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"id": 979,
"title": "38–40 Commercial Road",
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"body": "<p>This substantial steel-framed building of 1937–8, refaced in 1996, replaced a London Salvage Corps station of 1874. The Corps emerged, like the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, from the insurance-company-funded London Fire Engine Establishment, established in 1833. With the formation in 1865 of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade under the MBW, salvage duties were left in the hands of the insurance companies, which instituted the Corps in 1866. Three stations were established in south, west and east London, all in proximity to brigade stations, with headquarters in Watling Street in the City. These stations provided accommodation for the men of the Corps, coachmen, stables, equipment such as waterproof sheeting and a salvage van.[^1] The eastern district was originally served from houses in Wellclose Square, but in 1873, with the projected move of the Wellclose Square brigade station to Commercial Road (see above), Charles Pilcher (1825–1913), Secretary of the Corps, followed suit by taking this plot of land from the MBW.[^2] Designs were by the City architect John Wimble (1838–1877), also responsible for the Watling Street station. James Morter was the builder. At four storeys, with a bold bracketed cornice, and moulded brick and shouldered cast-stone window heads, the Commercial Road station of 1874 had a little more architectural go than most of its neighbouring buildings.[^3] Most of the building was accommodation for the men. A small warehouse for salvaged furniture was added in 1875, and Wimble and Morter added a storey in 1884. To the rear, three houses on Goodman’s Stile, including the old Castle public house, were made annexes and there was a small courtyard with stables.[^4] The station closed in 1934 when mechanisation meant fewer stations were required; the Corps itself survived until 1984.[^5] The current building at Nos 38–40 was erected by J. Stewart & Sons (Tottenham) Ltd as speculative warehousing for Isadore Paule (formerly Polovinsky), a Wentworth Street textile merchant.[^6] The site took in both the Salvage Corps building and the houses to the rear on Goodman’s Stile. Of seven storeys over a basement, with a staircase bay to the east, Paule’s block towered over its neighbours. The top two storeys of the back range cant down in a steep cat-slide, presumably to avoid overshadowing. Rag-trade use gave way to offices and in 1996 the façade was clad in red granite. From 2010 to 2015 upper floors were occupied by the London Corporate College, providing higher-education courses in business, hospitality, health and social care, mainly for international students. Following refurbishment in 2015, the whole building became a branch of Techspace, for use as flexible co-working space with meeting rooms and a ground-floor café.[^7]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>Evening Mail</em>, 17 Jan 1866, p. 5: <em>St James’s Gazette</em>, 5 July 1889, pp. 5–6: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), CLC/B/017/MS15733/001: Sally Holloway, <em>London’s Noble Fire Brigades, 1833–1904</em>, 1973, pp. 22,135–6: John Creighton, <em>Fire Engines of Yesterday</em>, 1984, p. 9</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS15733/001; CLC/B/017/MS15732/001: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 4 Oct 1872, p. 344; 1 Nov. 1872, p. 478: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: LMA, District Surveyors Returns (DSR): Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, L/THL/D/2/30/39; P02160: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS15732/002: Building News, 20 July 1877, p. 49</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: The National Archives, IR58/84823/4092: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS15735</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: <em>Daily Herald</em>, 18 Dec 1934, p. 1; 1 Jan 1935, p. 9: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS15732/015</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: DSR: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS15732/015</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: dera.ioe.ac.uk/15478/1/RG1015LCC.pdf: www.techspace.co/locations/whitechapel</p>\n",
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"title": "Nos 32–34 (Riga Mews, formerly Riga Yard)",
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"body": "<p>Riga Mews is a development of flats from 2004 occupying a former timber yard from which the street-side buildings of 1873 were restored as flats, shops and offices. It is representative of smaller-scale schemes of renewal in Whitechapel that were typical before blockbuster towers arrived after 2010. James Jabez Chalk (1836–1899) and Seymour William Chalk (1838–1909) were timber merchants with a wharf in Limehouse and a yard in Cannon Street Road, founded in the early nineteenth century by their father, James Chalk. In 1872 the Cannon Street Road lease was not to be extended so the brothers opened negotiations with the MBW. They considered several sites on the new section of Commercial Road, including that soon occupied by Morrison Buildings North (see No. 35A), before settling here. Unusually, as the road’s building plots were mostly sold on eighty-year leases, they bought the freehold, for £1,250. George Vulliamy, the MBW’s architect, was unenthusiastic about a timber yard on the new street, fearing a gap in the frontage. Designs by the Chalks’ architect, Charles Arthur Legg (1832–1906), with two two-storey buildings flanking an imposing gate, were no doubt intended to meet this reservation. They underwent several revisions, notably when S. W. Chalk decided to live on the premises. He failed to persuade Vulliamy to allow his house (No. 34, to the east) to be a storey higher. This presumably explains the formation of a room between the houses, somewhat concealed behind the substantial pedimental gable over the cartway to the timber yard. This also gave Chalk access to the first floor of No. 32, which originally had no staircase from the ground-floor office. The symmetrical stock-brick group of 1873 was soberly classical, with stone dressings, rusticated brick quoins and segmental-headed windows, those to the ground floor tripartite.[^1] In 1886–7 S. W. Chalk had his way and a third storey was added to No. 34 to matching designs by Adrian Lane (1852–1888), architect, by Amos Eaton, the Whitechapel High Street builder. By then known as Riga House, a gesture, no doubt, to the source of the Chalks’ timber trade, No. 34 already included a conservatory, bathroom, nursery and servant’s room. In 1901 a further office was added behind No. 32, where a staircase was then or soon after inserted. After S. W. Chalk’s death in 1909, the timber business continued through sons and grandsons of both J. J. and S. W. Chalk. The yard was apparently vacant by the early 1970s. No. 34 was let to a succession of hosiers, woollen merchants and tailors.[^2] A mixed-used scheme of 1997 by Time Square London Ltd that would have used the yard for storage and distribution came to nothing, and the site was redeveloped in 2004–5 by RS and PS Developments to the designs of Axis Architects. The listed front range was restored in a rather dry-cleaned manner, with ground-floor commercial use below four flats. Steel balconies were added to the rear, and the first-floor flats were given a bedroom each over the cartway. The ground-floor window of No. 34, which had been made plate glass, was replaced to match the original, and No. 32 was raised a storey to mirror No. 34 in not-quite matching stock brick, reinstating the symmetry on which Vulliamy had insisted. A three-storey block of five flats and workshop/office units were built behind in the yard, the latter in the manner of a light-industrial building, with large steel-frame windows and rendered walls.[^3] The ground floors of Nos 32 and 34 were in 2019 used as a solicitor’s office and a beauty salon.</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), B/CHA/4/9: Post Office Directories (POD): London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyor's Returns (DSR): Ancestry: Historic England Archives (HEA), BF091159, RCHME report, 1993</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: THLHLA, B/CHA/4/11; P02324: DSR: Census: POD: HEA, BB93/7744: Tower Hamlets planning applications online (THP)</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: THP</p>\n",
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"body": "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/features/954/jethasmall.JPG\"></p>\n\n<p>Sulaiman Mohammed Jetha came to London in 1933 at the age of 27, setting up a business to import spices from India and supply them to businesses in Aldgate East, London. Originally belonging to the Ismaili tradition, he later adhered to the Sunni school of thought. He married Ira Arnovitz in 1934, in what was to be a happy and long-lasting union. Sulaiman Jetha was an astute businessman, with interests in property and the stock market, and yet also ever generous to friends and religious causes.</p>\n\n<p>Soon after his arrival in London Sulaiman Jetha became involved in Muslim community work, first at the Indigent Moslem Burial Fund and later the Jamiatul Muslimin, a charitable society for the promotion of Islam, and assistance to Muslims, founded in 1934. In 1941, after pressure from the Jamiatul Muslimin, the London Mosque Fund bought terraced properties on Commercial Road to serve as an Islamic Cultural Centre and Library, but effectively to function as a mosque (the East London Mosque, ELM) under supervision of the Jamiat. When the properties were damaged by bombing during the London Blitz, Sulaiman Jetha was involved in liaising between the Jamiat and the London Mosque Fund for the repair work. He also corresponded with the Ministry of Supplies on behalf of the Jamiat for the provision of rationed sugar during Ramadan. During the 1945-6 general elections in British India, he contributed generously to the All-India Muslim League’s election fund.</p>\n\n<p>In 1948 the London Mosque Fund became the East London Mosque Trust and its Secretary, Sir John Woodhead, subsequently invited Sulaiman Jetha to enrol as a member. From 1950 onwards Jetha was actively involved in the ELMT, appointed its treasurer in 1951, then Honorary Secretary and then Chair. As an office bearer, Sulaiman Jetha continued Sir John Woodhead’s tradition of meticulous record keeping, and the efforts of both men are largely responsible for the fine ELM archives today.</p>\n\n<p>Sulaiman Jetha played a central role negotiating for an alternative venue when the Greater London Council placed a compulsory purchase order on the Commercial Road premises in 1974. A space was subsequently obtained off Fieldgate Street for a prefab building, and it was carpeted using left-overs from the Islamic Cultural Centre at Regents Park, that was being demolished and rebuilt. He used his extensive contacts to raise funds for the new purpose-built East London Mosque on Whitechapel Road, travelling to the Middle East at his own expense, and also maintaining good relations with Muslim ambassadors in London. During his tenure as Chair of ELMT, he had to deal with several awkward internal disputes, but this did not weaken his commitment to the project and he weathered the storms. Though funds were being raised for the mosque, Sulaiman Jetha was always ready to sanction donations from the ELMT to help in emergencies overseas, whether affecting Muslims or non-Muslims, such as earthquakes in Morocco or Nicaragua, or the Sahel drought in Ethiopia. He was also a pioneer of inter-faith dialogue, for example inviting synagogue representatives to visit the Mosque. He respected his wife’s Jewish affiliation, and donated to causes she supported even after her death in 1974. When the new mosque building was inaugurated in 1985, Sulaiman Jetha delivered the welcome address. He retired as chair of ELMT in 1990.</p>\n\n<p>Almost to the very end of his days, despite poor health and loss of vision, Sulaiman Jetha continued to make his way daily from his home in Finchley to the mosque and oversee its affairs, passing on a unique spirit of sacrifice and conscientiousness to a new generation of volunteers. One of these was Salahudeen Haleem (also Treasurer of ELMT), for whom Sulaiman Jetha was ‘the soul of ELM’. For Choudhury Mueenuddin, who served as Secretary of the ELMT for some years during his chairmanship, he was ‘Sulaimanbhai to friends, and Jetha Sahib to his juniors’, and ‘one of the early pioneers of what was to become the Muslim community in Britain’.</p>\n\n<p>Sources: East London Mosque Archives; Humayun Ansari, <em>The Making of East London Mosque, 1910-1951</em>, Cambridge, 2011; Chowdhury Mueenuddin, ‘Sulaiman Mohammad Jetha’ [obituary], <em>Impact International</em>, July 1996</p>\n",
