],
[
-0.071934030456307,
51.51281536880901
],
[
-0.071897041880432,
51.51282319750863
],
[
-0.071941565002123,
51.51290509717561
],
[
-0.071831416366548,
51.512942678785066
],
[
-0.071781735212569,
51.5128432447703
],
[
-0.071725521861399,
51.51285417962799
],
[
-0.07176487086724,
51.51293293466522
],
[
-0.071675647300703,
51.51295029074344
],
[
-0.071664919501195,
51.51292881954059
],
[
-0.071609406497337,
51.512939618081724
],
[
-0.071587377736956,
51.512895528347
],
[
-0.071612025842334,
51.512890733734274
],
[
-0.071602267132423,
51.512871202037054
],
[
-0.071638516898164,
51.51286415062836
],
[
-0.071631665323334,
51.51285043746628
],
[
-0.071520551906845,
51.51287205152489
],
[
-0.071479483670422,
51.51278985445861
],
[
-0.071510654926827,
51.51278379096125
],
[
-0.071493990169301,
51.51275043681792
],
[
-0.071398637684366,
51.51276898494904
],
[
-0.071377550943573,
51.51272678005531
],
[
-0.071560243982688,
51.512691242207104
],
[
-0.071533397485951,
51.51263750953841
],
[
-0.071453105482364,
51.51265312815549
],
[
-0.071420349396566,
51.51258756716799
],
[
-0.07167247628417,
51.51253852254618
],
[
-0.071707184439989,
51.512607989805105
],
[
-0.071606228537011,
51.51262762818665
],
[
-0.071633225247965,
51.51268166132723
],
[
-0.07169132093397,
51.512670360313905
],
[
-0.071712967532689,
51.512713685153294
],
[
-0.071811121682106,
51.5126945917228
],
[
-0.071768019434541,
51.512608324512954
],
[
-0.071970981647633,
51.512568842989026
],
[
-0.072017837645733,
51.51266262230734
],
[
-0.071954707384708,
51.51267490286048
],
[
-0.072013765441807,
51.5127931035959
],
[
-0.072057545202814,
51.51278458724506
],
[
-0.072087040272971,
51.512843619299026
],
[
-0.072110299177035,
51.51283569768739
],
[
-0.072067753844785,
51.51274483657161
],
[
-0.072241827775471,
51.51271310224785
],
[
-0.072288312836018,
51.512824307605015
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "St Mark Street",
"address": "English Martyrs RC Primary School, St Mark Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 9,
"search_str": "English Martyrs RC Primary School, St Mark Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Yoel Sheridan grew up in Goodman's Fields in the 1930s and 40s and has written about the experiences of his family at this time in a book called 'From Here to Obscurity' (Tenterbooks, 2001). </p>\n\n<p>\"If one stopped almost any inhabitant of the East End of London and asked for directions on how to find Newnham Street, the chances are that the otherwise knowledgable person would be unlikely to have even heard of the street, let alone point in its direction. Yet, Newnham Street was a real street. </p>\n\n<p>If however, when standing in Aldgate High Street, one asked for the Tenter Streets, then faces would light up. People would become knowledgable and ask, do you mean the Tenter Streets or the Tenter Grounds? This is because the former is to the south, close to the Minories, while the latter is to the north, close to Bell Lane. The former please, because there, in the centre of the North, East, South and West Tenter Streets, Newnham Street could be found. There, Shulem [father of Yoel or Yulus] lived until the German bombers in the second world war totally obliterated the Street from the map. Today, it is no longer a street and its name no longer appears on a modern map of London. In its stead, stands a Catholic School that occupies the whole of what was once the living accommodation of a thriving, industrious, diverse community. Yulus, as an adult, visited the school. One of the senior Nuns asked him whether he had lived in the area. No, said Yulus. No? said the Sister querulously, then what is your interest? I lived on here, said Yulus emphasizing the word on. He then pointed to the very spot where the house of his childhood once stood. It is a pity, said the Sister in her strong Irish accent, that the Jews left this area. They were so clean. It was a pleasure to hear her lyrical voice rising at the end of the last sentence.</p>\n\n<p>The Jewish enclave of Goodman's Fields was socially similar to, if physically different from, other Jewish enclaves in the East End ghetto. The four to five storey tenement buildings in East Tenter Street and Buckle Street were not as high or as formidable as the seven storey Rothschild Buildings in Thrawl Street. Nor were they spread over such a large area as the Brunswick Buildings in Goulston Street and Hughes Mansions in Vallance Road, all to the north of Whitechapel. They did not have the enclosed courtyards of those other 'grander' buildings, which acted as playgrounds for children and meeting places for adults. The surrounding streets were the playgrounds and meeting places. Important facilities that existed in the enclave were utilised by the whole East End community, such as the <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1401/detail/\">Workers' Circle building in Alie Street</a> that was both a political and cultural centre. Monickedam's wedding reception hall was also in that street. <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1699/detail/#\">Camperdown House</a> that housed the headquarters of the Jewish Lads Brigade and the Hutchinson House Youth Club, was located in Half Moon Passage. Leman Street boasted the headquarters of the Cooperative Wholesale Society (CWS), the central Police Station for the area, and, at one time, the Temporary Jewish Refugee Centre that later moved to <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/49/detail/#\">Mansell Street</a> with a back entrance in West Tenter Street. </p>\n\n<p>[The Newnham Street] house was so much better than the previous overcrowded two room apartment that [Yulus's father, Shulem] had rented in the tenement buildings in Bacon Street, off Brick Lane, where toilet facilitites had to be shared with six other families living on the same floor. Now that he was living in a six roomed house with its own private toilet, he could not imagine how they [a family of nine] managed to live in those terribly cramped conditions...When number ten [Yulus] was due to come on the scene...a move to better housing conditions became inevitable. Now, at least, in Newnham Street, the family could breathe and the girls had the privacy of their own room. </p>\n\n<p>Times had since become harder and [Yulus's father] had agreed with Rivka [his wife] to take in a lodger. They had moved their bedroom downstairs to the back room that had a window that looked out onto the back yard. The room was divided from the front parlour by large wooden double doors that were usually kept closed, as the back room also housed a foot treadle operated Singer's sewing machine...The upper back bedroom was to be converted to accommodate the lodger...The only toilet in the house was situated in the back yard, in a small outhouse. Access to the yard was through a door in the scullery that adjoined the kitchen. Access to the scullery was through the kitchen which was also the main living room where the family would congregate for meals, listen to the newly acquired wireless set, meet, discuss, quarrel, reconcile, laugh and, in the summer months, count the number of flies that had come to a sticky end on the fly paper hanging from the central light fitting...