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"id": 817,
"title": "William Farrow's veterinary practice",
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"body": "<p>Around 1853 William Farrow moved from his house and veterinary practice in St George in the East, just to the east of Whitechapel, to 11 (later 21, now 11 again) Commercial Street where he set up a new practice. After his death in 1878 ownership passed to one of his sons, Arthur Hastings Farrow, who kept the practice until his own death in 1916.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: 1851 census: Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons archives: electoral registers: death certificates for Jessie Hastings Farrow, William Farrow, Arthur Hastings Farrow</p>\n",
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"id": 851,
"title": "The Sir Sidney Smith public house, 22 Dock Street",
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"body": "<p>The Sir Sidney Smith public house was present on this site as such by 1816, named after the naval hero of the American and French wars, Admiral Sir William Sidney Smith. It was rebuilt in 1936 for Truman, Hanbury, Buxton Ltd through A. E. Sewell, the firm’s architect, and W. Loweth & Sons Ltd of Clapton, builders. A plain and nicely proportioned four-storey brick-faced pub, a faience name plaque specifies ‘Sir Sydney Smith’. Even so, it was renamed Pepper Pot House in 1998, but after a brief closure around 2015 reopened under its old name, salvation possibly due to the arrival of a youth hostel opposite.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/475/925514; District Surveyors Returns: Post Office Directories: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, B/THB/D/231</p>\n",
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"title": "The Sailors' Home to 1862",
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"body": "<p>The Sailors’ Home, also known at first as the Brunswick Maritime Establishment, was built on the site of the Royal Brunswick Theatre in 1830–5 with Philip Hardwick as its architect. Enlarged to Dock Street in 1863–5, substantially altered in 1911–12, rebuilt on the Dock Street side in 1954–7, adapted to be a hostel for the homeless in 1976–8, and again converted to be a youth hostel in 2012–14, this has been, <em>mutatis mutandis</em>, a major local presence for nearly two centuries, all the while used as a hostel. As the first purpose-built short-stay hostel for sailors anywhere, it represented in its original form the invention of a building type, the Royal Hospital for Seamen in Greenwich notwithstanding. It was to have seminal influence on the development of lodging-house architecture.</p>\n\n<p>The prevalence of sailors in east London’s riverside districts was not new at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but populations did increase and living conditions declined. The new wet-dock system meant sailors had to leave their ships immediately without ready access to land-based employment, as there had been previously. The end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 left an estimated 100,000 seamen redundant from the Royal Navy. The Rev. George Charles ‘Boatswain’ Smith (1782–1863) came to the fore in addressing the lot of these sailors through evangelism. A seafarer himself in his teens who had served with distinction under Nelson in the battle of Copenhagen, Smith had become a Baptist missionary. He established a floating sanctuary on a remodelled sloop in the Thames off Wapping Stairs in 1818, and the British and Foreign Seamen’s Friend Society and Bethel Union in 1819. He then took the former Danish Church in Wellclose Square in 1825 for use as a Mariners’ Church. In the same year Anglicans established the London Episcopal Floating Church Society, which acquired another ship for seamen to use for worship. Smith, a witness to extreme poverty and deprivation in and around Wellclose Square, was next instrumental in establishing an asylum for destitute sailors in a warehouse in Dock Street, which opened in January 1828. He was in addition a pioneering advocate of temperance.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Paid upon coming ashore, sailors, both naval and mercantile, were prey to exploitation and theft by boarding-house and brothel keepers and others, a practice known as ‘crimping’ that was widespread and generally tolerated. Smith was determined to force reforms and had tried to introduce a system of approved boarding houses as used in other ports. In his eyes the Royal Brunswick Theatre and its predecessor had been a haven for crimping. The collapse presented an opportunity. In September 1828, just six months on from the disaster, Smith convened a meeting on the site with a view to raising there ‘a General Receiving and Shipping Depot for Mariners’.[^2] This was to be a religious mission, aiming at moral reform through reducing the influence of prostitution and drink. As such it was a late example of the Georgian impulse to ‘improvement’ and control through institutional architecture. Alongside Smith were Captains Robert and George Cornish Gambier, RN, brothers and nephews of Admiral James Gambier, himself an evangelical, and Capt. Robert James Elliot, RN, who was also a topographical artist. George Gambier was the Secretary of the London Episcopal Floating Church Society and he and Elliot were directors of the Destitute Sailors’ Asylum. A committee was formed tasked with acquiring the ground from the creditors of Maurice and Carruthers. The Sailors’ Home or Brunswick Maritime Establishment, so-called, launched appeals in early 1829, aiming to unite ‘the Regularities of social Order with the moral Decencies of Life, the Principles of Christian Loyalty, and the Duties of Religion.’[^3]</p>\n\n<p>Within the year eminent naval and other figures had been recruited to promote fund-raising (first trustees included William Wilberforce) and the freehold of the site was obtained. But Smith, an uncompromising and combative character, fell out with George Gambier, the Treasurer, over the latter’s unworldly sympathies for Henry Irving’s radical Nonconformity that led him to leave fund-raising to faith. Smith stepped down as Secretary and set up a rival Sailors’ Rest project leading other Dissenters to withdraw support for the Home. Elliot took charge as the Home’s Secretary, contributed more than £1,000 of his own money, and steered the project into Anglican safety, securing the patronage of the Bishop of London, Charles James Blomfield. Hardwick was engaged and on 10 June 1830 Elliot laid a foundation stone. Hardwick conceived the project in stages, to be built gradually as funds became available, ultimately to provide space for 500 men, each with their own cabin or sleeping place. Progress was slow. By the end of 1831 a brick carcase had been raised and roofed, but there things stalled for want of money, in part because of Smith’s rival project, which collapsed in 1832, and another short-lived competitor on Well Street opened by the Destitute Sailors’ Asylum, but abandoned in 1833. There was also an enforced diversion into the forming of a sewer extending beyond the site. Basement vaults and other main internal structures were formed in late 1833, and the Home opened on 1 May 1835 with accommodation for 100 men on its lower levels, and more than £2,000 still needed for completion. The first sailors admitted were the crew of an American ship in St Katharine’s Docks. A peaceful atmosphere introduced by the ‘sobriety and steadiness’ of these ‘temperance men’ was broken a few days later by the arrival of English sailors, coming from India and bringing ‘intoxication, swaggering and noise’.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>The Sailors’ Home was originally a three-storey, basement and attic brick building facing Well Street. Stucco dressings included channelled rustication to the ground floor, as survives. This and the bay rhythm of the façade were retained from the theatre, it is possible even that the lower-storey wall to Well Street was not wholly rebuilt. Hardwick connected the outer bays with a portico of large cast-iron Doric columns similar to those he had placed at St Katharine’s Docks. The south end of the building was replaced in 1893–4, an additional floor was inserted in 1911–12, and the columns were removed in 1952. </p>\n\n<p>The basement had a kitchen to the north and baggage stores for sailors’ chests and bedding to the south, central vaults being for general storage and domestic offices. The main central space at ground-floor level was a waiting hall open to all seamen. It had a York stone-flagged floor with a grid of nine tall cast-iron columns. The floor and columns are both still partly extant, but concealed. This hall was also used for assemblies and worship, and had small box offices for payment and registration, where the men’s ‘characters’ were recorded. Flanking dormitories named ‘Bombay’ (north) and ‘Calcutta’ (south) had two tiers of cabins either side of passages with rows of lavatories at one end. The cabins, each about 8ft long, 5ft wide and 7ft high (2.5m x 1.5m x 2.2m), probably drew on the precedent of Greenwich Hospital’s accommodation for naval pensioners. On the originally comparably tall first floor a central dining and reading hall had a similar array of columns and was flanked by two more double-tiered dormitories (‘Canton’ north and ‘Madras’ south). Upper floors were initially used for a school, lecture room and museum of ship models and curiosities. As inmate numbers grew in 1842–8 the outer upper-storey rooms were gradually fitted up as single-tier dormitories, dedicated in honour of donations as ‘Royal Adelaide’, ‘City of London’, ‘City of Edinburgh’ and ‘Sydney’, increasing the Home’s capacity to 328. The central second-floor room remained divided as a navigation school and a boardroom containing the museum. There was provision for a small savings’ bank, a shipping office (to get sailors placed on vessels), a library and a chaplain. A single bath was introduced in 1845. The Home also employed outdoor agents or runners to outmanoeuvre crimps and bring sailors from their ships.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>Henry Mayhew, in a full description that was not uncritical of the Home’s management, noted in 1850 that seamen addressed the institution’s officers as friends not as superiors, and recorded a testimony from one among them that ‘the steadiest-going seamen will always speak well of the Sailors’ Home’.