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"body": "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/features/954/hajitaslim.JPG\"></p>\n\n<p>Through most of the 1960s, it was difficult to talk about the East London Mosque on Commercial Road without reference to Haji Taslim Ali and his close friend, Sulaiman Jetha, secretary and later chairman of the Mosque’s Trustees. Haji Taslim (Syed Abdul Momin Ali) was invited by Sulaiman Jetha (see above) to sign up as a member of the East London Mosque Trust in 1955, and subsequently appointed (and re-appointed every few years) as the Mosque’s ‘honorary welfare office’ and superintendent. In 1960, based on a formal agreement with the Trustees, Haji Taslim began providing a Muslim funeral service from the Mosque.</p>\n\n<p>Haji Taslim was born in Sylhet, north-eastern Bangladesh (then East Bengal), and began working as a coalman in the boiler room of British merchant navy ships that would take on crews in Calcutta. By his early twenties he had travelled the world, but during the Second World War his ship was torpedoed in the English Channel. The crew were rescued and taken to Chatham, where he was offered the choice of staying in Britain till the War was over, or a passage back to British India – he decided to stay, taking up odd jobs, mainly as a kitchen hand, eventually finding a job in the Daimler car factory in Coventry. There he met his wife, Josephine Mary Morgan, a divorcée later known as Hajja Mariam Ali<strong> </strong>(see below). After various business ventures, including employment in Saudi Arabia, Taslim Ali returned to London because he felt a calling for religious and community service. East London residents today recall how Haji Taslim would drive his own car to pick up children for the madrassa, and then drop them home afterwards. In April 1970 he was attacked by skinheads as he was locking up the mosque at night and hit over the head with an iron bar. He recovered well, and with Sulaiman Jetha was a keen participant in the work of the Muslim missionary association, Tablighi Jamaat, offering facilities to visiting groups at the Mosque till around 1974. ‘Haji Taslim Funerals’, located at the East London Mosque’s new Maryam Centre, continues to provide an essential community service, under the management of his son Gulam.</p>\n",
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"title": "29 Whitechapel Road",
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"body": "<p>No. 29 Whitechapel Road was built with a workshop to the rear in 1891 after a recently erected predecessor was destroyed by fire. It was put up by and for Mark Levy of Fulham and occupied as a draper’s shop with tailoring on the upper storeys and ladies' costume makers in a back workshop. The premises housed a Mantle Makers’ Club and a first-floor front room opened to visitors in July 1898 as the Russian Free Library and Reading Room. This was an initiative by Alexei Teplov (1852–1920), a Russian revolutionary who had been imprisoned in both Russia and France before coming to London where he linked up with members of the Society of Friends of Russian Freedom. The library moved in 1900 to 16 (White) Church Lane. Around 1905 seventy-two people were employed at No. 29. The rear workshop was raised a storey to relocate dressmaking over offices in 1931–2 for D. Silverstein, with Higgins & Thomerson as architects.[^1]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: District Surveyors Returns: Post Office Directories: <em>The Builder</em>, 26 October 1878, p. 1131: Robert Henderson, ‘“For the Cause of Education”, A History of the Free Russian Library in Whitechapel, 1898–1917’, in Rebecca Beasley and Philip Ross Bullock (eds), <em>Russia in Britain, 1880–1940: From Melodrama to Modernism</em>, 2013, pp.71–86 (73–5): Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 15915</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>This unadorned three-storey building was among the first to be built on Commercial Road’s extension. It began as a farrier’s shop, with an open ground floor, the plot leased from the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1872 by Thomas Watson (1833–1916), a farrier and veterinary surgeon previously in Spread Eagle Yard off Whitechapel High Street. His son William Watson maintained the business here into the 1930s. Use thereafter until 2018, with a shopfront inserted, was mostly for the rag trade. The upper floors became fully residential in 2000, extended at the first floor in 2004 to create two flats. Since 2018 the shop has been a convenience store.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyors Returns: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 12 July 1872, p. 82: Post Office Directories: The National Archives, IR58/84823/4093: Ancestry: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>This prominent site at the acute corner with Goodman’s Stile commands an easterly view down Commercial Road. It was the first plot to be leased on this side of the new road. The Castle public house was built in 1871–3 by Thomas Ennor for the Bremen-born publican Gerhard Kaemena (1821–1882), and named after his former pub round the corner on Goodman’s Stile. With its curved prow, it formed a gateway pair with No. 27, which Ennor built at the same time.[^1] Within there is what might be original wooden and glass shelving, with an octagonal clock behind the horseshoe bar against the wall that separates two bar spaces. The pub remained in German hands after Kaemena’s death. Subsequent landlords were Engelbert Sclengemann, his former potman, and John Frederick Wahlers, here till about 1915.[^2] By the 1960s the Castle was a Courage pub. It has since become independent, a repainting in modish black in 2015 signifying a change in tone. The basement and first floors host live music, mostly drum and bass, house and techno.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 26 April 1872, p. 607: Census: Ancestry: London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyors Returns (DSR): Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, B/ENN/1/1</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Post Office Directories: Census: DSR: pubwiki.co.uk/LondonPubs/Whitechapel/CommercialRd44.shtml</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: www.thecastlelondon.com/</p>\n",
"created": "2020-02-13",
"last_edited": "2020-02-17"
},
{
"id": 251,
"title": "The Prince of Orange",
"author": {
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"body": "<p>from Mark Dunn:</p>\n\n<p>The Prince of Orange was a public house, in existence from at least 1797 to 1863 when its site was incorporated into the neighbouring Bryant and Hodges' sugar refinery.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: http://pubshistory.com/LondonPubs/Whitechapel/PrinceOrange.shtml </p>\n",
"created": "2016-12-30",
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{
"id": 377,
"title": "Visiting Whitechapel as a youngster",
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"body": "<p>Sufia remembers mid-20th century Whitechapel:</p>\n\n<p>Whitechapel had a sense of culture when I came to Whitechapel when I was younger. It was okay to be Bangladeshi here. We came to visit my uncle just outside the Whitechapel boundary from Yorkshire. My mum felt very at home here coming from Yorkshire. I remember being excited by going to a cinema on Commercial Road to watch a Bollywood movie. There was lots of Bangla media around: newspapers, the latest fashions, events. You could dip in and out of the culture. I felt part of it.</p>\n\n<p>The first time I heard the call to pray was very memorable. It was like we were in a foreign country. You could see how different cultures were mixed together in London and it was okay. You heard of stories of racism but as a younger person visiting it wasn't something I thought about. The best thing was Whitechapel Market, it had everything that no one else had in Yorkshire!</p>\n\n<p>I moved to the area later in life. My two daughters were born in the London Hospital before we moved out to Poplar. Since 1997 I've been working at the Wapping Centre(?), with women and Bangladeshi community in particular. I found that there was so much culture on our doorsteps but women were not coming out of their houses to engage with it. So I worked in various local centres to encourage women to be confident in different ways and to be part of the community. More recently I've been working at the Maryam Centre.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2017-06-03",
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"id": 982,
"title": "No. 60 (iQ Aldgate)",