</p>\n\n<p>One of the reasons for furnishing the front parlour so nicely when they came to Newnham Street, was so that suitors for the two girls could be received in style. They could then tell their parents how well they had been treated. Likewise, the eldest son could entertain his potential bride and Rivka and Shulem could entertain the potential in-laws with pride. the front parlour had not been used too many times for these purposes. But Rivka continued to hope.</p>\n\n<p>[On Friday afternoons] Newnham Street was busy preparing for Shabbas. Rivka was not alone in whitening the square area outside the front door. All the pavements had been washed and the white squares outside each household looked like a bouquet waiting to be presented to the Shabbas bride. People were hurrying home in their work clothes. Food had to be prepared before Shabbas as no active cooking could be done on that day...The most popular and traditional recipe was cholent...The larger pots belonging to the larger families were too big to go into the family ovens [on Friday night] and so an arrangement was made with the local Jewish baker for the cholent to be cooked overnight in his oven...On Friday afternoons Yulus and his elder brother would take the family cholent in its two-handled brown enamel pot to the <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/68/detail/\">bakers</a> located in St Mark Street next to the Scarborough Arms Pub on the corner of Scarborough Street. Other youngsters from other families would do likewise. The baker would place an identifying mark on the pot with chalk and place it deep into his oven with a long loaf paddle which he also used to remove the pot the following noon when the two boys came to collect it and carry it back home using rags to wrap around the handles for insulation against the heat.\"</p>\n",
"created": "2018-02-06",
"last_edited": "2021-05-04"
},
{
"id": 669,
"title": "Procession Sunday and the East End Exodus",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1297,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.071935648282288,
51.51134524228436
],
[
-0.071874729442993,
51.51121363108998
],
[
-0.071816144948546,
51.51122339231668
],
[
-0.071776588646252,
51.51120578254433
],
[
-0.071762024560661,
51.51117337877791
],
[
-0.07177649375904,
51.511141452410264
],
[
-0.071834141993347,
51.51113011940239
],
[
-0.071816329795347,
51.51108571239466
],
[
-0.072075019832766,
51.51104549229583
],
[
-0.072193056743033,
51.51130853787665
],
[
-0.072151551976597,
51.51131487321276
],
[
-0.072147312228886,
51.51132649961524
],
[
-0.072142333320455,
51.51133343542439
],
[
-0.072015847069243,
51.5113547481352
],
[
-0.071996105248008,
51.51135617797319
],
[
-0.071982278923131,
51.511350687404345
],
[
-0.071975230627282,
51.51134004502751
],
[
-0.071935648282288,
51.51134524228436
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "Roman Catholic Church of the English Martyrs",
"street": "Prescot Street",
"address": "Roman Catholic Church of the English Martyrs",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 20,
"search_str": "Roman Catholic Church of the English Martyrs"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p><em>Interview with the oldest parishoner (OP) continued, including information from his daughter 'F'.</em></p>\n\n<p>F: “When we used to have the outdoor processions...they were great. It was a lovely day. You used to have the procession and then later on in the evening the band would just come round and play all the old songs while the priest blessed the altars.” </p>\n\n<p>OP: “You could describe it as the highlight of the year in parish life because you had the people who had moved away over the years invariably made a point of coming back. It didn't matter how long they'd been away, and if you'd met them wherever they'd gone to live, they always declared themselves Tower Hill people. They would never say they came from anywhere else.</p>\n\n<p>The procession would go and do a tour of the parish, it was quite a lengthy walk really, especially for the small kids. And then they would come back to the church and there would be a short service of benediction, after which everybody went home and all the relatives who were visiting came to see and one thing or another. Then in the evening the priest would go around blessing all these altars and they'd be accompanied by a drum and [Irish] pipe band.\" </p>\n\n<p>F: “They used to play all the old songs, it's a long way to Tipperary, Danny Boy and all that...”</p>\n\n<p>OP: “Then we'd all go and have a good drink afterwards.”</p>\n\n<p>F: “But sometimes before you went and had your drink, you'd had a little tipple of sherry or something indoors with the tea with the family, and then you'd come out to see the band and the priest and everyone would be dancing behind them and singing.” </p>\n\n<p>OP: “It used to drive my missus mad getting five kids ready for the procession…\" </p>\n\n<p>F: “It was horrendous. She was very precise with everything and everything had to be just so. It was just crazy. But it was lovely at the same time…because Daddy was a Knight of Saint Columba…\"</p>\n\n<p>OP: “It was a great day, procession Sunday. It always took place round about June. In May they used to have the indoor procession for the May Queen, and I showed you pictures of my younger daughter when she was the May Queen.”</p>\n\n<p>F: “People used to make altars on their window-ledges, altars in doorways [for procession Sunday]...”</p>\n\n<p>OP: “It was basically [made of] a statue of some sort, it would either be our Lady or the sacred heart, a picture of the pope...Symbols of religion, of the faith...”</p>\n\n<p>F: “Obviously with flowers…All the local streets would have them...”</p>\n\n<p>OP: “Every street on the route would have them. We lived up on the third floor so my mother used to stick out the pope's flag. A yellow and white flag would go out her window.” </p>\n\n<p>F: “They used to be brilliant days. The night before the procession everyone used to go round and look at people's altars. Some of them, they did them beautiful, but it didn't matter, it was all part of it. They used to have their candles alight, and all that, and in the square in the middle of Peabody's, there was a big block there that got bombed in the war…”</p>\n\n<p>OP: “They'd all be disappeared by the Monday [the altars]…”</p>\n\n<p>F: “…And the priest always used to pray on that spot [at Peabody’s] as well on procession Sunday. There was a lot of people that lost family in that block, there was an altar nearby there...”