[^6] Henry Roberts, closely familiar with the Home having acted as its architect in the 1840s when he was also the first architect of the pioneering Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes and responsible for model lodging houses, later acknowledged that the Sailors’ Home ‘must in some respects be considered the prototype of the improved lodging-houses.’[^7] The Home’s achievements notwithstanding, its Chaplain, the Rev. Robert Hall Baynes, worried in 1858 that ‘the neighbourhood abounds in gin-palaces and prostitutes, the latter to a fearful extent.’ [^8] </p>\n\n<p>Annual numbers of boarders rose from 528 in the first year to 1,263 in the third, 2,183 in 1840 and 3,833 in 1842. Steady increases continued, to 5,544 in 1853 and 8,617 in 1861. Most of the sailors were of British or North American origin, but not all. By 1862 there had been 544 boarders from Africa.[^9]</p>\n\n<p>The land and the gas house behind the Sailors’ Home had been leased in 1842 with a view to possible extension, even before the formation of Dock Street and the building there of St Paul’s Church. It was used as a skittle ground. Part of the new Dock Street frontage was secured in 1854 and the notion of enlargement was revived as inmate numbers continued to increase. The freehold of another northerly frontage on Dock Street frontage was acquired in 1859, but more southerly ground proved slower to obtain, a lease not being secured until June 1862 – the freehold was purchased in 1889.[^10]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB)</em> for Smith: Roald Kverndal, <em>Seamen’s Missions: Their Origin and Early Growth, a Contribution to the History of the Church Maritime</em>, 1986, passim</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>Morning Post</em>, 11 Sept 1828</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Newcastle Courant</em>, 28 Feb 1829: <em>The Times</em>, 1 May 1829: <em>ODNB </em>for Elliot: Kverndal, pp. 92–3, 325–33</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: National Maritime Museum (NMM), SAH/60/2–3: <em>Morning Chronicle</em>, 11 June 1830: <em>Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser</em>, 6 May 1835: Kverndal, pp. 332–40</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: NMM, SAH/1/1, pp. 159,165,280,296; SAH/1/13, p. 4; SAH/60/2–3; SAH/60/10: <em>The Builder</em>, 4 Oct. 1862, p. 708: Historic England Archives, 3583/29–49</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>Morning Chronicle</em>, 11 and 19 April and 2 May 1850</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: Henry Roberts, <em>The Dwellings of the Labouring Classes</em>, 1867 edn, p. 15 </p>\n\n<p>[^8]: Lambeth Palace Library, Tait 440/433</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: NMM, SAH/1/4; SAH/60/2</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: NMM, SAH/1/1, pp. 44,233; SAH/1/4, pp. 21,250–2,291,467; SAH/1/7, pp. 362,391; SAH/60/10: The National Archives, WORK6/145/9</p>\n",
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"title": "The Destitute Sailors' Asylum (demolished)",
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"body": "<p>The Destitute Sailors’ Asylum first opened in 1828 in a converted warehouse on Dock Street, the Asylum was established by the Rev. George Charles ‘Boatswain’ Smith and associates, notably Capt. Robert J. Elliot, to address rough sleeping by seamen bereft of work and money. Unlike the Well Street Sailors’ Home that opened in 1835, it provided shelter at no charge for unfortunate seamen, some victims of shipwreck or infirmity. It comprised a soup kitchen under three open upper storeys laid with straw for sleeping quarters, and offered help finding places on outward-bound ships; 2,000 men were admitted in its first year. Its first address was always thought temporary. In 1835, following the collapse of Smith’s scheme for a rival sailors’ home, and having secured a lease with 56 years to run and the patronage of the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria, the Asylum moved to purpose-built premises on the west side of Well Street, later 22 Ensign Street, at the south end of the site now occupied by Onedin Point. The architect was Henry Roberts, early in his career after he had gained notice for designing Fishmongers’ Hall. The connection was evangelical Christianity, Roberts probably introduced to Elliot by the Rev. Baptist Wriothesley Noel. This job evidently captured Roberts’s imagination and conscience; hereafter much of his working life was devoted to architecture for housing the poor. The building was a simple seven-bay two-storey range with a rusticated stucco façade. There was a ground-floor living or mess room below a dormitory, with an office and kitchen to the north below rooms for the superintendent. From the 1840s it was managed with the Sailors’ Home, and by 1871 49,304 destitute sailors had been helped. The Well Street Asylum closed in 1886 in favour of a new building in Gravesend. It was subsequently used as a Mission to Seamen with an upper-storey chapel, then from the 1920s for diverse manufacturing and warehousing purposes. It was demolished as recently as the 1990s.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: National Maritime Museum, SAH/60/2: LMA, LCC/EO/HFE/05/146: The National Archives, MT9/63/M1082/1872; IR58/84837/5482–3: Henry Roberts, <em>Dwellings of the Labouring Classes</em>, 1850, p. 47: James Stevens Curl,<em>The Life and Work of Henry Roberts, 1803–1876: The Evangelical Conscience and the Campaign for Model Housing and Healthy Nations</em>, 1983, pp. 16–19 and plate 17: Post Office Directories: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 21692: Roald Kverndal, <em>Seamen's Missions: Their Origin and Early Growth</em>, 1986, pp. 322–7</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>As part of a scheme to redevelop the hospital and its estate, Bennett & Son produced plans to clear the site bounded by Ashfield Street to the north, Philpot Street to the east, Varden Street to the south, and Turner Street to the west for a nurses’ residential quarter. Plans were produced for nine blocks set in landscaped gardens encircling Walden Street, conveniently located for the recently completed Princess Alexandra School of Nursing on the east side of Philpot Street and a proposed nurses’ recreation centre on the north side of Varden Street, later known as the Three Feathers Club. The blocks were intended to provide accommodation for approximately 1,000 nurses in bedsitting rooms and small flats, with communal dining rooms, television lounges and laundries. Planning permission for the scheme was granted in 1969, and demolition commenced swiftly. Only six blocks were completed and opened formally in 1976. Three blocks of flats in Ashfield Street, Philpot Street and Turner Street, varying in height from three to seven storeys, are faced with brown brick and have private balconies. Three blocks fronting Varden Street provided bedsitting rooms. The block in Ashfield Street, known as the James Hora Home, continues in hospital use as accommodation for outpatients and the relatives of critically ill patients, but the other nurses’ homes were sold to Cross Property Investments in 2012.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Historic England Historians’ file; RIBA Biographical file, T. P. Bennett & Partners: RLHLH/SS/9: <a href=\"http://www.costar.co.uk/en/assets/news/2012/September/Barts-to-sell-sprawling-5-acre-Whitechapel-site\">http://www.costar.co.uk/en/assets/news/2012/September/Barts-to-sell-sprawling-5-acre-Whitechapel-site</a>:<a href=\"https://children.bartshealth.nhs.uk/st-bartholomews-hospital\">https://children.bartshealth.nhs.uk/st-bartholomews-hospital</a>:<a href=\"https://www.itv.com/news/london/2014-03-14/london-nhs-workers-see-rents-almost-double-after-accommodation-is-sold\">https://www.itv.com/news/london/2014-03-14/london-nhs-workers-see-rents-almost-double-after-accommodation-is-sold</a>. </p>\n",
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"body": "<p>In late 1862 a building committee took the Sailors' Home's extension plan forward and Edward Ledger Bracebridge, a Poplar-based architect who had been responsible for the Strangers’ Home in Limehouse (1857), and who was personally known to Lord Henry Cholmondeley, the committee’s Chairman, was appointed with a brief to design a new block facing Dock Street and to reconfigure the 1830s building. The Rev. Dan Greatorex, newly appointed Chaplain and a member of the committee, objected to Bracebridge’s first scheme on account of its impact on light to his house, immediately to the south on Dock Street. A significantly more expensive amended scheme (first estimated at £8,000 as against £5,500) was approved and built in 1863–5, with James Mugford Macey as builder for a contract sum of £10,626. Thomas Wayland Fletcher was the Clerk of Works. Lord Viscount Palmerston laid the foundation stone on 4 August 1863 and the Prince of Wales opened the building on 22 May 1865. A commemorative stone plaque bearing that information is still to be found facing the hostel’s internal courtyard where it was moved, recut, in 1956.</p>\n\n<p>In the earlier block’s basement, the kitchen was enlarged and a scullery replaced a staircase that had risen through the main halls, now opened up by the removal of ancillary functions to the new block and the placing of an open-well stone fireproof staircase in a linking range. The original central upper-storey spaces were adapted to be more dormitories. The outwardly Gothic and polychrome Dock Street building’s basement had a room for the navigation school, a recreation room, two baths and service rooms. The ground floor had offices to the front, including the seamen’s savings’ bank, with waiting halls to the rear, the first floor a boardroom and officers’ mess room to the north, and a library and recreation hall to the south. The two upper storeys were laid out as a single room, the Admiral Sir Henry Hope Dormitory (Hope, who died in 1863, had been the Home’s Chairman from 1851). This extraordinary space comprised four galleried tiers of sleeping berths or cabins (108 in all) to east and west of an atrium open to the roof with south-end staircases. The gain in accommodation was 160 berths for an overall capacity of 502. Behind the new block a basement-level courtyard gave access to an enclosed skittle alley abutting the earlier building’s northwest corner. A range of water closets ran alongside another yard behind the vicarage.