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"body": "<p>The site at the corner of Commercial Road and Back Church Lane formed part of Benjamin Masters’ and later Samuel Gower’s landholding in the eighteenth century. A few small buildings, possibly a cooperage, may have been present by 1731, but the site was probably mostly used as commercial garden ground and only developed on Joel Johnson’s building leases from 1758. Occupants in the 1760s and ’70s included, inter alios, John Man, possibly a Mansell Street carpenter.[^1] In 1764 a new building was being run by Evan James as the Statute Hall, an employment agency for domestic servants, a measure perhaps of the perceived supply of such labour in Whitechapel. It only lasted until 1768, when James consolidated the business in Tottenham Court Road.[^2] Thereafter its cellars and a large warehouse at the corner with Back Church Lane were used by William and later Samuel Read, Whitechapel High Street distillers, and by the Bullock family of the Swan Brewery in Osborn Street. A row of nine cottages, Statute Hall Court, had been built running south from Church Lane by the 1790s.[^3] By 1818 the freehold of the whole site was held by Robert Campbell of Blackheath (1738–1828), who owned the white-lead works in Buckle Street established by his father-in-law, Sir James Creed. Occupants included a straw-bonnet maker and a house painter, there were extensive stables, a wheelwright’s yard, a building formerly ‘the auction mart’ and thirteen small houses. The former Statute Hall was occupied by oilmen and tripe boilers.[^4] The site was acquired in 1868 by the MBW for the Commercial Road extension. The building line was set well back for development in 1873–4 on an eighty-year lease by the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company, which also had a smaller site opposite, identically developed. Morrison Buildings South was effectively two conjoined five-storey blocks of the same old-fashioned type as devised by the Company’s founder, Sydney Waterlow, and his builder–contractor, Matthew Allen. With fifty-four flats, these buildings included workshops, possibly in the basement.[^5] Morrison Buildings South survived wartime damage to be acquired in 1961 by Palaville Ltd, a subsidiary of London Merchant Securities (LMS), the company run by the East End-raised property developer Max Rayne; this was a then rare foray away from the West End.[^6] Permission was secured in 1967 for a six-storey warehouse and showroom building on the site, but subsequent applications shifted to a more mixed scheme including offices. Morrison Buildings South was not demolished until 1975 when construction began on what was occupied by 1980 as purely an office building, permission for the planning change reputedly having been secured by the developer’s promise to pay for conservation work at Christchurch, Spitalfields. The six-storey building was in the Brutalist-Expressionist commercial style of the period, faced in prefabricated textured concrete panels, chamfer-edged with tapering window aprons; the top two floors to the rear were in a mansard. Principal occupancy was as an employment office, latterly JobCentrePlus. With the rise in the attractiveness of the City Fringe to investors and a reduction in the number of job centres, the building was slated for redevelopment by Derwent London, created in 2007 when Derwent Valley acquired LMS and its property subsidiaries (including Palaville), by then run by Rayne’s son Robbie.[^7] A project for a nineteen-storey block of 417 student rooms, to help meet the ‘massive under-supply of accommodation’ for students in Tower Hamlets, was approved in 2010. A twenty-one-storey scheme had been refused in 2009 on grounds of height. The site was sold to Generation Estates and the Carlyle Group and cleared in 2013. The new building went up in 2014–15 with Buckley Gray Yeoman as architects, Wates Construction Ltd as main contractor. It opened as Pure Aldgate, run by Pure Student Living, a subsidiary of Generation Estates/Carlyle, which then sold the building, along with all its other Pure sites, to LetterOne Treasury Services.[^8] With its tower near the corner, the building has massing similar to that of Nos 52–58, and it steps down on Commercial Road to meet its neighbour’s podium. However, the architects eschewed otherwise locally prevalent blandness. The façade, inspired by, inter alia, the texture of basket-weave, and David Walker’s One Coleman Street (2002–7), is articulated by precast concrete frames reflecting but not part of the structure, which project and recess alternately creating a distinctive pinking-shears-cut profile. These frames contain aluminium-frame windows and thin strips of tile, terracotta in colour for the main buildings and cream in separating elements between the tall and lower blocks. The effect is eye-catching and makes this less massy than neighbouring buildings. The ground floor houses student reception and communal areas on its deep east side, and a unit for retail or office use on the west side. Further student communal areas, a cinema room, gym and residential rooms are on the first floor. There is a students’ ‘sky lounge’ with an outdoor area on the nineteenth floor and further roof gardens on the lower blocks. The student rooms are mini-studios, the smallest 175 square feet, or double units with shared kitchen and bathroom, from 340 square feet. From 2017 student rooms were made available in summer months as Pure City Stay Aldgate, short-term holiday lets. In 2018 the building became iQ Aldgate after the student accommodation provider iQ acquired Pure Student Living.[^9]</p>\n\n<p>------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Land Tax returns (LT): The National Archives (TNA), LH/A/23/3: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), P/WNH/1/9/2: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: D. A. Kent, ‘Ubiquitous but Invisible: Female Domestic Servants in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London’, <em>History Workshop Journal</em>, vol. 28/1, Autumn 1989, pp. 111–28: LT: <em>Public Advertiser</em>, 30 March 1768</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: LMA, CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/361/558536: LT: Horwood’s map of London, 1813</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: LMA, CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/387/601666; CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/474/938525; CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/481/953788–9: TNA, PROB11/1736/65: <em>Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser</em>, 2 Feb 1828, p. 1</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 22 May 1874, p.632; 5 Jun 1874, p.661: TNA, IR58/84816/3360-3416: Post Office Directories: LMA, District Surveyors Returns: TNA, IR58/84816/3360</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/00007064/filing-history?page=16: London Merchant Securities annual report year end 31 March 1976, p.5: Oliver Marriott, <em>The Property Boom</em>, 1967, pp. 83–7</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online (THP): THLHLA, P02183; L/THL/D/3/4/7: uk.reuters.com/article/property-derwent-lms/derwent-to-buy-london-merchant-securities-idUKNOA42953820061114</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: www.generationestates.co.uk/project/60-commercial-road-london-e1/: THP: Architects’ Journal, 20 Oct 2015: www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=1634624: www.generationestates.co.uk/project/pure-student-living-platform/: www.letterone.com/media/news/2015/letterone-treasury-services-invests-680-million-in-uk-student-accommodation/</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: www.letterone.com/media/news/2017/iq-student-accommodation-acquires-pure-student-living/: www.iqstudentaccommodation.com/sites/default/files/inline-files/iQ_Student_Accommodation_Annual_Report_2017_18_0.pdf: www.egi.co.uk/news/iq-secures-pure-student-living-portfolio-in-870m-deal/</p>\n",
"created": "2020-02-13",
"last_edited": "2020-06-01"
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{
"id": 264,
"title": "36 Whitechapel Road and 1 Fieldgate Street, 1960s",
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"body": "<p>A digitised colour slide of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, and the buildings (left) that stood at 36 Whitechapel Road and 1 Fieldgate Street until c. 1970; from the Tower Hamlets Archives collection:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/821306684056498177\">https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/821306684056498177</a></p>\n",
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"body": "<p>A vast pile of flats of 2005–9 occupies what had previously been two large sites, long ago in single ownership. Following the death of Samuel Gower in 1758, the local carpenter–architect Joel Johnson (1720–1799) acquired the freeholds and granted building leases mainly in the 1760s and ’70s.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>John Turquand (1724–1777) built a sugarhouse on the corner with Gower’s Walk (later No. 52) in 1771–2. He had previously been in partnership with his father René (1693–1775) in Wellclose Square, and his cousin, Paul, had a sugarhouse in Great Garden Street. This six-storey brick sugarhouse had a large rear yard with a workmen’s lodging room and a two-storey house on Gower’s Walk (later No. 60) with a canted back bay.[^2] Other sugar refiners succeeded – Gerard Goebel, Job Matthew and, from the 1790s to 1829, George Wicke, with John Walton until 1804. Charles Bowman, who had several other sugarhouses, extended the building in 1853.[^3] </p>\n\n<p>The size and value of the sugarhouse meant it was excluded from the sites compulsorily purchased by the Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) for the extension of Commercial Road, causing a slight narrowing of the route at this point. The final sugar refiner, Conrad Wohlgemuth, complained to the MBW in 1870 about the difficulties the newly widened pavement caused loading and unloading by crane.[^4] Wohlgemuth departed in 1873, and the premises were taken by E. H. Hill & Co., biscuit bakers, who reduced the main building’s height in 1874 and made jam here.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>In 1897 the site, including that of the Gower’s Walk house, was leased by Joel Johnson’s great-grandchildren to Solomon and Phineas Cohen and Louis Weenen, Hanbury Street tobacco manufacturers, and redeveloped with a four-storey and basement L-shaped factory on a set-back building line that the LCC secured. This was built to designs by Robert P. Notley, architect, some-time District Surveyor for Bethnal Green.[^6] The building, with concrete floors on wrought-iron columns, was red-brick faced with triple gables to the front and large windows to open floors. It enabled Cohen, Weenen & Co. to consolidate production on the site, where they remained till 1939, by when the factory was known as Tower House and they were part of Godfrey Phillips. The top floor housed an airy cigar-making room, the second floor a store and tobacco-drying rooms, cigarette-making was on the first floor, and offices and storage on the ground floor. The basement was converted for a bomb shelter in 1941, but shortly afterwards bombing destroyed the top floor. This was replaced with an additional storey in 1951–2, to designs by Elsom and Pearman, architects. Thereafter, the building was used by the rag trade, mainly dress wholesalers, the last occupant being the menswear wholesaler Guide London.[^7] The upper floors of the building were converted to flats on a supposedly temporary basis in 1995, but the building was damaged by fire in 2003 and subsequently redeveloped (see below).[^8] </p>\n\n<p>The Church Lane site to the east (later 54–58 Commercial Road), also part of Joel Johnson’s take, was first developed in 1761-3 with a foursquare Baptist chapel. This was built for a General Baptist congregation with origins in the 1650s at Tower Hill, meeting by the 1750s in the Seventh Day Baptist Chapel in Mill Yard. Its pastor, John Brittain (<em>c.</em>1710–1794), had started a building subscription in 1760. The chapel’s interior was plain but sported typical meeting-house accoutrements of pulpit, desks and galleries.[^9] Brittain was said to be an uneducated tradesman, ‘with sometimes more zeal than prudence’, but ‘his temper being fearless and his manner animated’, he acquired a considerable following, with 300 members by 1770.[^10] Nonconformism in the eighteenth century was fissiparous and disputatious. In 1770 the Church Lane chapel hosted a meeting of disaffected General Baptists who seceded to form the New Connexion of General Baptists, which sought a return to the Arminian tenets and absolute scriptural obedience of the General Baptists’ earlier years. Brittain was among the founders, but the leading spirit was Dan Taylor (1738–1816), a pastor based in Halifax who brought the evangelising spirit of his Wesleyan upbringing to the new Baptist sect and to Whitechapel in 1785 when he became assistant to the elderly and ailing Brittain. The congregation had declined, as had the New Connexion in London. Under Taylor it revived and in 1791 a ‘commodious baptistry’ was added ‘at considerable expense’.