</p>\n\n<p>OP: “The route changed slightly over the years. We used to leave the church and we'd go up Prescot Street, across the road into Hooper Street, across Lambeth Street, [up to Commercial Road] then down Christian Street and come back a little bit this way, and then Pell Street…Pell Street has gone now.\"</p>\n\n<p>F: “We went over the Tower way first!”</p>\n\n<p>OP: “No we went along Commercial Road first, then down Pell Street, then down the bottom of Thomas More Street, it was then called Nightingale Lane up until just before the war, to two council blocks that we felt belonged in our parish, so we did those and then we'd come back up John Fisher Street for the Peabody lot, and then Cartwright Street and we'd finish up on Tower Hill where they executed the Catholic martyrs, Thomas More and John Fisher. We used to come round this way, [but] when Pell Street disappeared after the war, it was considerably shortened because we'd lost so much ground you know? Pell Street had disappeared and we had quite a lot of people living down there.</p>\n\n<p>These were the days when the great exodus to the East took place from the East End, to Dagenham. We used to go down and visit them...I was never tempted to move out. I can't tolerate suburbia in any of its forms. I've got no reason for it. I just thought I'm a city person and I've never had a desire to live anywhere else. Occasionally I went to visit some of the people who moved out there. I mean I have a sister in law living in Dagenham East at the moment. I’ve got a brother in law living in Hornchurch, I've got a granddaughter living in Buckhurst Hill. One of my own daughters is living in Beckenham, which is very very nice, but it's a bit upmarket. It's a question of horses for courses.”</p>\n",
"created": "2018-06-15",
"last_edited": "2021-08-05"
},
{
"id": 789,
"title": "John Wilton and the music hall: 1850 to 1881",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1392,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.066897382560978,
51.51047185184401
],
[
-0.066897150320887,
51.510543358461234
],
[
-0.066964310871808,
51.51054939761258
],
[
-0.067031736648758,
51.51055546057313
],
[
-0.067033159620775,
51.51054385631446
],
[
-0.067124985785421,
51.51055249759738
],
[
-0.067119646867151,
51.510573278551
],
[
-0.067097006082147,
51.51057630354935
],
[
-0.067064204301052,
51.510690877240464
],
[
-0.066813595729658,
51.51071232706844
],
[
-0.066808845661517,
51.510692481646345
],
[
-0.066750873450789,
51.51069733978511
],
[
-0.066731248551372,
51.51054469318253
],
[
-0.066802206282857,
51.51054121190127
],
[
-0.066805453245557,
51.51046452251118
],
[
-0.066897382560978,
51.51047185184401
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "1",
"b_name": "Wilton's Music Hall",
"street": "Graces Alley",
"address": "Wilton's Music Hall, 1 Graces Alley",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 23,
"search_str": "Wilton's Music Hall"
},
"tags": [
"Wilton's Music Hall"
]
},
"body": "<p>John Wilton, a butcher’s son and former solicitor’s clerk from Bath, took over the pub in 1850 and in 1853 employed Thomas Ennor, a local builder, to put up a new Mahogany Bar Concert Room on a similar north–south footprint to that which had been built by Matthew Eltham. Jacob Maggs, a Bath painter-decorator cum artist, supplied designs. This room was superior in having shallow balconies on three sides on cast-iron columns and a small bar to the west of a northerly stage behind a wood and canvas proscenium. Entrance and escape were initially only through the pub. With improving and respectable aims in a difficult neighbourhood, Wilton managed a new and increasingly popular form of musical entertainment, his wife Ellen being an active partner. The premises were known from 1854 as Wilton’s Music Hall. In 1855 Wilton acquired 2 Graces Alley and, with S. Charles Aubrey of Dalston as his surveyor, revived its use for circulation to and from the hall with a new stone-paved entrance hall and a stone staircase with cast-iron candelabrum newels, its upper landing on iron rails, a makeshift arrangement that endures.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Wilton was sufficiently successful as to be able to acquire 3–4 Graces Alley and to rebuild ambitiously in 1858–9 on a scale and with a panache to match London’s leading music halls, again working with Maggs and Ennor, perhaps also Aubrey. Ellen Wilton laid a foundation stone dedicated to Apollo on 9 December 1858 and the venue reopened in March 1859 as Wilton’s Magnificent New Music Hall. The acquisition of No. 4 and rebuilding with a reduction in depth of this heretofore two-room deep house created space for the building of a substantially larger hall oriented east–west across the gardens of 1–4 Graces Alley and 17 Wellclose Square. Aligned with the backs of Cable Street’s properties, not with Graces Alley, the hall’s position left irregular circulation spaces and voids between it and the houses along the alley. </p>\n\n<p>The hall was indeed, and still is, magnificent. With good proportions (about 75ft long by 40ft wide and 40ft high) and excellent acoustics, a priority for Wilton, the balconied space has a barrel-vaulted ceiling with ornamental ribs. Five-bay side walls are articulated by capped piers with ten-bay high-level arcades over circular windows.</p>\n\n<p>A simple proscenium arch provided standing space in the wings of an originally apsidal stage backed with Gothic-framed mirrors; there were no tableau curtains or flys for scenery. On the other three sides a carton-pierre bombé-fronted balcony with swags and acanthus ornament stands on helical-spiral load-bearing cast-iron columns, an apparently unique feature, at least as a survival. The floor would have been flat for supper-room seating. A shallower apse to the west was probably behind a refreshment counter at ground level. There would also have been a servery in the gap between the pub and the hall near the stage, a significant indicator of the relationship of auditorium to public house. Henry Mayhew’s collaborator, Bracebridge Hemyng, explained that Wilton had ‘erected a gallery that he sets apart for sailors and their women. The body of the hall is filled usually by tradesmen, keepers of tally-shops, &c., &c.’[^2]</p>\n\n<p>Decorative plasterwork was by White and Parlby, ‘subdued white, relieved by the gold, grounds being blue and red.’[^3] A spectacular central sunburner fitting and four other cut-glass gas chandeliers were by J. Defries & Sons. The sunburner’s was ‘a solid mass of richly cut glass in prismatic feathers, spangles and spires’.