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"title": "72–86 Alie Street",
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"body": "<p>Sir Stephen Evance held a 120ft frontage on the south side of Alie Street between Rupert Street and Lambeth Street from 1686, having acquired John Hooper’s Leman estate leases of 1682. Sir Caesar Child, Evance’s legatee in 1712, extended the lease of 1682 in 1722 after he resolved his inheritance. That seems to have led to the development of this Alie Street holding. It had been built up by 1733 with eight houses, later Nos 72–86. Though comparatively narrow with three windows squeezed into 15ft fronts, these houses were substantial, two rooms deep and of three storeys and attics over area-lit basements, their doors with projecting hoods on carved brackets. Child’s son-in-law, Jonathan Collet, who, like Evance, was a director of the Royal African Company, renewed leases in 1744 and the row formed part of Leman estate property acquired by Edward Hawkins in 1779 from John Newnham’s trustees.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>The terrace at 72–86 Alie Street was popular with naval men. A Capt. Colebatch was in the westernmost house by 1733, succeeded from 1756 by Capt. Charles Robinson (d. 1781). Capt. Purser Dowers (1706–77), a shipwright’s son from a family of Dutch origin, lived in some style in one of the more easterly houses from 1756, with his ‘housekeeper’ Elizabeth Curtis to whom he left a substantial legacy and the well-appointed contents of the house, including silver, porcelain and two four-poster beds. Four of the row’s houses were destroyed in the Second World War, the other four stood till 1960.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: East Sussex Record Office, SAS/AB/1098: London Metropolitan Archives, Land Tax returns (LT): The National Archives (TNA), C11/49/29; IR58/84831/4845–52</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: LT: Ancestry: TNA, PROB11/1032/292</p>\n",
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"title": "Whitechapel Road and the market in 1975",
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"body": "<p>A digitised colour slide of the market in 1975 from the Tower Hamlets Archives collection:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/793852220794146816\">https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/793852220794146816</a></p>\n",
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"title": "Memories of working at St George’s German Lutheran Church",
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"body": "<p><em>Contribution by Steve Pilcher.</em></p>\n\n<p>I had the pleasure and privilege to work as Deputy Director in the Historic Chapels Trust’s office at St George’s German Lutheran Church from 2004 to 2016. </p>\n\n<p>Walking down from Aldgate East tube station, amongst the hubbub of 21st century life and rapid change on nearby building sites, St George’s is an oasis of calm. Stepping through the door, you instantly realise you have, in effect, stepped back into a ‘time warp’. The interior has changed little in over 250 years. The wooden box pews fill the church and lead the eye to the pulpit with the Royal coat of arms perched above, a rarity in a non-conformist place of worship.</p>\n\n<p>The Historic Chapels Trust oversaw the restoration of the church, at a cost of £866,000, the work was completed in 2004. One of my first jobs was to help organise the opening ceremony, where the Duke of Gloucester was the guest of honour. Inevitably this involved me opening up early for a visit by ‘Special Branch’ and a top to bottom search of the church with sniffer dogs. </p>\n\n<p>My role when working in the office at the church involved liaising with architects, builders and volunteers at the other 19 buildings in HCT’s care to help co-ordinate the maintenance and upkeep of the buildings and encourage events to take place. One of the joys of working at St George’s was making time to talk to visitors and learn about their interest in the church. Sometimes visitors would have travelled from as far away as the USA etc. One particular gentleman regularly visited every two to three years from Australia – as one of his ancestors had been married in the church in the 19thcentury and his name was on the benefaction boards. </p>\n\n<p>The church stands witness to the wisdom and courage of the local east London German community who in the 1930’s supported the then pastor, Julius Rieger, to help people who were fleeing persecution in the post 1933 Nazi controlled Germany. One day the son of Pastor Busing paid a visit. Pastor Busing had ‘spoken out’ against Hitler and needed to leave Germany. Julius Rieger had offered him the post of Curate at St George’s in the late 1930’s so that Busing and his fiancee (who was half Jewish) could find a safe haven from persecution in Nazi Germany. Pastor Busing had emigrated