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"id": 237,
"title": "East London mosque in its temporary building, 1977",
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"body": "<p>A digitised colour slide from the Tower Hamlets archive collection:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/758994373669298181\">https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/758994373669298181</a></p>\n",
"created": "2016-12-19",
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{
"id": 682,
"title": "56–58 Fieldgate Street",
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"body": "<p>Alexander Limburg, a fishmonger, was the lessee and first occupant of this shophouse of 1902–3. T. G. Charlton was the architect, M. Calnan & Co. of Commercial Road the builders. The redevelopment permitted widening of the north end of Nottingham Place. By 1907 the premises pertained to the British and American Salmon Curing Co. Other salmon curers were here to the 1930s and Mike Abrahams, a fishmonger, followed into the 1970s. The shop was adapted for garment-trade use in 1993 and has since become Motown Desserts. The shop was adapted for garment-trade use in 1993 then around 2009 as Motown Desserts. A third storey was added in 2012–13.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Royal London Hospital Archives, RLHLH/S/1/4; RLHLH/D/3/24, p. 56: London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyor's Returns: Post Office Directories: The National Archives, IR58/84791/832: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 40646: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: Google Street View</p>\n",
"created": "2018-07-02",
"last_edited": "2021-04-01"
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{
"id": 1073,
"title": "120 Leman Street",
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"body": "<p>Imperial Buildings or Warehouses were erected on this site in about 1884 replacing a sugar refinery on the wedge of land between the south side of Chamber Street and the arches of the London & Blackwall Railway Company.[^1] The twelve four-storey warehouses were originally arranged around a yard opening into Leman Street and were probably built for the railway company, since they were owned by the Great Eastern Railway (GER) Company in 1910.[^2] The ‘duty paid stores’ of the United Kingdom Tea Company Ltd., at Imperial Warehouse, Leman Street, from 1885, most probably represents this address, perhaps the two adjoining units on the far south-western side which were in use as a tea warehouse in 1887.[^3] By 1894 the warehouses to the south of the yard had been demolished, presumably during the widening of the railway line between Fenchurch Street and Stepney, leaving a run of six numbered 2–12 (evens) Chamber Street.[^4] In the same year the Co-operative Wholesale Society made alterations to one of the warehouses, and by 1897 all six were in use by the Society's drapery, tea and bedding departments.[^5] This was evidently a temporary arrangement, before these departments were transferred to refurbished warehouses at 116–118 Leman Street. In about 1911 Imperial Buildings was altered or rebuilt, with a canted corner at the junction of Leman Street and Chamber Street, by H. Jones of the GER Engineers’ Office, Liverpool Street. By the 1950s the timber-floored buildings, which were used as stores, factories and a printing works, presented a fire hazard and in 1974–9 they were classified several times as a dangerous structure by the district surveyor.[^6] </p>\n\n<p>Permission was granted in 1988 for the present seven-storey office building, described as being on an island site, and it was built in 1989–90.[^7] This curves around Chamber and Leman Streets, with the entrance at the apex, the smooth finish emphasised by large surface areas of steel and glass. The architect was IKA Project Design & Management, with Lovell Construction (London) Ltd as the contractor; the owner is recorded as both Warwick Balfour and Easepride Ltd, which in the late 1990s shared a director in Richard Gary Balfour-Lynn.[^8] In 2007 permission was granted for refurbishments to the entrance, in large part due to the renovation of CWS buildings locally – 120 Leman Street now stood ‘in stark contrast’ to Ekins’s ‘imposing’ 1 Prescot Street, by this time converted to apartments, and the conversion of 99 Leman Street on the opposite side of the road.[^9] In about 2015, Househam Henderson Architects (later Hyphen), which had already refurbished the cladding, created a canopy and a glazed facade at ground- and first-floor levels of the entrance and new reception areas.[^10]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>The Globe</em>, 11 March 1884, p. 7: Goad insurance plan, 1887</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), Building Control (BC) file 22396</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Illustrated London News</em>, 11 July 1885, p. 38: Goad insurance plan, 1887</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Ordnance Survey map, 1894</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyors' Returns: <em>Co-operative Wholesale Society Annual</em>, 1897</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: Correspondence and plans in THLHLA, building control file 22396; Photograph, 1973, LMA, SC/PHL/01/392/73/10908.</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online (THP), PA/87/00990: THLHLA, BC file 22406</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: THLHLA, BC file 22406: <a href=\"https://companycheck.co.uk/company/02182178/EASEPRIDE-LIMITED/companies-house-data\">https://companycheck.co.uk/company/02182178/EASEPRIDE-LIMITED/companies-house-data</a>; <a href=\"https://companycheck.co.uk/company/01685293/WARWICK-BALFOUR-MANAGEMENT-LIMITED/companies-house-data\">https://companycheck.co.uk/company/01685293/WARWICK-BALFOUR-MANAGEMENT-LIMITED/companies-house-data</a></p>\n\n<p>[^9]: THLHLA, BC file 22406</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: THP, PA/07/00376</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2020-05-13",
"last_edited": "2020-05-13"
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{
"id": 771,
"title": "Stern's Hotel, 3-5 Mansell Street",
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"username": "Sheila"
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"b_name": "The White Chapel Building (former Sedgwick Centre)",
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"body": "<p>In 1927 my father, Sam Stern, bought an empty warehouse at 3 and 5 Mansell Street, on this site. On 10 March 1928 he opened Stern's Hotel and kosher banqueting rooms in the building.</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/11/06/sterncropsm.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p>Over the years the restaurant catered more than 6,000 weddings and bar mitzvahs. In spite of the bombs the hotel remained open during the second world, providing a haven for many refugees escaping Nazism. It finally closed in 1952.</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/11/06/sternsmall.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-11-01",
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{
"id": 872,
"title": "Co-operative Wholesale Society Administrative Offices and Bank, 1 Prescot Street",