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>Facing the alley, No. 4 gained bracketed cornices to harmonise and storey height as at the pub, taller than Nos 2–3. Probably contemporary was the unified stucco facing of the whole ground-floor frontage, with a continuous fascia for advertising and the ornamental surround to the wide foyer entrance at No. 2.</p>\n\n<p>Madrigals, glees and excerpts from opera featured prominently in the hall’s performances at first, along with attractions from the West End and beyond, and from circuses, ballet and fairgrounds. Eminent solo singers of comic songs included Sam Collins, later Jolly Nash and George Leybourne (Champagne Charlie). There were also trapeze artists and can-can dancers. The stage was squared off under a simple lean-to loft sometime before 1871 when there was still supper-room seating.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>Wilton continued to run the music hall as a model of propriety and order until 1868 when he moved to the West End, retaining freehold ownership of other Graces Alley property. His first successor was George Robinson, who moved on to the Royal Oak in 1872, perhaps having run a less genteel house than Wilton’s. Harry Hodgkinson was the proprietor in August 1877 when fire broke out during refurbishment works, gutting the interior of the hall and destroying the roof. Little was left within the walls save parts of the balcony on ‘tottering’ columns. Insurance money permitted hasty like-for-like reconstruction and reopening in September 1878, just in time to avoid having to comply with new fire regulations that led to the closure of many small music halls. The works were executed under the supervision of J. Buckley Wilson, of Wilson, Willcox and Wilson, architects; the builder, otherwise unidentified, was called Jones. Reinstatement with reused columns was as before, save for the insertion of a more theatre-like raked floor. Tastes had been changing and audiences declining. Perhaps more significantly, the MBW’s safety demands imposed further work or hefty fines. Despite the expense of the rebuild, Wilton’s Music Hall closed in 1881.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, MBO/080, pp. 218–43; MBO/081, pp. 169–80; MBO/084, pp. 226–38; SC/PHL/02/1009: <em>The Era</em>, 23 Sept. 1855.</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Henry Mayhew, <em>London Labour and the London Poor</em>, vol. 4, 1861, p.227</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Building News</em>, 15 April 1859, p. 348.</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: <em>The Era</em>, 3 April 1859.</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: <em>The Era</em>, 18 March and 3 April 1859: <em>East London Observer</em>, 12 March 1859: <em>Building News</em>, 15 and 22 April 1859, pp. 348,388: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archive (THLHLA), LC11593: Jacqueline S. Bratton, <em>Wilton’s Music Hall</em>, 1980, pp. 11–14: Theatres Trust Resource Centre (TTRC), John Earl, ‘Wilton’s Music Hall Conservation Plan’, 1999, pp. 14–16: Peter Honri, <em>John Wilton’s Music Hall: the handsomest room in town</em>, 1985: Carole Zeidman, ‘Wilton’s, a history of the hall and houses’, 2015, pp, 21–7, 32: information kindly supplied by John Earl and Philip Cooper.</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: THLHLA, P/SLC/2/16/46: <em>Daily News</em>, 31 Aug 1877: <em>The Builder</em>, 18 May 1878, p. 524: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 2 Aug. 1878, p. 223: Bratton, pp. 14–17: Earl, pp. 17–18: Zeidman, pp. 38–9: www.wiltons.org.uk/heritage/history.</p>\n",
"created": "2018-12-07",
"last_edited": "2021-08-06"
},
{
"id": 847,
"title": "11A-11C Dock Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1372,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.068057208494737,
51.50994707934026
],
[
-0.067741719270887,
51.51000467088681
],
[
-0.067573542753321,
51.50966353310232
],
[
-0.067877175177271,
51.509577840143784
],
[
-0.068057208494737,
51.50994707934026
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "11A-11C",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Dock Street",
"address": "11A-11C Dock Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 3,
"search_str": "11A-11C Dock Street"
},
"tags": [
"Millwall Dock Company"
]
},
"body": "<p>The site that is now 11A–11C Dock Street was laid out with stabling and sheds around an open yard in 1863–4 and first occupied by Thomas Howey & Co., carmen. The Millwall Dock Company took the property as a cartage depot in 1873 and rebuilt some of the stabling in 1885–6. This use continued into the 1920s when the property was given up by the Port of London Authority, into which the dock company had been merged. The site became a furniture factory then a motor garage, cleared save for petrol pumps by 1958. The present three-unit warehouse with an upper storey to the front for offices was built in 1970 for Third Gulliver Property, employing Douglas Marriott, Worby & Robinson as architects, and White Bros (Bermondsey) as builders.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, P93/PAU2/020, /237; DL/A/K/01/16/099: Museum in Docklands Port and River Archive, 2736 (Millwall Dock Schedules): The National Archives, IR58/84824/4102–3: Post Office Directories: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control files 21372–3, 21376–80</p>\n",
"created": "2019-03-04",
"last_edited": "2019-03-04"
},
{
"id": 588,
"title": "Lunch at Ostwinds in the 1950s",
"author": {
"id": 220,
"username": "paul2"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1782,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.071442314822931,
51.51734246806489
],
[
-0.071262303449235,
51.51737278086081
],
[
-0.071299007932809,
51.51745926545695
],
[
-0.070937581445306,
51.51751896797156
],
[
-0.070898034826619,
51.51743153722992
],
[
-0.070840058938839,
51.51743912665687
],
[
-0.070698894532489,
51.517300563933034
],
[
-0.070728747884351,
51.51725923868469
],
[
-0.071361610052371,
51.51715454089468
],
[
-0.071442314822931,
51.51734246806489
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "",
"address": "site of 71-79 Wentworth Street",
"feature_type": "GREATER_WHITECHAPEL",
"count": 1,
"search_str": "site of 71-79 Wentworth Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>At lunchtimes my father and I would leave his shop at <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/100/detail/\">28 White Church Lane</a>, cross Whitechapel Road and walk through Wentworth Street market and go to Ostwinds, the kosher bakery and restaurant on Wentworth Street. The restaurant was on the first floor above the bakery. I always remember that whenever we entered my father would greet, and be greeted by, loads of men in the room (I think it was always mainly men in the room... probably all local businessmen, shopkeepers, etc.</p>\n",