to Canada after WWII and his son had come over from Canada to retrace his father’s footsteps and left a copy of a book, written by his mother, detailing the escape to London in the 1930’s and the help given to her and her husband by Pastor Rieger and the congregation. St George’s also had a connection to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian and scholar who is commemorated in a statue above the entrance door at Westminster Abbey. Bonhoeffer had been a pastor at St Paul’s church in nearby Goulston Street between 1933-35 and he and Rieger had worked together in the project to help people fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany. </p>\n\n<p>Work in the office at St George’s could have its interesting and amusing episodes, especially from a practical point of view. Back in 2011 we found ourselves beset by some embarrassing problems with the drainage system. After a heavy downpour we found that the kitchen area was getting flooded by the drains ‘backing up’ into the small rear courtyard. On one particular occasion, I and another colleague ended up forming a ‘ human bucket chain’ through the church, to bale out water from the rear yard, to avoid it flooding into the church. After months of ‘badgering’ Thames Water, they finally investigated the problem and to our surprise and horror it was established that another utility company, when changing their pipework in front of the church, had severed the waste water pipe and not reconnected it. Thames Water had to close the street for nearly a week and dug a large hole in order to reconnect. The moral of this tale is always to watch what is going on in any holes being dug outside your property and ask what is going on!</p>\n\n<p>The church was taken on by the Historic Chapels Trust as unfortunately the congregation had declined in number to around 20 people by the 1990’s and it was not longer economically viable as a congregation and no other congregation wanted to use the church due to the inflexible layout of the fixed wooden box pews that are such an important part of the church’s history and character. HCT have been supported by an active group of local friends, led by Sigrun Shahin, a member of the former congregation. The local friends group have since 2004 organised an interesting programme of talks, concerts and exhibitions – the highlight for me being the annual Christmas Carols concert – which has over the years attracted up to 100 people to the building and the event has always ended with a carol in German – in tribute to all those from a German background who had worshipped at the church. I always found it particularly moving when it ended with a rendition of ‘Stille nacht’. </p>\n",
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"body": "<p>St George’s German Lutheran Church on the north side of what was Little Alie Street is the oldest surviving German church in Britain. It opened in 1763, and has changed remarkably little since. As has been said, ‘the inside keeps the feeling of the eighteenth century in a way that few English churches do’.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>German immigration to London, much of it by Protestant refugees fleeing religious persecution, had been significant in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and there were several German churches in London by 1700.[^2] Through the first half of the eighteenth century membership of London’s German Lutheran churches doubled to about 4,000. Some of this increase can be attributed to the continuing immigration of those seeking religious asylum, and the arrival of the Hanoverian Court had an additional impact. However, economic migration was the main basis for the establishment of a German settlement in Whitechapel. Much of the refining of Caribbean sugar imports in London had been in German hands from its introduction in the mid seventeenth century, expertise in processes previously established in the Hanseatic towns being deployed to build up the sugar-baking industry that was substantially based in Whitechapel. By the 1760s there were numerous sugarhouses in the vicinity of Alie Street. Immigrant German sugar merchants, craftsmen and labourers held on to the secrets of their trade, giving it continuity and concentration in a district remote from existing German churches in the City and Westminster. </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Foundation and construction of the church</em></p>\n\n<p>The lease of the Alie Street site was purchased for £500 on 9 September 1762 and the new church was consecrated on 19 May 1763. The principal founder was Dietrich Beckmann, a wealthy sugar refiner, who gave £650, much the largest single benefaction towards the total of <em>£</em>1,802 10 9 that was raised for purchasing the lease and building the church. Beckmann (<em>c.</em>1702–1766) was the uncle of the first pastor, Dr Gustav Anton Wachsel (<em>c.