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"body": "<p>Leonard Gray Ekins, FRIBA (1877–1948) worked all his adult life for the Co-operative Wholesale Society and served as London Branch Chief Architect from 1916 to 1942.[^1] In 1898–1903 he was assistant architect under F. E. L. Harris at Manchester and confirmed as Newcastle’s Branch Architect in 1905.[^2] Like Harris, Ekins employed the Hennebique system of reinforced concrete in his larger projects, including the Dunston-on-Tyne soap works (1907–9, extended 1911–14).[^3] He was placed in charge of the new branch Architects’ Department, which covered London, the South of England and South Wales, in 1916, and appears to have been based initially at 99 Leman Street.[^4] In his early years in Whitechapel Ekins seems principally to have been involved with planning alterations to the block on the west side of Leman Street (Nos 108–118), which housed the coffee works and bacon stoves, but was doubtless also at work on more ambitious projects. Demolitions had already begun on the north side of this block, in 1912 if not before, with a former restaurant at the corner with Prescot Street. By January 1913 the CWS had erected a temporary single-storey iron building for use as offices in its place and renumbered the plot 1 Prescot Street, presumably with a more impressive building in mind for the future.[^5] The demolition of the neighbouring houses at the corner of Prescot Street took place at around the same time. Ekins made plans in 1923 for a series of temporary covered workshops and garages, which extended south behind the bacon stoves and coffee works at 116–118 Leman Street, with an entry created by the demolition of the house at 90 Chamber Street. But this work seems not to have been executed and no further building appears to have taken place on this site until preparations for the new Administrative Offices and Bank in about 1930.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>The impressive building now known as 1 Prescot Street is probably L. G. Ekins’s best-known London work. This steel-framed office block, with dramatic, cliff-like elevations above its artificial granite base, looms over Leman Street and Prescot Street, where it occupies a prime position on the south-west side of the crossroads, nearly opposite the site where the London Branch had begun in 1881. At the opening of the first section of the Administrative Offices in 1933, CWS publicity explained how, on the east side of Leman Street, No. 99 was in a line of buildings that continued for 514 feet, while on the other side the headquarters of the E&SCWS extended for 331 feet. Street directories capture the spread of the two societies along Leman Street – the CWS at 53 & 55 and 99 on the east side and 82, 116, 118 and 130, and the E&SCWS at 100 Leman Street on the west.[^7] To the CWS at least, this provided further evidence of the almost seamless ‘Co-operative Advance along Leman Street’.[^8] But to some, the range of architectural styles was now bewildering. An article in <em>Building</em> by architect Frederic Towndrow described the impact made by Ekins’s new Administrative Offices in comparison with its older CWS neighbours:</p>\n\n<p>'After wandering through this unpleasant part of London, one comes upon it with a shock of pleasant surprise. Its adjacent buildings, also belonging to the Co-operative Society and designed several years ago, are frankly awful. Here in such low company is one of the most interesting and beautiful buildings erected in England in recent years. In contrast with work of a similar kind, which was being done a few years ago, here is food for optimism and faith in the human race. The building has spirit, it has urge, and a sense of grand advancement.'[^9]</p>\n\n<p>In 1930 Ekins had travelled to Germany and Holland with CWS Architects W. A. Johnson, FRIBA (from Manchester) and W. G. T. Gray (Newcastle-upon-Tyne) to study ‘modern architecture’, which CWS historian Percy Redfern took as a sign of how the CWS kept pace with ‘the revolutionary change since the war in the outlook of the [architectural] profession’.[^10] Towndrow was unconcerned as to whether the new administrative block was ‘modern, or functionalist, or English, or Dutch or merely original’ but thought it had ‘some life and power in it’.[^11] It has been heralded since as ‘a riot of German Expressionist and Wrightian motifs’, with ‘rugged Amsterdam-School style Expressionist brickwork’.[^12] As Teresa Pinto points out, in openly embracing this new style from the Continent, the CWS was doing more than just following fashion: ‘it was also celebrating its role within the international co-operative movement, in which it conceptualised itself as the leading player’.[^13] Ekins’s undated elevation drawings for the new block were received by the LCC in July 1929 and show the design as executed, with contrasting textured spandrel panels, spiny antefixae and other detailing, which indicate that, even before his tour of Europe in 1930, he already had such a building in mind.[^14]</p>\n\n<p>The approved drawings covered the complete development of the six-storey Administrative Offices on the Prescot Street, Leman Street and Chamber Street sites but it was executed in two planned stages; like the tea warehouse, which opened in 1897 and subsequent E&SCWS and CWS buildings, the building was executed in-house by the CWS Building and Engineers’ Departments. The first portion, on the north side of the block between Prescot Street and Chamber Street, was opened formally in April 1933 and contained the CWS Bank on the ground floor. Although Ekins’ drawings of around 1929 indicate that he proposed to add the double-height mansard at a later date, and CWS board minutes of February 1930 discuss the cost of planning for two extra floors, photographs of May 1933 appear to show the first phase of the building, fronting Prescot Street and the corner of Leman Street, completed to full height.[^15] Unless it was retrospective, it is therefore not clear what was meant by the ‘addition of fifth and sixth floors with alterations’ itemised in district surveyors’ returns of 1936.[^16]</p>\n\n<p>When both phases were complete, the building was designed to hold 500 people and it was proposed that the Architects’ Department, and the Engineers’ and Building Departments, would be housed in ‘happy unity’ on the two upper floors.[^17] The Architects’ Department designed the retail stores as well as the Wholesales’ premises and in 1933 a total of 800 architectural, engineering and building staff based at branch offices in England and Wales were to be supervised from the new Administrative Offices.[^18] The CWS highlighted the symbolism of having frontages in both Leman Street and Prescot Street – Leman Street, with the entrance to the Bank, being a ‘co-operative colony’, while Prescot Street was ‘the thoroughfare that leads to the Tower of London, the Royal Mint, and the great City itself’.[^19]</p>\n\n<p>The new Bank – ‘the clearing house’ of the Co-operative movement – had three times more floorspace than in its former home at 99 Leman Street, where it had opened in 1920 with ‘only 441 current and deposit accounts’.[^20] The panel above the Prescot Street entrance, depicting a naked man and woman grasping a wheatsheaf staff beneath a beehive to symbolise co-operation, was designed by J.C. Blair, the brother of a late director of the CWS.[^21] An underground tunnel connected the new building with the London Tea Department on the north side of Prescot Street.[^22] There were now nearly 2,957 CWS employees in and about Leman Street with a further 978 working for the E&SCWS at Leman Street, the bonded warehouses at Middleton’s Wharf, Wapping, and the chocolate factory at Luton.[^23]</p>\n\n<p>Although the CWS had claimed in 1930 that, ‘compared with northern grime, Whitechapel was the high street of an old-world country town’,[^24] the effects of urban pollution on Ekins’s London exteriors may perhaps have influenced CWS practice in Manchester. Similarly dentilated brickwork in contrasting panels was in the late 1930s also employed by the CWS Architects’ Department in Manchester, for example at the new Menswear Department and Drapery Warehouse, which opened at the end of 1939. It was reported that the buff and blue brickwork and reconstructed stone dressings had been chosen ‘with a view to survival from the more murky effects of a drab climate’.[^25] When the first portion of the London Administrative Offices was opened in 1933, the promotional booklet insisted that while Balloon Street, Manchester, ‘retains its historic position in the CWS; Leman Street affords evidence of the conquering power of co-operation in the Capital City of Empire’.[^26]</p>\n\n<p>The second portion of the administrative block was undertaken in 1957–8, thereby completing Ekins’s suite of Expressionist blocks on the west side of Leman Street; the Leman Street entrance was moved further to the south than originally conceived and the return building line on Chamber Street was also modified.[^27] Other than the three-bay side return on Chamber Street, where Ekins’s seven-storey wing ended, the elevation flanking Chamber Street (which was rarely photographed) was one-storey high above the plinth.[^28] This was described in 1957 as ‘partial development’, and thus represented a curtailment of Ekins’s original four-storey design for the south side of the block.[^29] Plans of around 1929 show a dining room on the ground floor, with a double-height meeting hall and staff gymnasium on the unexecuted storeys above.