"created": "2018-03-01",
"last_edited": "2018-03-01"
},
{
"id": 647,
"title": "133 New Road",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 856,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.062996488811552,
51.51809460420352
],
[
-0.063026603614248,
51.51813282355058
],
[
-0.062952372531105,
51.5181555902181
],
[
-0.062928962515822,
51.518110643493884
],
[
-0.062996488811552,
51.51809460420352
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "133",
"b_name": "",
"street": "New Road",
"address": "133 New Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 1,
"search_str": "133 New Road"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>No. 133 New Road appears to have been built in 1825–7, possibly for John Jones, seemingly a dairyman, going up at the same time as 138–146 Whitechapel Road, with which its facade was later unified with embellishments that were lost in the 1980s. [^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, Tower Hamlets Commissioner of Sewers ratebooks: Historic England Archives, DD000633</p>\n",
"created": "2018-05-09",
"last_edited": "2018-05-09"
},
{
"id": 569,
"title": "Early history of the Idea Store site",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 518,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.058265578249493,
51.51997368190386
],
[
-0.057870681883353,
51.520069776330836
],
[
-0.057795852846717,
51.519925640296286
],
[
-0.057754684632276,
51.51993713160212
],
[
-0.057648441439835,
51.519761149535064
],
[
-0.05807295251591,
51.51962908276924
],
[
-0.058265578249493,
51.51997368190386
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "321",
"b_name": "Whitechapel Idea Store",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Whitechapel Idea Store, 321 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 15,
"search_str": "Whitechapel Idea Store"
},
"tags": [
"David Adjaye",
"James Edmeston",
"John Samuel Hayward"
]
},
"body": "<p>A row of shophouses on sites that became 319–329 Whitechapel Road probably had seventeenth-century origins. John Hayward, a floorcloth and carpet manufacturer of Newington Causeway, established a Whitechapel factory in the 1780s on the south side of Whitechapel Road (on the west side of what is now Cavell Street, a Post Office site since the 1880s). Within a decade the enterprise had spread to a shophouse across the road, immediately west of the Drapers’ Almshouses, the site corresponding to what became 329 Whitechapel Road, and to new warehousing on the east side of North (now Brady) Street. Hayward died in 1794 and left his business in trust to his teenage son John Samuel Hayward (1778–1822). Thomas Hayward, probably a brother and uncle, was resident at and no doubt in charge of the Whitechapel site. John Samuel Hayward gained fame as an artist, but did also apply himself to floorcloth making. Hayward & Co.’s north-side premises passed to Edward Wentworth from 1828 to his death in 1848, and then to Thomas Edward Davis and William Wentworth Davis, under whom floorcloth manufacturing continued here until 1882.[^1] No. 329 was rebuilt for Messrs Davis in the early 1860s to designs by James Edmeston as a showroom–warehouse of five bays and four storeys with what was said to be a stone front with Gothic arcading – the <em>Builder</em> disliked it. After acquisition by Mann Crossman & Paulin of the Albion Brewery adjoining, these premises were used by teadealers, Walker & Dalrymple (later Teetgen & Co.), who were also at Nos 319–321 on the Brady Street corner, a rendered Italianate pair of 1857. Nos 323–327 were humble earlier singletons.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Land Tax returns: Tower Hamlets Commissioners of Sewers ratebooks: The National Archives, PROB11/1245/125; PROB11/1660/332; PROB11/2072/202: Victoria & Albert Museum, E.1628–1939: <em>The Times</em>, 30 June 1828, p 8: Post Office Directories </p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 31 July 1857, p. 552: <em>The Builder</em>, 16 April 1864, p. 272: <em>The Standard</em>, 1 Aug 1882, p. 8: Post Office Directories</p>\n",
"created": "2018-01-26",
"last_edited": "2018-03-05"
},
{
"id": 570,
"title": "Whitechapel Idea Store, 321 Whitechapel Road",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 518,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.058265578249493,
51.51997368190386
],
[
-0.057870681883353,
51.520069776330836
],
[
-0.057795852846717,
51.519925640296286
],
[
-0.057754684632276,
51.51993713160212
],
[
-0.057648441439835,
51.519761149535064
],
[
-0.05807295251591,
51.51962908276924
],
[
-0.058265578249493,
51.51997368190386
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "321",
"b_name": "Whitechapel Idea Store",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Whitechapel Idea Store, 321 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 15,
"search_str": "Whitechapel Idea Store"
},
"tags": [
"David Adjaye",
"James Edmeston",
"John Samuel Hayward"
]
},
"body": "<p>The sites that had been 319–329 Whitechapel Road were cleared in connection with the Albion Yard and Sainsbury’s developments in 1994. Once those projects were complete Tower Hamlets Council took this large corner property south of the new supermarket for public-library use. This was one of the first steps towards implementing a new approach to this building type. A Tower Hamlets’ strategy of 1998–9 envisaged ‘Idea Stores’ in shopping districts, to be conveniently situated centres for the acquisition of all kinds of information, to promote lifelong learning and self-improvement in both mind and body. The ‘stores’ were to be sited and designed to provide ‘a unique environment using the architectural and interior design language of the retail and leisure industries. Strong retail style branding and image promotion will reinforce the total break with “Victorian municipality” that so discourages participation and will help excite and re-engage the local community.[^1] This was novel, but it did have unavowed echoes of local late-Victorian initiatives.</p>\n\n<p>Council officers explained to their Building Control colleagues that they were commissioning ‘high-quality consultants’ to achieve an ‘innovative landmark design’ for a ‘radical innovative concept’.