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=32",
"previous": "https://surveyoflondon.org/api/v1/documents/?format=api&page=30",
"results": [
{
"id": 631,
"title": "My favourite aunt",
"author": {
"id": 228,
"username": "Deekay"
},
"feature": {
"id": 15,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.07038859472598,
51.51426496387257
],
[
-0.07073271347526,
51.51412601920421
],
[
-0.070849739517874,
51.514247147044586
],
[
-0.070508832474584,
51.514384190759564
],
[
-0.07038859472598,
51.51426496387257
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "19",
"b_name": "City Reach, 19 Leman Street",
"street": "Leman Street",
"address": "City Reach, 19 Leman Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 5,
"search_str": "City Reach, 19 Leman Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>My great aunt, Doris Allan, was the second youngest from a dockworker's family from Canning Town. I don't know where she learned her trade as an embroiderer but she somehow worked her way up to owning her own business. She used to take me with her to her workshop in Whitechapel. The first place was demolished as it was very old and dilapidated but full of character and charm. She was on the first floor and on the ground floor they made bags. I think they were Italian? I remember the distinct smell of machine oil and cottons. After it was pulled down, she moved to Alie Street and continued to work as an embroiderer in to her 70s. Whitechapel was a part of my aunt's life as long as I knew her and probably many years before. She moved out to Essex in the 1950s but still commuted in every day - she must have had a real fondness for the place.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-04-28",
"last_edited": "2021-02-17"
},
{
"id": 400,
"title": "Love In An English Republic",
"author": {
"id": 161,
"username": "julie2"
},
"feature": {
"id": 296,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.069238538289603,
51.51610506120929
],
[
-0.069007097235987,
51.5162239535272
],
[
-0.068282200256798,
51.51654369745104
],
[
-0.068157401560378,
51.51641994527148
],
[
-0.067807959279103,
51.51600137496063
],
[
-0.068541180339468,
51.515783257348254
],
[
-0.068555919008956,
51.51580580160597
],
[
-0.068713893455475,
51.515872451567986
],
[
-0.068778503699218,
51.51586114158782
],
[
-0.068817146392177,
51.515922550138725
],
[
-0.068888047037903,
51.51596428315636
],
[
-0.069016085124709,
51.515921053627785
],
[
-0.069107698271647,
51.51601562404751
],
[
-0.069243279190738,
51.515974904669626
],
[
-0.069238538289603,
51.51610506120929
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "Altab Ali Park, including the site of the parish church of St Mary Matfelon",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Altab Ali Park",
"feature_type": "OPEN_SPACE",
"count": 32,
"search_str": "Altab Ali Park, including the site of the parish church of St Mary Matfelon"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>My Birmingham family had no desire to go to London so neither did I, until I followed my maternal Clarke pedigree via wifi in Australia. I've been digging deep into the working and middling sort of ancestors for years, making full use of the global sharing of knowledge. </p>\n\n<p>My husband and I emigrated with our families when we were 14 years old and both ignorant of the English Civil Wars, but drilled in the Tudors, so my explorations in 17th-century London have been electrifying. With imagination sparking I have a novel in progress I call <em>Providence, or Love in an English Republic</em>.</p>\n\n<p>According to the Stepney Parish Church registers, St. Mary Matfelon, Whitechapel was where Hugh Cannaday, a mariner/roper, married Thomasine Bond on January 13, 1631 (my 13x great grandparents).</p>\n\n<p>Two months later, daughter Thomasine Cannaday was born in Gun Alley, Wapping, followed by Tabitha and three sons. Unlike her siblings, Thomasine survived, fell in love with John Clark and followed in his footsteps, literally as a Redcoat.</p>\n\n<p>She followed her heart and her God, to receive her '15 minutes of fame' in a ballad about her time as a cross-dressing military drummer! At some point I will have to tread my way to the former church burial ground where she was buried: 5th March 1690 ~ a woman from Well Close in Well Street.</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2017/06/27/-female-drummer.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p><strong>The famous Woman-Drummer</strong></p>\n\n<p>Or the valiant proceedings of a Maid which was in love with a Souldier,</p>\n\n<p>and how she went with him to the wars, and also of many brave actions that she</p>\n\n<p>performed after he had made her his wife, shal here be exprest in this ensuing</p>\n\n<p>Ditty. to the tune af wet and weary.</p>\n\n<p>OF a Maiden that was deep in love</p>\n\n<p>with a Souldier brave and bold sir,</p>\n\n<p>Ile tel you here as true a tale</p>\n\n<p>as ever hath been told sir:</p>\n\n<p>And what brave actions she performd</p>\n\n<p>after she was his wife sir.</p>\n\n<p>And how she did behave her selfe</p>\n\n<p>to save her husbands life sir:</p>\n\n<p>She marcht with him in wet and dry,</p>\n\n<p>in Winter and in Summer,</p>\n\n<p>For he was then a Musketier,</p>\n\n<p>and she became a Drummer.</p>\n\n<p>When first this couple fell in love,</p>\n\n<p>a bargain she did make sir,</p>\n\n<p>That when that he had need of her</p>\n\n<p>she would not him forsake sir:</p>\n\n<p>And so they went for two Comrades</p>\n\n<p>most lovingly together,</p>\n\n<p>And plaid their parts most actively,</p>\n\n<p>like two Birds of one feather:</p>\n\n<p>she marcht with him in wet and dry,</p>\n\n<p>in winter, etc.</p>\n\n<p>She had got mans apparrel on,</p>\n\n<p>gay doublet and brave hose sir,</p>\n\n<p>And manfuly she beat her Drum,</p>\n\n<p>her enemies to oppose sir:</p>\n\n<p>And she was daintily bedeckt,</p>\n\n<p>acording to her Colours,</p>\n\n<p>And she was like a man indeed,</p>\n\n<p>just to great Mars his followers:</p>\n\n<p>she marcht with him in wet and dry, etc.</p>\n\n<p>They have been both in Ireland,</p>\n\n<p>in Spain and famous France sir,</p>\n\n<p>where lustily she beat her Drum,</p>\n\n<p>her honour to advance sir.</p>\n\n<p>Whilst Canons roard and Bullets flye,</p>\n\n<p>as thick as hail from Sky sir,</p>\n\n<p>She never feard her forraign Foes</p>\n\n<p>when her Comrade was nigh sir;</p>\n\n<p>She stood the brunts in heat and cold,</p>\n\n<p>in winter and in summer,</p>\n\n<p>Her husband was a Muskettier,</p>\n\n<p>and she was then a Drummer.</p>\n\n<p>In every place where she did come,</p>\n\n<p>she shewd herself so valiant,</p>\n\n<p>And few men might, compare with her,</p>\n\n<p>her actions were so gallant:</p>\n\n<p>She manage could her sword full well,</p>\n\n<p>and to advance a pike sir;</p>\n\n<p>But for the beating of a Drum,</p>\n\n<p>you seldome saw the like sir:</p>\n\n<p>In frost and snow, in wet and dry,</p>\n\n<p>in winter and in summer,</p>\n\n<p>Her husband was a Muskettier,</p>\n\n<p>and she a famous Drummer.</p>\n\n<p>She beat with three men at one time,</p>\n\n<p>and won of them a wager,</p>\n\n<p>And had not one strange chance befell,</p>\n\n<p>she should have been Drummajor:</p>\n\n<p>Her belly it began to swell</p>\n\n<p>and she grew plum and jolly</p>\n\n<p>But she usd all the means she could,</p>\n\n<p>whereby to hide her folly:</p>\n\n<p>She marcht by day and watcht by night,</p>\n\n<p>in winter and in summer,</p>\n\n<p>And still they took her for a man,</p>\n\n<p>she was so stout a Drummer.</p>\n\n<p>In company she would merry be,</p>\n\n<p>and sometimes sing a song sir,</p>\n\n<p>And take Todacco oftentimes,</p>\n\n<p>and drink strong Beer among sir:</p>\n\n<p>If any one had angred her,</p>\n\n<p>or done her any evill,</p>\n\n<p>Sheed quickly make them for to know</p>\n\n<p>they were better crosse the Devil:</p>\n\n<p>Near Tower-hill sho quartered was</p>\n\n<p>in famous London Citie,</p>\n\n<p>But more strange newes I have to tell</p>\n\n<p>before I end my Ditty.</p>\n\n<p>For she was grown so big with child,</p>\n\n<p>which made her fellows wonder,</p>\n\n<p>And in a short time after that,</p>\n\n<p>poor soul she fell asunder:</p>\n\n<p>But when her painful hour approacht,</p>\n\n<p>I doe not lie nor flatter,</p>\n\n<p>The women cut her Codpeece point,</p>\n\n<p>to see what was the matter.</p>\n\n<p>But to be brief, it came to passe,</p>\n\n<p>as I must tell you truly,</p>\n\n<p>She was delivered of a son</p>\n\n<p>the sixteenth day of July:</p>\n\n<p>The women all were kind to her</p>\n\n<p>whilst that she was in labour,</p>\n\n<p>Because she was a Souldiers wife,</p>\n\n<p>they shewd to her much favour:</p>\n\n<p>They [f]urnisht her with every thing,</p>\n\n<p>as [m]eat and drink and clothing,</p>\n\n<p>For child-bed linnen and the like,</p>\n\n<p>they let her want for nothing:</p>\n\n<p>Her husband was a Muskettier,</p>\n\n<p>and she a lusty Drummer,</p>\n\n<p>It seems they soundly plaid their parts</p>\n\n<p>in winter and in Summer.</p>\n\n<p>Let no man nor no woman think</p>\n\n<p>that she hath been dishonest,</p>\n\n<p>But what she did was done in love,</p>\n\n<p>as she before had promist.</p>\n\n<p>To keep her husband comany,</p>\n\n<p>the truth of all was so sir,</p>\n\n<p>And pleasure him both day and night</p>\n\n<p>where ever they did go sir:</p>\n\n<p>Her husband was a Musketier,</p>\n\n<p>and she a famous Drummer,</p>\n\n<p>It seems they plyd their businesse well</p>\n\n<p>in winter and in summer.</p>\n\n<p>You Maidens all that hear this Song,</p>\n\n<p>consider what is told here.</p>\n\n<p>Concerning of this woman kind,</p>\n\n<p>that dearly lovd a Souldier:</p>\n\n<p>If you with Souldiers be in love,</p>\n\n<p>I wish you to be loyal,</p>\n\n<p>For they to you wil faithful prove,</p>\n\n<p>if you put them to the trial:</p>\n\n<p>Her husband was a Musketier,</p>\n\n<p>and she a famous Drummer, etc.</p>\n\n<p>For love is such a powerful thing,</p>\n\n<p>if it be rightly given,</p>\n\n<p>There cannot be a better gift</p>\n\n<p>under the ropes of Heaven;</p>\n\n<p>So now brave Souldiers all adieu,</p>\n\n<p>remember what is spoken,</p>\n\n<p>Come buy my songs and send them to</p>\n\n<p>your Sweet-hearts for a token:</p>\n\n<p>Her husband was a Musketier,</p>\n\n<p>and she a warlike Drummer,</p>\n\n<p>I would that I had such a Mate,</p>\n\n<p>to walk with me this Summer.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/30874/xml\">http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/30874/xml</a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/30874/image\">http://ebba.english.ucsb.edu/ballad/30874/image</a></p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2017-06-22",
"last_edited": "2021-03-30"
},
{
"id": 662,
"title": "Three o'clock walk",
"author": {
"id": 231,
"username": "Mariame_Amouche"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1188,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.062135521845015,
51.51764176709899
],
[
-0.061842202698012,
51.517670085745486
],
[
-0.061848902036134,
51.51769938896618
],
[
-0.061550919793822,
51.51772590607731
],
[
-0.061559977080333,
51.51776552415219
],
[
-0.061447064288193,
51.51777557192973
],
[
-0.061449635978695,
51.51778682104097
],
[
-0.06118390946889,
51.51781046681395
],
[
-0.061173470769467,
51.517768252329546
],
[
-0.0611656045837,
51.517762055237526
],
[
-0.061159583649328,
51.517735562574764
],
[
-0.061165991378992,
51.51772693239806
],
[
-0.061115835114599,
51.517494904849876
],
[
-0.061108055251476,
51.51749055594055
],
[
-0.061100533853466,
51.51745850319045
],
[
-0.061102936626612,
51.5174532736114
],
[
-0.061094280097356,
51.517413095299034
],
[
-0.061827243127089,
51.517348112870636
],
[
-0.061830552360161,
51.517362587728314
],
[
-0.062066885754417,
51.51734155598123
],
[
-0.062135521845015,
51.51764176709899
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Stepney Way",
"address": "Outpatients Department",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 9,
"search_str": "Outpatients Department"
},
"tags": []
},