[^30] An extension was added in 1960 to the Chamber Street front at second-floor level, near the private link road between Prescot Street and Chamber Street, but otherwise the exterior fronting Chamber Street was not altered significantly until after 1973.[^31] Like other CWS and E&SCWS premises locally, the whole administrative office complex was arranged around an open area which served as light well and yard, entered in this case from the link road. This link road was eventually bridged with a foot passage above second floor on the Prescot Street frontage, in order to connect with Ekins’s furnishing warehouse of 1939. Inside the administrative block, ‘Empire hardwoods’ were used throughout and the completed building contained a double-height boardroom and directors’ dining room, in addition to the banking hall and associated offices.[^32]</p>\n\n<p>Now known as 1 Prescot Street, the Administrative Office and Bank were generally known as 110 Leman Street and 1 Prescot Street (but were still addressed with their original numbering of 108–118 Leman Street and 1–9 Prescot Street by the GLC in 1973).[^33] In 1968 ‘alterations to form offices’ were agreed to the sixth floor ‘Ex Architects’ Department’.[^34] Changes in the 1970s included a new CWS Travel Bureau on the ground floor with a basement adaptation for a bullion room.[^35] A total refurbishment was carried out for the CWS in 1985.[^36] It was presumably at this time that the single-storey elevation along Chamber Street was carried up to the height of the Leman Street front and capped with a projecting attic, since drawings of 1995 showing the present Chamber Street elevation proposed removing the ‘existing windows’ above the first floor with decorative metal grilles to vent car parking areas on the ground, first and second storeys.[^37] In 1995 IKA Project Design & Management submitted plans for a proposed conversion from offices to residential accommodation with 115 units on behalf of CWS Property, with landscaping and associated works.[^38] After these were passed in mid-1996, a representative from Rialto Homes Plc attended the meeting between the architects and the District Surveyor to discuss a fire strategy for the accepted scheme. Later the same year, by which time the CWS was not mentioned in building control or planning correspondence, Rialto Homes submitted a revised scheme. Permission was sought and granted for the refurbishment, change of use and conversion from offices and ancillary uses, to create a gym at basement level, 150 residential units on floors one to seven (including four residential units at roof level), and car parking and cycle storage at lower ground, ground and new mezzanine floor levels (i.e., no carparking above the first floor as originally planned).[^39] Present use, and plans by Rialto’s architects for the conversion, Denton Corker Marshall Ltd, indicate commercial units on the ground-floor Leman Street and Prescot Street fronts.[^40] The building and its railings were listed Grade II in 1990.</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: ‘Obituaries’, <em>RIBA Journal</em>, September 1948, p. 519: Percy Redferen, <em>Story of the C.W.S.</em>, 1913, p. 325.</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Lynn Pearson, <em>Architecture of the Co-operative Movement</em>, draft Chapter 4, p. 2.</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Pearson, draft Chapter 4, p. 3: Michael Stratton and Barrie Trinder, <em>Twentieth Century Industrial Archaeology</em>, 2000, 2013 edn., pp. 13, 46; <em>CWS Annual</em>, 1915, p. 121.</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Royal Institute of British Architects, L. G. Ekins RIBA nomination papers, 5 November 1920; ‘CWS Architects’ Activities’, <em>The Producer</em>, November 1924, p. 17.</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: Photograph of the CWS Tea Department, <em>The Wheatsheaf</em>, January 1913, p. 103: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), Great Prescot Street drainage plans, 1 Prescot Street, 25 November 1915.</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: Great Prescot Street drainage plans, 1/7 Prescot Street and 90 Chamber St, 1923, THLHLA, L/THL//D/2/30/119: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), District Surveyors Returns serial no. 1923.0301.</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: Ancestry, Post Office Directory, 1932, p. 431.</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: <em>London Branch of the CWS</em>, 1933, p. 21.</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: Frederic E. Towndrow, ‘Current Architecture’, <em>Building</em>, July 1933, p. 282.</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: <em>New History of the C.W.S.</em>, 1938, p. 423.</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: Towndrow, ‘Current Architecture’, <em>Building</em>, July 1933, p. 282.</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: Elain Harwood, Historic England Archives, London Historians File TH 137; <a href=\"https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101065738-number-1-prescot-street-and-attached-wall-and-railings-whitechapel-ward#.XHk9O9HgpN0\">https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101065738-number-1-prescot-street-and-attached-wall-and-railings-whitechapel-ward#.XHk9O9HgpN0</a>; Bridget Cherry, Simon Bradley, Charles O’Brien, Nikolaus Pevsner, <em>London: East</em>, 2005, p. 436.</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: Teresa Pinto,<em>An Architectural History of the Co-operative Movement in London, 1916–1939</em>, unpublished MA dissertation, UCL Bartlett School of Architecture, 2015, p. 8.</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/19/3339.</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: THLHLA, Building control file, 22378, 110 & 1–7 Prescot Street; 110–20 Leman Street plans (large), LMA, GLC/AR/BR/19/3339; information on CWS board minutes from Lynn Pearson; <em>Architectural Review</em>, 24 May 1933, p. 692.</p>\n\n<p>[^16]: LMA, DSR serial no. 1936.1338-48.</p>\n\n<p>[^17]: <em>London Branch of the CWS, </em>1933, pp. 24, 31.</p>\n\n<p>[^18]: <em>Ibid</em>.</p>\n\n<p>[^19]: <em>Ibid.</em>, p. 21.</p>\n\n<p>[^20]: <em>Ibid.</em>, p. 27.</p>\n\n<p>[^21]: <em>Ibid.</em>, p. 22.</p>\n\n<p>[^22]: LMA, DSR serial no. 1931.1281; CWS property plan, 1934, LMA, GLC/AR/BR/17/077326/02.</p>\n\n<p>[^23]: <em>London Branch of the CWS</em>, 1933, p. 31.</p>\n\n<p>[^24]: ‘Sunshine in London: East and West by a Wheatsheaf Observer’, <em>The Wheatsheaf</em>, February 1930, p. 23.</p>\n\n<p>[^25]: ‘Manchester’s Splendid new Service Centre’, <em>The Producer</em>, November 1939, p. 326.</p>\n\n<p>[^26]: <em>London Branch of the CWS</em>, 1933, p. 23.</p>\n\n<p>[^27]: Correspondence in THLHLA, Building control file, 22378, 110 & 1–7 Prescot Street. </p>\n\n<p>[^28]: Photograph, 1973, LMA, SC/PHL/01/392/73/10920.</p>\n\n<p>[^29]: THLHLA, Building control file, 22378, 110 & 1–7 Prescot Street.</p>\n\n<p>[^30]: 110–20 Leman Street plans (large), 1929, LMA, GLC/AR/BR/19/3339.</p>\n\n<p>[^31]: <em>Ibid</em>; Photograph, 1973, LMA, SC/PHL/01/392/73/10920.</p>\n\n<p>[^32]: <em>London Branch of the CWS</em>, 1933, pp. 15, 21; LMA, GLC/AR/BR/19/3339.</p>\n\n<p>[^33]: THLHLA, Building control file, 22378, 110 & 1–7 Prescot Street.</p>\n\n<p>[^34]: THLHLA, Building control file, 23212, 1 Prescot Street.</p>\n\n<p>[^35]: THLHLA, Building control files, 22378, 110 & 1–7 Prescot Street and 23212, 1 Prescot Street.</p>\n\n<p>[^36]: Minutes of meeting with District Surveyor, 1996, THLHLA, Building Control file, 26731, 1 Prescot Street. </p>\n\n<p>[^37]: THLHLA, Building control file, 22378, 110 & 1–7 Prescot Street. </p>\n\n<p>[^38]: Proposed refurbishment by IKA Design and Management, 1995, THLHLA, Building control file, 26731, 1 Prescot Street; Tower Hamlets planning applications online, Listed Building Consent (S8 P&LBC 1990), 1996.</p>\n\n<p>[^39]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online, WP/96/00217, 1996.</p>\n\n<p>[^40]: THLHLA, Building control file 26731, 1 Prescot Street.</p>\n",
"created": "2019-03-29",
"last_edited": "2020-05-21"
},
{
"id": 435,
"title": "The London Hospital Dental Institute and Students’ Union, Stepney Way",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
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"street": "Stepney Way",
"address": "Dental Hospital and Institute of Dentistry",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