[^2] Following a competition, David Adjaye was appointed the programme’s chief architect in 2001. In his 30s and of Tanzanian–Ghanaian origin, Adjaye had quickly acquired a reputation for excitingly radical and elegant architecture, in significant part through the close-by Elektra House at 84A Ashfield Street of 1999–2000. The Whitechapel Idea Store was conceived as the programme’s flagship and Adjaye/Associates prepared plans in 2001–2. Under Adjaye’s direction, Samson Adjei, Christopher Adjei, Yohannes Bereket, Nikolai Delvendahl, Cornelia Fischer, Jessica Grainger, Martin Kaefer, Haremi Kudo, Sean McMahon, Yuko Minamide and John Moran worked on the job, and Arup were the engineers. They aimed to produce, in Adjaye’s words, ‘a glamorous place that’s open to everybody – an accessible civic building’, ‘like a mall, clean and glass and glossy’.[^3] A commercial architectural vocabulary was thus turned to civic purpose. Adjaye also saw through another contemporary new-build Idea Store in Poplar at the other end of the Borough.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>Whitechapel’s Idea Store was built in 2003–5 by William Verry Ltd, contractors. Its main five-storey almost cubic block houses not just a library, but also adult-education facilities, a crèche, a gallery for exhibitions and a café. The children’s library to the south-west on the ground floor was to be a retail unit in early plans, and remains convertible to such use if finances require. The precast-concrete and steel frame is clad in glass on three sides, with translucent green and blue strips rhythmically arrayed and allusively reflecting market awnings below. There is grey aluminium cladding to the east where a path to the supermarket was opened. The upper storeys of the Whitechapel Road façade are suspended above the pavement from which a double-flight escalator rises, a means of entry intended to symbolise ease of access as in a shopping mall, but sadly soon put out of use for security reasons. The glazing is internally supported by Kerto laminated timber fins or mullions, a deliberate break from the otherwise corporate appearances, which are integrated with the building’s designedly flexible fittings. Inside there are red rubber floors, exposed concrete ceilings and, in a central core, twin interlocking staircases with black trim and recessed handrails as at the recently completed Tate Modern. A two-storey rear pavilion houses a dance studio and therapy room on its upper level, which drops down to an easterly open deck. A black aluminium wall faces the supermarket car park. An intended video-wall element to the main façade was not completed. The building was an immediate critical and functional success, and more than a decade on it remains well used and eloquently appreciated as good civic architecture.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets Borough Council, ‘A Library and Lifelong Learning Development Strategy for Tower Hamlets’, 1999, at https://www.ideastore.co.uk/assets/documents/misc/A_Library_and_Lifelong_Learning_Development_Strategy_for_Tower_Hamlets(1).pdf</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Tower Hamlets Local Hisory Library and Archives (THLHLA), Building Control file 18658</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: David Adjaye as quoted by Hana Loftus in <em>Architects' Journal</em>, 24 Oct 2011, p. 27</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Ken Powell, <em>New London Architecture</em>, 2001, p. 157: <em>Building Design</em>, 28 Oct 2005: Peter Allison (ed.), <em>David Adjaye: Making Public Buildings</em>, 2006, pp. 158–207</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: THLHLA, Building Control file 19215: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: <em>Architects' Journal</em>, 12 Oct 2006, pp. 65–74: 24 Oct 2011, pp. 26–8: <em>Architectural Design</em>, Oct 2006, pp. 126–9: Ken Powell, <em>New London Architecture 2</em>, 2007, pp. 52–3</p>\n",
"created": "2018-01-26",
"last_edited": "2018-03-05"
},
{
"id": 546,
"title": "Whitechapel Coal Depot and Great Eastern Square",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 615,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.061912426696935,
51.520202313072325
],
[
-0.061874785965162,
51.52020632400268
],
[
-0.061889838776397,
51.520270600539185
],
[
-0.061772606596072,
51.52027912769503
],
[
-0.061761274604345,
51.52022643741218
],
[
-0.061628238435086,
51.52023839485955
],
[
-0.061602171287638,
51.52013104478763
],
[
-0.061573162136184,
51.520127096195324
],
[
-0.061544517048737,
51.52011514494444
],
[
-0.061534860531212,
51.52010343868477
],
[
-0.061529168139568,
51.52006888501374
],
[
-0.061526425989946,
51.520048706748355
],
[
-0.061514408930299,
51.52003660718366
],
[
-0.061495102107996,
51.52002913056525
],
[
-0.061475241885438,
51.52002590044315
],
[
-0.061460589950224,
51.52002438689717
],
[
-0.061438363000579,
51.52002476509692
],
[
-0.061426370471038,
51.52003077384237
],
[
-0.0614153485846,
51.52003879812201
],
[
-0.061405729871782,
51.520049304430415
],
[
-0.061402315101561,
51.52005856401746
],
[
-0.061402724606023,
51.52007404708882
],
[
-0.061405755392364,
51.52008528050189
],
[
-0.061122177806162,
51.52022899048914
],
[
-0.061091504623702,
51.520085764968634
],
[
-0.060963368011847,
51.51993513884966
],
[
-0.060938560956953,
51.51990598454681
],
[
-0.061198284937537,
51.519823605100925
],
[
-0.061528142251785,
51.51970437567786
],
[
-0.061544781135941,
51.51969783671064
],
[
-0.061556075859584,
51.51969339795934
],
[
-0.061560863910158,
51.519688671562044
],
[
-0.061562478644049,
51.51968225561496
],
[
-0.061562600959662,
51.51965870894303
],
[
-0.061734852890324,
51.51964663949438
],
[
-0.061767969632807,
51.519786788205614
],
[
-0.061805132613926,
51.51978453796883
],
[
-0.061827146831599,
51.519876199669575
],
[
-0.061912426696935,
51.520202313072325
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Durward Street",
"address": "Whitechapel Sports Centre, Durward Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 7,
"search_str": "Whitechapel Sports Centre, Durward Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>The first direct contact of the northern parts of the parish of Whitechapel with railways came when the Great Eastern Railway Company built a long snaking range of coal drops (or shoots) south from Bethnal Green onto the northern parts of what had been the Whitechapel Distillery until 1861. This opened as Whitechapel Coal Depot in 1866, but from the 1880s was known as Spitalfields Coal Depot. It was a substantial structure, six sidings on a long viaduct, the 52 arched vaults of which were let to merchants and filled with coal. It closed in 1967, but the structure survived until the late 1980s.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>The formation of the coal depot was doubtless behind a proposal from the Great Eastern Railway Company in 1864 that the wide part of Buck’s Row between Thomas Street and the Ragged Schools (on the site of 6 Durward treet) should be renamed Great Eastern Square. This was approved by the Metropolitan Board of Works but appears never to have been adopted.[^2] Even so, the open space was a gathering place where in the 1890s ‘Jews assemble on Sundays and speechify’.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>Buck’s Row gained great notoriety in 1888 upon the murder here of Mary Ann (Polly) Nichols by ‘Jack the Ripper’. Together with White’s Row it was renamed Durward Street in 1892, with seemingly random reference to Walter Scott’s novel, 'Quentin Durward' (1823).[^4]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Greater London Industrial Archaeology Society, Newsletter, Dec 1984: <em>Victoria County History, Middlesex, vol. 11: Stepney, Bethnal Green</em>, 1998, pp. 89–90: Goad map, 1890</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 19 Feb and 8 April 1864, pp. 229,385</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: London School of Economics Library, Booth/B/351, p. 243</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: London County Council Minutes, 25 Oct 1892, p. 938 </p>\n",