"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>The discovery of this forsaken hospital building was, for me, a visual representation of how gentrification can even affect valuable institutional buildings of years gone by. I am saddened by the fact that this hospital building, which once used to be a highly respected structure enabling the functioning of a key public service for the people of London, has been left to perish in the memory of its own past. Stopping for a moment to concentrate on the building, I could almost feel the presence of the faded spirit that the hospital once possessed proudly. I imagined what New Road was like at the turn of the twentieth century when the building was first opened. The scene that came to mind was of a long road with men in top hats and women in long bell-shaped skirts bustling along the sidewalk while early designs of ambulance vehicles zoomed across the street to an abrupt stop as they reached the entrance doors of the emergency rooms located elsewhere on the hospital’s estate. Residents watched from their windows as these vehicles opened their doors and injured men and women were steered immediately into the emergency rooms ready for operating. Imagining this reality brought home to me the real community spirit and life that this building feels like it has now lost. Its location allowed it to act as something of a climax to the street, pedestrians from Commercial Road, like <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1206/detail/\">me</a>, having to travel the full length of the road in order to reach the immense structure that there should always be a memory of in this place. </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-05-23",
"last_edited": "2018-05-23"
},
{
"id": 404,
"title": "Circumcision cakes",
"author": {
"id": 163,
"username": "Jil"
},
"feature": {
"id": 511,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.061158839374764,
51.51901890806152
],
[
-0.061124847287167,
51.518969189064066
],
[
-0.061173563089729,
51.51895737027033
],
[
-0.061193305729985,
51.518964077607194
],
[
-0.061256113642657,
51.51905699979579
],
[
-0.061196914867139,
51.51907433313947
],
[
-0.061158839374764,
51.51901890806152
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "235",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Zam Zam Gift Shop (formerly the Lord Napier public house), 235 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 13,
"search_str": "Zam Zam Gift Shop (formerly the Lord Napier public house), 235 Whitechapel Road"
},
"tags": [
"Grodzinski",
"Kossoff's",
"Lord Napier public house",
"S. A. S. Yeo"
]
},
"body": "<p>When I was a trainee midwife at the London Hospital in the 1960s, there was a Kossoff's bakery shop on the corner of Court Street and Whitechapel Road. When a baby boy was born to a Jewish mother, he was circumcised. For all involved to celebrate, we were provided with a very sweet red wine - a little on a finger helped the baby deal with the pain - and some small finger-sized sweet pastries from Kossoffs. I associated these pastries, which were brought by weight, with circumcisions, so the staff in the bakery were a bit surprised when I went into buy some 'circumcision cakes', which were delicious.. When I explained why I was calling these pastries by that name, I was told they were a traditional cake for such an event and agreed that in future, when anyone wanted to buy some, they would think about calling them the same name as me.</p>\n",
"created": "2017-06-27",
"last_edited": "2019-04-01"
},
{
"id": 824,
"title": "History of Providence Row",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 364,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.071489806542886,
51.517023172539695
],
[
-0.071243898612021,
51.51660982272529
],
[
-0.071190306454479,
51.516576885746375
],
[
-0.071306299769721,
51.51654960254589
],
[
-0.071326638948875,
51.51652155453997
],
[
-0.071374403242583,
51.5165233420156
],
[
-0.07170710495994,
51.516972518185476
],
[
-0.071689530249958,
51.51699956808665
],
[
-0.071662895989952,
51.51700659921577
],
[
-0.071622347338577,
51.51700294482352
],
[
-0.071489806542886,
51.517023172539695
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "82",
"b_name": "The Dellow Centre",
"street": "Wentworth Street",
"address": "Providence Row, The Dellow Centre, 82 Wentworth Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 13,
"search_str": "The Dellow Centre"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>This history of Providence Row, which provides shelter and services to the homeless, is from an information brochure by Providence Row which they contributed to this project in October 2018;</p>\n\n<p>The Early Years</p>\n\n<p>In the winter of 1857, a young Catholic priest, Father Daniel Gilbert, came across a woman sheltering in a doorway in London’s East End, an area notorious for its poverty and deprivation. He struck up a conversation with her and discovered that she had no money and nowhere to go. He was so moved by this unfortunate woman’s situation that he resolved to create a refuge for people like her, open to anyone regardless of their background, race or religion.</p>\n\n<p>Fr Gilbert called on the help of the Sisters of Mercy in Wexford, Ireland. On the 23rd of September 1858 five of the Sisters arrived in London. Initially they moved to a convent on Broad Street but found it too small for the purposes of a refuge. Fr Gilbert then found a large stable at the back of 14 Finsbury Square. This stable opened on to a narrow street called Providence Row.</p>\n\n<p>After less than a month of dedicated, hard work and fundraising by the small group of founders Providence Row Night Refuge opened on 7th October 1860. It was the first non sectarian shelter in London. Originally it contained only 14 beds but quickly expanded in February 1861, adding another 31 beds [^1]. This still didn’t prove big enough to meet the demand and the refuge later moved to a larger site on Crispin Street, near Spitalfields Market. By 1862 it had provided 14,785 meals to homeless and destitute people in London [^2].</p>\n\n<p>By the time of his death in 1895, the now Monsignor Gilbert had raised and spent an enormous £100,000 on the refuge, putting up new buildings and improving and expanding the services on offer. Remarkably, he had paid back all the loans he had secured to fund the refuge [^3]. His death was not the end of the Gilbert family’s involvement in Providence Row however. Monsignor Gilbert’s nephew, J W Gilbert, joined the management committee in the same year. Many years later Monsignor Gilbert’s great nephew would become the warden for the men’s hostel and his skills in repairs and maintenance would save the refuge a great deal of money over the years [^4].</p>\n\n<p>Providence Row offered a welcome alternative to the only other free accommodation available to homeless and destitute people at that time: the workhouse. For those that found themselves in difficulty the workhouse was a humiliating last resort. Families were broken up and rather than looking for work outside ‘inmates’ were forced to pick old ropes apart to make ‘oakum’ (a waterproofing material) or other menial tasks. Once in the workhouse one rarely found a way out.</p>\n\n<p>Providence Row’s refuge was not in this vein. Families were kept together, although the men had to sleep in separate quarters. Later, self-contained flats for entire families would be built to help maintain family units. The Sisters of Mercy ran a school attached to their convent in Crispin Street enabling mothers and fathers to look for work during the day while their children were cared for. The Sisters’ continuous cooking, cleaning and general upkeep of the refuge gave people time to look for work by reducing the time needed for domestic chores. Between the world wars, the refuge even provided professional singers, actors and artists to entertain clients.</p>\n\n<p>The period between 1918 and 1939 also saw a greater dialogue by government and local authorities about the issues that surrounded poverty and destitution. It also saw an influx of European immigrants fleeing Nazi persecution; an estimated 30,000 European Jews came to England in the 1930s alone. It was left to organisations such as Providence Row, as well as other local groups founded by their fellow countrymen, to help these new arrivals.</p>\n\n<p>World War II</p>\n\n<p>The advent of World War II changed Providence Row in many ways. By 1939 the charity ran five refuges, with plans to develop further. However, the annual report for that year notes that these plans would need to be put on hold and set out the modified purpose for the war, ‘as a rest and feeding centre for people who might be rendered homeless by enemy bombing operations [^5]’ alongside their existing work of helping homeless people. The men’s common room was converted into an air raid shelter and the charity became part of the National Defence Scheme. These provisions would be well used throughout the war as a refuge for those made homeless by the bombings, the so-called ‘housing famine’.</p>\n\n<p>At the end of the war the charity saw a change in its client group. Before the war those staying at the refuges had generally been men of working age experiencing temporary difficulties. The outbreak of war, and specifically conscription, provided employment to many young men and in turn enabled older men to find work more easily. At the charity this shift meant a rise in under-20s awaiting the call to service and more people who were elderly or ill. The charity also noted a rise in men suffering mental illnesses as a direct result of the bombings [^6].</p>\n\n<p>The true horror of war came home even further in 1940 when the refuge and offices at Milk Street and Mark Lane were bombed [^7]. Due to the heavy bombing in the East End the refuge eventually closed in 1942 and only reopened after the war [^8].</p>\n\n<p>After the war</p>\n\n<p>1948 brought the National Assistance Act and with it the end of the Poor Law that had dominated nineteenth century attitudes to the homeless. The last workhouse closed in 1929; the shift towards the welfare state had begun [^9]. The management committee and Sisters of Mercy at Providence Row now presumed their work was done and that the refuge would become ‘redundant’ [^10]. However, on this matter they were wrong. The Act did not go far enough to helping those who found themselves destitute and, due to public misunderstanding of the Act, donations to the charity decreased.</p>\n\n<p>Providence Row and the services it provided were needed more than ever, but with a much tighter budget. Aside from its usual client group, the refuge was also seeing people who had been rendered homeless by the bombing – homes that for many were not rebuilt until the 1950s.</p>\n\n<p>From its beginning in 1860 through to the mid 1970s, caring for destitute families was a priority for Providence Row. Ken Loach’s influential 1966 television play Cathy Come Home helped to highlight the plight of such families, and around this time provision for these families began to gradually improve. Seeing this increase in help specifically for families, along with a range of new and alternative advice and service centres, Providence Row began to shift its focus towards helping those people not being prioritised by the welfare state; single homeless people and those without children.</p>\n\n<p>A Time of Change</p>\n\n<p>The 1970s was a period of great change for Providence Row. A decline in charitable giving and a rise in running costs meant Providence Row needed to reassess and modernise [^11]. Paid staff were introduced to work alongside the Sisters of Mercy and in 1970 the application to the National Federation of Housing Societies to create a Providence (Row) Families Housing Association was approved. In 1988 Providence Row Charity and Providence Row Housing Association separated and became two different organisations. This enabled those at the charity to concentrate on the day centre services it had begun to provide. Luckily for the charity, the Sisters of Mercy felt the work they did was traditionally more aligned with the charity and most chose to stay there, rather than join the housing association [^12]. A team of dedicated volunteers from the Sisters of Mercy still play a crucial part in delivering services at Providence Row today.</p>\n\n<p>In the 1970s and 1980s there was a period of regeneration and redevelopment in the East End and local papers began to report on the archaic state of housing in Spitalfields, an area mostly unchanged for over 100 years.</p>\n\n<p>After the 1988 separation from the housing association, the decision was made to move from Crispin Street to a new site. A fundraising campaign began and - with the help of the Sisters of Mercy who sold the Crispin Street site in aid of the campaign - the Dellow Centre was built. It opened on 17 April 1994 [^13]. Around this time Providence Row had integrated with two other organisations: St Botolph’s and the Just Ask Counselling Service. These two merges meant that Providence Row was able to begin expanding the services it offered as well as access to funding from central government. These factors enabled the charity to modernise and keep up with sector trends.</p>\n\n<p>The Present</p>\n\n<p>Providence Row continues to offer day centre services to people affected by homelessness in the East End of London.