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>In 1874–5 the single-storey skittle alley was reconstructed, extended to the south and raised to be a three-storey and basement range (which survives) to provide an additional dormitory for ships’ mates and space for a clothing store, sales of clothing from the Home having increased since their introduction in 1868. John Hudson and John Jacobs, both of Leman Street, were architect and builder respectively. The same men combined to give the 1830s building an additional attic dormitory in 1876. A drinking fountain still in situ near the northwest corner of what was the main waiting hall is surmounted by an inscribed plaque recording a benefaction of 1873 from William McNeil, a formerly resident seaman. There is also documentation of a drinking fountain given by John Kemp Welsh in 1875. Thereafter an Officers’ Smoking Room went up on the north side of the yard.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>By this time there were many other hostels for sailors, but the Sailors’ Home was the parent exemplar. Outside, crimping was still prevalent, and the Home was drawing more than 10,000 boarders annually. Ale was served, but there was no bar. It remained a Christian foundation, but not zealously so, aiming to ‘encourage habits of decorum, economy, and self-cultivation, and to contribute in educating {seamen} as missionaries of Commerce to the ends of the earth’.[^3] Between 1879 and 1884 Joseph Conrad (Jozef Korzeniowski) stayed several times at the Home and studied in its navigation school. Conrad called the Home a ‘friendly place’, ‘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.’[^4] </p>\n\n<p>Educational provision was reshaped in 1893 in collaboration with the London County Council, which had a new role overseeing technical schools, to create the London Nautical School and the London School of Nautical Cookery, to train cooks for the merchant navy. After the Merchant Shipping Act of 1906 made certified cooks compulsory, Lloyd George reopened the enlarged cookery school in 1907.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>The Black Horse public house, originally at what became 10 Well Street, had been extended around 1860 with premises immediately north of the Home’s Dock Street site. George Edward Rose was the proprietor (it was later the Rose Tavern), and Frederick Robert Beeston was probably his architect. The Home acquired this on a long lease in 1895 for conversion to a cartage depot after the Mercantile Marine Office on Well Street had displaced the establishment’s earlier stable yard and the original building’s south range.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>That sacrifice had reduced the Home’s capacity to 300, a limit that had further to be reduced to 200 following a threat of closure in 1910 when the LCC stipulated improvements to the original dormitories, in particular for the provision of light. An appeal for funds was launched and Murray, Delves & Murray, architects (Stanley Delves, job architect) prepared plans for works carried out in 1911–12 by Harris and Wardrop, builders. These involved the insertion of an additional floor in the Well Street block with internal reconstruction to form a light-well above the ground-floor waiting hall, which gained a skylight and was now designated ‘the Lounge’. Structural steel carried down to the basement. The dining hall moved to the ground floor of the north range and the cookery school to the skylit attic (until the 1930s when it moved to the basement). Bars and a first-floor chapel were introduced and the navigation school soon departed. All the sleeping cabins were now on the upper storeys. No. 14 Well Street was acquired and demolished to permit the formation of windows in the Home’s north flank wall, which was faced with channelled rusticated render. External fire-escape staircases were also added. Following this reconfiguration the establishment rebranded itself, incorporating as the Sailors’ Home and Red Ensign Club in 1912.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>Despite the reduced berths, the numbers of boarders continued to average more than 10,000 a year. By 1919 the Home had admitted a total of 639,005 sailors, 336,088 of them English, 51,388 from Sweden, Norway and Denmark, 18,500 from Germany, 11,376 from Russia, 2,483 from the ‘Cape and Mauritius’, 1,154 from West Africa, 7,958 from the West Indies, 2,523 from the East Indies, 1,914 from South America, and 1,387 from China and Japan. After this the origins of the sailors were no longer recorded in annual reports.[^8]</p>\n\n<p>Numerous minor alterations were carried out in the 1930s, including conversion and refenestration of the clothing store for staff cabins in 1931 to raise capacity to 235. More than 20,000 were boarded in 1933, usage that was sustained after the war when the merchant navy reserve pool was introduced, bringing seamen greater security of employment. Additional accommodation being needed, the Home’s architect, Colin H. Murray of Murray, Delves, Murray & Atkins, advised a comprehensive approach in 1937 and was asked to prepare plans for complete rebuilding. War meant postponement, but Murray did advance a scheme for rebuilding the Dock Street building in 1942.[^9]</p>\n\n<p>By 1945 Murray was working with Brian O’Rorke on a more ambitious phased project for the replacement of the whole complex (now simply called the Red Ensign Club). This envisaged three slab blocks laid out on an offset H plan to make best use of the two street frontages, rising at the centre to twelve storeys for a total 307 bedrooms (no longer called cabins) above lower-level common spaces. London County Council approval was secured, but in the post-war years building licences were not forthcoming. O’Rorke (1901–74), New Zealand born, had come to notice in placing joint third in the competition to design the RIBA’s headquarters and gone on to build a reputation for designing passenger-ship interiors. In 1946 he succeeded Edwin Lutyens as architect for the National Theatre, for which his designs remained unbuilt. He took over as architect for the new Club, leaving Murray, Delves, Murray & Atkins in charge of maintaining the existing buildings. Wells, Cocking and Weston were appointed consulting engineers, Ian Cocking in the lead. Commander A. E. Loder (Secretary and Chief Steward) and Commander A. Westbury Preston were key inside figures in seeing through the rebuilding project, as was Rear Admiral Sir David Lambert as Chairman in the early 1950s. </p>\n\n<p>Ambitions grew, with 6–10 Ensign Street to be acquired for demolition to square off the site, and brief hopes that the Church Commissioners would permit building above St Paul’s Vicarage. But costs kept rising with inflation and a diminishing number of boarders gave rise to concern in 1949 that expansion was no longer warranted. O’Rorke scaled down the plans by two storeys, and a licence for the first phase was granted in 1950. A new problem arose when the Merchant Navy Welfare Board was unable after all to contribute funds. With a shortfall of £35,000 of an estimated £275,000, and costs still rising, in 1951 O’Rorke suggested rebuilding the Dock Street range with the taller central block to its rear for £160,000 to prevent further delay. This was agreed and Charles Price Ltd (led by Kenneth Price) was given the contract for the new building for £179,488 in March 1952. First Hardwick’s Ensign Street block was re-modernised, to plans by Murray with R. Mansell as contractor. A staircase was inserted in the northeast corner of the ground-floor lounge, which was otherwise laid out with a billiard table and a ‘television set’. The Dock Street rebuilding ensued from 1954 and was completed in 1957 for a final cost of £218,400. Even so, the central block had also had to be abandoned, the new capacity was just 240 and there was a deficit of £63,000.[^10]</p>\n\n<p>O’Rorke’s building has six storeys and a setback attic, a steel frame and reinforced-concrete floors, metal windows and copper roof covering. Above curtain-wall glazing for the façade of the two lower storeys that housed communal spaces, it is brown-brick clad. The flat-faced Modernism is herbivorous yet stark. A lighter touch was introduced in the intertwined rope-pattern ironwork of the first-floor balconettes. A lift motor-room tower rising above the southeast staircase was a remnant of the centre-block plan. There had been disagreements as to the relative size of cabins (still, after all, so-called) for seamen and officers. The hierarchical view prevailed and it was 1966 before washbasins were installed in each room. The former pub and cartage depot to the north on Dock Street was demolished for yard access, and 8–10 Ensign Street came down in 1954 for a contractor’s site and then a car park.</p>\n\n<p>Following the closure of the London and St Katharine’s Docks in 1968–9 and continuing financial difficulties the Red Ensign Club closed at the end of 1974. Hostel use was quickly re-established, the buildings being converted in 1976–8 for the Look Ahead Housing Association Ltd (Beacon Hostels), founded in 1973 by Mary Jones, a retired civil servant. The complex became a hostel for single homeless men, with the London School of Nautical Cookery carrying on in the basement. Christopher Beaver Associates were architects for the conversion, Finchley Builders and then J. W. Falkner & Sons Ltd, carried out the work in phases. Capacity at what came to be called the Aldgate Hostel (sometimes Beacon House) shrank from 180 to 150 beds. Many of those housed were construction workers and there was also use as a halfway house for men released from prison. By 2012 Look Ahead had closed this and all its other large ‘industrial-era’ hostels to shift to smaller specialist services.