"created": "2018-01-03",
"last_edited": "2018-03-09"
},
{
"id": 814,
"title": "Baptist Chapel",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 417,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.072579098508925,
51.51588574342777
],
[
-0.072804098509042,
51.515812043427744
],
[
-0.07310819850918,
51.5157573434277
],
[
-0.073255698509161,
51.51591574342781
],
[
-0.072960598509013,
51.51600294342786
],
[
-0.072746598508902,
51.51606954342789
],
[
-0.072579098508925,
51.51588574342777
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "Kensington Apartments, 11 Commercial Street",
"street": "11 Commercial Street",
"address": "Kensington Apartments, 11 Commercial Street, London 6LW and 6NE",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 9,
"search_str": "Kensington Apartments, 11 Commercial Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Between 1854 and c.1910 an imposing Baptist Chapel stood on the site of the lower section of Kensington Apartments. It had some claim to be the oldest Baptist congregation in London and was built to replace the chapel of 1730 in Little Prescot Street, at the south end of Mansell Street, which had been troubled for some years by ‘the constant thunder of railway engines’ and whose site was needed for the Blackwall Railway development.[^1] The builder of the Commercial Street Baptist Chapel was John Wood & Son of New North Road, the architect Joel Foster Earle (1823-86), from an extensive family of builders and sculptors in Hull, who had trained as a Baptist minister before becoming an architect.[^2] Railway compensation of £6,560 paid for the freehold site (£2,900), 85ft wide and 88ft deep. The chapel, to seat around 800, was fronted by a full-width pediment over a distyle in antis Corinthian portico. Steps rose within to a central entrance flanked by doors to staircases to the galleries, which stood on iron columns running round three sides. The moveable dais at the west end covered the baptistery and entrance to vestries, and accommodated the pulpit from the old Prescott Street chapel. A schoolroom and lecture hall c. 40ft by 27ft was located on the south side.[^3] </p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/12/20/baptist-chapel-from-kevan.JPG\">The Commercial Street Baptist Chapel when newly built, from E.R. Kevan, <em>London’s Oldest Baptist Church</em>, London 1933</p>\n\n<p>It was an active congregation under its excitable and energetic minister, Charles Stovel (1799-1883), an anti-slavery campaigner. There were lectures against Christian evangelism in India, and slavery in the American South, and by Stovel himself on ‘The Sin of Exacting Excessive Labour’ in support of the Early Closing Association.[^4] </p>\n\n<p>The Baptist chapel’s congregation was evidently dwindling even before Stovel’s death in 1883. A visitor in 1875 found the congregation already ‘small’, in such a large building.[^5] By 1888 attendance was down to around 120 and in the summer of 1893 the site had caught the eye of Samuel Barnett and his associates hoping to build the <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/388/detail/#whitechapel-gallery-pre-history-and-early-history-up-to-1914\">Whitechapel Gallery</a>.[^6] Negotiations continued sporadically until the summer of 1896 when they petered out, Barnett’s friend, the Baptist minister Dr John Clifford, reporting that ‘There is still an indisposition to leave the place, a clinging to the hope that better days may come’.[^7] The Baptists struggled on in Commercial Street till 1909, when they sold the building to the Metropolitan Police, and after a temporary sojourn in a room in Alie Street, the remnants of the congregation merged with a congregation in Walthamstow, which continued, as Grace Baptist Church, until closure in 2014.[^8] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>A memorial of mercies, trials and deliverances, realised by the first Baptist Church in Removing from Prescot Street to Commercial Street</em>, London 1856</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <a href=\"https://www.earle.me.uk/earle-search/earle-family-of-kingston-upon-hull/\">The Earle family of Kingston-upon-Hull</a>: Census: Ancestry: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), District Surveyor's Resturns (DSR)</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Baptist Reporter and Missionary Intelligencer</em>, Aug 1855, p. 249: <em>Builder</em> (<em>B</em>), 27 Sept 1856, p. 530</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: H. Leon McBeth, <em>The Baptist Heritage: Four centuries of Baptist Witness</em>, Nashville, TN, 1987 p. 302: <em>East London Observer </em>(<em>ELO</em>), 21 Sept 1861, p. 2: </p>\n\n<p>[^5]: <em>ELO</em>, 16 Jan 1875, p. 5</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>The Religious Census of London</em>, London 1888, p. 22</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: Whitechapel Gallery Archives, EAR 1/5</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: <em>Shoreditch Observer</em>, 9 Aug 1908. p. 5: E.R. Kevan, <em>London’s Oldest Baptist Church</em>, London 1933, p. 160: information Abigail Gardner, Grace Baptist Partnership </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-12-20",
"last_edited": "2018-12-21"
},
{
"id": 658,
"title": "Salvation Army Rescue Home, 212 Hanbury Street",
"author": {
"id": 230,
"username": "Clare_F"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1626,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.064687897362774,
51.51940232177648
],
[
-0.064688354663401,
51.519547922321735
],
[
-0.06440657359774,
51.51954740857876
],
[
-0.064403728665074,
51.51940374702956
],
[
-0.064687897362774,
51.51940232177648
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "",
"address": "Greater Whitechapel",
"feature_type": "GREATER_WHITECHAPEL",
"count": 1,