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"search_str": "Dental Hospital and Institute of Dentistry"
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"tags": [
"Dental Institute",
"London Hospital",
"Royal London Hospital",
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"body": "<p>The area bounded by Stepney Way, Turner Street, Newark Street and New Road is dominated by the former London Hospital Dental Institute and Students’ Union, built in 1962–5 to designs by Stephen Statham & Associates, a little-known architectural practice. This assertive block was the outcome of an ambitious plan to unite and extend the hospital’s dental treatment, education and research facilities. Between 1945 and 1952, the dental department and its associated school tripled in size. This substantial block south of the Outpatients Department was designed to accommodate 130,000 dental patients each year and to permit a doubling of the annual admission of dentistry students to 50. A large and highly specialized Dental Institute was accompanied by a separate Students’ Union at the east end of the building. At the time of writing (August 2017), the Dental Institute has fallen into disuse, yet the adjoining Students’ Union continues as Barts and the London Students’ Association.[^1]</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2017/08/04/sol-whitechapel100132.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p><em>The London Hospital Dental Institute and Students’ Union from the south-west, photographed by Derek Kendall in 2016.</em></p>\n\n<p>The planning of the block spanned approximately five years, owing partly to lengthy consultations with both the Ministry of Health and the University Grants Committee (UGC), which financed the scheme jointly. The prolonged evolution of its design may also be attributed to the building committee led by the hospital and the medical college. An initial design was submitted to the Ministry and UGC in 1957, yet the committee insisted on layout alterations after its approval two years later. The final design was developed in association with Oscar Faber & Partners, consulting engineers, and John Liversedge & Associates, structural engineers. The block was constructed in 1962–5 by Francis Jackson Contractors Ltd and a number of subcontractors.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>The Dental Institute and Students’ Union replaced three rows of early nineteenth-century terraced houses at 52–64 New Road, 1–23 Newark Street and 2–26 Stepney Way. It is a bulky concrete block formed of a podium crowned by a five-storey tower; a discordant configuration influenced by LCC restrictions on height and floor area. The podium engulfs the entire site, while the tower is limited to a narrow rectangular footprint with cantilevered projections on the third and fifth floors. The reinforced-concrete frame is partly exposed and the exterior walls clad with tiles and concrete panels. The south elevation of the Students’ Association in Newark Street is marked by window openings arranged with playful irregularity, while its north entrance facing Stepney Way was originally clad with marble.[^3]</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2017/08/04/sol-whitechapel100142.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p><em>The south elevation of the Dental Institute and the Students' Union in Newark Street, photographed by Derek Kendall in 2016. </em></p>\n\n<p>The block was divided into the Dental Institute west and the Students’ Union east, separated on the ground floor by a central car park adjacent to staff common rooms and lockers. The Students’ Union was limited to three storeys and a basement compressed into the east end of the podium. A large dining room occupied the centre of the ground floor, while the upper floors contained three common rooms, and top-lit music and games rooms. The internal configuration of the Dental Institute was highly specialized thanks to collaboration between the architects and building committee. After its completion in 1965, the institute was described triumphantly as ‘the manifestation of a philosophy of dental treatment and education translated into practical building terms’.[^4] An engineering workshop, a ‘hot’ laboratory and service plants were confined to the basement. The Dental Institute originally lacked a street entrance, with its principal doorway for staff and patients located next to the ground-floor car park and accessed via footpaths from Stepney Way and Newark Street. The entrance foyer was flanked by the Oral Surgery and Radiology Departments, each divided into suites by light partitions. The arrangement of the first floor was a focus for the architects and the building committee, who studiously tested models and prototypes. The result was a central core comprising a sterilising department, a waiting area, surgeries and offices, partially encircled by a treatment area containing 92 dental chairs for patients. These were arranged in four-bay clusters separated by low screens to ensure privacy.[^5]</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2017/08/04/sol-whitechapel100145_8SC1Qxc.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p><em>The north elevation of the Dental Institute in Stepney Way, photographed by Derek Kendall in 2016.</em></p>\n\n<p>The narrow upper floors of the five-storey tower were largely assigned to dental education and research. The second floor contained a lecture theatre, a photographic unit and offices, while a Department of Child Dental Health was installed on the third floor. Each level followed a similar layout, with central corridors terminating east and west in lobbies containing stairs and lifts. Specialized rooms formed by light partitions flanked the corridors, benefitting from exterior glazing. An exception was the fourth-floor teaching department, which, by the inclusion of a south-facing corridor, secured a seminar room, a laboratory, and a clinic devoted to practising dental techniques on ‘phantom heads’, or mannequins. The fifth and sixth floors of the building were dedicated to research and included an animal testing facility.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>It was later remarked that when the Dental Institute opened in September 1965, the department ‘instantly foamed up and filled every corner of the building’.[^7] A series of alterations followed, including the insertion of a public street entrance in New Road. Plans were produced in 1978 to simplify the first-floor treatment area by replacing the grouped dental chairs with single fitted cubicles. Since the Institute of Dentistry transferred to the hospital’s newly renovated Alexandra Wing in 2014, the west end of the block has lapsed into disuse and the site has been earmarked for redevelopment.[^8]</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2017/08/04/sol-whitechapel100140.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p><em>Former entrance to the Dental Institute in Newark Street, photographed by Derek Kendall in 2016. </em></p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Royal London Hospital Archives (RLHA), RLHLH/Z/2, <em>The Builder</em> (7 January 1966), pp. 11–14; RLHA, RLHMC/X/37, ‘The London Hospital Dental Institute’ (1965); RLHLH/Z/2, <em>The Hospital</em> (October 1965); RLHA, RLHLH/A/24/56, House Governor’s Office file: Dental Department and new Dental Institute, 1952–67.</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/24/56, House Governor’s Office file: Dental Department and new Dental Institute, 1952–67; RLHA, RLHLH/Z/2, <em>The Builder</em>; RLHLH/Z/2, <em>The Hospital</em>.</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: RLHA, RLHLH/S/4/12, ‘Specification and bill of quantities for new Dental Block and Students’ Union Building’ (April 1962); RLHA, RLHLH/Z/2, <em>The Builder</em>.</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: RLHA, RLHLH/Z/2, <em>The Builder</em>.</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: RLHA, RLHTH/S/10/11/1–13, Dental Institute Aperture Cards.</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: RLHA, RLHLH/S/10/11/1–13; RLHA, RLHLH/S/4/12; RLHA, RLHMC/P/1/5, Clubs Union building (Students’ Association), exterior and interior views (1970s–80s); RLHA, RLHLH/X/251, ‘The London Hospital Dental Institute, School for Dental Surgery Assistants’ leaflet, n.d.; RLHLH/Z/2, Subject files – Dental Institute.</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: S. Francis Fish, <em>The Dental School of the London Hospital Medical College, 1911–1991</em> (The London Hospital Dental Club and London Hospital Medical College, 1991), p. 95.</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: Bridget Cherry, Charles O’Brien and Nikolaus Pevsner, <em>London: East</em>, <em>The Buildings of</em> England (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), p. 403; <a href=\"http://www.smd.qmul.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses/a200\">http://www.smd.qmul.ac.uk/undergraduate/courses/a200</a>, accessed 22 May 2017; Whitechapel Vision.</p>\n",