</p>\n\n<p>We’re a one-stop shop of advisory, recovery and training opportunities for those who need it most. Our team supports people with housing, money, health and substance misuse issues. Meanwhile our learning and wellbeing activities help people renew skills, confidence and healthier relationships with the people in their lives. Finally our catering, gardening and baking training schemes are a fun, structured and supportive way of getting a qualification, building their CV and getting back into work.</p>\n\n<p>Website address www.providencerow.org.uk</p>\n\n<p>Providence Row currently has 30 full time staff and around 30 dedicated volunteers. We continue to help people from all backgrounds and walks of life, and unfortunately there remains a desperate need for our services in the 21st century.</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Procter, A.A., <em>A Chaplet of Verses</em>, London, 1862, p.ix.<br>\n[^2]: <em>Ibid</em>, p.x.<br>\n[^3]: <em>Providence</em><em> Row: 1860-1960</em>, commemorative centenary document produced inhouse, 1960. <br>\n[^4]: Management Committee Meetings, 5 October 1966, p.185.<br>\n[^5]: <em>The Seventy-Ninth Annual Report of the Providence (Row) Night Refuge and Home</em>, p.8.<br>\n[^6]: <em>Ibid,</em> 22 April 1942, p11.<br>\n[^7]: <em>Ibid</em>, 19 September 1940, 17 October 1940, 10 May 1941 (check pages). <br>\n[^8]: <em>Ibid</em>, 22 April 1942, p.11.<br>\n[^9]: Source: http://eastlondonhistory.com/tag/workhouse/<br>\n[^10]: <em>Providence Row Night Refuge and Home for homeless men, women and families</em>, pamphlet produced in house c.1950.<br>\n[^11]: <em>Background to the charity and Dellow Centre</em>, internal report produced in house, c.1996. <br>\n[^12]: Providence Row internal report, produced in house, 1989, p.??. <br>\n[^13]: <em>Providence Row Appeal</em>, commemorative book, 1994.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2019-01-09",
"last_edited": "2019-08-27"
},
{
"id": 903,
"title": "John Harrison House (1962–4)",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1061,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.058715070758662,
51.51632047838213
],
[
-0.058538688189915,
51.51633644323949
],
[
-0.058503743799575,
51.51618882954332
],
[
-0.058299432828153,
51.51620738920249
],
[
-0.058276305780072,
51.51610727415779
],
[
-0.058533032283052,
51.516083107505835
],
[
-0.05866858619558,
51.515962957572825
],
[
-0.058805326314088,
51.516025024731846
],
[
-0.058671142666155,
51.516139234479695
],
[
-0.058715070758662,
51.51632047838213
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "",
"address": "John Harrison House",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 2,
"search_str": "John Harrison House"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>This ten-storey Y-plan block was built to designs by Bennett & Son, architects, and Oscar Faber & Partners, consulting engineers. Named in recognition of one of the founders of the infirmary in 1740, this tower block contained more than 220 bedsitting rooms for nurses and administrative staff. At its completion in 1964, each wing had a central corridor lined with bedsitting rooms with shared balconies. Communal sitting rooms, kitchens, utility rooms and lifts were located at the central juncture of the corridors. The reinforced-concrete frame is concealed by inward-facing balconies and sheer expanses of brickwork on the side elevations, which ascend to a rooftop terrace. The block has largely been converted to administrative offices for the hospital.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: RLHA, RLHLH/P/2/46: <em>Evening News</em>, 10 September 1964: RIBA Biographical file, T. P. Bennett & Son: <em>Building Design</em>, May 1987, p. 3. </p>\n",
"created": "2019-04-29",
"last_edited": "2019-04-29"
},
{
"id": 849,
"title": "10-20 Dock Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1357,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.068530386108842,
51.51042706519062
],
[
-0.068475051657414,
51.51031660186125
],
[
-0.068588742250489,
51.51029405625176
],
[
-0.068640966081213,
51.510403054113354
],
[
-0.068530386108842,
51.51042706519062
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "10-14",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Dock Street",
"address": "10-14 Dock Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 3,
"search_str": "10-14 Dock Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>The west side of Dock Street has little architectural quality. Recent blocks of flats and a data centre bookend an interwar Truman’s pub. Other forms of commerce and manufacturing have long gone. In the late nineteenth century there were numerous outfitters or clothiers along here in three-storey shophouses, close to the Sailors’ Home and serving seamen. Abraham Cohen at 2 Dock Street had the freehold of Nos 4–10, Joel Davis was at No. 6 and Solomon Siegenberg at No. 14 in the 1880s. At No. 12 Samuel Froomberg was a beer retailer in the 1870s and a shipping agent a decade later, giving way to Dr Barnardo's Shelter for women and infants from around 1888 to 1904. The Shipping Federation, an employers’ association formed in 1890 to counter trade unionism in response to the London dock strike of 1889, was next door at No. 14 from the 1890s, running a seamen’s registry office immediately opposite the Sailors’ Home, later extending into No. 12, and continuing up to about 1960. The three-storey nineteenth-century building at 10–14 Dock Street was demolished in 2017.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Further south at the site that became 16–20 Dock Street there was a brewery from the seventeenth century.This was held by James Stutter in the 1770s and leased in 1802 to Anthony Calvert of the Wapping-based victuallers, Camden, Calvert and King. The property was made a rice mill around 1850 for William Henry Castle & Co.. This was converted by 1881 to be a pepper and spice mill for Drysdale, Wallis & Dennison, who rebuilt on a larger scale in 1883–4 to either side of Shorter’s Rents (Flank Street from 1912), and continued until about 1950.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>The spice mill was adapted to office use and in 1999 a scheme for a seven-storey office building on its site was approved. This was superseded by plans for the larger site at 10–20 Dock Street. In 2004 Purple Property Holdings Ltd and Squire and Partners, architects, put forward a scheme for two blocks either side of Flank Street, seven storeys to the south, rising to twelve to the north, for 95 flats above shops. This was opposed by Tower Hamlets Council, with support from English Heritage, on grounds of inappropriate height, impact on the streetscape and the setting of the listed buildings opposite, and because only ten per cent of the flats were to be affordable. However, the Planning Inspectorate granted an appeal in 2006, with the number of flats then reduced to 89. Mansell Construction Services Ltd and IDOM UK (engineers and architects) took the scheme forward. The former spice mill was demolished but works that were set to commence in 2008 were held in abeyance, doubtless on account of the financial crisis at that time. Further revisions were made in 2011 and the project finally went ahead in 2017–19 as The Ordnance Building, also marketed as The Lofts at Ordnance.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyors Returns (DSR): Post Office Directories (POD): Goad insurance map, 1887</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), P/MMD/1/4 and 7; P/MMD/2/2; P02649: <em>The Builder</em>, 22 Sept. 1883, p. 405: Goad 1887: DSR: POD: Derek Morris and Ken Cozens, <em>Wapping 1600-1800</em>, 2009, pp. 52-55</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: THLHLA, Building Control files 87703, 88359: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n",
"created": "2019-03-05",
"last_edited": "2019-03-05"
},
{
"id": 826,
"title": "Another Whitechapel building designed by H. V. Kerr",
"author": {
"id": 242,
"username": "louisberk"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1211,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.060716830687566,
51.51503684106574
],
[
-0.060754864794692,
51.51519940315179
],
[
-0.060584802867024,
51.51521499553526
],
[
-0.060553383594403,
51.51519361007404
],
[
-0.060511493376522,
51.51499886492687
],
[
-0.060704170652299,
51.51498273039421
],
[
-0.060716830687566,
51.51503684106574
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "9-17",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Turner Street",
"address": "Comfort House, 9-17 Turner Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 1,
"search_str": "Comfort House, 9-17 Turner Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>This is another building which was designed by the architect H. V. Kerr who designed <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1167/detail/#gwynne-house-turner-street\">Gwynne House</a> (also in Turner Street) and <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/818/detail/\">Empire House</a> (nearby in New Road).</p>",
"created": "2019-01-18",
"last_edited": "2019-02-01"
},
{
"id": 428,
"title": "The East London Friendly Loan Society",
"author": {
"id": 178,
"username": "Maureen"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1040,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.068260232398246,
51.51477078323367
],
[
-0.068237397616931,
51.5146070496752
],
[
-0.068325779668302,
51.51460207572257
],
[
-0.068328416983729,
51.51462758994578
],
[
-0.068445405747601,
51.51462288219034
],
[
-0.068461036102187,
51.51477409091653
],
[
-0.068260232398246,
51.51477078323367
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "46",
"b_name": "46 Commercial Road",
"street": "46 Commercial Road",
"address": "46 Commercial Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 11,
"search_str": "46 Commercial Road"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>The East London Friendly Loan Society in Commercial Road, corner of Alie Street. People used to save their money there and when they needed a loan they got it on the amount they had saved, but tax-free.</p>\n",
"created": "2017-07-31",
"last_edited": "2020-02-17"
},
{
"id": 892,
"title": "Old Home (1875–6)",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1230,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.06071898744648,
51.51847914149303
],
[
-0.060743358937849,
51.518529899918775
],
[
-0.060362148562617,
51.518618013153
],
[
-0.060404024127419,
51.51868851949335
],
[
-0.060356952993906,
51.51869974522794
],
[
-0.060399234817198,
51.51877056309998
],
[
-0.060042469531136,
51.5188530372297
],
[
-0.060006551123239,
51.51879256032364
],
[
-0.05997171006068,
51.51880061452483
],
[
-0.059923949522789,
51.51872019830377
],
[
-0.059602716389847,
51.51879445706454
],
[
-0.059631951693606,
51.51884368227145
],
[
-0.059135089420495,
51.51895853862307
],
[
-0.059031394281591,
51.51878393727422
],
[
-0.059075483581288,
51.51877374555587
],
[
-0.05923306113512,
51.518737319626666
],
[
-0.059261815633844,
51.518785736083466
],
[
-0.059453095208379,
51.51874286661955
],
[
-0.059437777096903,
51.51871791341666
],
[
-0.059509844762857,
51.518701022201654
],
[
-0.059472510825189,
51.51863713193043
],
[
-0.059893693119402,
51.51853565124978
],
[
-0.059897251108141,
51.51854177905041
],
[
-0.060406197614306,
51.5184267554985
],
[
-0.060388475186227,
51.51839623334771
],
[
-0.060226549751936,
51.51811735804654
],
[
-0.060490662909997,
51.51805857683586
],
[
-0.060500593175314,
51.518078725457706
],
[
-0.06071898744648,
51.51847914149303
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "Former Royal London Hospital",
"street": "",
"address": "Former Royal London Hospital ",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 53,