</p>\n\n<p>Another conversion was carried out in 2012–14, the property having been acquired by Michael Sherley-Dale, whose residential property company, JMS Estates (IOM) Ltd, leased the premises to Wombat’s Hostels. This firm, founded by Marcus Praschinger and Sascha Dimitriewicz with a name deriving from the genesis of the business in their travels in Australia, had opened its first youth or backpacker hostel in Vienna in 1999 and gradually expanded across Europe. The refurbishment of the Dock Street–Ensign Street hostel was by Andrew Mulroy architects, with Eastern Corporation as the main contractors, and Peter Thompson as the project manager. In a light-touch approach, little external fabric apart from the entrance doors and canopy was replaced. The middle range of the 1860s was raised by two storeys and its long-since disused staircase was removed. The main internal change was from single bedrooms to dormitories. Wombat's London opened with 618 beds. The vaulted cellar was made a café and bar with exposed brickwork, and the internal courtyard was landscaped as a garden. In 2015 the access road to the north was infilled with a three-storey extension using Moleanos (Portuguese) limestone cladding for the façade. An additional attic bedroom storey on the Ensign Street building was formed in 2018–19, with a two-storey addition to the infill block set to follow on, all designed and overseen by Mulroy and Thompson with Eastern Corporation.[^11]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: National Maritime Museum (NMM), SAH/1/5, passim; SAH/1/13, pp.280,283: Historic England Archives, 3583-029–57: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), P/MIS/75: <em>The Builder</em>, 25 April, 18 July, 8 Aug. and 26 Dec. 1863, pp. 303,522,567,919: <em>Illustrated London News</em>, 27 May 1865, p. 505 </p>\n\n<p>[^2]: NMM, SAH/1/6, pp.418,421,439,493: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), District Surveyors Returns (DSR): Ordnance Survey map 1894</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Shipping and Mercantile Gazette</em>, 24 May 1872 </p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Joseph Conrad, ‘A Friendly Place’, <em>Notes on Life and Letters</em>, 1912, p. 203: Alston Kennerley, ‘Joseph Conrad at the London Sailors’ Home’, <em>The Conradian</em>, vol. 33, no. 1, spring 2008, pp. 69–102</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: LMA, SC/PHL/02/0229; LCC/EO/HFE/05/147: NMM, SAH/57/3 </p>\n\n<p>[^6]: DSR: The National Archives (TNA), WORK6/144/9; WORK6/145/8; IR58/84823/4099: Post Office Directories</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: NMM, SAH/3/2, pp. 1–12: THLHLA, Building Control files 21363, 21689; cuttings 365.1; P16978–82: LMA, LCC/EO/HFE/05/146: TNA, IR58/4823/4100: DSR </p>\n\n<p>[^8]: LMA, LCC/EO/HFE/05/146</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: NMM, SAH/3/2, pp. 71–230: THLHLA, Building Control file 21363: LMA, LCC/EO/HFE/05/146: DSR</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: NMM, SAH/1/12–13, passim; SAH/60/20–22: THLHLA, Building Control file 21363: LMA, LCC/EO/HFE/05/146; GLC/AR/BR/06/028958</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: THLHLA, Building Control file 21363: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: information kindly supplied by Peter Thompson</p>\n",
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"id": 387,
"title": "Going to the baths in the 1950s and 1960s",
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"body": "<p>I remember going to the public baths in Goulston Street because we had no bathroom at home. You brought a clean towel and clothes with you and paid your money at the entrance. In return you were given a ticket which you gave to the attending lady. You were then shown to your bathroom and given a plug to stop the water draining away. In the room there was a sink and a mirror. You shouted out 'More hot water for number 10!' </p>\n",
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"title": "The wool warehouse (demolished) and later Drapery Warehouse extension at 53–65 Leman Street (demolished)",
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"body": "<p>Early in 1925 the Co-operative Wholesale Society announced that it would shortly be acquiring the warehouse adjoining 75 Leman Street on its north side, the freehold of which it had owned since at least 1917, and into which it would expand after alterations to meet the needs of its growing drapery business.[^1] The large five-storey brown-brick wool warehouse with ten bays fronting Leman Street had been built in 1879 for Hyatt, Parker & Co. and from 1889 it was in use as a wool warehouse by C. H. Cousens & Co., to whom the CWS leased it in 1917.[^2] The front concealed a much larger range of warehouses behind, which reached north to Leman Passage and east to Goodman Street, and by its acquisition the CWS almost doubled the area of its property on the east side of Leman Street. The warehouse was demolished by 1928 when work began on the first portion of a new seven-storey steel-framed drapery warehouse designed by L. G. Ekins, which opened in February 1930.[^3] Although Ekins, as Chief Architect of the London Branch, was responsible for much of the new building on the CWS’s expanding Whitechapel estate between 1916 and 1939 his major and surviving architectural contribution lies on the west side of Leman Street and is covered further on. Nevertheless, the spare neo-classicism of his new drapery extension marked a departure from CWS architecture locally and was finished above the lower basement on its Leman Street front in moulded faience tiles and bronze panels to the floor sections,[^4] with narrow pilasters that broke up large areas of glazing to light the showrooms in the six-bay front. Inside, a cream marble entrance hall led to a Roman stone staircase and lifts to the ‘modern style’ showrooms above, where men’s and women’s wear made in CWS clothing factories was displayed in airy and glamorous surroundings for the retail buyers. It was said that the second floor ‘might have been mistaken for a conservatory, with its trellises of roses, bowls of gay tulips’ made from glass and ‘perfumed atmosphere’.[^5] The block eventually known as 65–99 Leman Street (i.e., including the headquarters building of 1887 and its 1910 extension) was initially addressed as 53–65 Leman Street and included large warehouses at 31–38 Rupert Street (later Goodman Street) adjoining the original CWS warehouses at its rear.[^6] At the opening of this extension in 1930 it was stated that development ‘marked the completion of about two thirds of the whole scheme of progress’ on the site.[^7] By that date additional warehouse space had already been acquired on the north side of Leman Passage fronting Goodman Street.[^8] In 1936 work was underway on this plot for the second phase of the drapery extension, which was completed by September 1937.[^9] The buildings formerly on the site numbered 53–63 included a printing works (Nos 53–55) built in the 1920s for Crane Bennett, heating engineers and sanitary specialists, which also had premises further up Leman Street, stables, and a run of shop houses with tenements above numbered 57–63, which abutted south on Leman Passage.[^10] In 1927 Stepney Borough Council had permitted the CWS to double the width of the passage, in order that the CWS might build over and under it according to plans presented. Ten feet of headroom was created in the covered sections with a central area open to the sky and the whole lit at the expense of the Society.[^11] By 1930 the CWS had acquired the printing works and the houses on the north side of the Passage, which were leased to tenants, including, by 1935, the Anchor Co-operative Society (which appears to have leased a series of buildings locally from the CWS) at No. 57.[^12] All were demolished for the final part of the drapery extension which, like previous extensions to 99 Leman Street, incorporated existing or new-built warehousing fronting Goodman Street at the rear. The overall building created an additional 45,000 square feet of floor space behind its 104ft-frontage, more than doubling that of the first phase, thereby ‘changing the skyline in Leman Street’.[^13] A sense of the presence of the CWS on the east side of Leman Street can be gleaned from the bird’s-eye photograph taken in 1949.[^14] This was the limit of CWS building on the east side of Leman Street itself. Expansion hereafter focussed upon Goodman Street and Lambeth Street to the east. </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: ‘London Drapery’, <em>The Producer</em>, February 1925, p. 113; Whitechapel Land Tax records, 1917.</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: OS map/VII.67/1875: Goad plan, 1887: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), CLC/B/017/MS15627/040 and CLC/B/017/MS15627/052, Wharf and Warehouse Committee Plans, wool warehouses, Rupert Street & Leman Street, 1879 and 1889: illustration in <em>The People’s Yearbook</em>, 1926.</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: ‘The Loft that turned into a Palace’, <em>The Wheatsheaf</em>, April 1930, p. 55.</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Bridget Cherry, Simon Bradley, Charles O’Brien, Nikolaus Pevsner, <em>London: East</em>, 2005, p. 436.</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: 'The Loft that turned into a Palace’, <em>The Wheatsheaf</em>, April 1930, p.56.</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), L/SMB/C/1/3, Metropolitan Borough of Stepney Valuation List, 1935, p. 109.</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: <em>Western Morning News</em>, 26 February 1930, p.8.</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: CWS London property plan, 1930, LMA, GLC/AR/BR/17/45017; Metropolitan Borough of Stepney Valuation List, 1935, THLHLA, L/SMB/C/1/3.</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: ‘Changing the Skyline at Leman Street, London’, <em>The Producer</em>, June 1936, p. 182; LMA, DSR serial no. 1937.1300-3; Historic England Archives (HEA), Britain from Above, EPW055309.</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: Leman Street drainage plans, 1924, THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/88; photograph, 1929, of the premises of Crane–Bennett Heating Engineers, 45–51 Leman Street, with 1920 on the front of the building; 45–51 is also marked on the later 1920s’ building to its right, see CIBSE Heritage Group Photographs of Radiators, Stoves, etc., n.d., n.p.: <a href=\"http://www.hevac-heritage.org/\">http://www.hevac-heritage.org/</a>; LMA, DSR serial no. 1924.0094–6; Metropolitan Borough of Stepney Valuation List, 1935, THLHLA, L/SMB/C/1/3.</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: ‘Stepney Borough Council’, <em>East London Observer</em>, 31 December 1927, p. 5.</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: CWS property plan, 1930, approved 1932, LMA, GLC/AR/BR/17/45017; Metropolitan Borough of Stepney Valuation List, 1935, THLHLA, L/SMB/C/1/3.