"created": "2017-08-04",
"last_edited": "2021-02-23"
},
{
"id": 1128,
"title": "6–13 Chamber Street (Travelodge, formerly DSI House and Argyll House)",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
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"b_number": "6–13",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Chamber Street",
"address": "Travelodge, 6–13 Chamber Street",
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"count": 1,
"search_str": "Travelodge, 6–13 Chamber Street"
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"body": "<p>A row of eight small early houses was demolished and replaced in the early 1970s by this plain four-storey brick range, divided with its ground floor interrupted to permit continuance of the passage to Royal Mint Street that was Abel’s Buildings. It was DSI House, a warehouse for DSI Contract & Office Furnishers Ltd. Conversion to office use was permitted in 1982, but that adaptation was not long lasting. What had come to be known as Argyll House had fallen vacant by the end of the 1990s. The building became a seventy-bedroom hotel in 2002 following a conversion for Princedale Ltd by Papa Architects. It has been a Travelodge since 2008.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Post Office Directories: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 20890</p>\n",
"created": "2020-08-04",
"last_edited": "2020-08-04"
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{
"id": 170,
"title": "Unsavoury memories of public urinals",
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"username": "eric"
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"properties": {
"b_number": "48",
"b_name": "The Proof House, 48-50 Commercial Road",
"street": "Commercial Road",
"address": "Worshipful Company of Gunmakers, The Proof House, 48-50 Commercial Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
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"body": "<p>Memories of Eric Shorter, b. 1936</p>\n\n<p>On the Tilbury side of Gower's Walk, there was another feature, at the top in a corner made by a wall of The Gunmakers' Proof House building in Commercial Road. This corner was occupied by a male urinal. I used it just once, and it was the most foul place I have ever experienced. It was never cleaned or flushed in any sense.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2016-11-01",
"last_edited": "2020-07-30"
},
{
"id": 760,
"title": "Making the Sugar House - archaeological watching brief",
"author": {
"id": 118,
"username": "david2"
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"properties": {
"b_number": "99",
"b_name": "Sugar House, 99 Leman Street",
"street": "Leman Street",
"address": "Sugar House, 99 Leman Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 21,
"search_str": "Sugar House, 99 Leman Street"
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"tags": [
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"body": "<p>During archaeological monitoring of substantial ground reduction on this site a culvert that predated, and was cut off by, the Co-op warehouse was briefly exposed. It was FULL of redware ceramic syrup-collecting jar fragments, with very few fragments of sugar-loaf moulds. I presume it came from a sugar house (refinery) in Leman Street in the 19th century. There were so many fragments of jars that I couldn't collect them, I simply selected out the whole vessels. I did -however- give the developers a particularly large base of a collecting vessel and they put it into the foyer of their newly refurbished building for a while, which they christened \"the Sugar House\". Maybe the find influenced their choice of name. </p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/11/12/jar4.jpg\"><em>Sugar refining vessels, mainly syrup-collecting jars, in an old culvert behind 99 Leman St.</em></p>\n\n<p>A picture of whole vessels is in Fig 16, page 358, on this link (Post-Medieval Archaeology, Fieldwork in 2006) https://doi.org/10.1179/174581307X236238. </p>\n",
"created": "2018-10-30",
"last_edited": "2021-04-28"
},
{
"id": 1080,
"title": "43–47 and 49–58 Gower's Walk, with 1–3 Mitali Passage ",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
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"body": "<p>These are eighteen two- and three-storey houses that were built in 1994–5 by the Mitali Housing Association, founded in 1985 to assist local families of Bengali origin, as the social housing portion of the development also at 109–129 Back Church Lane. The facades have a postmodern character in their use of red and yellow brick patterned to echo parapet gablets in front of monopitch roofs. The Gower’s Walk and Mitali Passage houses occupy a site that had included, from the south, Webb’s Place, cleared in 1937, a yard at No. 47 that was a cigar-box makers in the 1880s, later a builder’s store and sawmill, and a row (Nos 50–58), probably some of Joel Johnson’s eighteenth-century houses. By 1896 these were in the ownership of T. M. Fairclough, a haulage firm that occupied the yard behind, and which replaced the row in 1932. No. 49, a gabled red-brick three-storey building of two flats over an entryway to a small yard that came to be used by Faircloughs, had been built in 1906 as the delivery entrance and caretaker’s flat to the People’s Arcade. It had an improbable afterlife in 1984–9, as Exhibiting Space, a gallery that presented exhibitions, practical and theoretical workshops, lectures and recitals. It sought ‘a critical articulation of verbal and non-verbal signifying practices’ to ‘strategically privilege the productivity of irreducible plurality’.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>Art Monthly</em>, Oct 1984, p. 44; 1 Dec 1985, p. 22; 1 March 1989, p. 25: Ansar Ahmed Ullah and John Eversley (eds), <em>Bengalis in London’s East End</em>, 2010, p. 42: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, L/THL/D/2/40/71: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: The National Archives, IR58/84818/3585–97; /84814/3147–73:<a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1039/detail/#story\">surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1039/detail/#story</a>: Royal Bank of Scotland Archives, NWB/1874: <a href=\"https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/east-london-landlords-merge-35391\">www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/east-london-landlords-merge-35391</a></p>\n",
"created": "2020-06-05",
"last_edited": "2020-06-05"
},
{
"id": 179,
"title": "The site of Webb's Place, Gower's Walk, in the early 1950s",
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"id": 72,
"username": "eric"
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"body": "<p>Memories of Eric Shorter, b. 1936</p>\n\n<p>As I walked it, ran it, cycled it, the Gower's Walk that I knew in the early 1950s was structured as I now describe. It runs roughly north/south and was cobbled throughout. The eastern side of Gower's Walk consisted roughly of three parts. The middle third consisted of a 6ft fence running for about 60 yards or so which as a child I could not see over. Behind it I thought there was a ‘bomb site’, viewed through holes in the fence, though in later years I came to understand that this was the remains of Webb's Place, whose dwellings had fallen into gross disrepair and were, I think, knocked down.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
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"title": "Gower's Walk Free School",