[^11] </p>\n\n<p>Brittain left his lease to his nephew, William Shenston, and great-nephew, John Brittain Shenston, later also a General Baptist minister.[^12] Taylor made the chapel the centre of his energetic activities, which included peripatetic preaching, establishing new, and reviving old, congregations, the foundation of the General Baptist Academy, of which he was first tutor, in 1797, and publication of the <em>General Baptist Magazine</em> in 1798–1800. At Church Lane, Sunday schools and a Friendly Society for Visiting the Sick were established. John Deodatus Gregory Pike (1784–1854) launched a career as a Baptist minister here in 1807–10.[^13]</p>\n\n<p>Following the creation of the General Baptist Union in 1812 and Taylor’s death, the New Connexion gradually lost its identity, and the Church Lane Chapel had ceased to be active by 1821. Its ownership had returned to the freeholder, George Waller, one of Joel Johnson’s sons-in-law. The chapel played host thereafter to an assortment of Nonconformist congregations. It was the Ebenezer Chapel by 1830, part of the seamen’s mission in 1831–4 under George Charles ‘Boatswain’ Smith, who was succeeded by another disputatious Evangelical, Thomas S. Corne (author of <em>The Finger of God</em>). In 1845–6 it was the ‘Scotch Church’, under the Scots Congregationalist Rev. Robert Ferguson who was succeeded by Joseph Cartwright (1783–1861) until the chapel finally closed in 1858–9.[^14] </p>\n\n<p>Brittain’s lease included land behind the chapel, running south for nearly 300ft, which enabled the development of a burial ground. This was known as Brittain’s burial ground and was intended for Baptists, probably not exclusively General Baptists as it was Thomas Davis, some-time pastor of both the Great Alie Street Zoar Chapel and the Petticoat Lane Baptist Chapel, who was the first to be interred in 1763, following his death from a piece of falling masonry. It ceased to be exclusively a dissenters’ burial ground by the 1780s, and became attractive to anyone seeking a burial cheaper than those provided in the parish churchyard.[^15] </p>\n\n<p>By 1821 the burial ground had expanded eastwards to other ground held by the Shenstons, a measure of the overcrowding affecting urban burials, confirmed by archaeologists who found coffins stacked up to seven high in 2007. The place was apparently in the hands of William Spiers, an undertaker who occupied the house next but one east of the chapel, with a sawpit in his yard.[^16] </p>\n\n<p>The ecumenical character of this burial ground attracted the press in the 1820s when baffled interest was taken in the funeral of a Lascar sailor and brawls at ‘Irish’ funerals were reported in comic detail. The ground also attracted the Resurrection men. Several bodies, some only just buried, were found in sacks around Back Church Lane, one near the ground’s rear entrance. This no doubt accounts for notices warning visitors to ‘Beware of spring guns’, devices for deterring body snatchers.[^17] In 1833 the burial ground and Spiers’ premises were taken over by Samuel Sheen (1796–1865), another undertaker, on a forty-year lease. Overcrowding and the now better-understood implications for the health of those living around the dead soon received attention. George Alfred Walker, a surgeon, found Sheen’s ground no better or worse than average: ‘The proprietor of this ground … has planted it with trees and shrubs, which are sufficiently attractive, <em>but the ground is saturated with human putrescence</em>’.[^18] Despite the Metropolitan Burial Act of 1852, closure was resisted until 1854. After an unsuccessful stint running a pub in Norwood, Sheen and his son continued as undertakers in Church Lane until 1861.[^19] </p>\n\n<p>The abandoned burial ground was taken over in 1861 by George and William Blackman, coopers, who already had extensive premises in Gower’s Walk and Rupert Street, and who had occupied the former chapel since about 1859. They formed a cooperage with sheds around a yard, which use continued until 1889. The site reverted to Joel Johnson’s descendants, but the LCC refused a development scheme in 1891 on account of past burial-ground use.[^20]</p>\n\n<p>The chapel site (Nos 54–58) was redeveloped in 1895–6 in a speculation by T. M. Fairclough, cartage contractors of nearby Christian Street. Their robust utilitarian steel-framed warehouse had four storeys in white brick with full-height windows.[^21] It was leased in 1898 to Joseph Tetley & Sons, tea merchants, for packing and storage. They remained until 1928, when the Co-operative Wholesale Society moved in, using the building first as tailoring workshops and after the war as a warehouse for tyres and motor parts. The warehouse later fell to multiple occupation, mainly by clothing wholesalers. In 2000 permission was secured for a conversion to flats, with two new floors and a rear extension. This had not been carried out when the building was gutted by fire in November 2003. </p>\n\n<p>The cobble-paved site of the burial ground was accessed by a cartway through the factory and used by Fairclough’s for cart storage by 1896. They had added a smith’s shop and two-storey wheelwright’s shop by the First World War. In 1950 Fairclough’s, which specialised in meat transport by the 1920s, was nationalised by the British Transport Commission and the yard was used by British Road Services (Meat Haulage) Ltd.[^22] </p>\n\n<p>Plans afoot from the late 1980s to redevelop at No 52–58 finally matured in 2005, as planning presumptions against tall buildings eroded – the site immediately east of Back Church Lane had been redeveloped with an eleven-storey Post Office computer centre in the 1960s. A mixed scheme was approved, extending to land on Back Church Lane behind No. 60, and a triangular site on the west side of Gower’s Walk, behind the Gunmakers’ proof house. Seen through by 2009, this development comprised towers of thirteen and seventeen storeys, straddling a three- to five-storey podium. Plots on either side of Gower’s Walk (Nos 59 and 63) were used for most of the required thirty-eight ‘affordable’ flats, leaving a small strip of landscaped green space. The towers were for flats, incorporating live/work units, offices, a health club and a café on the lower four floors. The clients were Business Environment Group Ltd and Rickbrook Ltd for the main building, and Solon Co-operative Housing Services and Network Housing Group for the affordable housing, the architects Rivington Street Studio Architecture. The design is blocky and bland, the towers clad in beige tile with small windows, many in narrow horizontal strips, the podium heavily glazed with silvery composite panelling which extends to piers on the pavement supporting the fronts of the towers and rectangular pods atop the towers. The Gower’s Walk ‘affordable’ blocks, of five and six storeys, are resolutely plain, faced in shades of light-grey render. </p>\n\n<p>By 2007 the main building was in the hands of the Jersey-registered Rocquefort Properties Ltd, part of a property empire controlled by David Kennedy, his family and associates, that includes Formation Design and Build which financed the project.[^23] </p>\n\n<p>As the main building was nearing completion in 2009 permission was given for repurposing forty-one of the ninety-eight flats (floors four to ten of the taller tower) as an apart-hotel of serviced flats, the justification being increasing demand for hotel space in the ‘City Fringe’ with an eye on the 2012 Olympics. As many other towers rose up nearby, the shorter tower was raised in 2016 with an extra floor of seven flats added to its silver pod. A further extension to provide three further flats in glazed rooftop additions to each tower was granted on appeal in 2019.[^24]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Howard Colvin,<em> A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1660–1840, </em>3rd edn, 1995, p. 548: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), P/WNH/1/9/1–2</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Land Tax Returns (LT): <em>Daily Advertiser</em>, 16 Sept 1777: W. Minet and W. C. Waller (eds), <em>Publications of the Huguenot Society</em>, vol.11:<em> Registers of the Church of La Patente, Spitalfields</em>, 1898, pp.98 <em>et </em><em>passim</em>: Ancestry: Ordnance Survey (OS) map 1873: THLHLA, B/ENN/1/1</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: LMA, LT; District Surveyors Returns (DSR): Post Office Directories (POD): Census: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: <em>East London Observer</em>, 11 June 1864, p.3: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes (MBW Mins), 17 June 1870, p. 647</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: POD: OS 1873: THLHLA, B/ENN/1/1</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/17/009385; CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05231: DSR: A. Felstead, J. Franklin, L. Pinfield (eds), <em>Directory of British Architects</em><em>, 1834–1900</em>, 1993, pp.667–8: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/39: London County Council Minutes (LCC Mins), 23 July 1895, p.737; 19 Nov 1895, pp.1082–3; 1 Dec 1896, p.1351</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: The National Archives (TNA), IR58/84809/2641: THLHLA, P022029; P02323; L/THL/D/2/30/39: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/17/009385: POD: Tower Hamlets planning applications online (THP)</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: <a href=\"https://www.guidelondon.co.uk/aboutus\">www.guidelondon.co.uk/aboutus</a>: THP: <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/996/detail/\">surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/996/detail/#</a>: <a href=\"http://www.stgitehistory.org.uk/media/commercialroad1921.html#4\">www.stgitehistory.org.uk/media/commercialroad1921.html#4</a></p>\n\n<p>[^9]: Adam Taylor, <em>The History of the English General Baptists, in Two Parts: Part the First, The English General Baptists of the Seventeenth Century</em>, 1818, p. 169: <em>Part the Second, The New Connexion of General Baptists</em>, 1818, pp. 80–90: Adam Taylor, <em>Memoirs of the Rev. Dan Taylor, late Pastor of the General Baptist Church, Whitechapel, London</em>, 1820, p. 251</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: Taylor, <em>Memoirs</em>, p. 207: Taylor, <em>History: Part Second, </em>pp. 90–1</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: Taylor, <em>History, Part Second</em>, pp. 134–43,191–2,202,205–7,319: Frank W. Rinaldi, <em>The Tribe of Dan: The New Connexion of General Baptists, 1770–1891: A Study on the Transition from Revival Movement to Established Denomination</em>, 2009, pp. 2–4,8–10: Taylor, <em>Memoirs</em>, pp. 125–33,169–70</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: TNA, PROB11/1250/189: THLHLA, P/WNH/1/9/2 </p>\n\n<p>[^13]: Taylor, <em>History, Part Second</em>, pp. 430–2: Taylor, <em>Memoirs</em>, pp. 177,215–51:<em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) sub</em> Pike</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: THLHLA, P/WNH/1/9/1: TNA, PROB11/1669/204: <em>ODNB sub</em> Smith: Thomas Corne, <em>An Evangelical Selection of Hymns</em>, 1834: <em>Morning Post</em>, 18 Feb 1836, p.3: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 29 Oct 1836, p.1: <em>Taunton Courier</em>, 19 Sept 1838, p.8: LMA, CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/517/1090391: POD: Census: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: THLHLA, P/WNH/1/9/2: TNA, PROB11/1669/204: Walter Wilson, <em>The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses</em>, vol. 4, 1814, p. 426: Michael Henderson, Adrian Miles and Don Walker (eds), <em>‘He Being Dead Yet Speaketh’: Excavations at three post-medieval burial grounds in Tower Hamlets, east London, 2004–10</em>, Museum of London Archaeology Monograph 64, 2013, pp. 53,65–6,71–2: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^16]: Henderson, pp.12–14,60–6: THLHLA, P/WNH/1/9/2</p>\n\n<p>[^17]: <em>Gentleman’s Magazine</em>, vol.93/16, Jan 1823, p. 80: <em>John Bull</em>, 24 July 1825, p.2: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 24 Sept 1850, p.4: <em>Star (London)</em>, 1809, p.4: Henderson, p.55: <em>East London Observer</em>, 26 Sept 1914, p.2</p>\n\n<p>[^18]: G. A. Walker, <em>The Grave Yards of London</em>, 1841, p.14</p>\n\n<p>[^19]: Henderson, pp. 59,65: POD: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 8 May 1856, p.7:<em> Morning Post</em>, 9 May 1856, p.7</p>\n\n<p>[^20]: POD: MBW Mins, 27 May 1870, pp.592–3; 23 April 1875, p.497: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/39: LCC Mins, 10 Feb 1891, p.165</p>\n\n<p>[^21]: DSR: THLHLA, L/THL/D/3/4/7: LCC Mins, 11 Feb 1896, p.137</p>\n\n<p>[^22]: W. R. Macdonnell, ‘A Study of the Variation and Correlation of the Human Skull, with Special Reference to English Crania’, <em>Biometrika</em>, vol. 3, 1904, pp. 191–243 (p. 197): Isabella (Mrs Basil) Holmes, <em>The London Burial Grounds: Notes on their History from the Earliest Times to the Present Day</em>, 1896, p.297: TNA, IR58/84809/2643: THP: Charlie Walker, <em>An History of Road Transport</em>, 2009, p. 110: Goad insurance maps: <em>Commercial Motor</em>, 8 May 1953, p. 25: <a href=\"http://www.glias.org.uk/news/254news.html#E\">www.glias.org.uk/news/254news.html#E</a>: <a href=\"http://www.glias.org.uk/news/255news.html\">www.glias.org.uk/news/255news.html</a></p>\n\n<p>[^23]: London Stock Exchange Aggregated Regulatory News Service (ARNS), 22 Aug 2007 via Nexis: <a href=\"https://www.investegate.co.uk/articlePrint.aspx?id=200611301259300071N\">www.investegate.co.uk/articlePrint.aspx?id=200611301259300071N</a>: <a href=\"https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/12154996\">offshoreleaks.icij.org/nodes/12154996</a></p>\n\n<p>[^24]: THP: <a href=\"http://www.skyscrapernews.com/buildings.php?id=5425\">www.skyscrapernews.com/buildings.php?id=5425</a>: <a href=\"http://dab.formationgroupplc.com/project/ibis-hotel-commercial-street/\">dab.formationgroupplc.com/project/ibis-hotel-commercial-street/</a></p>\n",
"created": "2020-02-17",
"last_edited": "2021-07-20"
},
{
"id": 162,
"title": "Site of entrance to London, Tilbury and Southend Railway goods shed",
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"body": "<p>Memories of Eric Shorter, b. 1936</p>\n\n<p>The Tilbury Warehouse had an entrance in Commercial Road just to the right of The Gunmakers Proof House. This was gated, and in weekdays the gates would be open but always guarded (it was, after all, a bonded Warehouse). I could never get in for a look, and had to content myself just seeing a few vehicles, including little three-wheeled Scammell trucks with flat-bed trailers entering and turning to climb towards a road that I think ran along the western edge of the first floor of the warehouse. I suspect that goods could be unloaded from train trucks here. In later years I learned that there used to be rare round brick gate posts, said to be extant in about 2009. I looked for them in vain.</p>\n",
"created": "2016-11-01",
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"title": "Nos 46–50 (the Gunmakers’ Company’s proof-house and former hall)",
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"body": "<p>The irregular group of buildings that faces Commercial Road between Goodman’s Stile and Gower’s Walk predates the extension of the road and is thus slightly set back and out of alignment, following the more directly east–west orientation of the old Church Lane. More significantly, it is also a unique survival, a City Livery Company continuing to exercise here an original regulatory function on a site it has occupied for nearly 350 years. Nos 48 and 50 on the corner with Gower’s Walk are the Gunmakers’ Company’s proof master’s house, proof house and receiving office, all largely of the 1820s. No. 46, to the west, is the Company’s former Livery Hall, built in 1871, possibly incorporating earlier fabric from an East India Company storehouse of 1808.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>The Worshipful Company of Gunmakers was instituted by charter in 1637, nearly fifty years after a group of gunmakers drew up draft procedures for proving the safety of firearms. Opposition from other interested parties – the Blacksmiths and Armourers – delayed the creation and adoption of the Company until a Royal Commission of 1631 recommended its institution. It received its charter from Charles I, but the proving of guns did not start until the charter was enrolled in 1656. This enabled the Company to test all new hand guns, great and small, pistols and daggs (heavy pistols), produced in London and for ten miles around, or imported, to search for the same, and to ensure that gunmakers had served a seven-year apprenticeship and produced a proof piece to the satisfaction of the Company. The Company’s first proof house, for testing the security of gun barrels by subjecting them to firing loads a quarter to a third heavier than normal, was built in 1657 near Aldgate on land owned by John Silke, a gunmaker. An explosion that damaged Silke’s premises may have encouraged the Company to take a new site in 1663, probably in the Minories or East Smithfield, the centre of the London gunmaking industry.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>In 1676 the Company moved to its current site. This appealed, no doubt, because it was in an open field and had no neighbours to disturb or damage. The site formed part of a larger holding bounded north and east by Church Lane, west by Goodman’s Fields, and extending south as far as present-day Hooper Street. This property was held in 1691 by John Nicoll, probably a Holborn soapmaker who had a family connection with Whitechapel through the Darnelly family, and from 1692 to 1703 by John Skinner, an apothecary with property in Whitechapel High Street. Skinner’s profession may account for the land being denominated the Physick Garden, though the name Jackson’s Garden was also in use. Skinner sold the entire property freehold in 1703 to Benjamin Masters, a mariner, and part was leased to Jonathan Keeling, a gardener, in 1720.[^3] The Gunmakers’ site was at the north-west corner of the Physick Garden. It was an irregular rectangle of ground, approximately 85ft wide by 58ft deep, bounded north by a ‘mudd wall’ and ‘a passage made by and through the mud wall’, west by a ditch and a ropewalk, east by ‘the hedge next to the dung road’, and south by another ditch separating it from the rest of Masters’ land. The proof house of 1676 was built by Michael Pratt, a carpenter, who held a lease on the ground.[^4] That proof house had to be rebuilt in 1713, this done by one John Rogers on a new sixty-one-year lease from Masters. Thereafter the Gunmakers acquired the freehold of the site. A proof master’s house was present by 1733 when the master, Humphrey Pickfatt, was taxed for the proof house and a dwelling.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>In 1752 a boundary dispute arose with Sir Samuel Gower, who had become the freeholder of land adjoining to the south and west. A plan accompanying the agreement that resolved this dispute reveals that the Gunmakers’ site did not extend eastwards quite to what had become Gower’s Walk, from which it was separated by a long 10ft-wide strip of land, occupied by a greengrocer’s shop with a small house behind. At this stage the Gunmakers’ premises included the proof house, roughly 20ft square, to the east adjoining the greengrocer’s, a privy at the south-east corner of the yard, the 35ft-wide (so double fronted) proof master’s house to the west (on the site of No. 46), the charging house (for charging weapons prior to proof), a shallow building about 20ft wide on Church Lane, with a smaller marking room (for stamping proofed weapons with the Gunmakers’ proof mark) on its east side abutting a narrow yard intruding into the greengrocer’s site on the Gower’s Walk corner.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>Thus lay the Gunmakers shortly before a major rebuilding, prompted because the proof house was once again ‘ruinous’. It was reconstructed in 1757–8 ‘on a more beneficial and useful plan’, with the proof master’s house adjoining. A date-stone survives, reset on an inner wall of the receiving house (see below). In 1760 the charging house, marking house and counting house, also ‘ruinous’, were rebuilt on the same sites.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>Contention arose in 1781 when Joel Johnson and others complained that the proof house damaged their investment in houses they had built nearby on Gower’s Walk, but the Gunmakers reasonably pointed out that the proof house had been in that location for more than a hundred years, builders must have been aware of this before they chose to build nearby. Further additions and improvements were made, though Johnson refused to sell the easterly strip of land he then held.[^8] </p>\n\n<p>Further development happened on the establishment’s west side in the early nineteenth century. The East India Company had been acquiring arms from London gunmakers since 1664. From 1709 to 1766 and again from 1778 it used the Gunmakers’ Company’s facilities to prove its arms. The East India Company built a storehouse and inspection room in 1807–8 on a westerly strip of the Gunmakers’ site, of which it took a ninety-nine-year lease in 1815. A door gave access to the Gunmakers’ yard through which barrels were transferred to the proof house. Beyond, the westernmost end of the Gunmakers’ holding was also developed, with two street-side houses with rear workshops, built in 1812 by John Williams, a bricklayer, on a fifty-seven-year lease. These properties were occupied over the next thirty years by a hairdresser, a bootmaker and a watchmaker, and were together gradually taken over by George Story (1805–1874), a scale-maker and the leaseholder from 1839.[^9] </p>\n\n<p>By 1823 the proof house was again dilapidated, and the master’s house ‘likely to endanger the lives of the proof master and his family’.[^10] Hereafter the site was rearranged much as it is today. The freehold of the easterly strip of land between the proof house and Gower’s Walk was acquired from George Waller, more amenable to a sale than his father-in-law, Joel Johnson. The new proof house and proof master’s house were built in 1826–7 at the north-east corner of the enlarged site, with a single-storey and basement receiving or entrance building adjoining on Church Lane. These buildings were designed by the Company’s surveyor, Robert Turner Cotton (1773–1850), perhaps with input from his son, Henry Charles Cotton (1804–73). John Hill was the bricklayer, and James Bridger of Aldgate the carpenter. Foundations for the proof house, dug and redug, were five bricks thick and more than 12ft deep.