</em>1737–1799). The early congregation was essentially made up of the area’s German sugar bakers and their families, alongside some refugees escaping war in the German provinces.[^3] </p>\n\n<p>Joel Johnson built the church. He was paid <em>£</em>1,132 in 1763, which with the lease accounted for virtually all the funds then raised. Johnson (1720–1799) was a successful local carpenter who had made himself a contracting builder with a large workshop at Gower’s Yard. He had probably been responsible for the Presbyterian Chapel of 1746–7 at the west end of Great Alie Street. At the same time he worked with Isaac Ware on the London Infirmary on Prescot Street, and in the late 1750s he was involved in the building of the London Hospital to Boulton Mainwaring’s designs. He was also said, in an obituary that credited him with many chapels, to have been the architect of the church of St John, Wapping, in 1756, a building with striking similarities to St George’s. However, it is possible that there too he was working to Mainwaring’s designs. Indeed, Johnson himself related that he began ‘to strike into the business of an architect’ only in 1762. The absence of any record of payment to any other surveyor or architect at St George’s leads to the surmise that this is what he was doing for Alie Street’s German church. It cannot, however, be ruled out that Johnson was working under another designer, perhaps Mainwaring again.[^4] </p>\n\n<p>Johnson & Co. were paid another <em>£</em>494 3<em>s.</em> in 1764–5, which probably related to an early extension of the church and the addition of the vestry block. Seams in the brickwork of the east and west walls show that the church was initially intended to be one bay shorter, and that during construction it was enlarged to the north. In keeping with this vaults do not extend under the north end of the church. It is also evident that the extension came during rather than either before or after the fitting out of the interior. Already in May 1763, when the church was consecrated, Thomas Johnson was being paid for a marble slab, probably the floor of the altar dais that survives, and a mahogany frame to a communion table. The box pews, which also survive, were evidently in by February 1764, when Errick Kneller was paid for painting 159 numbers on them. Kneller was also paid for painting two boards, certainly those still in place bearing the Ten Commandments in German. Kneller, not evidently related to Sir Godfrey (Gottfried) Kneller, the German-born Court painter, was apprenticed in London to Gerald Strong and granted his freedom through the Painter-Stainers’ Company in 1732. Others who received payments in 1764 included Paul Morthurst, a carpenter and joiner, Thomas Palmer, a plasterer, and Sanders Olliver, a mason.[^5] All the building tradesmen, except perhaps Kneller, appear to have been English. Accordingly, in its original architectural forms and constructional details, both outside and in, the church is not evidently German. The timing of the payments suggests that the main body of the church went up in 1762–3, the north extension following in 1763–4, with the two-storey vestry block to the north-east being added in 1765–6, all complete by 21 August 1766, which date appears on the brick apron of a first-floor vestry-block window, along with the names of vestrymen, Beckmanns and Wachsels to the fore. This window faces a courtyard that until 1855 was a burial ground, the land immediately east of the church having always pertained to it. </p>\n\n<p>The front of the church to Alie Street has handsome sub-Palladian proportional dignity, even though since 1934 it has lacked its crowning features, a clock that was at the centre of the pediment, a bell turret above, and a large weathervane in the shape of St George and the dragon. In its original form this elevation bears out a link with St John Wapping. The two uppermost stages of the former turret were smaller versions of the upper stages at Wapping, and both churches had identical eyebrow cornices over their clocks. The central lunette below may once have been glazed, though an organ soon blocked it. Its present lettering, ‘Deutsche Lutherische St Georg’s Kirche Begründet 1762’ in Gothic script, is a renewal of an earlier inscription. The other elevations of St George’s are plain. East of the church on Alie Street was Wachsel’s substantial three-storey pastor’s house, replaced by a school building in 1877. </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Church interior</em></p>\n\n<p>Little has been taken away from the interior of the church that was built in the 1760s. The furnishings are remarkably unchanged. Box pews still fill the floor, and the galleries that stand on eight Tuscan timber columns still line three sides of the building. With a simple Protestant layout, the most has been made of limited space. There is no central aisle, and more of the building’s width is galleried than is not. </p>\n\n<p>Past this density the eye is drawn to the north (liturgically east) wall and its essentially original ensemble of pulpit, commandment boards and royal arms. The central pulpit stands above and immediately behind a railed altar, in an arrangement that is typically Lutheran. To emphasise the interdependent centrality of preaching and sacrament in its worship Lutheranism tended to favour bringing the altar and the pulpit as close together as possible, often with the altar raised on a dais, as it is here.