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"body": "<p>Gower’s Walk Free School opened in 1808 on the west side of Gower’s Walk, immediately south of Samuel Gower's sailcloth factory. It owed its foundation to William Davis (1766–1854) of Leytonstone, whose sugarhouse between Leman Street and Rupert Street gave him ample opportunity to observe the untutored children of the neighbourhood. He was a trustee of the Whitechapel Parochial (Davenant) School, to which he introduced Dr Andrew Bell in 1806. Gower’s Walk’s ‘school of industry’ was a different venture, though it also came to be affiliated to the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church on its foundation in 1811. It was intended both to educate children aged eight to fourteen, who had to be baptised members of the Church of England, and to instruct them in ‘the habit of diligence’ through practical skills.[^1] At Gower’s Walk that skill, for boys, was printing (Andrew Bell’s biographer suggests shoemaking was tried first, without success), and for girls, needlework, knitting and learning to mend stockings and gowns. Commercial work undertaken by the children included the printing of the National Society’s annual reports. Most of the proceeds went to the running of the school, with twenty per cent to the schoolmaster and mistress, originally a local couple, William (1775–1818) and Elizabeth Lovell. By 1810 the school’s earnings far exceeded the income from Davis’s endowment. The children received some reward, both in kind – clothing – and a small amount of money, most of which they had to wait till they left the school to receive.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>The small school had a simple layout, occupying the full width of the relatively narrow site near its west end. It has been said that it was a converted sugarhouse, though this seems a later confusion based on Davis’s business. Early accounts state only that he bought the land, which appears to have been unbuilt on, and paid for the building of the school, which contained two large classrooms on its north side and the printing workshop on its south side, with accommodation for the schoolmaster and mistress. Much was made in early reports of Davis’s desire for anonymity, but in 1821 he commissioned a bust of himself from Sir Francis Chantrey, a sketch for which survives, to go over the door of the school.[^3] </p>\n\n<p>Through the first twenty-five years the school roll was around 100 to 120 boys and 50 to 90 girls. Income from the industrious children meant a new lithography press could be added to the patent Stanhope machine in 1822 and a new printing office was built in 1826. The Davis family maintained a benevolent hold over the school as trustees, entertaining the children to treats at their grand homes in the Essex fringes of London up to the death of William Davis’s grandson John Coope Davis in 1881.[^4] The school building was acquired along with everything else between Gower’s Walk and Back Church Lane for the Commercial Road Goods Depot. Another local attempt at relief was a single-storey ragged school and mission on the north side of Johnson’s Court, present by 1864. This persisted as a Sunday School till the First World War.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>Faced with demolition to make way for the goods yard, the Gower’s Walk Free School relocated by acquiring the southern part of what had briefly been the Grape Sugar Company’s premises between Lambeth Street and Rupert Street, which belonged to John Coope Davis’s brother, Howell Davis, who was one of the school’s trustees. The seven-storey northern part of the former sugarhouse survived as a warehouse. Compensation from the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway Company for the school’s original site (£11,500) paid for the new site (£6,000) and building (£4,230) of 1884–5. As a resolutely Church of England foundation, the school had close links with successive rectors of St Mary Matfelon, and designs were supplied by Ernest Claude Lee, the architect of the newly rebuilt parish church, and, as it happened, Davis’s cousin. The school, which had capacity for 184 children, faced Lambeth Street with some architectural pomp, at least by local standards. It had an irregular layout with the girls’ school and schoolteacher’s house flanking the main entrance, an L-plan printing house over a dining room north of the house and the boys’ school projecting to the west behind the entrance and girls’ school. The rest of the site back to Rupert Street was the playground, which extended under the boys’ school. Lee deployed a mostly unfussy Queen Anne manner, in stock brick with red-brick dressings, Ionic pilasters, segmental window heads and pediments, and a shaped gable with a swagged and pedimented bellcote atop the boys’ school. A pedimented niche flanked by scrolls over the main entrance in Lambeth Street housed Chantrey’s bust of William Davis, salvaged from the old school. The builders were Kirk & Randall of Woolwich, the carver, Thomas Earp of Lambeth, who had also been employed at the parish church.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>The school’s printing work as the Gower’s Walk Free Press continued to be productive with the support of the National Society and such as Toynbee Hall. But the strict requirements of Anglicanism stipulated by the Trust deed made it increasingly anachronistic in a parish where so many of the poor which the school was designed to assist were Jewish. The Board of Education had the school in its sights by 1914, and in 1931 even the National Society was of the view that ‘the extensive premises and substantial endowment … could be put to better use than providing about 30 boys with an education of doubtful efficiency’.[^7] One of the trustees, Dorothy Hilton, Howell and John Coope Davis’s niece, struggled on for another four years with grants from the National Society, determined to maintain Anglican traditions, even if the building became a boys’ club. However, the decision was taken to close the school in 1935, though printing work continued. The building was sold and the money added to the Davis Trust to fund educational work in the parish of Hackney, a purpose that is maintained with Davis descendants remaining as trustees.[^8] </p>\n\n<p>The school did find a use similar to that proposed by Hilton, though decidedly not Anglican, when it reopened in 1940 as the Hindustan Community House. Kundan Lal Jalie (1909–1983), a former Bombay stockbroker who was studying economics in London, had established this institution in 1937. Moved by the destitution of Bengali sailors in Whitechapel he opened a community centre in a two-room basement, location unknown. In 1938 Jalie met and married Mary Ingham (1909–1992), a Lancashire schoolteacher who had retrained as a nurse in Aldgate and spent time in India in the mid-1930s as an associate of Mohandas Gandhi before returning to London. Henceforth she was known as Shanta Devi, sometimes Shantabehn. A donation of £11,000 from a Cambridge student called Thomas Tufton (probably Thomas Sackville Tufton, later Baron Hothfield, 1916–1986), inspired by a talk Jalie gave at a Peace Pledge Union meeting, enabled the Jalies to buy the disused Gower’s Walk school in 1939. Building work to the designs of Farebrother and Ellis, surveyors, adapted the schoolrooms, with the Jalies occupying the former schoolteacher’s house. The second floor of the boys’ school and first and second floors of the girls’ school were repurposed as dormitories, the boys’ classroom kept for teaching use, with a dining room beneath and kitchens adjoining on the ground floor of the former girls’ school. A single-storey extension to Goodman Street (as Rupert Street had become) housed a surgery and waiting room for consultations with Indian doctors working on a voluntary basis. Authorities were suspicious that the house was a locus for ‘Communism and anti-British propaganda’, but its purposes seem to have been simple social welfare, offering cheap lodging and meals, the chance to listen to Indian music on a gramophone, to learn English and to be helped to find work. The community house lasted only till about 1943 when bombing damaged the former schoolrooms. The residents were taken to Tilbury and then Coventry to find work, and the Jalies retreated to Kensington and eventually the South Coast.[^9] </p>\n\n<p>The school building was repaired with much of the 1880s applied decoration and the Chantrey bust removed, and taken into use by printers in the early 1950s with a workshop added in the former playground. This use continued till demolition in 1974–5.