</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: ‘Changing the Skyline at Leman Street, London’, <em>The Producer</em>, June 1936, p. 182.</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: HEA, Britain from Above: EAW021448, Leman Street and environs, Whitechapel, 1949,<a href=\"https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW021448\">https://britainfromabove.org.uk/en/image/EAW021448</a>.</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>I grew up opposite the synagogue and flats during the 60s/70s...in Evelyn House (the other side of Old Montague Street)...predominantly a Jewish block at the time...always think of the caretaker of the synagogue, old Jock, when I see photos...he lived in the attached flats behind......He used to shoo away us local non-Jewish kids when we were snooping round the back door of the kitchen area...or near any entrances....</p>\n\n<p>We were used to begging for lutkes (or luktas as we called them... fried potato snacks) from the kitchen at the back door of Bloom's kitchen...occasionally scoring half a dozen to share between us, other times chased away by the chef!</p>\n\n<p>Back at the synagogue..old Jock was a good old stick, even though he kept us away from the enticing smells that wafted from the kitchen.....He was a good friend of my nan and always had a smile and a good word when I wasn't trespassing.</p>\n\n<p>He used to have nieces that came on hols during the summer holiday that I always used to play with...so long ago now that I can't recall their names....</p>\n\n<p>So even though I never saw the inside of Great Garden St (always be Greatorex St to me!) I have fond memories of some of its occupants....</p>\n\n<p>Still have a Whitechapel Heart!</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>To supply the major rebuilding campaign following the Great Fire of London in September 1666, timber was imported from the great pine forests of Scandinavia. This inspired the developer Nicholas Barbon to create Marine (later Wellclose) Square primarily for Danish-Norwegian timber merchants, who were said to have warmed themselves comfortably by the Great Fire. Laid out from the 1680s, this was his only major project in East London. In 1767 the German-Norwegian brothers Georg and Ernst Wolff moved their timber trading firm to 21 Wellclose Square, extending it next door to No 20. Ernst was to produce a Danish-Norwegian dictionary, a ready-reckoner for timber pricing, and a history of the Danish Church, which stood at the centre of the Square until it was demolished to make way for the school established in connection with the Church of St Paul, Dock Street.</p>\n\n<p>In 1787 Georg became the Danish-Norwegian consul. Being a practical man, he undertook his consular duties from his business address at 20-21 Wellclose Square, which was decorated in 1796 with two Coade stone reliefs depicting the arts and sciences. Georg retired from the consulate in 1804 and his son Jens took over until the consulate was closed in 1807. The building survived until 1968, when it was demolished as part of the wholesale demolition of Wellclose Square. The Coade stone reliefs were removed and transferred to the Norwegian Embassy in Belgrave Place, Belgravia, where they can still be seen decorating the main entrance. The Shapla School now stands on the site of the Danish Consulate.</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>Excerpt from Historic England list entry for St Augustine with St Philip's Church (listed at Grade II*):</p>\n\n<p>STEPNEY WAY E1 4431 (South Side) St Augustine with St Philip's Church (Formerly listed as St Philip's Church) TQ 3481 15/504 29.12.50 B GV 2. 1888-92. Architect Arthur Cawston. Early English style. Red brick with white stone dressings. Lofty building with shingled fleche over dressings. Brick intersecting vaults with stone quoins. Ambulatory arcade to apsidal chancel and apsidal Lady Chapel at east end. Porch at west end is base of a tower which was never built. Good example.<br>\n<br>\nSt Augustine with St Philip's Church forms a group with Nos 28 to 42 (even) Newark Street.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Historic England, National Heritage List for England, list entry number: 1065066 (https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1065066, accessed 26 August 2016). </p>\n",
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"body": "<p>This house was built in 1847 on a plot to the north of St Paul’s Dock Street for its chaplain. The 45ft frontage was sold by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests for £500, below its market price because of the charitable nature of the purchaser's intentions. Henry Roberts, architect, and William Cubitt & Co., builders, responsible for the church, saw the house up as well. Roberts’s plans for a house with three sitting rooms and six bedrooms came with an estimate of £950, but the Cubitt tender was £1,250 so Roberts simplified things to agree a contract sum of £1,050 after ‘a good deal of difficulty’. The costs were covered by the amount allowed for endowing the church in the church’s overall subscription fund.[^1] Of stock brick and three storeys with a stucco cornice and a basement, the house is double-fronted in three bays with spearhead area railings and slightly battered ground-floor architraves, a subtle Greek Revival touch characteristic of Roberts. </p>\n\n<p>Minor works in the twentieth century included the additions of a garage to the south for Father Joseph Williamson in 1953–5. Parishes merged, and the house, listed in 1973, was subdivided in 1973–4. Cecil Brown, architect, oversaw works to make it three flats with parish meeting rooms in the basement.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), P93/PAU2/019; District Surveyors Returns (DSR): The National Archives, CRES 60/7: Lambeth Palace Library, FP Blomfield 47, f. 128 </p>\n\n<p>[^2]: LMA, P93/PAU2/022, /063–5, /238; DSR: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives , Building Control files 21363, 21371: James Stevens Curl, <em>The Life and Work of Henry Roberts 1803–1876</em>, 1983, p. 33</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>One of the last surviving Somali Cafes in Cable Street. During our research we uncovered a series of Artist, Photographers and Histories who have been documenting Ali's Cafe, and one of them was Christian Petersen. We contacted Petersen for him to make this work available to us for our Take Me to Rio exhibition and series of community dialogue events and heritage walks in 2015, and this image is from that exhibition. </p>\n\n<p>Christian Petersen's Photos and Memory of Ali's Cafe - http://www.christianpetersen.com/alis/</p>\n\n<p>An extract is found below: \"Ali’s Place is a gathering place, a hang out or den for Ali’s friends to come and chew qat but also for people who are lonely in the community or just fancy coming in for the banter. The building is a tall Victorian warehouse, it cost next to nothing I was told. In the 50’s when Ali arrived in the UK this part of London, Tower Hamlets, was bustling. The area around Cable Street was home to pubs, nightclubs, brothels, drinking dens and cheap dockside cafes. Ali had a cafe that served the Yemeni and Somali sailors in the area and eventually he raised the money to buy ‘Ali’s Place’. Everyday a group of people, his friends, arrive in the afternoon. The TV flickers all day until about 8pm when the place closes up. Here you will find Yemenis, Somalis, Ethiopians, Iranians, Libyans, many are regulars, if they don’t show one night then there is concern amongst the regulars. Everyone helps one another out. One day we went to visit one of the older Yemeni men in the hospital in Whitechapel. He’d gone into theatre and his wife was sat alone in a corridor on a chair by a oblong window that looked over London. I later found out he’d had to have his leg taken off below the knee. They talked about him later that day at Ali’s. He was happy they said.\"</p>\n",
"created": "2017-10-06",
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"title": "12 Cable Street",
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"body": "<p>This shophouse was built in 1899, with C. H. Shoppee, architect, and H. Burman & Sons, builders, acting for the Rev. Frederick Edwards.</p>\n\n<p>As 4 Cable Street (which it was until 1868), the earlier building on this site housed the shop of Charles Henry Harrod (1799–1885), wholesale grocer and tea dealer. Harrod is said to have set up here in 1834, when the East India Company lost its monopoly on tea pricing. However, directory evidence suggests he might have been next door at the corner (then No. 5, now No. 14) until around 1842, after the birth of his son and successor Charles Digby Harrod (1841–1905). Harrod continued to trade from 4 Cable Street until around 1855, after he had set up more lucrative outlets in the City and Knightsbridge.</p>\n\n<p>Notoriety arrived at this address in 2015 when a conversion that had gained planning permission as for a ‘Museum of Women’s History’, particularly dedicated to East End women, opened as the ‘Jack the Ripper Museum’, replete with blue plaques mimicking those granted by English Heritage, to Elizabeth Stride, a victim, and George Chapman, a suspect. Mark Palmer-Edgecumbe, previously a ‘diversity chief’ at Google, was responsible for this project. His architects were Waugh Thisleton, but Andrew Waugh disowned the job when he discovered how it had been completed. Attempts to force closure of the museum have failed.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyors Returns: The National Archives, IR58/84822/3961: <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography</em>: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: <em>The Guardian</em>, 29 July and 4–5 Aug. 2015</p>\n",