"search_str": "Former Royal London Hospital"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Plans for the Grocers’ Company’s Wing gave rise to a scheme for the hospital’s first purpose-built nurses’ home, intended to provide dormitories and recreation rooms for an expanded staff. In 1874 the house governor, William Nixon, estimated that the enlarged hospital would require more than thirty additional nurses (including sisters, probationers, day nurses and night nurses). Nixon proposed that the resident medical officers should be allocated rooms in the central block, and a new building constructed to house the matron, the steward, and nurses. The most suitable position for the building was deemed to be at the south end of the east wing, where communication with an earlier staircase lobby would ensure proximity to the main hospital building. Plans were prepared in rough by J. A. Thornhill and finished by Charles Barry Jr, who received instructions not to exceed an estimate of £5,900. A high tender from Perry & Co. was reduced to £6,168.10, and construction followed in 1875.[^109] </p>\n\n<p>The result of this economy was an austere brick building composed of four storeys above a raised basement. A pediment on its west façade echoed the articulation of the lobbies at the centre of the east and west wings. Notwithstanding modest appearance, this residence improved conditions for the hospital’s nursing staff. A few years earlier, Nixon had observed that nurses suffered frequently under the strain of ‘constant overwork’, without rooms for relaxation.[^110] The home provided a dormitory for thirty-five nurses, along with separate accommodation for probationers.[^111] A recreation room and a dining room were also provided above the matron’s apartment, an arrangement intended to ensure supervision ‘without any appearance of intrusive watchfulness’.[^112]</p>\n\n<p>The nurses’ home was subsequently extended to designs by Plumbe, with the construction of a six-storey block with dormitories for approximately 100 nurses and a two-storey residence for the steward. Small individual nurses’ bedrooms were crammed into a narrow rectangular plan with a central corridor. Water closets, sinks and bathrooms on each floor were confined to a projecting sanitary tower. A three-bay staircase range linked this block with the earlier nurses’ home, where dormitories were converted into dining rooms, sitting rooms and visiting rooms. Its brick-built exterior matched the austerity of the earlier hospital buildings, with decoration limited to iron balconies, crow-stepped gables, and a corbelled cornice of moulded brickwork. The extension was built by William Goodman and opened formally by the Prince and Princess of Wales in 1887.[^113]</p>\n\n<p>[^109]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/37, pp. 32, 79–80, 84–5: DSR. </p>\n\n<p>[^110]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/35, p. 439. </p>\n\n<p>[^111]:<em>ILN</em>, 11 March 1876, p. 258.</p>\n\n<p>[^112]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/37, p. 11. </p>\n\n<p>[^113]: <em>ILN</em>, 28 May 1887: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/41, p. 477; RLHLH/A/5/42, pp. 318–9; RLHLH/A/5/43, p. 188; RLHLH/S/2/102: DSR.</p>\n",
"created": "2019-04-29",
"last_edited": "2021-05-10"
},
{
"id": 736,
"title": "The development of Marine Square",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1739,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.066601937242699,
51.51029583018458
],
[
-0.066591707248507,
51.51033156155218
],
[
-0.066545305611051,
51.51035690561341
],
[
-0.066198603102223,
51.510392528155435
],
[
-0.065574109139852,
51.51044206147906
],
[
-0.065466692202089,
51.51042614702678
],
[
-0.065392638379111,
51.51036346011576
],
[
-0.06531561677056,
51.50997993556986
],
[
-0.065330072257861,
51.50986949543138
],
[
-0.065384877232455,
51.50984713300441
],
[
-0.066347369900239,
51.5097819610304
],
[
-0.066412309769772,
51.5097922788254
],
[
-0.066466585944749,
51.509827985933335
],
[
-0.066496879035431,
51.50989484609386
],
[
-0.066601937242699,
51.51029583018458
]
],
[
[
-0.06617795318375,
51.51038731673777
],
[
-0.066162776826975,
51.51030567245064
],
[
-0.06588610031897,
51.51032669039412
],
[
-0.065912350489888,
51.51041084290673
],
[
-0.06617795318375,
51.51038731673777
]
],
[
[
-0.06624311370635,
51.51019072010641
],
[
-0.066077627531148,
51.510204269850675
],
[
-0.066069527116146,
51.510170337345684
],
[
-0.06611551384684,
51.51016638639934
],
[
-0.066109726117682,
51.51014703372793
],
[
-0.065814585354416,
51.5101673738921
],
[
-0.065821533323482,
51.51022330153386
],
[
-0.065683910471039,
51.51023360737856
],
[
-0.065657889334494,
51.51008339520407
],
[
-0.065349361164399,
51.51010853754948
],
[
-0.06532938777826,
51.510008209650636
],
[
-0.065633994165545,
51.509987653756085
],
[
-0.065620188745178,
51.50991765971934
],
[
-0.065722948991599,
51.50991121538507
],
[
-0.065716780377172,
51.509880881568165
],
[
-0.065901817537395,
51.50986765480321
],
[
-0.06593178354119,
51.50999605393065
],
[
-0.066038317356042,
51.509988508785376
],
[
-0.066023042932445,
51.50990918839897
],
[
-0.065998737156917,
51.50991111308007
],
[
-0.065980280001972,
51.50981894970597
],
[
-0.066320560006103,
51.50979200375635
],
[
-0.06632996113982,
51.50983401855985
],
[
-0.066268265775343,
51.50983881506029
],
[
-0.066265082872055,
51.50982597208467
],
[
-0.066214609325215,
51.509829790835916
],
[
-0.066234584593038,
51.50993011860635
],
[
-0.066179431061551,
51.509934441553284
],
[
-0.066189455574639,
51.5099837339709
],
[
-0.066197871962622,
51.509983000685985
],
[
-0.066205558541818,
51.510021498909204
],
[
-0.066199016557763,
51.510021972412325
],
[
-0.066209250254486,
51.51006632649741
],
[
-0.066216245469672,
51.51006615116071
],
[
-0.066221862792188,
51.51009851070753
],
[
-0.066214365136205,
51.51009954983773
],
[
-0.066220460291682,
51.51013162657133
],
[
-0.06623170678327,
51.51013006787535
],
[
-0.06624311370635,
51.51019072010641
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Wellclose Square",
"address": "Wellclose Square",
"feature_type": "OPEN_SPACE",
"count": 8,
"search_str": "Wellclose Square"
},
"tags": [
"George Wolff",
"Lt Gen Albert Borgard",
"Nicholas Barbon",
"Sir John Parsons"
]
},
"body": "<p>By 1682 Well Close was largely overlooked by buildings from across the roads that are now Cable Street, Ensign Street and the Highway. These would have been humble makeshift dwellings and commercial premises. There was nothing about the vicinity likely to prompt the rise of anything more ambitious. As Daniel Defoe, born in 1660, later witnessed, ‘Well Close, now called Marine Square, was so remote from houses, that it used to be a very dangerous place to go over after it was dark, and many people have been robbed and abused in passing it; a well standing in the middle, just where the Danish church is now built, there the mischief was generally done’.[^1] Yet the close was a large intact open space more or less square in dimensions on the urban margins. The Crown now decided to release it for development and it thereby came to the acquisitive attention of Dr Nicholas Barbon. </p>\n\n<p>Best known as late seventeenth-century London’s most innovative and voracious speculative builder, Barbon was also the lead founder of England’s first fire-insurance company. The Insurance Office, soon known as the Fire Office (then from 1705 the Phoenix Fire Office), was set up on Barbon’s initiative in 1680. Always to the fore, Barbon needed well-connected and well-heeled partners, and a portfolio of property the ground rents of which would provide security against insurance claims. The former were secured through City connections. Barbon’s first three partners in the Fire Office were previous collaborators in development projects. Samuel Tookie and Benjamin Bartlett were goldsmith bankers, and Samuel Vincent held a contract for victualling the navy with Richard Brett and (Sir) John Parsons (1639–1717), who had inherited the Wapping riverside brewery from his father. By the end of 1681 Parsons was also involved with the insurance project, for the securing of which properties on the Essex House site (at the east end of the Strand) and on St Martin’s Lane were supplemented in early 1682 by two of the Tower Liberties – the Old Artillery Ground in Spitalfields, and Well Close. A letter advertising the Crown’s intended sale of these lands had been sent in December 1681 to Barbon and other entrepreneurial individuals: Sir William Warren, a wealthy Wapping timber merchant and ship builder who was another of Barbon’s trustees, Thomas Neale, the developer of Lower Shadwell and the streets of Seven Dials in St Giles in the Fields, Sir Christopher Wren and Thomas Killigrew, theatre manager. Barbon secured the properties through George Bradbury and Edward Noel, lawyers who were Fire Office trustees, but prevaricated to the point that he had to be given a next-day ultimatum by the Treasury for the deal to be sealed. Parsons’s involvement was crucial to Barbon’s ability to finance this expansion. In 1683, when Barbon had seen off a rival insurance scheme from the City, Parsons bought Bartlett’s share in the Fire Office. He was also then appointed to be one of four commissioners on the Navy’s new Victualling Board. Parsons, Vincent and Felix Calvert (or Calverd), another brewer who became a trustee with a stake in the Well Close project, were all tax farmers and members of a group of financiers that had a hold on the excise. Parsons rose to greater prominence, becoming a Tory MP in 1685, and a City alderman in 1687, when he was knighted. Despite a setback in 1689 when he was dismissed from his Victualling Board commission and briefly imprisoned for having adulterated supplies, he was Lord Mayor in 1703.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>The Well Close property was divided among the trustees and then parcelled out to numerous other parties in deeds of October 1683. These were followed in December by a deed that settled the freehold with the Fire Office trustees and included a covenant to build within a year. This projected development of the site as Marine Square, the name seemingly a gesture to the interests it hoped to attract. The other deeds make it clear that a layout had been devised and development plots measured, possibly beginning in 1682 when the Victualling Office complained about encroachment. There was ample space to insulate the square’s houses, to permit them to face inwards to a new garden, an approach not adopted around this time at Goodman’s Fields. New roads north and south, initially Little Cable Street and Neptune Street, linked to Knockfergus, newly identified as Cable Street, and Ratcliff Highway, now renamed Parsons Street. A road called Prince’s Street was to have opened from the square midway on its east side, but this never materialised. The layout of connecting alleys, running diagonally outwards from the corners of the square to the corners of the close as a whole, was an inventive arrangement, possibly reflecting the ‘desire lines’ of the pre-existing footpaths. It was copied in 1684 at Red Lion Square in Holborn, another Barbon project. Barbon had little interest in close supervision of the development, more in innovative ways of raising ground rents through subsidiary tiers of ownership. Responsibility for surveyorship is unclear, but there is a strong candidate. Isaac Rowe, who is known to have prepared a plan for the laying out of what was to become Smith Square in Westminster in 1686, and whose Northamptonshire connections might explain a link to Barbon, took leases of two house plots on Marine Square (later Nos 3 and 4).</p>\n\n<p>The superior interests in property at Marine Square were allocated among the trustees, but principally to Barbon himself, for the east end of the north side and north end of the east side (including Rowe’s take), and Parsons, for the south side and south end of the east side. The remaining third went to John Wilson, for most of the west side, Felix Calvert, who later complained that he had been ‘prevailed on’ to buy a share,[^3] around the north-west corner, and Bernard Turner and John Hinde, a goldsmith banker bankrupted in 1685, for the rest of the north side. From that level onwards, the leading taker for the responsibility (and risk) of development was William Prideaux, who had leases on as many as seventeen house plots including most of Barbon’s and Wilson’s sections. Prideaux was described in 1694 as ‘a servant, workman, or else under some dependency of Mr Barbon . . . and of mean substance in the world’.[^4] Joseph Hartwell was a servant of Parsons, from whom he took five east-side house plots, undertaking to tile-in brick houses by June 1684. Barbon arranged a mortgage of Prideaux’s leases through Noel, the raising of money being his primary purpose. Building work probably did begin quickly, but houses languished unfinished.</p>\n\n<p>George Proctor, who took on two double plots, one from Barbon and the other Hinde’s, was said to be another agent or servant of Barbon’s. George Jackson, a City bricklayer, took three south-side plots (those that became Nos 35–37) from Parsons and also secured a long lease of what became Nos 46–47 in 1695. But building leases as such were not easy to contract. Barbon and Parsons were obliged to employ John Foltrop, a carpenter–builder, for work on nine houses. Foltrop took two more on leases on his own account. Arrangements for developing the square gave rise to a great deal of litigation and in 1690 Barbon and Parsons used their status as MPs to escape prosecution for mismanaging the Fire Office.