[^6] The pulpit, raised to allow the pastor to address the galleries as directly as the rest of the congregation, comprises a shaped desk with a backboard and a large tented canopy or tester, atop which there flies a dove. It has always been approached by the stairs to its east, but to start with it would have seemed less hemmed in, apparently floating above the altar against the panelled back wall. The altar dais was originally relatively small, three steps up, with a black-and-white pattern marble floor. Originally the turned-baluster communion rails were on the outer edge of a large second step that was wide enough for the pastor to walk round.</p>\n\n<p>In a prominent position above the pulpit are the splendid gilt Royal Arms of King George III, in the form that they took up to 1801, presumably work of the 1760s. Unique in a German church in England, these arms seem to be a clear assertion of loyalty to the Crown on the part of Whitechapel’s German community. However, it should be noted not only that King George was the Elector of Hanover, but also that, however genuine and general loyalty might have been, there was opposition from a majority of the congregation to Beckmann and Wachsel’s preference for use of the English language. Through these Arms the founder and pastor may have been making a point. Flanking the tester are the sumptuously framed commandment boards, their gilt texts in German, exquisitely lettered by Kneller in 1763–4. </p>\n\n<p>The entrance vestibules both retain original staircases, with closed strings and turned column-on-vase balusters, solid joinery if somewhat old-fashioned in the 1760s. A blocked doorway under the south-east staircase originally led directly into the pastor’s house. Panelling along the side walls, which breaks before the north bay, in line with external seams in the brickwork, and steps down at the same point in the galleries, indicate the late change of plan that extended the church northwards in 1763–4. Above a restored ceiling there is a timber king-post truss roof that is essentially that built in the 1760s. The roof space also retains fittings for the support of a central chandelier, long gone and of which no depictions are known. The first-floor committee room in the vestry block retains its eighteenth-century plain panelled walls, cornice and fireplace surround.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Late Georgian conflicts and alterations</em></p>\n\n<p>Beckmann died in 1766, leaving the church a further <em>£</em>500. On the north wall near the reader’s stairs there is a commemorative tablet in English, to him, his sons and his wife, and there is also a floor slab in front of the sanctuary; he is said to have been buried under the communion table. Despite having been enlarged during construction the church was soon found to be too small to meet early demand. There was overcrowding in 1768, many worshippers being forced to stand at the back. Another legacy of Beckmann’s was disagreement between his nephew, Wachsel, and another nephew, Nicholas Beckmann, who had the support of other vestrymen. This dispute about authority led to a violent confrontation in the church on 3 December 1767. Wachsel saw his opponents off, but from 1770 found himself embroiled in a wider and long-lasting <em>Parteienkrieg</em>, as it was called, that extended to liturgy and the nature of music in the church, as well as to the question of whether services should be held in English or in German. In spite of his theological roots in German Pietism, which had moved away from complex church music, Wachsel introduced hymns, first in German then in English, and then sermons in English. Next he discharged a German choir and introduced ‘violins, trumpets, bassoons, and kettledrums’. The musical performances were said to have been accompanied by the eating of ‘Apples, Oranges, Nuts etc as in a Theatre’. The church allegedly ‘became a place of Assignation for persons of all descriptions a receptacle for Pickpockets and obtained the name of the Saint George Playhouse Goodman’s Fields’.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>Amid fights and death threats a congregation that had been more than 400 had fallen to 130 by 1777. Despite an overwhelming vote for his dismissal in 1778 Wachsel held on to his post by going to law. Acrimony rumbled on. Having desisted for a time, Wachsel reintroduced music in 1786. At this point he was accused of violently assaulting the bellows blower. Another judicial intervention in 1789 ruled that Wachsel had misused the building, but arguments about the use of English continued up until his death in 1799.