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"body": "<h3><strong>Foundation</strong></h3>\n\n<p>The Royal London Hospital traces its beginnings to September 1740, when seven men met at a tavern in Cheapside to consider plans for establishing a new infirmary. Shute Adams, druggist, Josiah Cole, apothecary, John Harrison, surgeon, and Richard Sclater, were affiliated with the medical profession, while Fotherley Baker, lawyer, John Snee, girdler, and George Potter were associated with commerce and the law. At its inception, the hospital joined a rich thread of charitable infirmaries in the capital, including St Thomas’s and Guy’s in Southwark, St Bartholomew’s and Bethlehem in the City, and St George’s at Hyde Park Corner. Its founders possessed a common concern for the care of labourers and merchant seamen, along with their wives and children. There was not yet a hospital to serve the east of London and its rapidly growing population, mostly dependent on employment in industry and trade connected with factories, sugar refineries and the port. A fund was raised to establish a new hospital that would offer assistance without charge to its patients. At the first official meeting of the founders, Harrison presented a five-year lease of a house in Featherstone Street, Moorgate, taken for the new infirmary. A motion to establish the charity met with unanimous approval. No time was wasted in acting upon this resolution and in November 1740 the hospital opened its doors to patients as the London Infirmary. The charity received patients sent by its governors, as well as people who arrived without a recommendation. The house contained about thirty beds for inpatients and cases were also taken as outpatients, but incurables were not admitted. Harrison, Cole and Dr John Andree, a physician who had trained in Reims, attended on a daily basis without pay as surgeon, apothecary and physician. These honorary posts were supported by salaried staff, including a matron, a porter, nurses, and night watches.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Within six months of its foundation, plans were afoot for the infirmary to ‘take a larger house in a more convenient situation’.[^2] By April 1741, a house was secured on the south side of Prescot Street, Goodman’s Fields. This location was judged to better serve the charitable interests of the hospital due to its proximity to the dwellings of both Spitalfields labourers (who were overwhelmingly weavers) and merchant sailors near the Thames, and its distance from any other hospital. A lease of the house was agreed for a term of just 3½ years. The infirmary moved the following month and opened with room for about forty beds. A shop was also purchased in nearby Alie Street for an apothecary’s store and, in 1742, another house was taken on Prescot Street to isolate patients with venereal disease.[^3]</p>\n\n<h3><strong>Need for enlargement</strong></h3>\n\n<p>By 1743, the expiration of the lease was looming and its renewal under consideration. Plans for the provision of a new building for the hospital were sparked by the intervention of Isaac Maddox, Bishop of Worcester, who was invited to deliver a sermon at the charity’s annual anniversary feast in April 1744. The matter of the lease was still unresolved and uncertainty surrounding the hospital’s future in Prescot Street probably struck a chord with the bishop’s philanthropic interests. From modest origins as an orphan, Maddox rose to become a prominent and charismatic voice in support of charitable hospitals, including the St Pancras Smallpox Hospital and Worcester County Infirmary. He is commemorated by a funerary monument in Worcester Cathedral which bears a depiction of the Good Samaritan and an epitaph that remembers him as an ‘Institutor of Infirmaries’.[^4] In his sermon, the bishop argued that the infirmary was overcrowded and inadequate: ‘admittance is impossible; the scanty building waits your necessary assistance to enlarge its bounds’.[^5] This declaration spurred the charity into action; a donation of twenty pounds from the bishop was allocated for the enlargement of the hospital and a fund opened for a new building.[^6] </p>\n\n<p>An agreement with Richard Alie, landlord at Prescot Street, satisfied the immediate need for enlargement. The house was re-taken on a lease of twenty-one years from Christmas 1744, along with three adjoining houses and a shed at the end of the garden. An extensive programme of repairs and improvements followed which, by 1745, had reached such an intensity that the supervision of a surveyor was required. Isaac Ware was appointed to this honorary role in return for compensation of his travel expenses. Ware was in a secure position to perform the duties of hospital surveyor, having been the architect of the conversion of Lanesborough House at Hyde Park Corner into St George’s Hospital.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>An inspection of the houses by a committee of governors, including surgeon Harrison, initiated plans to repair or rebuild the shed. It became apparent that it was too dilapidated for renovation and that a new building was required to accommodate a range of functions, including a waiting room, a chapel, a laundry, a distillery, a laboratory, a mortuary, and a cold bath. Ware was instructed to prepare designs and Joel Johnson and Robert Taylor were contracted as builders in partnership. The building was completed in 1747, yet the House Committee was troubled by reports that the cold bath was poorly finished and complaints from neighbouring residents about a cesspool emptying into Chamber Street. By June, Ware judged it ‘impossible’ to continue as surveyor due to ‘the distance of his abode, and the multiplicity of his other business’.[^8] James Steer was invited to take his place. The committee may have hoped to benefit from Steer’s experience as surveyor at Guy’s Hospital, where he designed its east wing in 1738–9. Yet Steer’s involvement was fleeting: like his predecessor, he was distracted from his honorary post by fee-paying ‘business’. Boulton Mainwaring, surveyor and son of a Staffordshire surgeon, was then invited to assess the cold bath and sanitary arrangements and by August 1747 was acting as surveyor. This was the beginning of a long tenure as hospital surveyor; Mainwaring was to play a pivotal role in securing the site for a new building on Whitechapel Road and designing the hospital’s first purpose-built home.[^9] </p>\n\n<h3><strong>Search for a site</strong></h3>\n\n<p>Consideration of the need to secure a permanent home for the hospital continued after the building works of 1746–7. While these measures had improved conditions at the infirmary, they did not guarantee a long-term solution to the problem of overcrowding. The refusal of a lease extension struck a fatal blow to any plans to remain at Prescot Street. In June 1746, Richard Leman (formerly known as Alie), confined to his country estate with gout, had declined to grant an additional term. This outlook, coupled with concern that the houses would be ‘too old and ruinous to continue in longer’, prompted the House Committee to revisit the Bishop of Worcester’s campaign for a new building.[^10] In December 1747 a committee of governors was appointed to secure a suitable piece of ground on the east side of London, close enough to the City for the convenience of its governors, physicians and surgeons.[^11] </p>\n\n<p>The sub-committee was ordered to proceed in its search with ‘great management, secrecy and expedition’.[^12] They had not met with any success by April 1748, and the task of finding a site was delegated to Mainwaring. In June, he reported that the only suitable site was that ‘commonly known by the Name of White Chappel Mount and the Mount Field’.[^13] Situated on the south side of Whitechapel Road, an arterial road which offered a direct route to and from the City, the largely open site was well-positioned to answer the charitable aims of the hospital, being near to the workplaces and dwellings of its nominal patients and at a distance from any other hospital. It was in the possession of Samuel Worrall, most likely the carpenter and builder prominent in development in Spitalfields between 1720 and 1750. He offered to part with his interest in the land in Whitechapel, which he held on a sixty-one-year lease from the City, for £750. Mainwaring intended offering about £600 and thought a longer term could be obtained easily as the City held the land from the Wentworth estate for a term of 500 years. Worrall insisted that his high price would only cover the expense already incurred of some new buildings on the land.[^14] </p>\n\n<p>The hospital began negotiations with Worrall, specifying an interest in the undeveloped land. In October 1748, newspaper reports stated that the hospital had taken a piece of ground and was proceeding to erect a building, when the matter was actually far from settled. The hospital was still in negotiations with Worrall, and considering other properties. These included sites in Lower East Smithfield, Leadenhall Street, Houndsditch and Bethnal Green, along with the adaptation of London House in Aldersgate Street. Greater consideration was given to two other sites in Whitechapel, yet one was too expensive and the other objectionably close to a white-lead works. In August 1749, the situation was still uncertain and Worrall now offered his land for the higher price of £800, which was received as ‘very improper’. William Myre, a governor, was asked to make an appeal to his acquaintance Lucy Alie for the hospital to purchase the freehold of its premises at Prescot Street.[^15] This tactical change may be ascribed to a hope that their new landlady, who had recently inherited Leman’s estate, might be more amenable. Yet the scheme led nowhere and by October the committee had returned to Worrall, who now offered a £40 deduction and asked for his son to be made a life governor of the charity to compensate for his expenditure on improving the land. In December the hospital reached an agreement with Worrall to purchase the land for £800, with the condition that the City would grant the hospital its long-term copyhold.[^16] </p>\n\n<p>Negotiations with the City Lands Committee for its 500-year lease from the Wentworth Estate were no less intricate. As the hospital was not an incorporated body, the City could not make an agreement with the charity but was prepared to make a deal with six or more gentlemen acting on its behalf. The City also indicated that it was only willing to part with the field lying east of Whitechapel Mount. Richard Coope, George Garrett, Dr James Hibbins, Boulton Mainwaring and Richard Sclater offered to act on behalf of the hospital. By July 1750, they had agreed to acquire the City’s interest in the Mount Field for the remainder of its 500-year lease.