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>The standardised leases of 1683 were all for 61 years, plot widths varying upwards from a minimum of 20ft, plots of 40ft and more generally being for multiple houses. The issuing of new much longer (999-year) leases in the 1690s to Jackson and others may have been necessary to stimulate building activity in this then marginal location. The uneven-ness of the plot sizes suggests no interest in any regularity of development, but brick construction was specified and general. It is not clear that any houses actually were finished by 1684. Richard Atkinson, a Covent Garden bracemaker, who had the site of No. 19 near the square’s north-west corner, undertook to build houses along Gunner Alley (south-west) by 1684, but two-storey brick shophouses first occupied by a butcher and a gunmaker only went up on the north side of Parsons Street at the Well (Ensign) Street corner in 1686–7. Parson’s south-eastern frontages (Nos 33–45) appear to have been built up in 1693–6.[^6] </p>\n\n<p>William Morgan’s map of 1682 shows Well Close as open ground irregularly crossed by footpaths, and a parish map of about 1694 shows it with nothing more than palings enclosing the whole, a pump to the south-east no doubt marking the eponymous well. But this is ambiguous as evidence, as the map is generally imprecise and omits buildings. Morden and Lea’s maps of 1690 and 1700 show ‘Wells Close’ then ‘Well Close Square’, built up with roads as never quite existed and a church at the centre that was certainly not present before 1694–6. Gascoyne’s map of Stepney of 1703 is more accurate for the road layout. It uses the name Marine Square and specifies the ‘Danes Church’; the warrant for the building of which in 1694 identified the site as Marine Square. An engraving of 1696 by Johannes Kip depicting the Danish church shows implausible regularity on the square’s east side and, perhaps more accurately, the houses that became Nos 30–32 to the right. The first reasonably reliably accurate map of the square from 1720 depicts it wholly built up save for gaps on its north and west sides.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>It can be concluded that many houses had been built round the square by the late 1690s, but that development was slow, something that was commented on and worried about, given the purpose the square and its mortgaged leases had in the Fire Office schema. This was not a propitious location for the speculative construction of prestigious houses. Barbon had been attracted by the Crown sale and Parsons knew the vicinity well. Maritime east London had a good number of wealthy entrepreneurs and mariners, but large houses on the square would have been difficult to sell, a risky speculation. Completion was gradual and incoherent. </p>\n\n<p>The name Marine Square was used through the early decades, but Wellclose Square was in common usage by 1717 and universal by about 1750. Ownership changed hands and became more fragmented. Henry Parsons, a son of Sir John, sold some freehold possession in 1702. Property that had pertained to Parsons, including 33–41 Wellclose Square, Ship Alley, Neptune Street and Parsons Street, was acquired by Edward Strong (1676–1741), the master mason engaged in the construction of Greenwich Hospital and many other major buildings.[^8]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Daniel Defoe, <em>A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain</em>, 1724–6 (edn 1986), pp. 298–9: William Morgan, <em>London &.c. Actually Survey’d</em>, 1682</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: The National Archives (TNA), T27/6, pp.368,403,412; ADM106/338/592: John M. Sims, ‘The Trust Lands of the Fire Office’, <em>The Guildhall Miscellany</em>, vol. 4/no. 2, April 1972, pp. 88–113; Frank Kelsall and Timothy Walker, <em>Nicholas Barbon 1640–1698</em>, forthcoming 2021, pre-publication typescript: History of Parliament Online for Parsons</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: TNA, C10/337/19</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: TNA, C7/148/37, as quoted by Walker, <em>loc. cit.</em></p>\n\n<p>[^5]: TNA, C54/4600 as transcribed by Sims, pp. 99–107: Walker, <em>op. cit</em>.: TNA, C7/169/99: THLHLA, P/SLC/1/17/42–3; P/SAS/3/2/2: Historic England Archive, London Historians’ files TH2: Howard Colvin, <em>A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840</em>, 1995 (3rd edn), p. 836: Elizabeth McKellar, <em>The Birth of Modern London: The development and design of the city 1660–1720</em>, 1999, pp. 44–5,62,101,132–3</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), P/SLC/1/17/43: London Metropolitan Archives, HB/C/072; Q/EV/038; LMA/4673/D/01/008/080: Sims: information kindly supplied by Frank Kelsall</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: Morgan, <em>op. cit.</em>: Brasenose College, B14.1/44: Richard Morden and Philip Lea, <em>London, Westminster and Southwark</em>, 1700: Joel Gascoyne, <em>An actuall survey of the parish of St Dunstan Stepney</em>, 1703: TNA, SP44/345, f.17</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: Walker: <em>Daily Courant</em>, 15 June 1717: THLHLA, P/SAS/3/2/1; P/MIS/284/1–3: Colvin, <em>op. cit.</em>, pp. 936–7</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-10-09",
"last_edited": "2021-02-02"
},
{
"id": 719,
"title": "Tewkesbury Buildings",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 383,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.071609813826012,
51.515448044408664
],
[
-0.071785562876674,
51.51561898838919
],
[
-0.071814008411836,
51.51564670243522
],
[
-0.071773741644205,
51.515662401930555
],
[
-0.071802650381169,
51.51569269732485
],
[
-0.071686217392417,
51.51573360377317
],
[
-0.071631683823236,
51.51567673015191
],
[
-0.071539953805845,
51.51558106397151
],
[
-0.071464278591544,
51.515502141045
],
[
-0.071609813826012,
51.515448044408664
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "101",
"b_name": "101 Whitechapel High Street",
"street": "Whitechapel High Street",
"address": "101 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7RA",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 6,
"search_str": "101 Whitechapel High Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>From the seventeenth century until the Second World War a long narrow courtyard was located off the northside of the High Street, with an entry thorugh an archway between Nos 99 and 100 Whitechapel High Street. It existed by 1675 when it was known as Church Alley, and by 1787 Tewkesbury Church Alley; there was a pub called the Tewkesbury Church adjoining the alley by 1730, source perhaps of the name upgrade.[^1] The alley’s trajectory over the next 250 years was the opposite to <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/384/detail/\">Spread Eagle Yard</a>, in that it became narrower and more uniform. In the 1670s it had twenty-six houses, mostly of one hearth, a narrow alley with a subsidiary spur eastwards and a square court at the north end. The only occupant who can be identified is a cutler, Thomas Lenton (d. 1695).[^2]</p>\n\n<p>By 1823, Tewkesbury Place, on a single lease with No. 99, consisted of sixteen three-storey houses, a warehouse and stabling for No. 99, a state it remained in till rebuilding in two phases in 1847-50 as Tewkesbury Buildings, fourteen three-storey, flat-fronted houses and a warehouse built by Pollock & MacLennan of Osnaburgh Street and Adcock of Seymour Street.[^3] Nos 99-100 Whitechapel High Street had been partially rebuilt presumably in connection with this, in 1847.[^4] They were built for Dr Edmund S. Symes, a physician long resident in Grosvenor Street, Hanover Square, who seems to have occupied himself mostly with phrenology and in directorships of various insurance and loan companies.[^5] When Tewkesbury Buildings were rebuilt Symes was complimented by the Osborn Street Commissioners on the ‘excellent’ arrangement of the houses, but by 1862 the Whitechapel District Board found that although they ‘were of the very best class of poor houses in the district, they caused more trouble to enforce proper sanitary arrangements than any other houses’.[^6] Underground rooms were repeatedly found illegally occupied as sleeping apartments.</p>\n\n<p>The previous year, the journalist John Hollingshead found: ‘Tewkesbury Buildings is a colony of Dutch Jews, and, if anything, they are a little cleaner than their Christian neighbours.[^7] A synagogue, <em>Chevrat Ahavei Shalom</em> [‘Lovers of Peace’] existed at 10 Tewkesbury Buildings from 1863 till, at least, 1894.[^8] In 1879 its Warden, Alexander Saloman Haring (1821-82), in whose home the synagogue was situated, appealed for funds to repair it.[^9] Haring, a bootmaker, had emigrated from Amsterdam in 1852 or 1853 and the Census supports the residence in Tewkesbury Buildings of numerous people of Dutch origin from 1851 onwards, many involved in cigar-making, including the Zeegen family who established a factory in Chicksand Street. In 1871 40 out of 54 heads of household in the Buildings were born in the Netherlands, mostly in Amsterdam; in 1881 it was 29 out of 43.[^10]</p>\n\n<p>Tewkesbury Buildings was destroyed during the Second World War and the site is still largely empty. A <a href=\"http://www.101whs.co.uk/\">proposal</a> to redevelop 101 to 105 HIgh Street and the site of Tewkesbury Buildings and <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/384/detail/\">Spread Eagle Yard</a>, is currently (July 2018) out for pre-planning consultation. </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Hearth Tax returns, 1674-5: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), DL/C/B/009/MS09172/085/012</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: HT 1674-5: LMA, DL/C/B/009/MS09172/085/012: LMA, Land Tax returns (LT)</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: LMA, District Surveyor's Returns (DSR): <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 23 June 1823, p. 4</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: DSR: The National Archives (TNA), IR58/84818/3567-84</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: DSR: <em>The Examiner</em>, 23 May 1841, p. 334; 1 July 1843, p. 415: <em>Illustrated London News</em>, 12 Jan 1856, p. 15</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>East London Observer </em>(<em>ELO</em>), 4 Jan 1862, p. 3</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: John Hollingshead, <em>Ragged London in 1861</em>, London 1861, p. 45</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em> (<em>JC)</em>, 22 June 1877, p. 7; G. Eugene Harfield, <em>A Commercial Directory of the Jews of the UK</em>, London 1894), np</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: <em>JC</em>, 21 Feb 1879, p. 2</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: Census: Ancestry: further information Maurice Zeegen</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\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-07-13",
"last_edited": "2020-09-18"
},
{
"id": 854,
"title": "6 Cable Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1378,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.068094866490909,
51.51074956580129
],
[
-0.068077053316227,
51.510667161734126
],
[
-0.068154454891722,
51.510665529951076
],
[
-0.068172631919119,
51.510747029802005
],
[
-0.068094866490909,
51.51074956580129
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "6",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Cable Street",
"address": "6 Cable Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 3,
"search_str": "6 Cable Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>6 Cable Street was built in 1898 for Matthew Lee, an oilman of Aldgate High Street and Exmouth Street, by W. Taylor of Percy Road. It was occupied briefly by Philip Feldmesser, a grocer, before Herman Koster then Henry John Van Zyl followed with refreshment rooms. The Missions to Seamen Institute was here briefly around 1920, then C. Freimuller & Sons, butchers, until about 1970.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyors Returns: Post Office Directories: London County Council Minutes, 5 July 1898, p. 814</p>\n",
"created": "2019-03-05",
"last_edited": "2019-03-05"
},
{
"id": 773,
"title": "11 Dock Street",
"author": {
"id": 153,
"username": "danny"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1369,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.06814938718865,
51.510141181955404
],
[
-0.06818852879571,
51.51022903462514
],
[
-0.068067568754798,
51.51025118835928
],
[