[^11] </p>\n\n<p>The proof house itself, up against Gower’s Walk behind the proof master’s house, is outwardly entirely utilitarian, a rectangular stock-brick building with segmental-headed windows at upper levels, of a height necessary to cope with the pressures and gases generated by proving. Most of the windows are blind, though some at least originally had iron louvres to dispel the smoke and pressure. The interior was essentially one space under a cast-iron framed roof, though subdivided in its lower half into two unequal open-topped proving chambers, one the main ‘proof hole’, containing a bed of sand where multiple barrels could be tested at once, the charges set off by a trail of gunpowder. In 1835 the upper part of the proof room was lined with cast-iron plates by Graham & Sons to protect the structure from damage from exploding gun barrels. The original cast-iron roof frame and these plates survived until 1994. </p>\n\n<p>The proof master’s house on the corner is of conventional three-storeyed design, also in stock brick, with a round-headed ground-floor window, gauged-brick arch heads and a stuccoed door architrave and cornice. The single-storey receiving house, possibly incorporating fabric from the marking house of 1760, originally had a copper-lined gunpowder magazine within its attic. Its three-bay façade, again stock brick but heavily stucco-framed, makes a stronger if entirely conventional classical statement. Four pilasters frame openings, including a central entrance with consoles to a segmental pediment. A rectangular panel atop the entablature announces: ‘THE PROOF HOUSE OF THE GUNMAKERS COMPANY OF THE CITY OF LONDON. ESTABLISHED BY CHARTER ANNO DOMINI 1637’.[^12]</p>\n\n<p>By 1857 the East India Company building was unoccupied as small arms for India had come to be supplied by the War Office. The Company surrendered its lease in 1860 and, following a report by the local architect G. H. Simmonds, the building was converted in 1863 to be a committee room for the Gunmakers’ Company. This room seems to have been largely incorporated, rather than rebuilt, when the Gunmakers redeveloped the west side of their property in 1871, extinguishing Story’s lease. Gunmakers’ Hall went up to designs provided by John Jacobs, the builder, but possibly the work of Simmonds. It included the old committee room and a new court room to its west with a new two-storey stock-brick front range in a lumpen Italianate manner. Portland stone dressings, now painted, include an arch-headed central door surround and a pierced cornice balustrade. The impressive panelled court room, with a slightly canted south end, has a bracketed coved ceiling with a central lantern. A heavy court room table was grandly set off on the east wall by a huge trophy of arms, a starburst of more than 1,000 bayonets, military swords, hammers, ramrods etc. In 1893 a further room was created above the committee room, with a staircase inserted at the front of the east side of the entrance lobby, this to designs by W. J. Lambert.[^13]</p>\n\n<p>The persistence of the Gunmakers on the increasingly urban site had been challenged since Joel Johnson took issue in 1781. In 1802 the Gunmakers successfully resisted the trustees of the new Commercial Road’s plan to acquire the site, though an Act of Parliament limited the hours of the day when guns could be proved. The Gunmakers succeeded in keeping the site from the Commercial Road trustees once again in 1824, and also saw off further limitation on the hours of proving. In 1882 the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway Company pressed to acquire the site for its vast warehouse, but the Gunmakers had only to relinquish a small strip with sheds on the south side of their property. Even so, the south walls of the proof house and court room had to be heavily buttressed following excavations for the railway warehouse’s north yard and extensive vaults.</p>\n\n<p>Piecemeal repairs and improvements were made from time to time, mostly reflecting changes in the requirements of proof. The shift from muzzle-loading to breech-loading guns and the consequent need for more complex proving accounted for additions in the yard, a small proof house for testing breech-loading guns in 1866, by when secondary proofing could be conducted with a gun fixed in a frame firing into a bed of sand, and other proving-chamber sheds thereafter. By 1920 low-level viewing shops and proofing rooms snaked around the southern boundary including behind the court room, and a loading shop opened off the receiving room. The Company endured lean years in the 1920s and was obliged to sell Gunmakers’ Hall in 1927, the trophy of arms transferred to the Birmingham Gun Barrel Proof House.[^14] </p>\n\n<p>The buyers were Israel Eichenbaum (1874–1935), owner of a wholesale drapery at 20 Commercial Road, and his son-in-law, Pinkus Segalov (1902–1959), and the building was let to the Order Achei Brith and Shield of Abraham Friendly Society. Jewish friendly societies were similar to other such societies, operating a subscription on which members could call in times of sickness. Mainstream societies sometimes excluded Jews, so specifically Jewish societies came into being from the 1790s. The Order Achei Brith (‘Brethren of the Covenant’), founded in 1894 out of a friendly society founded in 1888, was the first fully to embrace a Masonic character, operating as a Lodge with ceremonies, elaborate regalia and rituals.[^15] It merged with the Shield of Abraham Society in 1911 and, in common with other registered friendly societies, was empowered to administer the National Health Insurance Act of that year. It was one of the largest such societies by 1928 when alterations were made by Bovis Ltd to close up the connections between Gunmakers’ Hall and the courtyard of the proof house. The building, now called Absa House, was opened as the Order’s headquarters by Lord Rothschild on 14 October 1928, the consecration conducted by the Chief Rabbi. In 1933 the Order had around 25,000 members. What had been proofing rooms in the yard behind the court room were then rebuilt as an office, reached from a door formed from one of the court room windows. The new room was fully lined in modish vaguely art-deco wooden panelling.[^16] </p>\n\n<p>The creation of the welfare state and the loss of the powers bestowed in 1911 reduced the practical need for friendly societies. Meanwhile the Order’s membership dispersed and failed to rejuvenate. By 1948 it was down to around 5,000 members. Amalgamation with the Order Achei Ameth in 1949 formed the United Jewish Friendly Society. From 1955 to 1958 No. 46 was let to the St Louis Club, a social club, with alterations made by H. J. F. Urquhart, architect, for a restaurant in the former court room, a lounge in the former committee room, and a first-floor billiard room. Thereafter the basement was relet to the Gunmakers for arms storage, with alterations for access through the party wall overseen by Morris de Metz, architect. No. 46 reverted to being offices for the Friendly Society, part let off to Joseph Textiles Ltd, until 1976, shortly before the society’s dissolution in 1979.[^17] </p>\n\n<p>To return to the east part of the site, in 1927 the imminent loss of Gunmakers’ Hall caused the Gunmakers’ Company to knock the first-floor rooms of the proof master’s house together to form a new court room, tie-rods being inserted; R. Hewett was the builder. Following war damage, the Company made further alterations in 1952 to designs by Albert Robert Fox, architect, with Wilton & Burgess, builders, to convert the receiving house basement into the court room, the proof master’s house altered back to form a first- and second-floor maisonette. In 1959 glazed timber-framed lean-tos for workshops and rifle storage were added on the south and east sides of the courtyard by Morris de Metz and James Jennings & Son Ltd, builders.[^18]</p>\n\n<p>The only major modernisation of the proof house itself took place in 1993–5 when Thomas & Thomas, surveyors, and E. F. Whitlam, engineers, oversaw works by W. M. Glendinning Ltd, builders. Two floors and a reinforced-concrete ring beam and lateral (spreader) beams were inserted, with a light steel-truss roof replacing late-Georgian cast iron. The extra floors, reached by a new staircase at the north end of the building, allowed for four smaller proofing chambers on the ground floor, equipped with ‘snail-catchers’ to contain the fired bullets, depleting their energy in complex bending lengths of metal tubing, in place of the traditional sandbanks, with ammunition storage, loading rooms, a testing laboratory, gun-mounting room and instrument room on the first floor. The second floor was reserved for storage.[^19]</p>\n\n<p>The former hall at No. 46 was sold by the United Jewish Friendly Society in 1976 to the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), a private bank based in Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands, founded in 1972 and rapidly expanding to become the world’s seventh largest private bank. It closed in 1991 when it was revealed to be a giant money-laundering scheme.[^20] The former court room became a banking hall with desks and cashiers, the floor in the canted bay removed to create a double-height space, connecting to the basement by a spiral staircase, with a vast window filling most of the south wall. Six new openings were made on the north and east sides, connecting east to the former committee room, now subdivided into a manager’s office and corridor, and north to the lobby. The one-time first-floor billiard room became a conference room. The architect was Harry S. Fairhurst. After the winding up of BCCI, the Gunmakers’ Company offered the liquidators £80,000 for the building. This was rejected and the building sold at auction for £120,000 to Itzik and Adrienne Robin and Robert and Stephanie Itzcovitz. The Gunmakers finally reacquired the building for £1.1m in 2007. After the departure of BCCI No. 46 was used as a textile showroom until conversion to educational use in 2002, first as an outpost of the City of London College at 71 Whitechapel High Street, and since 2009 as the London College of Christian Revival Church Bible School, founded in South Africa in 1944.[^21] </p>\n\n<p>Following the closure of branch proof houses in Manchester and Nottingham in 1996 and 2000, Gunmakers’ Company proofing of military weapons in Whitechapel has increased (Ills – Gunmakers proof house interiors in 2018, DK102474 and 102516). By 2008 the proof master’s house was no longer residential, being reserved entirely for offices.[^22] </p>\n\n<p>A hundred years ago, the <em>Builder</em> observed of the Gunmakers that ‘[t]he history of the Company is devoid of the romantic and historical associations connected with most of the misteries [sic], and is that of a well-organized and managed commercial undertaking, doing much useful work and deriving the necessary income from the fees charged for testing and proving weapons’. That still holds true.