[^8] Wachsel has a humble plaque on the east wall, its inscription in English. Early alterations to the fittings at the north end of the church may have to do with this power struggle. In 1784 a payment was made towards ‘a Cloth Communion Table’,[^9] seemingly identifiable as the canvas reredos, a surprising survival, that is gilded with vine leaves and the text of John 14.6, in German within a laurel wreath. At some point after this reredos was installed and before 1802, possibly in the late 1790s, the already small railed sanctuary was made smaller. The communion rails were moved marginally in on all three sides, and the dais was enlarged with a timber extension to meet the rails. This brought communicants closer to the altar, but accommodated fewer. This might be explained through Pietism, which would have stressed preaching and personal devotion while de-emphasising weekly communion, or it might have been simple pragmatism. It may be relevant that in 1796 <em>£</em>55 2<em>s.</em> 6<em>d.</em> was spent on ‘repairing and fitting up the chapel, parsonage and other appurtenances’.[^10] </p>\n\n<p>At the other end of the church there were two small curved-front upper galleries, possibly for children or a children’s choir, on columns to either side of a small organ. It is possible that these were always present, but given the blocked lunette it is likely that they were an early change, perhaps from the late 1760s when there was great demand for seating, or from 1778–9 when small sums were spent repairing the church. The account of the <em>Parteienkrieg</em> indicates that there was an organ by 1786. An organ was explicitly present in 1802 when reader’s and clerk’s desks were fixed immediately west of the pulpit. The reader’s desk, at least, was being relocated. Its previous mobility is evident in the survival of casters on the bases of its corner posts.[^11]</p>\n\n<p>Benefaction boards at the south end of each outer row of pews commemorate many gifts to the church, including a <em>£</em>50 donation from King Frederick William IV of Prussia in 1842. Through the long pastorate of Wachsel’s successor, the Rev. Dr Christian E. A. Schwabe, from 1799 to 1843, during which services were in German, the German community in Whitechapel continued to grow, and other German churches were established near by. A German Catholic church with its origins in Wapping in 1808 moved to its present location on Mulberry Street and Adler Street in 1861 where the Church of St Boniface continues. St Paul’s German Protestant Reformed Church opened on Hooper Square in 1819. This congregation, its church rebuilt on Goulston Street in 1887 and destroyed in 1941, was thereafter merged into that of St George’s. </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Restoration of the church in 1855</em></p>\n\n<p>A framed tablet under St George’s west gallery, put up in 1856 and made by a Mr Cook for <em>£</em>5 14<em>s.</em>, has a painted inscription that explains in German changes that had then taken place. Translated it relates: ‘1 SAM 7.12/ Hitherto hath the Lord helped us/In the year 1855/through voluntary contributions from the members of this parish and German and English friends the sum of <em>£</em>2465 18<em>s.</em> was collected in a few weeks and administered by John Davis as Treasurer. With this sum the church was completely renovated and beautified, the foundations for the capital assets of the parish lain, and the continuance of this place secured for many years.’ This happened under the leadership of Dr Louis Cappel (1817–1882), pastor from 1843 to 1882, who had come from Worms and who was of Huguenot descent.</p>\n\n<p>The restoration of 1855 arose from the renewal of a sixty-one-year lease that had been acquired in 1802. Successful fund-raising was broadly based, seemingly drawing primarily on Whitechapel’s still strong sugar-baking German community. It remained the case that ‘the Elders and Wardens of the Church consist almost exclusively of the Boilers, Engineers and superior workers in the Sugar Refineries’. Mid nineteenth-century attendances were said to be about 400 to 500, of which about 250 paid pew rents. A sub-committee of five led by Cappel managed the restoration; three of the others – Martin Brünjes, William Prieggen and Claus Bohling – were local sugar refiners. The church was closed for the building works during July and August 1855. Costs escalated and legal difficulties held up renewal of the lease; it was September 1856 before the congregation was asked ‘to bear testimony to the present condition of the building and the propriety of its decoration’.