-0.068025430552516,
51.5101641393888
],
[
-0.06814938718865,
51.510141181955404
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "11",
"b_name": "11 Dock Street",
"street": "Dock Street",
"address": "11 Dock Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 3,
"search_str": "11 Dock Street"
},
"tags": [
"Henry Roberts",
"William Cubitt"
]
},
"body": "<p>Just found this website which has some interesting detail about this building at No 11 Dock Street.</p>\n\n<p>http://www.11dockst.co.uk/index.html </p>\n\n<p>The builder was Sir William Cubitt 1785 - 1861 Railway and Canal Engineer and creator of the prison treadmill. The Architect was an American, Henry Roberts 1803 - 1876 from Philadelphia. He eventually set up the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes. Roberts was the designer of the current Fishmonger's Hall situated on the north bank of the Thames just to the West of London Bridge.</p>\n",
"created": "2018-11-09",
"last_edited": "2019-03-04"
},
{
"id": 424,
"title": "Daniel Mendoza, boxer",
"author": {
"id": 178,
"username": "Maureen"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1742,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.076387722492951,
51.516257872286374
],
[
-0.07580974439088,
51.51649846859169
],
[
-0.075744693982384,
51.51651411423466
],
[
-0.075332716624042,
51.51665341173461
],
[
-0.075277819023276,
51.516667372076085
],
[
-0.074429584483841,
51.51681699796736
],
[
-0.074402209988697,
51.516763242480046
],
[
-0.075229889371391,
51.51661092868018
],
[
-0.074836715281391,
51.516135055700595
],
[
-0.074917049606191,
51.51611135328064
],
[
-0.075312012611936,
51.51658616747119
],
[
-0.075695505281233,
51.51646463519818
],
[
-0.075779072585588,
51.51644696856364
],
[
-0.076328753388395,
51.516209038390684
],
[
-0.076387722492951,
51.516257872286374
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "",
"address": "Petticoat Lane Market",
"feature_type": "PLACE",
"count": 39,
"search_str": "Petticoat Lane Market"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Daniel Mendoza the boxer came from Petticoat Lane and later lived in a house in Paradise Row, Bethnal Green. He was the great great grandfather of Peter Sellers.</p>\n",
"created": "2017-07-31",
"last_edited": "2020-11-08"
},
{
"id": 666,
"title": "Memories of 16-18 Whitechapel Road",
"author": {
"id": 230,
"username": "Clare_F"
},
"feature": {
"id": 149,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.067726383185714,
51.51676597696389
],
[
-0.067616472230646,
51.51681719642325
],
[
-0.067537624268648,
51.51675134445248
],
[
-0.067408192671059,
51.51663746794185
],
[
-0.067521967443561,
51.51658948754757
],
[
-0.067726383185714,
51.51676597696389
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "16-18",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "16-18 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 3,
"search_str": "16-18 Whitechapel Road"
},
"tags": [
"Buck & Hickman",
"Killby & Gayford Ltd",
"Rhythm Factory"
]
},
"body": "<p>The archetypal picture of the Salvation Army's First Corps at 20-22 Whitechapel Road shows it adjoining, to the right, Nos 16-18 which, even before it became Buck & Hickman, was <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/150/detail/#images\">a tool and hardware outlet</a>.</p>\n\n<p>For five years in the later 1960s I worked here and, when not running messages to the lorry yard next door, or fetching jugs of tea from the basement, I sat typing in the middle window of the first-floor front (a Crittall window: Crittall was one of our prized customers). Luckily, it was not impeded by the HAMLET board shown in the 2015 photograph shown <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/149/detail/#images\">here</a>.</p>\n\n<p>From here I not only saw, but heard, the goings-on of the busy main road. There was the traffic: the dark-green Buck & Hickman lorries entering 20-22 via what had been the porch of the Army's First Corps (untouched by Second World War bombs), exiting from the back of its makeshift lorry yard (once the fine Hall and Shelter) to join the one-way traffic scheme. There was the noise of manual typewriters - my untrained two-fingered efforts far outdone by my envied colleagues at about 100 words per minute.</p>\n\n<p>Then there were the bells from the long-lived Whitechapel Bell Foundry, the testing and the tuning. And one day, when I was unutterably sad because the kindliest of our officers at my nearby Salvation Army hostel had been moved, all the way to Dundee, they played 'Early one morning', in tune with my misery, causing smudging to my invoices:</p>\n\n<p><em>O, don't deceive me; O, never leave me. How could you use a poor maiden so?</em></p>\n\n<p>Lastly, there was the great flock of starlings that roosted on a nearby tree, making lovely sunset silhouettes on early winter evenings.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-05-26",
"last_edited": "2018-06-04"
},
{
"id": 738,
"title": "Wellclose Square's notable occupants",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1739,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.066601937242699,
51.51029583018458
],
[
-0.066591707248507,
51.51033156155218
],
[
-0.066545305611051,
51.51035690561341
],
[
-0.066198603102223,
51.510392528155435
],
[
-0.065574109139852,
51.51044206147906
],
[
-0.065466692202089,
51.51042614702678
],
[
-0.065392638379111,
51.51036346011576
],
[
-0.06531561677056,
51.50997993556986
],
[
-0.065330072257861,
51.50986949543138
],
[
-0.065384877232455,
51.50984713300441
],
[
-0.066347369900239,
51.5097819610304
],
[
-0.066412309769772,
51.5097922788254
],
[
-0.066466585944749,
51.509827985933335
],
[
-0.066496879035431,
51.50989484609386
],
[
-0.066601937242699,
51.51029583018458
]
],
[
[
-0.06617795318375,
51.51038731673777
],
[
-0.066162776826975,
51.51030567245064
],
[
-0.06588610031897,
51.51032669039412
],
[
-0.065912350489888,
51.51041084290673
],
[
-0.06617795318375,
51.51038731673777
]
],
[
[
-0.06624311370635,
51.51019072010641
],
[
-0.066077627531148,
51.510204269850675
],
[
-0.066069527116146,
51.510170337345684
],
[
-0.06611551384684,
51.51016638639934
],
[
-0.066109726117682,
51.51014703372793
],
[
-0.065814585354416,
51.5101673738921
],
[
-0.065821533323482,
51.51022330153386
],
[
-0.065683910471039,
51.51023360737856
],
[
-0.065657889334494,
51.51008339520407
],
[
-0.065349361164399,
51.51010853754948
],
[
-0.06532938777826,
51.510008209650636
],
[
-0.065633994165545,
51.509987653756085
],
[
-0.065620188745178,
51.50991765971934
],
[
-0.065722948991599,
51.50991121538507
],
[
-0.065716780377172,
51.509880881568165
],
[
-0.065901817537395,
51.50986765480321
],
[
-0.06593178354119,
51.50999605393065
],
[
-0.066038317356042,
51.509988508785376
],
[
-0.066023042932445,
51.50990918839897
],
[
-0.065998737156917,
51.50991111308007
],
[
-0.065980280001972,
51.50981894970597
],
[
-0.066320560006103,
51.50979200375635
],
[
-0.06632996113982,
51.50983401855985
],
[
-0.066268265775343,
51.50983881506029
],
[
-0.066265082872055,
51.50982597208467
],
[
-0.066214609325215,
51.509829790835916
],
[
-0.066234584593038,
51.50993011860635
],
[
-0.066179431061551,
51.509934441553284
],
[
-0.066189455574639,
51.5099837339709
],
[
-0.066197871962622,
51.509983000685985
],
[
-0.066205558541818,
51.510021498909204
],
[
-0.066199016557763,
51.510021972412325
],
[
-0.066209250254486,
51.51006632649741
],
[
-0.066216245469672,
51.51006615116071
],
[
-0.066221862792188,
51.51009851070753
],
[
-0.066214365136205,
51.51009954983773
],
[
-0.066220460291682,
51.51013162657133
],
[
-0.06623170678327,
51.51013006787535
],
[
-0.06624311370635,
51.51019072010641
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Wellclose Square",
"address": "Wellclose Square",
"feature_type": "OPEN_SPACE",
"count": 8,
"search_str": "Wellclose Square"
},
"tags": [
"George Wolff",
"Lt Gen Albert Borgard",
"Nicholas Barbon",
"Sir John Parsons"
]
},
"body": "<p>As Nicholas Barbon and his colleagues had intended, ship’s captains were prominent among the first occupants of ‘Marine Square’. Among them from the 1690s to his death in 1713 was Thomas Bowrey, a sea captain and East Indies merchant, who published the first English–Malay dictionary. There were at least four captains on the square around 1715 and nine in 1745, most in the East India and Russia trades. Col. Hugh Raymond had begun with the East India Company and become a South Sea Company director with interests in marine insurance. He lived at the west end of the south side of the square in a house that was inventoried in 1720 as having three storeys and garrets, with eighty-two pictures on the staircases, about seventy books, and a great deal of silver. His nephew, Captain Charles Raymond, who also had interests in East India shipping, followed him on the square.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>The location also attracted some of London’s leading customs’ officials. Thomas Evans, surveyor of tobacco, a post worth £200 a year, died on Wellclose Square in 1731. Thomas Day, a once renowned author of children’s fiction and a political radical, was born on the square’s east side in 1748, the son of the deputy collector outwards of the customs of the Port of London who left his infant son a fortune.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>The Danish–Norwegian church at the centre of the square attracted Scandinavian residents and there was a Danish coffee house on the square by 1762. Lt. Gen. Albert Borgard, a Danish mercenary appointed an Ordnance engineer in 1698 and thereafter based at the Tower of London, lived at what became No. 44 on the square’s east side into the 1740s when he moved to Woolwich. Perhaps best known for his central role in the establishment of the Royal Artillery regiment, Borgard was involved with Wellclose Square’s church by 1704 and in 1715 married Catherine Michelsen, the daughter of George Michelsen, a merchant and elder of the church. After his death in 1751 at the age of 92, Borgard was buried under the church.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>George Wolff, a wealthy Norwegian timber importer, lived at No. 21 from around 1767, when his son Jens was born. Wolff was prominent in church affairs and was appointed the consul for Denmark–Norway in London in 1786. He had extended his occupancy to No. 20 by 1789, shortly before he moved to America Square around 1790. The houses were again separately occupied by 1791. Bas-relief Coade-stone panels of putti engaged in artistic and agricultural activities, one bearing an original incised or imprinted date of 1796, were thereafter fixed to the fronts of Nos 20 and 21. As Alison Kelly has noted, the reliefs might reflect the influence of Joshua Reynolds’s <em>Infant Academy</em> of 1782, though they were not in Coade’s catalogue in 1784. They were removed around 1960 and re-erected by the GLC in 1968 at 25 Belgrave Square, the Norwegian Embassy, on its Belgrave Place return elevation. But the date of 1796 means they cannot be linked to Wolff’s double occupancy. It is possible he remained the landlord, and it should be noted that Jens Wolff fitted out a lavish sculpture gallery at Sherwood Lodge in Battersea in the late 1790s. However, a more likely explanation is that the pair of houses was rebuilt or at least refronted in 1796 to designs by Elijah Goff junior, a surveyor, who lived at No. 21 from that date to 1803 and in 1797 exhibited elevations of the east fronts of two houses ‘lately erected’. In 1795 he had married Mary Robinson, the daughter of John Robinson, the London Hospital’s Surveyor from 1780 to 1806, also surveyor to the pavement commissioners for Whitechapel’s Church Lane from 1783, who lived on the square’s north side at No. 11. The marriage was witnessed by Major Wright, a well-connected solicitor and clerk of the peace who was also resident on the square’s north side. A son, Major Goff (1799–1861), became Surveyor to the Tower Royalty and lived at No. 21 into the 1840s. It might also be pertinent in relation to the reliefs that William Buskin (1736–1789), a carver, gilder and glass grinder, was at No. 19 in the late 1780s, his widow Sarah Buskin, continuing there until after 1800.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>Other residents of the square had other networks. Samuel Jacob Hayyim Falk (<em>c.</em>1710–1782), known as the <em>Ba’al Shem</em> of London, was a kabbalist whose connections, charisma and reputation brought him wealth. An immigrant from Galicia who came to London in the 1740s by way of stints in Bavaria and Amsterdam, Falk’s patrons included Aaron Goldsmid. In the early 1750s he moved from Prescot Street to the house at No. 31 on Wellclose Square’s south side, and lived there with a private synagogue till his death, in what Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz called a ‘splendidly decorated big house’.