[^23] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Derek Stimpson (ed.), <em>The Worshipful Company of Gunmakers, or The Gunmakers’ Company</em>, 2008, pp. 42–3, 54–5: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05227/002</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Stimpson, pp.3–6: Ancestry:<a href=\"http://silkfamily.proboards.com/thread/279/robert-silke-gunmaker-london-1659ish\">silkfamily.proboards.com/thread/279/robert-silke-gunmaker-london-1659ish</a></p>\n\n<p>[^3]: William Morgan, ‘London &c. Actually Survey’d’, 1682: The National Archives (TNA), PROB11/652/170; PROB11/643/365</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: LMA, CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05231; CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05220/004,010: Stimpson, pp. 13, 27–8: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: LMA, CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05231; Land Tax Returns</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: LMA, CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05231: Stimpson, pp. 32–3</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: LMA, CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05227/001; CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05220/009: Stimpson, pp. 32–3</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: LMA, CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05220/010: Stimpson, p. 36</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: British Library, IOR/L/L/2/1296-1297: Stimpson, pp.34–5: LMA, CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05232: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: LMA, CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05227/001 </p>\n\n<p>[^11]: LMA, CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05232; CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05227/001: Howard Colvin, <em>A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840, </em>3rd edn, 1995, pp. 272–3: Post Office Directories (POD): Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), Building Control (BC) file 22133</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: LMA, CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05227/001: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/39: Historic England Archives, BF092363, RCHME report, 1994: Stimpson, pp.46–8</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: LMA, CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05232; CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05227/002: POD: Stimpson, pp. 54–5</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: <em>The Builder</em>, 8 Oct 1920, pp. 400–2: TNA, IR58/84809/2638-2640: Stimpson, pp. 46–50,55,70</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: LMA, CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05231: POD: Ancestry: R. P. Kalman, ‘The Jewish Friendly Societies of London, 1793–1993’, <em>Jewish Historical Studies</em>, vol. 33, 1992–4, pp. 141–61: Todd M. Endelman, <em>The Jews of Britain, 1656–2000</em>, 2002, p. 148: <a href=\"https://www.southampton.ac.uk/archives/cataloguedatabases/webguidemss180.page\">www.southampton.ac.uk/archives/cataloguedatabases/webguidemss180.page</a></p>\n\n<p>[^16]: <em>Bucks Herald</em>, 28 Sept 1928, p.6: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, 19 Oct 1928, p.14: <em>East London Observer</em>, 8 Sept 1928, p.6; 20 Oct 1928, p.6: LMA, District Surveyors Returns (DSR); SC/PHL/01/385/76/7963–7: Daniel Tilles, <em>British Fascist Antisemitism and Jewish Responses, 1932–40</em>, 2015, p. 110</p>\n\n<p>[^17]: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, 7 Jan 1949, p. 12; 28 April 1950, p. 18; 9 June 1950, p. 14; 21 Jan 1955, p. 6: William Henry Beveridge, <em>Voluntary Action: Report on Methods of Social Advance</em>, 1948, p.338: THLHLA, BC File 20995: POD: LMA,SC/PHL/01/385/76/7968</p>\n\n<p>[^18]: DSR: THLHLA, BC File 20995: Stimpson, pl.21</p>\n\n<p>[^19]: THLHLA, BC File 20996</p>\n\n<p>[^20]: Angelos Kanas, ‘Pure Contagion Effects in International Banking: The Case of BCCI’s Failure’, <em>Journal of Allied Economics</em>, vol. 8/1, May 2005, pp. 101–23: <a href=\"https://fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm\">fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/bcci/03hist.htm</a></p>\n\n<p>[^21]: THLHLA, BC File 20995: Tower Hamlets planning applications online (THP): Stimpson, pp. 55,71: <a href=\"http://www.the-bac.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CRC-Bible-School-College-Full-28.06.16-SENT.pdf\">www.the-bac.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/CRC-Bible-School-College-Full-28.06.16-SENT.pdf</a></p>\n\n<p>[^22]: Stimpson, pp.78–9: THP: <a href=\"https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/08/29/show-proof/\">www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2014/08/29/show-proof/</a></p>\n\n<p>[^23]: <em>The Builder</em>, 8 Oct 1920, pp. 400–1</p>\n",
"created": "2020-02-17",
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{
"id": 987,
"title": "London Muslim Centre (38–46 Whitechapel Road and 11 Fieldgate Street)",
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"body": "<p>The East London Mosque raised £600,000 to buy the land west of the mosque from Tower Hamlets Council in 1999 and the purchase was completed in 2000. The community centre part of the project, which had been initially designed to be two storeys and to include shops on Whitechapel Road and a roof terrace, intended for<em> Eidgha</em> (Eid prayers), was now taken forward with revised plans from the Frederick Gibberd Partnership. Since having designed Regent’s Park Mosque this firm had maintained a track record in mosque design, principally through Richard Biggins. Prince Charles and Prince Mohammed bin Faisal Al Saud (1937–2017), a son of King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, visited to launch the initiative on 23 November 2001 and planning permission was granted in February 2002. Bamfords Trust PLC, led by Mohamed Arif Zabadne, was appointed as the building contractors. In what turned into a design-build approach, Bamfords imposed revisions for the sake of cost reductions, and Gibberds produced a simpler and cheaper scheme in June 2002. Bamfords then switched architects, replacing Gibberds with Markland Klaschka. David Glover of Arup was also involved. There were further revisions to what ended up raised two further storeys to be a six-storey main block, Gibberds’s roof terrace abandoned. The much changed scheme was approved and built in 2003–4. The Centre cost £10.4m of which £2.5m came from Tower Hamlets Council, the European Regeneration and Development Fund and the London Development Agency. There was also support from Sure Start and the Bridge House Trust. Community fundraising was critical, and was seen through under the supervision of Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, the East London Mosque Trust’s Chairman from 2002 to 2013 who had been instrumental in the link-up with The East London Citizens Organisation (TELCO) in 1996. More than half the total cost was raised through donations from local worshippers and from around the UK, around ten per cent from international sources, and the remainder from the sale of assets.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>The London Muslim Centre is a steel-framed and brick-clad building. Its main Whitechapel Road elevation has a full-height and therefore attenuated eight-bay arcade, of red brick with blue-brick spandrels and tympana. There are shop units in the four western bays and lettable offices in the ‘LMC Business Wing’ at 38–44 Whitechapel Road, entered to the far west in a setback bay that rises in yellow-stock brick. </p>\n\n<p>A portico to the east adjoining the mosque was much redesigned. It ended up with a geometric-arabesque tiled panel that curves inwards over the entrance between white blockwork piers. Inside, a triangle-plan concourse leads to the centre’s main hall, which is set diagonally echoing the mosque’s prayer hall in being oriented to <em>Qibla</em> to provide for overflow prayer-hall use, which allowed the mosque to accommodate up to 10,000 worshippers. This orientation was not an element of the earlier Gibberds’ designs. The centre also houses basement ablutions and a gym/youth centre, a ground-floor nursery to the south and upper-storey rooms for private schools and community use, increasing capacity for social work, healthcare, training and advice. It substantially consolidated the East London Mosque’s local presence.</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Shahed Saleem, The British Mosque: An architectural and social history, 2018, pp. 162–5: Humayun Ansari (ed.), The Making of the East London Mosque, 1910–1951, 2011, p. 75: <em>Building Design</em>, 30 Nov 2001, p.1: <em>East London Mosque News</em>, Nov. 2002, pp. 1–4; July 2003, pp.1–4: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 80244: ‘Opening Ceremony of the London Muslim Centre’, booklet, 11 June 2004: Mohamed Arif Zabadne, speech at opening, 11 June 2004: Interview with Nazmul Haque, 11 Nov. 2002: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: information kindly supplied by Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari</p>\n",
"created": "2020-02-17",
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{
"id": 279,
"title": "Public lavatory and cattle trough at the south end of Leman Street, 1967",
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"body": "<p>This colour slide is from the collection of the Tower Hamlets Archives, and shows the 1920s entrance to the public lavatories built against south side of the pier supporting the railway line (formerly the London & Blackwall Railway) that crosses the south end of Leman Street, and the cattle trough, one of many installed by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association between 1867 and 1936. The WCs and presumably the trough were later removed, probably around 1986 during construction of the support piers for the Docklands Light Railway, which runs immediately to the south side of the old railway bridge. With thanks to members of the Living in Stepney Facebook Group for confirming the exact location of this image.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/823551039827755008\">https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/823551039827755008 </a></p>\n\n<p>Sources:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway\">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docklands_Light_Railway</a> </p>\n\n<p>Philip Davies, <em>Troughs and Drinking Fountains</em>, London, 1989</p>\n\n<p>London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyor's Returns</p>\n",
"created": "2017-02-16",
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{
"id": 986,
"title": "Mosque Tower and Mosque Terrace (36 Whitechapel Road and 1–5 Fieldgate Street) ",