[^17]</p>\n\n<h3><strong>Mainwaring’s design </strong></h3>\n\n<p>In May 1751, the hospital’s building committee instructed Mainwaring to prepare a plan for a building to accommodate 200 patients, with provision for future enlargement. He presented five plans to the building committee, of which two were selected for further consideration. No drawings of the five designs survive but the minute books record that one of the selected plans was designed to accommodate 198 patients in each wing with a total capacity of 396, whereas the other would accommodate 366 patients.Mainwaring was instructed to seek advice from the hospital’s physicians and surgeons, particularly in relation to room height, and to prepare estimates. The committee decided that the projected expense of both plans was excessive and that a smaller building ‘might be sufficient for the present’.[^18] Mainwaring was asked to draw up a new plan ‘as near as he could’ to one of the proposals for a hospital for 300 patients that could be extended as required in the future, along with estimates for the building with, and without, ornament. Revised designs for a building for 312 patients were presented to the committee in September and ‘plan and elevation number six without the ornaments’ approved.[^19]</p>\n\n<p>The chosen design was for a hospital composed of three detached ranges linked by colonnades. No drawings of this early plan survive, but a description of its basic form recalls Wren’s unexecuted designs for Greenwich Hospital of 1694–1700 and Gibbs’s plan of around 1730 for the rebuilding of St Bartholomew’s. Mainwaring might also have borrowed from the Foundling Hospital, built between 1742 and 1754 to designs by Theodore Jacobsen. The main hospital buildings there were planned as three detached ranges linked by short lobbies, enclosing three sides of a courtyard.[^20]</p>\n\n<p>Whatever the projected advantages of the chosen plan, by the next month it had been reconsidered ‘under the several heads of accommodation, convenience, durableness, and expense’, and declared ‘capable of great improvements’. Mainwaring, whose efforts had moved to examining the site in preparation for foundations, prepared a new design for a single building with attached wings.[^21] This was considered superior on each of the four points. Firstly, it would accommodate 350 patients. Secondly, its arrangement was judged to be more convenient for patients and staff, with south-facing wards (deemed the preferable aspect for patients) and protection from weather conditions and dust from Whitechapel Road. Thirdly, the committee argued that a continuous building would be ‘in its nature stronger and more lasting, than the same quantity divided into three’. Finally, the plan for a smaller building was less costly and saved the expense of colonnades. In another economising measure, plans for a chapel were omitted as prayers could held in the court room. It was also decided that the hospital should be positioned parallel to Whitechapel Road and set back by seventy feet or more for the governors’ coaches. In December, Plan No. 8 was approved by a General Quarterly Court and Mainwaring appointed as surveyor for the proposed building.[^22] </p>\n\n<p>The final plan was publicized by an engraving produced by John Tinney, who was commissioned to carry out the work with ‘all expedition’. Three hundred copies were circulated to the governors to generate donations to the building fund, and also to reassure benefactors that there was ‘nothing ostentatious, sumptuous or unnecessary intended’ in its design.[^23] Mainwaring’s final design for the new hospital reflects this concern for avoiding extravagance. The north front was to have a plain, symmetrical façade of twenty-three bays with a projecting centre capped with a pediment. With ornament on the exterior restricted to a Doric entrance porch, a dentil cornice and stone doorcases at the side entrances, the main elevation was modest yet dignified in character. The new building had a U-shaped plan composed of a three-storey central block with two rear wings, east and west. The main block contained a central corridor and two large wards positioned on the south side of each floor. The wards were serviced by lobbies containing sinks, privies, and nurses’ rooms. On the ground floor, the north side of the central block was occupied by offices for the apothecary, physicians, nurses and stewards. The first floor had a large court room that doubled as a chapel at its centre, flanked by offices for the surgeon, matron and secretary. The rear wings, identical in plan, contained back-to-back wards separated by spine walls with central fireplaces; an arrangement similar to the ward blocks at St Bartholomew’s.</p>\n\n<h3><strong>Construction</strong></h3>\n\n<p>The hospital was constructed to Mainwaring’s plain and practical design between 1752 and 1778. The central block was built first and completed in 1759 under his supervision. The east wing was built in 1771–4 and the west wing in 1773–8, both under the supervision of Edward Hawkins, who succeeded Mainwaring as hospital surveyor in 1771.</p>\n\n<p><strong><em>Central block, 1752–9</em></strong></p>\n\n<p>After plans for the new building were settled in December 1751, Mainwaring’s efforts turned to its construction. John Mann, carpenter, and Thomas Andrews, bricklayer, were contracted to build up to first-floor level. The foundation stone was laid on 11 June 1752 in a ceremony attended by noble patrons and dignitaries. Progress was swift, yet it seems that the building committee felt that it would be too risky to attempt the entire building. When the workmen completed their contracts in December, Mainwaring was asked to prepare separate estimates for finishing the central block and its wings. In February 1753, new contracts were advertised for completing only the central block. Yet before any were agreed, Mainwaring’s report on the cost of finishing the central block delivered a blow to the building committee. His estimate of £5,300 was far higher than the sum of cash held in the building fund and annuities held in the name of trustees, leaving a shortfall of more than £1,150. Despite the shortage of funds, building works stumbled along. In April and May, Edward Gray was hired as bricklayer, Joseph Clark as carpenter and Sanders Oliver as mason. Progress remained steady, suffering only occasional setbacks. The only serious and recurring obstacle was cash flow. Mainwaring increased his estimate for the central block to £5,700, and, though it was covered in by the end of March 1754, work then came to a halt due to a lack of funds.[^24] The suspension of building activity coincided with worsening conditions at Prescot Street. The hospital’s governors convened to consider the situation and emphasized the importance of finishing the new building. A subscription was launched to raise funds and the building committee ‘readily agreed’ to an offer from several governors to lay one of the floors at their own expense.[^25] Donations trickled into the building fund and work resumed in 1755, when workmen were employed to finish the new building. Gray and Oliver continued as bricklayer and mason, and Joel Johnson was appointed as carpenter and joiner, despite the debacle over shoddy workmanship at Prescot Street. Building works now progressed steadily without any serious hiccups and, though they continued until 1759, the hospital moved into its new building in Autumn 1757. The lease of the infirmary’s houses on Prescot Street was relinquished immediately.[^26]</p>\n\n<p>The allocation of rooms in the completed range did not differ from Mainwaring’s final design. The cellar storey comprised a long passage providing access to stores, laundries and wash-houses paved with Purbeck stone. The south-facing wards of the central block had large stone chimneypieces and were furnished with plain wooden bedsteads. A handful of rooms, including the court room, the committee room and offices for the physician, surgeon and apothecary had wainscoting to a height of five feet. A surgery, a bleeding room and a cold bath were positioned on the ground floor, and an operating theatre in the attic. The central block successfully brought together all of the hospital’s activities under a single roof, with room at first for 130 patients. The number of beds increased in the following years and by 1765, there were 190.[^27]</p>\n\n<p><strong><em>East wing and west wing, 1771–8</em></strong></p>\n\n<p>After the completion of the central block, plans to build the proposed side wings rested until 1770. The revival of building activity coincided with improved finances, bolstered by a legacy from Anne Crayle, a spinster landowner who bequeathed much of her wealth to the capital’s voluntary hospitals. Despite this significant boon, the newly reinstated building committee proceeded cautiously. At first Mainwaring was asked to prepare a plan and an estimate for a single wing, to be constructed on the foundations already laid. His plan for the east wing conformed to the original design for identical three-storey wings of six bays, with paired wards on each floor and a basement. In 1771, Thomas Langley was appointed as carpenter, Thomas Barnes as bricklayer, and Isaac Ashton as mason. As work on the east wing commenced, Mainwaring warned that he was struggling to perform his duties, particularly ‘the constant attendance upon the workmen requisite’, due to the distance from his home. He recommended that Edward Hawkins, a local developer on the Leman Estate in Goodman’s Fields, should act as surveyor in his absence, yet promised to attend as frequently as possible.[^28] However, poor health intervened and at the end of the year, at the age of sixty-nine, Mainwaring resigned.[^29] </p>\n\n<p>Under Hawkins the building works progressed steadily. Contracts were agreed to finish the east wing in 1772 and by the following spring, its completion was in sight as advertisements were circulated for a contractor to furnish it with ninety beds. At this point, there was enough optimism for the hospital to assemble a building committee to manage the construction of the west wing; that took place in 1774–8 and included many of the same workmen.This ambitious strategy soon faltered under financial pressure. An appeal for donations in 1774 revealed that the completion of the east wing and shell of the west wing had depleted the building fund, leaving a shortfall of cash to pay the workmen and a deficiency of almost £900 to finish the building.[^30] Despite these financial straits, work trundled forward. A plea for support was successful by the following year, when the building committee reported that its fund contained over £1,000 for finishing the west wing. This news prompted a flurry of activity and by December 1777, the west wing was largely finished.