[^5] The Rev. Henry Mayo, an eminent Independent minister and radical, lived at No. 50 from 1764 to his death in 1793.[^6] David Jennings’s Dissenting Academy was on the east side, probably at No. 45, from 1744 to 1762.[^7] </p>\n\n<p>There were other more conventional professionals, doctors and lawyers being present from early on into the Victorian period. Robert Pell, was a medical practitioner of Scandinavian origins, a magistrate and major in the militia who succeeded Borgard at No. 44.Stephen Smith Ward, surgeon, was at No. 7 on the north side by 1816, succeeded by Dr Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, who joined his father’s medical practice before gaining eminence as a botanist and the inventor of the terrarium (‘Wardian case’). Edwin John Quekett, professor of botany and a surgeon at the London Hospital, lived at No. 50 in the 1830s and 40s. What became the Royal Microscopical Society was founded in his house.[^8]</p>\n\n<p>Merceron & Lush, attorneys, had their office at No. 36 around 1840. The partners were Henry Merceron, the son of Joseph Merceron, a formidably corrupt east London politician, and James Wilmot Lush, descended from other East London magistrate families. Lush married Major Wright’s daughter and became Chief Bailiff of the Tower Liberty.[^9]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archvies (LMA), CLC/427: Land Tax returns (LT): Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), P/SAS/3/2/3–4: Derek Morris, <em>Whitechapel, 1600–1800: a social history</em>, 2011, p. 66: Derek Morris, <em>Wapping 1600–1800</em>, 2009, pp. 125,149–50</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>London Evening Post</em>, 1 June 1731: LT: <em>ODNB</em>: Collage 121629</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Old Bailey Online: <em>Whitehall Evening Post</em>, 4 Jan. 1780: THLHLA, P/SAS/3/2/3–4: LT: <em>Survey of London</em>, vol. 48: <em>Woolwich</em>, 2012, pp. 135–7,145: <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB)</em>: Morris, <em>Wapping</em>, p.147</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: LT: Post Office Directories (POD): Ancestry: LMA, CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/352/542821; MS9172/190/1/35: THLHLA, P/GOF/1; L/SMW/C/4/1: : Peder Borgen, ‘George Wolff (1736–1828): Norwegian-born merchant, consul, benevolent Methodist layman, close friend of John Wesley’, <em>Methodist History</em>, vol. 40/1, Oct. 2001, pp. 17–28: Howard M. Colvin, <em>A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1660–1840</em>, 1995 (3rd edn), p.412: <em>Survey of London</em>, vol. 50:<em> Battersea</em>, 2013, pp. 88–90: Alison Kelly, <em>Mrs Coade’s Ston</em>e, 1990, p. 175: <em>A descriptive catalogue of Coade’s Artificial Stone Manufactory, etc</em>, 1784: Morris, <em>Wapping</em>, pp. 148–9</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: As quoted in Todd M. Endelman’s introduction to Michal Oron, <em>Rabbi, Mystic, or Imposter? The Eighteenth-Century Ba’al Shem of London</em>, trans. Edward Levin, 2020, p.5: LT: www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/5992-falk-hayyim-samuel-jacob: <em>ODNB</em></p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>ODNB</em>: LT</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: Dissenting Academies Online, https://dissacad.english.qmul.ac.uk/sample1.php?parameter=Advacademy&field1=AcademiesLocs.Location&search1=Wellclose%2520Square,%2520Wapping,%2520London&acadid=164</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: LMA, CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/472/925084; LT: Post Office Directories (POD): <em>ODNB </em>for Quekett and Ward</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: Julian Woodford, <em>The Boss of Bethnal Green: Joseph Merceron, The Godfather of Regency London</em>, 2016, pp. 83,242: POD: The National Archives, WORK14/3/3</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-10-09",
"last_edited": "2021-02-02"
},
{
"id": 739,
"title": "Wellclose Square's industry, institutions and changing character",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1739,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.066601937242699,
51.51029583018458
],
[
-0.066591707248507,
51.51033156155218
],
[
-0.066545305611051,
51.51035690561341
],
[
-0.066198603102223,
51.510392528155435
],
[
-0.065574109139852,
51.51044206147906
],
[
-0.065466692202089,
51.51042614702678
],
[
-0.065392638379111,
51.51036346011576
],
[
-0.06531561677056,
51.50997993556986
],
[
-0.065330072257861,
51.50986949543138
],
[
-0.065384877232455,
51.50984713300441
],
[
-0.066347369900239,
51.5097819610304
],
[
-0.066412309769772,
51.5097922788254
],
[
-0.066466585944749,
51.509827985933335
],
[
-0.066496879035431,
51.50989484609386
],
[
-0.066601937242699,
51.51029583018458
]
],
[
[
-0.06617795318375,
51.51038731673777
],
[
-0.066162776826975,
51.51030567245064
],
[
-0.06588610031897,
51.51032669039412
],
[
-0.065912350489888,
51.51041084290673
],
[
-0.06617795318375,
51.51038731673777
]
],
[
[
-0.06624311370635,
51.51019072010641
],
[
-0.066077627531148,
51.510204269850675
],
[
-0.066069527116146,
51.510170337345684
],
[
-0.06611551384684,
51.51016638639934
],
[
-0.066109726117682,
51.51014703372793
],
[
-0.065814585354416,
51.5101673738921
],
[
-0.065821533323482,
51.51022330153386
],
[
-0.065683910471039,
51.51023360737856
],
[
-0.065657889334494,
51.51008339520407
],
[
-0.065349361164399,
51.51010853754948
],
[
-0.06532938777826,
51.510008209650636
],
[
-0.065633994165545,
51.509987653756085
],
[
-0.065620188745178,
51.50991765971934
],
[
-0.065722948991599,
51.50991121538507
],
[
-0.065716780377172,
51.509880881568165
],
[
-0.065901817537395,
51.50986765480321
],
[
-0.06593178354119,
51.50999605393065
],
[
-0.066038317356042,
51.509988508785376
],
[
-0.066023042932445,
51.50990918839897
],
[
-0.065998737156917,
51.50991111308007
],
[
-0.065980280001972,
51.50981894970597
],
[
-0.066320560006103,
51.50979200375635
],
[
-0.06632996113982,
51.50983401855985
],
[
-0.066268265775343,
51.50983881506029
],
[
-0.066265082872055,
51.50982597208467
],
[
-0.066214609325215,
51.509829790835916
],
[
-0.066234584593038,
51.50993011860635
],
[
-0.066179431061551,
51.509934441553284
],
[
-0.066189455574639,
51.5099837339709
],
[
-0.066197871962622,
51.509983000685985
],
[
-0.066205558541818,
51.510021498909204
],
[
-0.066199016557763,
51.510021972412325
],
[
-0.066209250254486,
51.51006632649741
],
[
-0.066216245469672,
51.51006615116071
],
[
-0.066221862792188,
51.51009851070753
],
[
-0.066214365136205,
51.51009954983773
],
[
-0.066220460291682,
51.51013162657133
],
[
-0.06623170678327,
51.51013006787535
],
[
-0.06624311370635,
51.51019072010641
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Wellclose Square",
"address": "Wellclose Square",
"feature_type": "OPEN_SPACE",
"count": 8,
"search_str": "Wellclose Square"
},
"tags": [
"George Wolff",
"Lt Gen Albert Borgard",
"Nicholas Barbon",
"Sir John Parsons"
]
},
"body": "<p>Alongside residential respectability there was industry, cheek by jowl. Sugar refining had a significant presence in Wellclose Square from the 1720s, even before the square’s frontages had been fully built up. This started at the west end of the square’s south side, spreading to the east side by 1730, and to the south end of the west side from 1759, much of the refining, but not all, in the hands of Germans. Karsten (later Carsten) Dirs was at the west end of the south side from the late 1740s, following on from Daniel Ireson. Dirs had also acquired property on the square’s north side by the time of his death in 1777, and his nephew, also Carsten Dirs, and other descendants owned property at Nos 5, 35 and 41 in the nineteenth century. No. 48 was rebuilt as a seven-storey gable-fronted sugarhouse around 1780 for John Henry Engle (or Engell). This refinery was adapted to become George Whybrow’s pickle factory in the 1870s, by when sugar refining had generally departed.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>To the south-west, amid sugar refining and cooperage, Gunner Alley was known as Harwood Court by the 1740s, later Harold’s Alley, then from 1895 Harad’s Place. It was redeveloped with Well Court inserted to its south in the late 1780s, this by Samuel Baker, a Kingsland Road bricklayer, and Caesar Andrews, an East Smithfield carpenter. Charles Court was added off the north side in the early nineteenth century. Little Cable Street became Shorter Street in the eighteenth century then Fletcher Street from 1939, and Anchor Alley was redesignated North Passage (later North-East Passage). Neptune Street became Wellclose Street in 1938.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>Professional residence hung on into the 1860s, but there were shops on the square by the 1830s, and many houses and their gardens had come to host small-scale manufacturing. By 1840 the address had lost any middle-class desirability, despite the large houses. In 1841 the Post Office Directory listed nineteen commercial or manufacturing addresses, eight professional, the other half unlisted as presumably straightforwardly residential. As Charles Knight recorded, ‘from being a favourite residence of naval officers. How altered now!’[^3] The ‘disreputable surroundings’ were noted in the late-Victorian last days of the Court House.[^4] A Wesleyan missionary of the same period at what had been Wilton’s Music Hall has been quoted as reporting ‘Houses of ill-fame are swarming, the neighbourhood teems with lazy, idle, drunken, lustful men, and degraded, brutalised, hell-branded women, some, alas! girls in their early teens.’[^5] </p>\n\n<p>Even so, Wellclose Square remained an oasis in a spreading desert of poverty. It attracted a number of charitable institutions, starting with the Sailors’ Orphan Asylum, at No. 14 by the 1830s. The Emanuel Almshouses replaced a large sugarhouse at the west end of the square’s south side in 1848, built for Jewish occupancy through a benefaction from Joel Emanuel, a former Bevis Marks silversmith and jeweller. W. L. Moffatt was the architect of this group of ten almshouses flanking an open courtyard at the back of which there was a synagogue. The institution moved to Hackney in 1903–4.[^6] From 1854 to 1878 No. 51 housed the Hand in Hand Asylum for Decayed Tradesmen, a Jewish residential and nursing home. No. 41 was adapted in the 1850s to be the Wellclose Square Reformatory, run by Thomas Lupton Jackson, a missionary to ‘thieves’ for the London City Mission. It was further adapted in 1889–90 after Jackson’s death to be the London Wesleyan East End Mission Hall. No. 44 was another Mission House by 1861, and No. 36 was used by the Mildmay Mission House to the Jews in the 1890s.[^7] </p>\n\n<p>In 1865 the London Fire Engine Establishment, an insurers’ initiative, acquired Nos 20 and 21 for conversion to be a fire station with stables to the rear, replacing a Phoenix Insurance facility within the square. This evidently anticipated the establishment later that year of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, which took control of the premises. They closed in 1875 when Whitechapel Fire Station opened in the Commercial Road. After being let out, the property was re-adapted in 1881 to be lodgings for night-watch firemen, a use that lasted until 1897. No. 13 was the insurers’ London Salvage Corps Station in the 1870s.[^8] </p>\n\n<p>The Eagle Brewery was at No. 52 in the square’s north-east corner by 1841. No. 51 was occupied by Harvey Greenfield & Co., brewers, from the 1870s, with Nos 48–50 added around 1897 for the Eagle Brewery with No. 52 continuing up to around 1910 as the Eagle Brewery tavern.[^9] </p>\n\n<p>In 1904–5 the Emanuel Almshouses site was redeveloped as warehousing for Tower Tea Ltd. Nash & Detmar were the architects and A. Jackaman & Co. the builders of a four-storey internally reinforced-concrete framed building. This was enlarged in 1909, and later run by Twining Crosfield & Co Ltd, with further eastward enlargements in the 1950s overseen by Samuel A. S. Yeo, architect.[^10] </p>\n\n<p>The cooperage on the square’s west side became a part of John Wagener’s Well Street sugar refinery in 1851. Its site was redeveloped with property further south as two- and four-storey warehouses in 1875. The adjacent west side of Charles Court was rebuilt in 1880. This property was again redeveloped in 1934–6 for Twinings.[^11] George Baines & Son intended demolition of No. 26 for Ralph Ansell Ltd in 1950, but it stood until 1954, in isolation at the end, Nos 22–25 having already come down.