[^12]</p>\n\n<p>The works had been supervised by J. Cumber, who was also surveyor to the Phoenix Fire Office,and <em>£</em>540 was paid to the builders, William Hill and J. Keddell. In all <em>£</em>771 was spent on the restoration of the church, which included complete refenestration and redecoration.[^13] </p>\n\n<p>Cast-iron framed side-wall and south gallery windows with red and blue margin glazing replaced original leaded-light windows. In addition James Powell & Sons of Whitefriars were paid <em>£</em>53 for two stained-glass windows that were designed by George Rees. These were a Crucifixion and an Ascension that originally flanked the commandment boards at the north end of the church. In 1912 the Ascension was destroyed and the Crucifixion was moved to the south wall, reorganised to fit into a three-light opening. There it retains borders of stamped jewel work that are the first recorded instance of a technique that became a Powell speciality.[^14] </p>\n\n<p>The redecoration of 1855 included the marbling of the columns, the graining and re-numbering of the pews, replacement of some top rails in mahogany, the removal of lamp or sconce holders (leaving mortices that can be seen to have been filled), and the removal of latch and lock plates. A large pew to the north-west was divided, cut down in height, cut back and carefully repaired so as to leave little trace of alteration. The enduring numbering of the pews and the survival of the church archives make it possible to trace who sat where in the church. The clerk’s desk was removed, its lectern being shifted to the east side, seemingly for the sake of visual symmetry. The stairs to the reader’s desk thus had to be remade, and it appears that the cheek-pieces and balustrade of those leading to the pulpit were also similarly remade. On the south-west gallery staircase Greek-key-pattern linoleum may also survive from 1855 as may self-closing mechanisms on the vestibule doors leading into the church. Finally, the vestry block’s winder staircase, previously timber framed, was enclosed in brick.[^15] </p>\n\n<p>Given the extent and considerable expense of this restoration it is notable that the interior was not more substantially altered, particularly when the generally radical and doctrinaire character of mid nineteenth-century English church restorations is recalled. Box-pew seating was reviled by the contemporary Anglo-Catholic revival, but there is no reason to suppose ecclesiological influence in a German Lutheran church. Indeed, there was no Catholic revival in Lutheranism until the early twentieth century, and iconoclastic attitudes persisted through the nineteenth century.[^16] </p>\n\n<p>Lutheranism aside, conservatism in church liturgy and architecture is entirely to be expected in an enclosed immigrant group like the Whitechapel German community. After the late eighteenth-century <em>Parteienkrieg</em> over the introduction of Anglican style worship the conservatism of the 1850s perhaps reflected a conscious desire to steer away from any kind of liturgical innovation, especially any that might be connected to Anglicanism. </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>The church from 1855 to 1930</em></p>\n\n<p>There was little physical change to the church through the rest of the nineteenth century. The organ in the south gallery was replaced in 1885–6, the new instrument also displacing the upper galleries in works supervised by E. A. Gruning, the German architect of the church’s new schools (see below). Made by E. F. Walcker, then of Ludwigsburg, for <em>£</em>353, this organ survives, in an enlarged form following repairs carried out by the same firm in 1937. It was restored by Bishop & Son in 2003–4.[^17] </p>\n\n<p>The giving up of the upper galleries and the earlier removal of a pew behind the southernmost columns suggest declining attendances in the late nineteenth century. From the 1860s the local sugar industry saw dramatic decline, and many of those who could afford to do so moved away from Whitechapel. However, London’s German population as a whole almost doubled in the half century to 1911. Whitechapel’s German residents were now occupied across a range of trades. From 1891 to 1914 Pastor Georg Mätzold (1862–1930) rebuilt the congregation and in the years up to 1914 St George’s was said to be the most active German parish in Britain, with average congregations of about 130.[^18] </p>\n\n<p>Repairs undertaken in 1910 under the supervision of Frederick Rings, another German architect, by G. J. Howick, a Catford builder, included the replacement of the vestry windows with ‘“Stumpfs” Reform Sash Windows’, made to the patented designs of Abdey, Hasserodt and Co., ‘builders of portable houses’.