[^10] </p>\n\n<p>By this time the Co-operative Wholesale Society had swallowed up much of the rest of this area to the north, including the Crown public house, which had been rebuilt again in 1899 for the Royal Chelsea Brewery Ltd. South of the school bombing had destroyed the tenement houses and Trumans recently refitted White Hart. This site was redeveloped in 1961–2 with a four-storey steel-framed printing works (7 Goodman Street), put up to designs by Denis Burniston of Norman Green & Partners, architects. This was a long narrow wedge-plan building on a stock-brick plinth, canted back to the north for better lighting. After the 1970s it was the sole earlier survivor in the area west of Lambeth Street, the Metropolis Press Ltd, latterly part of Premier Press Ltd, remaining as tenants, with the National Westminster Bank’s maintenance department on the ground floor. The building was demolished around 2004 for the Times Square development.[^11] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: William Bradburn, ‘Industrial Work in English Elementary Schools, II: Industrial Work in Schools During the Early Part of the 19th Century’, <em>Manual Training Magazine</em>, 1919, pp. 120–2</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: J. M. D. Meiklejohn, <em>An Old Educational Reformer: Dr Andrew Bell</em>, 1881, pp. 47–8: A. Highmore, <em>Pietas Londinensis : The History, Design, and Present State of the Various Public Charities in and Near London</em>, 1810, pp. 740–7: <em>The Literary Panorama</em>, vol. 10, 1810, pp. 1162–4: Annual Report of the National Society’, 1814: <em>First Report of the Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee of the House of Commons Appointed to Inquire into the Education of the Lower Orders of the Metropolis</em>, 1816, p. 54: <em>Gower’s Walk Free School Annual Report</em>, 1818, pp. 122–4: <em>Reports of the Free School Gower’s Walk Free School</em>, 1833, pp. 122–4, 179–80: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Literary Panorama</em>, p. 1163: Highmore, <em>Londinensis</em>, p. 741: <em>Chambers Miscellany</em>, vol. 7, 1854, pp. 52–4: Alison Yarrington, Irene D. Lieberman, Alex Potts and Malcolm Barker, ‘An Edition of the Ledger of Sir Francis Chantrey RA, at the Royal Academy, 1809–1841’, <em>The Volume of the Walpole Society</em>, vol. 56, 1991–2, pp. 1–343 (141): National Portrait Gallery, NPG316a(31)</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: <em>Reports of the Free School Gower’s Walk Free School</em>, London 1833, p. 190 and <em>passim</em>: <em>Essex Standard</em>, 6 Sept 1861, p. 2: <em>Chelmsford Chronicle</em>, 15 Sept 1865, p. 8</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: <em>The Ragged School Union Magazine</em>, vol. 16, 1864, p. 238: <em>Clerkenwell News</em>, 11 July 1870, p. 4: <em>East London Observer</em>, 28 Feb, p. 7: The National Archives (TNA), IR58/84829/4677: British Library of Political and Economic Sciences, BOOTH/B/224: Post Office Directories (POD): Ordnance Survey (OS) map 1913: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), L/THL/D/2/30/70</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>The Builder</em>, 11 July 1885, p. 54: Church of England Record Centre (CERC), NS/1/7/13692: Ancestry: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), District Surveyors' Returns (DSR): TNA, IR58/84815/3285</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: CERC, NS/1/7/13692</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: <a href=\"https://beta.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-details/?regid=312314&subid=0\">beta.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-details/?regid=312314&subid=0</a></p>\n\n<p>[^9]: <em>The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi</em>, vol. 61, 1975, pp. 209, 374: Martin Green, <em>Gandhi: Voice of a New Age Revolution</em>, 1993, p. 335: Rozina Visram, <em>Asians in Britain: 400 Years of History</em>, 2002, p. 264: Rehana Ahmed and Sumita Mukherjee (eds), <em>South Asian Resistances in Britain</em><em>, 1858–1947</em>, 2012, p. 79: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/70 and 81: DSR: Goad insurance plans, 1942, 1945: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/17/077204; RM22/63: OS 1948: <a href=\"http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/hindustan-community-house\">www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/makingbritain/content/hindustan-community-house</a></p>\n\n<p>[^10]: Goad 1959: POD: THP</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: DSR: POD: THLHLA, Building Control file 22125; L/THL/D/2/30/70; P03431; P03432: LMA, RM22/63: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: Goad, 1887, 1942</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2020-06-05",
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"body": "<p>This single-storey brick building was erected in 1920–1 for the Lep Transport and Depository Co. Ltd as a garage and receiving depot, originally 26 Chamber Street, incorporating space in arches under the railway viaduct. J. S. Campion was the builder. By 1930 the CWS had a lease from the London and North Eastern Railway Company of what was then known as 14–15 Chamber Street and Arch 53/54. The premises continued in use as a CWS garage up to 1968 and have since been adapted to use as a carwash. </p>\n\n<p>Plans in 1987 for a community centre on land to the west came to nothing. The huge Royal Mint Gardens development, begun in 2018, incorporates railway arches further west, the conversion and navigability of which promise a revival of the south side of Chamber Street.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyors Returns; GLC/AR/BR/17/45017; GLC/AR/BR/07/2914: Post Office Directories: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, L/SMB/C/1/3; Building Control file 20896: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n",
"created": "2020-08-04",
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"body": "<p>Stepney Way follows the course of the footpath that linked Whitechapel’s field gate to St Dunstan’s Stepney. It was formerly known as Oxford Street, perhaps in compliment to Brasenose College, which held the advowsons of both Whitechapel and Stepney from 1708. Groups of houses on the street were called Hereford Terrace, Wellington Place, Raven Terrace and Hampshire Place till 1867. The present name was introduced in 1938.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Development this far north on the London Hospital's estate was restricted by the concern attached to preserving air circulation around the hospital, confining building plots to the street’s west and east ends. The south side of the stretch between New Road and Turner Street was built up between 1807 and 1811, when the first leases for completed buildings were granted. Henry Stevens took Nos 12–22, while smaller lots of one or two dwellings went to John Henry Frith, Benjamin Cornish and Hannah Wilson. On the north side, Robert Watson completed four terraced houses at Nos 9–15, while Robert Shearsmith followed with another four at Nos 17–23 in 1815. Nos 1–7 were taken in smaller lots of one or two dwellings between 1814 and 1819.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>The eastern stretch of Stepney Way on the hospital estate was developed in the 1820s. The Brewers’ Company leased ground for a row of almshouses that went up in 1825–6 to face St Philip’s Church across open ground. The British Oak public house, next door to the east on the south side of Stepney Way at No. 28, was taken on a building lease by Elizabeth Humphreys in 1828. Adjoining ground for a row of twelve houses had gone to John Symonds, John Jacobs, James Hellyer and Spencer Lambert between 1823 and 1826. These stood opposite two rows of eight houses between East Mount Street and Raven Street, also erected in the 1820s. The block east of Milward Street was sold in 1875 to the East London Railway Company, which demolished some houses for its railway cutting. The Oxford Arms occupied No. 43 at the corner of Milward Street. </p>\n\n<p>From the 1890s the hospital acquired sites along Stepney Way for the rebuilding programme overseen by Rowland Plumbe (see p.xx). Only Nos 2–26 (south side west) and 37–49 (north side east) survived into the 1960s. No. 20 was the home of Isaac Sharp (1879–1965), a trade-union secretary and local councillor, and Martha, née Belinsky (1881–1967), both Russian Jewish immigrants. Their son, Eric Sharp (1916–1994), was born here. His business career, ranging from Monsanto Ltd to Cable and Wireless, led to a peerage as Baron Sharp of Grimsdyke under Margaret Thatcher.[^3] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: British Library, Crace Maps, pf 6/189, Edward Langley and William Belch, <em>New Map of London</em>, 1812</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Barts Health Archives, RLHLH/S/1/3</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography</em></p>\n",