"search_str": "Greater Whitechapel"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/05/23/hanburywomen.gif\"></p>\n\n<p>The Hanbury Street Rescue Home for 'fallen women' at 212 Hanbury Street opened on 22 May 1884, being prominent in the 'Maiden Tribute' story (<a href=\"https://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/history/blog25\">https://www.salvationarmy.org.uk/history/blog25</a>), and moved to Dalston on 5 Aug 1885. The Home is the house shown to the left of Trinity Congregational Church (<a href=\"http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol27/pp265-288#h3-0018\">http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol27/pp265-288#h3-0018</a>). The Church and house were demolished in 1903, replaced by a Board School and later by Pauline House, the high-rise block of flats there now. </p>\n",
"created": "2018-05-23",
"last_edited": "2018-05-23"
},
{
"id": 445,
"title": "9 Davenant Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 446,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.065599547334165,
51.51834996604178
],
[
-0.065789221022941,
51.51826327188507
],
[
-0.065887098962743,
51.51835337791054
],
[
-0.065836679125025,
51.51837469588768
],
[
-0.065696761346175,
51.51843874064897
],
[
-0.065690942009691,
51.51843342651627
],
[
-0.065599547334165,
51.51834996604178
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "9",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Davenant Street",
"address": "9 Davenant Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 1,
"search_str": "9 Davenant Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>The east end of the former ropewalk that had otherwise been taken by Ind, Coope & Co. was developed by Daniel Luke Moss, a Fieldgate Street stonemason, who put up a warehouse with a steam engine in 1846 and a court of twelve small houses, Moss’s Buildings, in 1848. The southern part of the site was redeveloped in 2005–8, for eleven flats with shops and clothing workshops in a four-storey block built for Unicastle Ltd, with Clements & Porter Architects (later Richard Bonsor, architect), and Eyekon Contractors Ltd, builders. In 2016 its shops are the Urban Chocolatier and Dot Print.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: District Surveyors Returns: Post Office Directories: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 82049: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2017-08-07",
"last_edited": "2018-03-05"
},
{
"id": 140,
"title": "the missing pots",
"author": {
"id": 46,
"username": "jacqui"
},
"feature": {
"id": 521,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.057044351749301,
51.52005556326038
],
[
-0.057062845054071,
51.52008733971823
],
[
-0.057006580922032,
51.52009916710701
],
[
-0.056992538373997,
51.520075225540054
],
[
-0.056933469956532,
51.520088559604176
],
[
-0.05684130439071,
51.51992730823853
],
[
-0.056960904550882,
51.519899865751334
],
[
-0.057044351749301,
51.52005556326038
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "337",
"b_name": "The Blind Beggar public house",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "The Blind Beggar, 337 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 9,
"search_str": "The Blind Beggar public house"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>If you look at older pictures of this pub, there are large plant pots on ledge above pub sign. These were removed by my father, Jack Holt, in the late 1960s or 70s, given to him by the landlord. He used them as flower pots and was proud of the history of them. You can see a picture of the pots in this newspaper article about the Krays, if you scroll down the page: <a href=\"http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/i-interviewed-krays-here-blood-6405389\">http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/i-interviewed-krays-here-blood-6405389</a></p>\n",
"created": "2016-09-16",
"last_edited": "2018-01-29"
},
{
"id": 166,
"title": "Memories of shopping in war-time Cable Street",
"author": {
"id": 72,
"username": "eric"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1388,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.066879502365839,
51.510844661379735
],
[
-0.066862511678253,
51.510761824516806
],
[
-0.066952814928383,
51.51075255750358
],
[
-0.066950782413508,
51.5107455473704
],
[
-0.066997569538801,
51.510740795451646
],
[
-0.066999136526024,
51.51074779791026
],
[
-0.067171264889663,
51.51073144940706
],
[
-0.067169771657697,
51.51072270400946
],
[
-0.067197802098879,
51.51072084047433
],
[
-0.067199319929543,
51.51072900489128
],
[
-0.067288775215765,
51.51072133252647
],
[
-0.067285473568536,
51.51069670449288
],
[
-0.067358367414083,
51.510691510626806
],
[
-0.067360545836973,
51.51070608117119
],
[
-0.06744649924104,
51.51070052109646
],
[
-0.06744449292239,
51.51068188369036
],
[
-0.067469680944622,
51.51068113601828
],
[
-0.067467235347347,
51.51065086365969
],
[
-0.067441116274192,
51.51065159598726
],
[
-0.067441608078574,
51.510639976378634
],
[
-0.067115839962,
51.51058809635666
],
[
-0.067138150386428,
51.51050125623889
],
[
-0.067591716505203,
51.51057152104168
],
[
-0.06767269001234,
51.510771689264104
],
[
-0.066879502365839,
51.510844661379735
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "1",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Ensign Street",
"address": "Sapphire Court, 1 Ensign Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 7,
"search_str": "Sapphire Court, 1 Ensign Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Memories of Eric Shorter, b. 1936</p>\n\n<p>My mum did the ‘weekly’ shop in Cable Street, where we used a greengrocers and a Yiddisher grocers. I went too, most times.</p>\n\n<p>The grocer sold you your needs, wrapped in paper or put straight into your bags, and he tallied the costs on a simple square of torn-off paper. He would verbalise the total cost as he summed it. But, he could not pronounce the ‘th’ of ’three’, and so verbalised it as ‘tree’. Strange things stick with youngsters, and my mind wants to say ‘tree’ instead of ‘three’ even today.</p>\n\n<p>We were in the grocers one day when its owner was serving a lady. She bought some eggs, and as usual these were handed over flimsily wrapped, and she dropped one. Without hesitating, she scooped the egg, still mostly in its shell, and poured it down her throat. Such were the shortages of war. I remember this because I have always been a bit iffy about fatty/slimey things in the mouth.</p>\n\n<p>At another time, during a weekday, I walked past another shop with an open door, and the way through to the back yard was visible. In the yard was a cow, which moo’d at me.</p>\n\n<p>A cow in Cable Street? Wow. That is a memory.</p>\n",
"created": "2016-11-01",
"last_edited": "2018-12-07"
}
]
}