[^31] </p>\n\n<p>The completion of the west wing in 1778 signified the realisation of Mainwaring’s design for the hospital’s first purpose-built home. At this point in its history, the hospital overlooked Whitechapel Road from its position east of the Mount and was bounded by open fields to the south. By the mid 1780s, a narrow range had been added at the west end of the hospital to provide coach houses and a mortuary. Improvements were also made to the hospital’s immediate surroundings: a patients’ garden was nestled between the ward wings and a kitchen garden cultivated from waste ground at the west. The charity, by now known as the London Hospital, released pamphlets which boasted of its convenient location close to the shipping activities of the port and Spitalfields, a nucleus for manufacturing, as well as the health benefits of its ‘airy situation’. With eighteen wards fitted up with about 215 beds, the new building offered a permanent base from which the charity could intensify its work. By 1786, the charity had treated nearly 450,000 patients since its modest beginnings, cementing its status as an institution of critical value to impoverished working families in the east of London.[^32] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: TNA, PROB 11/808/506; PROB 11/884/265: A. E. Clark-Kennedy, <em>London Pride: Story of a Voluntary Hospital </em>(London, 1979), p. 15: <em>Account of the Rise, Progress and State of the London Infirmary </em>(London, 1742): <em>The London Magazine or Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer</em>, Vol. 20 (May 1751), p. 236: Clark-Kennedy, <em>London Pride</em>, pp. 15, 25: Isaac Maddox, <em>The Duty and Advantages of Encouraging Public Infirmaries: a Sermon preached for the London Infirmary </em>(London, 1743), pp. 25–26. </p>\n\n<p>[^2]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/2/1, p. 15. </p>\n\n<p>[^3]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/2/1, pp. 18, 21, 41: ‘The London Hospital: Report of Mr Martin, July 4, 1864’, <em>Accounts and Papers of the House of Commons</em>, Vol. 41, p. 234: <em>An Account of the Rise, Progress and State of the London Infirmary </em>(London, 1742), p. 4. </p>\n\n<p>[^4]: ODNB.</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: Isaac Maddox, <em>The duty and advantages of encouraging public infirmaries, further considered </em>(1744), p. 14. </p>\n\n<p>[^6]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/2/1, pp. 63, 81: Clark-Kennedy, <em>The London: A Study in the Voluntary Hospital System</em>,Vol. 1 (London: Pitman Medical Publishing, 1962), p. 111. </p>\n\n<p>[^7]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/1, pp. 226, 331–2: Colvin, pp. 1087–1090. </p>\n\n<p>[^8]: RLHLA, RLHLH/A/4/1, p. 155. </p>\n\n<p>[^9]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/2, pp. 77, 109, 234, 244; RLHLH/A/4/1, p. 155: ‘Guy’s Hospital’, in <em>Survey of London: Volume 22, Bankside (The Parishes of St Saviour and Christchurch Southwark)</em>, ed. Howard Roberts and Walter H. Godfrey (London, 1950), pp. 36–42: Colvin, pp. 672–3. </p>\n\n<p>[^10]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/2, p. 284. </p>\n\n<p>[^11]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/2, pp. 88, 285–6: RLHLH/A/5/3, p. 43. </p>\n\n<p>[^12]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/2, p. 291. </p>\n\n<p>[^13]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/3, pp. 1–2. </p>\n\n<p>[^14]: ‘The Wood-Michell estate: Princelet Street west of Brick Lane’, in <em>Survey of London: Volume 27, Spitalfields and Mile End New Town</em>, ed. F. H. W. Sheppard (London, 1957), pp. 184–9: Colvin, p. 1150: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/2, p. 324. </p>\n\n<p>[^15]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/3, p. 142. </p>\n\n<p>[^16]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/2/2, p. 10; RLHLH/A/5/3, pp. 34, 40–1, 43, 61, 118, 126, 185, 190. </p>\n\n<p>[^17]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/3, pp. 219–21, 227. </p>\n\n<p>[^18]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/4/2, p. 146. </p>\n\n<p>[^19]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/4, pp. 13, 27, 34, 39; RLHLH/A/4/2, p. 146. </p>\n\n<p>[^20]: John Summerson, <em>Georgian London</em>(Yale UP, edn, 2003), p. 118: Christine Stevenson, <em>Medicine and Magnificence: British Hospital and Asylum Architecture, 1660–1815 </em>(Yale UP, 2000), pp. 79, 176: ‘The Foundling Hospital’, in <em>Survey of London: Volume 24, the Parish of St Pancras Part 4: King’s Cross Neighbourhood</em>, ed. Walter H. Godfrey and W. McB. Marcham (London, 1952), pp. 10–24: RLHA, RLHLH/A/4/2, p. 155. </p>\n\n<p>[^21]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/4, p. 48. </p>\n\n<p>[^22]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/4/2, pp. 154–5. </p>\n\n<p>[^23]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/2, p. 291. </p>\n\n<p>[^24]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/4, pp. 82, 106, 168, 190, 199–200, 202, 207, 280, 304. </p>\n\n<p>[^25]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/5, p. 12, RLHLH/A/2/2, p. 133. </p>\n\n<p>[^26]: Clark-Kennedy, <em>London Pride</em>, pp. 71–2.</p>\n\n<p>[^27]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/5, p. 229; RLHLH/A/2/2, p. 133; RLHLH/A/22/1, <em>Sermon preached at St Lawrence Jewry, 28 March 1765.</em></p>\n\n<p>[^28]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/8, p. 302; PROB 11/1062. </p>\n\n<p>[^29]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/8, pp. 222, 226, 278, 280, 302: TNA, PROB 11/945/422: TNA, PROB 11/1062: Colvin: ‘Parishes: Oddington’, in <em>A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 6</em>, ed. C. R. Elrington (London, 1965), pp. 87–98. </p>\n\n<p>[^30]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/9, p. 164. </p>\n\n<p>[^31]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/8, p. 352; RLHLH/A/5/9, pp. 74, 78, 159, 164. </p>\n\n<p>[^32]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/11, p. 48; RLHLH/S/1/16, Sketch plan by J. Oatley from original plans of 1799; RLHLH/A/22/1, <em>Account of the Rise, Progress and State of the London Hospital </em>(London, 1782), p. 1; <em>General State of the London Hospital </em>(London, 1787), p. 1. </p>\n",
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"body": "<p>The project responds to the varied urban context of Mile End Road and is arranged in three blocks, one repairing the Mile End street frontage and the other two enclosing<br>quiet mews court to the rear.</p><p>A five storey rotunda provides a geometric transition between new and old, and marks the new pedestrian entrance to the courtyard behind.</p><p>The site, a former vehicle depot, is located in the historic Whitechapel conservation area and is adjacent to the seventeenth century Trinity Green Almshouses on the major eastern approach to the City of London.</p><p>The design developed with the active support of the Royal Fine Art Commission and the Ancient Monuments Society.</p><p>Awards<br>Guardian Housing Award 2000,<br>Housing Project Award 2002,<br>Building for Life Award 2002<br>(sponsored by CABE, The Housebuilders Federation, The Civic Trust)</p><p><br></p>",
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"b_number": "277",
"b_name": "Whitechapel Station",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Whitechapel Station, 277 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 11,
"search_str": "Whitechapel Station"
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"body": "<p>Thomas Barnes, ‘bricklayer and builder’, and John Lay, a bricklayer of Newcastle Street, Whitechapel, acquired two shophouses on the site that later gave way to Whitechapel Station in 1805 with a large plot of land to the rear, Barnes being primarily responsible for the development of lands further north. Behind they or their successors built the eighteen small houses of Hope Place around 1820. Another twenty or so even smaller houses had been built to the rear of the Grave Maurice, as Devonshire Place, and between, as Harrison’s Buildings. All these were cleared for the East London Railway after the sites were acquired in 1873.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Transport for London Group Archives, LT002009/452–4; LT002051/001–3; /395: London Metropolitan Archives, Tower Hamlets Commissioners for Sewers ratebooks</p>\n",
"created": "2017-11-28",
"last_edited": "2019-04-30"
},
{
"id": 859,
"title": "8 Ensign Street",
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"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
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"street": "Ensign Street",
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"count": 1,
"search_str": "8 Ensign Street"
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"tags": [
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"body": "<p>An early shophouse at 12 Ensign Street survived into the late 1970s in the shadow of the Sailors’ Home. Jack Georgiou, ice cream maker and restaurateur, was here from the 1930s. By 1959 Abdi Warsama Shirreh, who also ran a hostel on the other side of Ensign Street, was running a café that became the ‘Somali Restaurant’. The larger site had been acquired by the Sailors’ Home, so passed with it to the Look Ahead Housing Association in the 1970s. In 1994–5 that organisation employed Levitt Bernstein Associates, architects (Edward Cox), and J. J. McGinley Ltd (Builders) to erect a four-storey yellow-brick faced block of twelve single-person ‘move-on’ flats, designed for individuals in transition from hostel to independent living.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control files 21689, 25705: Post Office Directories</p>\n",
"created": "2019-03-05",
"last_edited": "2020-10-13"
},
{
"id": 240,
"title": "Whitechapel Road and the market, 1975",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
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"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Whitechapel Market, Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "PLACE",
"count": 48,
"search_str": "Whitechapel Market, Whitechapel Road"
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"body": "<p>A digitised colour slide form the collection of the Tower Hamlets Archives:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/749240383905882112\">https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/749240383905882112</a></p>\n",
"created": "2016-12-19",
"last_edited": "2020-10-20"
}
]
}