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"body": "<p>Memories of Eric Shorter, b. 1936</p>\n\n<p>I walked Hooper Street often, either taking left or right from Gower's Walk. Left was easy, a right at the next corner went down Back Church Lane to Cable street, and was one way to our shops. The other way went past the famous Pump House and then dog-legged around to meet with Leman Street and then on to Cable Street. But first one had to pass under a wide bridge in Hooper Street, this holding up the spur and sidings from the main line into Fenchurch Street, with the rails then entering the first-floor goods platforms of the Tilbury Warehouse. Under the bridge on both sides were large wooden doors entering into dark caverns, and there were two rail lines across Hooper Street itself. There was other rail storage, served from above by a single-truck hydraulic lift from the Tilbury. As a child I regularly saw trucks being hauled by capstan across the road from one dark cavern to another. An operator would deftly wind a wagon rope around a moving capstan and the truck would move. As appropriate the operator would remove the rope from the capstan with a lasso-ing like motion, and the truck would move on its own at a slow pace. I would have given a week’s pocket money to look inside these dark places, but while such transfers were in progress, all traffic of all kinds was prevented from being under the Hooper Street bridge.</p>\n\n<p>Not long back, in about 2010, I visited Hooper Street again. The bridge has gone, as have all railway workings and storage and the Tilbury itself. But, I walked along the gutter on the northern side, and at a point where the road surface had worn thin, saw the unmistakable glint of a very short piece of bullhead rail pointing across Hooper street. The track was still there, but had been overlaid with Tarmac. My heart sang.</p>\n",
"created": "2016-11-01",
"last_edited": "2021-05-10"
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{
"id": 168,
"title": "The discomfort of cycling over cobbles in the 1940s",
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"body": "<p>Memories of Eric Shorter, b. 1936</p>\n\n<p>Early on my parents bought me a sit-up-and-beg bike. When I wore that out, they bought me a second-hand road racing machine, so light I could just about lift it with one finger. It had large-diameter thin wheels and a Brooks B17 saddle – not far from being just a strip of leather. It had one fixed high gear. Fine, but it wasn’t designed for the cobbles of Gower's Walk or London. At one time I could recognise individual stones in a set of cobbles outside our front door, and knew what to avoid. But I had to ride daily, else my bum would suffer. If for any reason I didn’t ride for a week or two then when I did, I knew I would have to renegotiate the pain barrier of ’hardening the bum for the road’.</p>\n",
"created": "2016-11-01",
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"title": "A narrow escape at the old 49 Gower's Walk in the 1940s",
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"body": "<p>Memories of Eric Shorter, b. 1936</p>\n\n<p>Ours was the top-floor flat, with interesting storage places beneath the sloping roof. The floors were wooden, with much woodworm that we treated regularly. There were no carpets, though my mum made some by sewing small folded strips of material offcuts on to hessian backing. When first there, I was young and had a three-wheeled kiddies' tricycle, that I used to ride around. The noise that this made on the wooden boards annoyed the people in the flat below, and I was ‘told off’.</p>\n\n<p>I also nearly killed myself at a young age. To me at one stage my trike was a fire engine, and a fire engine has to have a hose and somewhere to get water. Improvisation is a great thing. A section of old rope was the hose, and I tied one end of it to a length of electric cable I found lying around with a plug on the end and bare wires on the other.. I plugged the cable into a wall socket in our lounge. I remember right now finding my mum and saying that the cable had ‘bitten me’. I had had a narrow escape.</p>\n",
"created": "2016-11-01",
"last_edited": "2020-06-05"
},
{
"id": 175,
"title": "The flats at the old 49 Gower's Walk, 1940s",
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"id": 72,
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"body": "<p>Memories of Eric Shorter, b. 1936</p>\n\n<p>Examination of Ordnance Survey maps from the 1950s show a structure marked with a cross where 49 Gower's Walk is now. That is standard OS symbolism for marking a through-way with buildings above. The buildings above were two flats, one occupied by a Jewish family and the top one occupied by my father etc. The two flats were above an exit from Faircloughs, but were rarely used while we were there. The only use that I recall is for vast deliveries of coke for heating the Faircloughs buildings. The pile of coke came up to the bottom of the first floor. Both flats were coal-fire heated, and for our top flat, the coalman had to lug bags of coal up several flights of stairs, and the only place that we could store coal was in a small room between back and front bedrooms. The flat always smelled of coal.</p>\n\n<p>As at 2010 or thereabouts, from a vantage point between Gower's Walk and Back Church Lane, it was possible to see the remains of no 48. I have a private photograph which shows marks on the northern wall of the soap factory at No 48 where the eaves of my bedroom butted up to it. I slept there.</p>\n",
"created": "2016-11-01",
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{
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"title": "Faircloughs yards and the east side of Gower's Walk in the early 1950s",
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"body": "<p>Memories of Eric Shorter, b. 1936</p>\n\n<p>As I walked it, ran it, cycled it, the Gower's Walk that I knew in the early 1950s was structured as I now describe. It runs roughly north/south and was cobbled throughout. The eastern side of Gower's Walk consisted roughly of three parts.</p>\n\n<p>The top third, right up to Commercial Road, was ‘commercial’ and belonged to Faircloughs, the meat transporters. Mostly there were very tall brick walls, that had Fairclough loading/garage bays behind them, but in the middle of these was an entrance to the Fairclough Yards [on the site of 52 and 53 Gower's Walk], with a long on-high narrow office where arriving vehicles could be ‘clocked in’. There was also another wooden-doored exit/entry to Fairclough yards/garages, above which were two occupied flats, at no 49. Next door was no 48, a soap factory, and I believe that beyond that were the uninhabited remains of defunct dwellings at 47 and 46. No 46 was, I think, on the corner of Gower's Walk and Webb's Place before that was fenced off. At the very top of Gower's Walk was the side of a commercial building whose address was 52 Commercial Road, but it features in my memories.</p>\n",
"created": "2016-11-02",
"last_edited": "2020-06-05"
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"title": "Entrance to Fairclough's yards on site of 52 and 53 Gower's Walk, 1950s",
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"body": "<p>Memories of Eric Shorter, b. 1936</p>\n\n<p>As I walked it, ran it, cycled it, the Gower's Walk that I knew in the early 1950s was structured as I now describe. It runs roughly north/south and was cobbled throughout. The eastern side of Gower's Walk consisted roughly of three parts.</p>\n\n<p>The top third, right up to Commercial Road, was ‘commercial’ and belonged to Faircloughs, the meat transporters. Mostly there were very tall brick walls, that had Fairclough loading/garage bays behind them, but in the middle of these was an entrance to the Fairclough yards [on the site of 52 and 53 Gower's Walk], with a long on-high narrow office where arriving vehicles could be ‘clocked in’. </p>\n",
"created": "2016-11-02",
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