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"body": "<p>The large corner site between Whitechapel Road and Fieldgate Street’s west end, cleared and used since 1967 as a car park, passed to Tower Hamlets Council upon the abolition of the GLC in 1986. With the East London Mosque newly opened there were already then intentions to use part of this land to build sheltered accommodation for Muslim elderly people. A scheme of 1989 to replace Whitechapel’s Commercial Road fire station here alongside other community uses on the whole site west of the East London Mosque came to nothing. Ballymore Properties advanced plans to develop the site with flats in a private speculation and the Council was prepared to sell up in 1997. This was successfully opposed in a campaign initiated by the mosque, the Trust’s chairman at this time being Akbor Ali. The mosque wanted the land to its west for its own expansive ambitions. The East London Citizens Organisation (TELCO), a coalition of community groups founded in 1996 with the mosque as an original member, led what proved to be a powerful mobilisation and in November 1998 planning permission was granted for an alternative scheme whereby Tower Hamlets Council gave up the site for joint development for ‘low-cost’ housing and a community centre, to be built by the Bethnal Green and Victoria Park Housing Association and LABO Housing Association in association with the East London Mosque Trust. The Frederick Gibberd Partnership prepared plans for the whole complex to include what was to be the London Muslim Centre. </p>\n\n<p>The housing at the western corner and along Fieldgate Street was handled by the Bethnal Green and Victoria Park Housing Association by agreement with the mosque as a first phase of the London Muslim Centre project and approved in May 2000. Built by 2002, it emerged as much plainer than first designed, revisions by Gibberds presumably being imposed on cost grounds. The eight-storey Mosque Tower, thirty-three flats, and four-storey Mosque Terrace, eight flats and a house at the east end, are of stock brick with red-brick trim and little other articulation. A prosaic octagonal dome tops the tower.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Fieldgate Street’s west end was narrowed in 2009, to enforce one-way traffic and a much enlarged pavement area south-west of Mosque Tower was landscaped by Tower Hamlets Council as the Fieldgate Oasis, with planters, including mosaic ornamentation, and benches. </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, pamphlets 022, St Mary’s Centre report, March 1986; cuttings 222.13: <em>East London Advertiser</em>, 23 Oct 1997, p.14; 29 Jan 1998, p.20; 5 Nov. 1998, p.19: East London Mosque Archives, GB3396 ELMT/BU/0133: <em>East London Mosque News</em>, issue 2, Nov. 2002, p. 1: Humayun Ansari (ed.), <em>The Making of the East London Mosque, 1910–1951</em>, 2011, pp.70–1: Shahed Saleem, <em>The British Mosque: An architectural and social history</em>, 2018, p. 163: Sarah Glynn, <em>Class, ethnicity and religion in the Bengali East End: A political history</em>, 2015, pp. 203–6: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: information kindly supplied by Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2020-02-17",
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"id": 197,
"title": "A sugar refinery with men's room, Fieldgate Street",
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"body": "<p>The 1873 map layer shows that the Maryam Centre sits squarely on the site of a sugar refinery, the later development of which took it almost to Whitechapel Road where the East London Mosque now stands. The sugar refinery was at 17 Fieldgate St, the building across the yard, beyond the gatehouse, was 16.</p>\n\n<p>There had been sugar refining at two separate locations in Fieldgate St, the earlier record being 1736, but we don't get a true indication of who was working the refinery adjacent to Orange Row until 1817 when it was listed as James & Edward Friend. William Boden became a partner in 1821 and took over the company when the partnership was dissolved in 1830, following a fire the previous year. The 1851 census shows that Boden lived in the dwelling house at the refinery, while fifteen, mostly single, German sugarbakers lived in the men's room at no 16. Other sugarbakers would have lived in the streets nearby. Men's rooms, with many bedrooms and a mess room, had always been part of the larger London refineries, giving the newly arrived young workers secure lodgings and guidance from the one or two experienced workers who also lived in. The records for this particular refinery make it clear where the men's room was relative to the refinery.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>William Boden retired in 1851 and took himself off to converted salt workers' cottages in Clevedon, Somerset.[^1] The business was purchased by Sydney B Hodge. He ran it through to his death in 1878 when his son took over, but by 1882 it was losing money, production ceased and the extensive premises were put up for sale.[^2] The buildings were described in an advertisement in <em>The Times</em>: 'A brick built sugar house 67ft by 61ft of ground and 7 floors, warehouse brick built of ground and 5 floors, cistern house, dwelling house, and offices of 4 storeys and basement, sample room with gatekeeper's house over, manager's office, large stone paved yard enclosed with pair of folding gates, lofty brick built chimney shaft, steam engine house, and a freehold dwelling house no. 16 Fieldgate St containing 12 rooms and in the basement a mess room for the men. A brick built charcoal house 60ft by 55ft with ground and 2 floors over, smith's shop, and gateway entrance, brick built stable and store with dwelling rooms over, stoke hole in rear and yard, and a brick built dwelling house with 3 rooms with yard in rear.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Sugar Refiners & Sugarbakers: www.mawer.clara.net</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Gordon D. Hodge, <em>56 years in the London Sugar Market</em>, 1960</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>The Times</em>, 1 July 1882</p>\n",
"created": "2016-11-18",
"last_edited": "2020-02-17"
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{
"id": 592,
"title": "Mahera Ruby on how the Maryam Centre serves women",
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"body": "<p>Mahera Ruby, an academic and community activist, grew up in Whitechapel. Here she reflects on what the Maryam Centre provides for the women who use it.</p>\n\n<p>'The Maryam Centre [is] one of our key achievements. We have a women’s project, Maryam Women’s Services now but it used to be called the Women’s Link. That used to be based at the mosque. So the mosque had two entrances: the women’s entrance and the men’s entrance. Even though women could still come in to use the services, I think they still felt a bit [uncomfortable] if they were coming in for, say, domestic violence or whatever troubles they were facing. With the Maryam Centre, it’s wonderful because they have [a] totally anonymous entrance.</p>\n\n<p>There’s a gym there, there’s the prayer space. And because it’s separate, very separate entrance, I think women feel much much more comfortable accessing those services. There’s counseling available now. So those kinds of services [have] been great for those women. But also for classes, so there’s a lot women’s classes that take place.</p>\n\n<p>Personally, I feel we could’ve done better. The Maryam Centre could have been better utilised. I would have loved to have had that ground floor hall to be ours too. [And] the lovely entrance, rather than us having that little entrance on the side. But we are working towards it.</p>\n\n<p>Because at the moment I feel it’s a bit sad that sometimes we may have to share the lift with people who have passed away in coffins. It’s a good reminder, but it’s not the nicest thing to experience.</p>\n\n<p>[The women’s prayer hall is on the 2nd floor] the whole floor. And it is nice, it’s quite nice. But I miss the gallery [the women’s prayer space in the 1985 East London Mosque building], because I think [there] we were at the heart of the mosque. Here, we’re a Centre.</p>\n\n<p>It does feel separate. A lot of people like it, I mean, women do prefer that because in this area, this is the only women’s centre. We used to have Jagonari across the road, we don’t have that anymore. So in terms of women’s services, this is one of the community-sensitive, culture-sensitive services. And we do get referrals of other cultures and faiths too, so it’s not just restricted to Muslims.</p>\n\n<p>[The Maryam Centre] really did make sense [as] the usage by women [was] increasing. The gallery just wasn’t [enough to] contain the women and the numbers, particularly Friday prayers, tarawih prayers, and it was becoming quite impossible. So I think it just made sense that women needed a bigger space. And [the] Maryam Centre was born.'</p>\n\n<p>Mahera Ruby was in conversation with Nishat Alam and Shahed Saleem on the 19th January 2018 at the East London Mosque </p>\n",
"created": "2018-03-09",
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"body": "<p>Following the opening of the London Muslim Centre in 2004, further enlargement of the East London Mosque's premises ensued to the south, beside Fieldgate Street on the site where the temporary mosque of 1975 and the imam’s house and mortuary of 1985 had stood. First plans for a building of up to seven storeys were submitted in 2006–7. These were revised up to nine storeys and the Maryam Centre was built in 2009 to 2013 in another design-build project led by Bamfords Trust, again working with Markland Klaschka, as at the London Muslim Centre. Costs of £9.5m were wholly met by the mosque’s fund-raising – £1.25m was raised in a single night in 2010.</p>\n\n<p>The steel frame here is yellow-brick clad, echoing earlier buildings but more monochromatically with starker angular elevations, broken up by a smattering of generally small windows. A new Fieldgate Street entrance foyer for the mosque as a whole was part of the project. Its west side is the Alhambra donor wall, decorated with large-pattern geometric-Arabesque tiling that commemorates the donations that funded the project. The ground-floor hall is an extension of the mosque’s men’s prayer hall. A street-side staircase leads initially to other prayer halls, that on the second floor being for women. There is basement car parking and the rest of the building is dedicated to use by Muslim women in what is said to be the first such centre in Britain. There is a female-only gymnasium and classrooms, spaces for advice or guidance, healthcare and childcare. There are also some residential flats. </p>\n\n<p>Haji Taslim Funerals, based at the Maryam Centre, commemorates Haji Taslim Ali (1915–1998), who had managed a Muslim funeral service from the East London Mosque on Commercial Road from 1950 with his wife Hajja Mariam Ali (née Josephine Mary Morgan). This couple also helped found Britain’s first halal butchers and ran a restaurant on Old Montague Street in the late 1950s. Their son Gulam Taslim succeeded as the Mosque’s funeral director.</p>\n\n<p>Plans by Webb Gray & Partners Ltd, architects, to enlarge the men’s prayer hall yet again and to the east were approved in November 2015. They had not yet been carried forward in early 2020.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>The East London Mosque’s Whitechapel Road and Fieldgate Street estate achieved topographical wholeness with the acquisition of the former Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue in 2015. The mosque has grown rapidly and in a somewhat improvised though coherent manner. ‘The combination of religious, community, social and commercial space is manifest in a plan of complex alignments and spatial arrangements. This can perhaps be read as a metaphor for the emergence of British Muslim institutions through a strenuous, iterative and intensely negotiated process.’[^2]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Shahed Saleem, <em>The British Mosque: An architectural and social history</em>, 2018, pp. 165–7: Humayun Ansari, <em>The Making of the East London Mosque, 1910–1951</em>, 2011, p. 40: Sarah Glynn, <em>Class, ethnicity and religion in the Bengali East End: A political history</em>, 2015, p. 203: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control files 90339, 90493: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/872/detail/#story: information kindly supplied by Jamil Sherif, see <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/954/detail/#haji-taslim-ali\">surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/954/detail/#haji-taslim-ali</a> and surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/954/detail/#hajja-mariam-ali: spitalfieldslife.com/2013/01/08/gulam-taslim-funeral-director/: information kindly supplied by Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Saleem, p. 167</p>\n",
"created": "2020-02-17",
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