[^12]</p>\n\n<p>George Edgar Weston, a builder who was based at Nos 42–43 from around 1880 into the 1930s, was responsible for several house-replacement projects. No. 40 was a warehouse rebuild of his in 1888–9. Weston also rebuilt parts of the square’s north side as warehouses and factories, No. 9 in 1892–3 as a warehouse that was used from 1897 by the Co-operative Wholesale Society for carpet storage, Nos 13–14 in 1894–5 (also used by the CWS), Nos 7–8 as a warehouse and yard for himself in 1903, and finally, in 1936–7, Nos 10–12, which had long since been a cleared site, left vacant by Weston and the CWS.[^13]</p>\n\n<p>No. 18 was rebuilt as a workshop in 1905–6 for the Norton Folgate Union Investment Co. Ltd, with John Hamilton as architect, Weston as builder. A manufacturing tenant could not be found and despite municipal opposition, use as tenement housing was permitted in 1907. By this time virtually all the square’s remaining houses were let in multiple households, averaging about twelve people per house. No. 18 became the Lord Charles Beresford Memorial Seamen’s Rest, which extended to No. 19 in 1930–1 to provide lodgings for forty-four seamen. In addition the Catholic Seamen’s Home and Institute was at No. 16 by 1899.[^14] </p>\n\n<p>Nos 44–45 were rebuilt as model dwellings called Clifford House in 1898–9, with John Robert Smith as architect. The five-storey block had twenty-four flats and a purpose-built synagogue to the rear. But Wellclose Square did not remain a strongly Jewish area and the synagogue had fallen out of use by 1926.[^15] German occupancy endured up to the expulsions of the First World War. The occupants of Nos 34–39 in 1910 were Carl Speckman, Herman Hein, August Kaun, Andrew Brack, Hugh Henrich and Joseph Schosberg.[^16] </p>\n\n<p>Thereafter occupancy was all commercial or divided residential and boarding houses, there were no more missions. Bomb damage was relatively insignificant, though No. 31 was a casualty.</p>\n\n<p>Nos 7 and 8 were again rebuilt as a single-storey shed in the 1950s for Angus Stuart Ltd’s sweet-making works. Nos 12–16 were also redeveloped in phases in the 1950s and early 1960s as a four-storey block for John Henderson & Co. Ltd, ship furnishers.[^17]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Bryan Mawer website (http://www.mawer.clara.net): Richard Horwood's map of London, 1799: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), P/SAS/3/2/2: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Q/HAL/316; LMA/4673/D/01/008/080; Land Tax returns (LT): The National Archives (TNA), PROB11/1037/191: Derek Morris,<em>Whitechapel 1600–1800: a social history</em>, 2011, p. 61: https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1395/detail/</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: John Rocque's map of London, 1746: LT: THLHLA, P/SAS/3/2/2; P/FAR/1/3/1–6</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: ed. Charles Knight, <em>London</em>, vol. 6, 1844, p. 196</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: TNA, WORK14/3/3: Post Office Directories (POD)</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: LMA, P93/PAU2/248</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>The Builder</em>, 30 Sept. 1848, p. 479: Ordnance Survey map 1873: LMA, District Surveyors Returns (DSR): THLHLA, B/ELL/2/3: POD</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: LMA, LMA/4456: POD</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: THLHLA, P/FAR/1/3/1: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes (MBW Mins), 19 Oct 1866, p.1287; 21 Oct. 1881, p.517: London County Council Minutes (LCC Mins), 14 Dec. 1897, p.1391: POD: Ordnance Survey (OS) maps</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: LCC Mins, 6 Feb. 1897, p.109: POD</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: THLHLA, B/ELL/2/3 and 43; L/THL/D/2/14/7 and 32: DSR: POD</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: THLHLA, P/FAR/1/3/1–6; B/ELL/2/28: DSR: <em>The Builder</em>, 13 Feb. 1875, p. 152: MBW Mins, 19 Feb. 1875, p. 243; 17 Dec. 1880, p. 882: https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1395/detail/</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: LMA, SC/SS/07/024/307: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/14/6; L/THL/D/1/1/259: Historic England Archives, London Region photographs: Goad insurance map, 1953</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: THLHLA, P/RIV/1/15/22/2; L/SMB/C/1/3: POD: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/22/BA/022390; POD: TNA, IR58/84837/5486–90: OS maps</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/22/BA/027795; GLC/AR/BR/22/TP/003045; DSR: LCC Mins, 12 March 1907, p.630: POD</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/165: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/22/ES/099975; DSR</p>\n\n<p>[^16]: THLHLA, C/INL/B/3/13</p>\n\n<p>[^17]: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/22/BA/022390; GLC/AR/BR/22/ES/013668: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/165: POD</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-10-09",
"last_edited": "2021-02-02"
},
{
"id": 725,
"title": "Old Castle Street synagogue (demolished)",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 416,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.074008398509168,
51.51649894342819
],
[
-0.074223298509118,
51.51677594342837
],
[
-0.074160667999642,
51.51678116450384
],
[
-0.07406279493191,
51.51665740746994
],
[
-0.073691098508962,
51.516691743428304
],
[
-0.074008398509168,
51.51649894342819
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "52",
"b_name": "The Community Centre",
"street": "Old Castle Street",
"address": "The Community Centre, 52 Old Castle Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 5,
"search_str": "The Community Centre"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>From 1872 a minor synagogue stood on the backlands of No. 113 (later No. 42) Old Castle Street, at its north-east end (on the site of the new Old Castle Street Community Centre), reached, as at other chevras in Whitechapel, through a discreet doorway in the street-front shop-house. Begun as a society of Poles in the 1850s (according to the obituary of one of its founders), the 1872 synagogue was formed from two small chevras (‘known as Gamilus Chasodim and Shalom Ve-Ameth’), meeting in an unknown location in Old Castle Street, though perhaps in the warehouse building altered into a synagogue in 1872.[^1] The site had been a small alley off Wentworth Street by the 1670s, known as Sugar Loaf Court (one of several of that name in the area), apparently expunged in rebuilding in the second half of the eighteenth century. By 1870 Chevrat Shalom veEmet (‘Peace and Truth’ synagogue) had 120 members, and by March 1872 the ‘long wanted’ permanent building was being created out of the old warehouse by Cawder, builder of Lewisham, opening on the 31st when the committee was met by the choir of the North London Synagogue, and an embroidered curtain for the Ark and cover for the reading desk were presented.[^2] Its President, Joseph Boam (1851-1937), a young Polish-born tailor whose premises at 118 Wentworth Street backed on to the site, was then still raising the £300 needed for the work.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>The synagogue was a founder member of the Federation of Synagogues in 1887, but its building was evidently somewhat makeshift. A full-scale rebuilding took place in 1890-1 following condemnation of the conditions by the sanitary committee of the Jewish Board of Guardians.[^4] Built largely on the footprint of the converted warehouse by Coulsell Bros, builders of Bethnal Green at a cost of £1,100, the synagogue was one of the more modest designs of Lewis Solomon, Hon. Architect to the Federation of Synagogues, but ‘might serve as a model for any other chevra in the East End’.[^5] Approached from Old Castle Street through a ‘neat and roomy vestibule’, the prayer hall measured 30ft x 40ft deep. It had an open trussed roof, lantern light and ventilators to overcome the enclosed site, and seating for 285 including 120 in the women’s gallery. The ‘handsome’ Ark and stained glass window came from the St John Wood’s synagogue (now the New London Synagogue) in Abbey Road, then undergoing enlargement by Lewis Solomon.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>By the early twentieth century the Old Castle Street congregation had outgrown its premises and at some point thereafter merged with the <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1061/detail/#\">Philpot Street Great Synagogue</a>, possibly at its foundation in 1908, ‘a removal rendered necessary by a large increase in the membership’. The Old Castle Street building, however, continued as a synagogue, known as Agudath Achim (‘Band of Brothers’) in its new incarnation, and was still operational in 1966.[<em>^7</em>] The synagogue was demolished in the late 1960s and the Old Castle Street entrance building in the early 1970s pending redevelopment of the site for the Denning Point/Tyne Street estate.[^8]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em> (<em>JC</em>), 23 Sept 1870, p. 31; 11 March 1921, p. 10</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>JC</em>, 5 April 1872, p. 5</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>JC</em>, 15 March 1872, p. 11; 5 April 1872, p.5: Post Office Directories: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: <em>JC</em>, 16 May 1890, p. 17; 19 Dec 1890, p. 14</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: <em>JC</em>, 17 April 1891, p. 14</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>The Builder</em>, 25 April 1891, p. 33</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: <em>Jewish Year Book</em>, London 1906: <em>JC</em>, 27 May 1921, p. 10; 11 March 1921, p. 14; 5 Aug 1966, p. 5: <em>Pall Mall Gazette</em>, 6 Nov 1919, p. 7: University of Southampton Special Collections, MS 248/1/1 to /11</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-07-16",
"last_edited": "2020-11-12"
},
{
"id": 654,
"title": "A Friendly Place",
"author": {
"id": 33,
"username": "Charno"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1385,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.067575803709333,
51.51021492278667
],
[
-0.067783647338447,
51.51017527172947
],
[
-0.067828706900756,
51.510167293395675
],
[
-0.067884358000762,
51.51028332470727
],
[
-0.068021222270461,
51.51026117174896
],
[
-0.068027105232624,
51.51027869995762
],
[
-0.068059007104689,
51.51027341168682
],
[
-0.068045803249401,
51.51025517119752
],
[
-0.068185711037114,
51.51022956959143
],
[
-0.068302205657116,
51.51049311218949
],
[
-0.068154065018083,
51.51051508999573
],
[
-0.068142111677326,
51.51048931210634
],
[
-0.068158013519995,
51.51048782991857
],
[
-0.0680993992664,
51.51035372697415
],
[
-0.068063773094401,
51.51035895389879
],
[
-0.068055396596396,
51.510336723241444
],
[
-0.067963562571312,
51.510349163498944
],
[
-0.067961653646245,
51.510339150568754
],
[
-0.067909585576321,
51.510347692789416
],
[
-0.067933270683552,
51.5104044774377
],
[
-0.067674158297256,
51.51045078856997
],
[
-0.067629160671485,
51.51036923447038
],
[
-0.067652633918951,
51.51036497018876
],
[
-0.067575803709333,
51.51021492278667
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "7",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Dock Street",
"address": "Wombat's City Hostel, 7 Dock Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 25,
"search_str": "Wombat's City Hostel, 7 Dock Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>In his <em>Notes on Life and Letters</em> of 1921, the author and former merchant seaman Joseph Conrad reflects on his experiences of the Brunswick Maritime Establishment and Sailors' Home, which he knew between 1878 and 1894. He calls it the Well Street Home (Well Street being the former name for Ensign Street, where the Home's much-altered original frontage still stands). Conrad refers to the Home as 'a friendly place':</p>\n\n<p>'I have listened to the talk on the decks of ships in all latitudes, when its name would turn up frequently, and if I had to characterise its good work in one sentence, I would say that, for seamen, the Well Street Home was a friendly place. It was essentially just that; quietly, unobtrusively, with a regard for the independence of the men who sought its shelter ashore, and with no ulterior aims behind that effective friendliness. No small merit this. And its claim on the generosity of the public is derived from a long record of valuable service.'</p>\n",
"created": "2018-05-22",
"last_edited": "2020-12-11"
}
]
}