[^19] In 1912 a fire in the building adjoining to the north led to the replacement of the Powell windows with stained glass by Heaton, Butler and Bayne, again depicting the Crucifixion and Ascension. Other acquisitions from this period were a silver orb with an engraving of the façade of the church, a brass cross and candlesticks for the altar, probably designed by Alexander Koch (1848–1911). Kaiser Wilhelm II donated a bible in 1913.[^20] </p>\n\n<p>The First World War was a difficult time for Whitechapel’s <em>Deutsche Kolonie</em>. Many of the congregation’s members returned to Germany in 1914, and others were interned. Mätzold stayed and continued services in the church, also taking on a pastoral role in internment camps. Continuity broke down in 1917 when the school was forced to close and Mätzold was expelled from the country. He was unable to return until 1920, from which date he quietly held together a much-diminished congregation until his death in 1930.[^21] </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>The church after 1930</em></p>\n\n<p>Part of Mätzold’s caution through the insecure 1920s had been the deferral of necessary maintenance. His successor, Dr Julius Rieger, from Berlin, was obliged to undertake an extensive programme of repair work in 1931, moving gradually as funds became available. Rieger took an early opportunity to pay tribute to his predecessor. The south end of the church under the gallery was re-organised in 1932 to create a committee room that was inaugurated and remains known as the <em>Mätzoldzimmer</em>. The formation of this room involved the loss of two large pews and circulation space as the panelling on the inner sides of the two entrance passages was extended northwards as far as the southern pair of columns. The eighteenth-century panelled partition that encloses the north side of the committee room has been turned around to present its fair raised-and-fielded face to the room rather than to the church. Pews on the other side of the columns were taken out, to create a narrow passage between the committee room and the remaining pews. Another more southerly pew had already been removed.[^22] </p>\n\n<p>In 1934 W. Horace Chapman, architect, conducted investigations of the roof and turret that discovered rot and woodworm. On the instructions of F. W. Charles Barker, Whitechapel’s District Surveyor, the bell turret and the coved ceiling were dismantled by J. Jennings & Son Ltd.[^23] </p>\n\n<p>By this time Rieger had more to worry about than woodworm. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 presented expatriate Germans with dilemmas. Rieger was an associate of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945), a young but eminent theologian and opponent of National Socialism, who served from 1933 to 1935 in London as pastor to German congregations in St Paul, Goulston Street, and in the German Evangelical Church in Sydenham. Rieger’s parish became a relief centre, providing a base for advice and shelter for German and Jewish refugees, particularly children, also sending off references for travel to England. During the Second World War German churches in Britain were not generally persecuted as they had been in 1914–18. It is nonetheless notable that at St George’s services continued uninterrupted right through the war. The church escaped significant bomb damage and was kept full into the 1950s, London’s German community having then been reinforced by a new wave of refugees. Rieger’s successor in 1953 was Pastor Eberhard Bethge, Bonhoeffer’s student, friend and biographer. His mentor had been hanged in April 1945 at Flossenburg concentration camp.</p>\n\n<p>Attendance at St George’s declined in the later decades of the twentieth century. In 1970 plans were drawn up by J. Antony Lewis, architect, proposing a major re-ordering that would have removed the pews and all but the west gallery, but this was not carried through. In 1996, when there were only about twenty left attending regularly, Pastor Volkmar Latossek led the congregation into a merger with that of St Mary’s German Lutheran Church, Bloomsbury.[^24] </p>\n\n<p>St George’s Church was facing an insecure future. The Historic Chapels Trust, established in 1993 to protect disused non-Anglican places of worship, took it into care in 1996, and an extensive restoration programme costing <em>£</em>866,000 was carried out in 2003–4. This was supported by grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund, English Heritage, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, St Paul’s German Evangelical Reformed Church Trust, and other private donations. Thomas Ford & Partners (Daniel Golberg and Brian Lofthouse) were the architects, and the building contractors were Kingswood Construction. The work included the reinstatement of a coved ceiling, like that removed in 1934. Reinstatement of the tower was also considered, but grant support for that was not forthcoming.[^25] </p>\n\n<p>The Historic Chapels Trust used the vestry as an office from 2005 and established a local committee for St George’s that arranged concerts, lectures and other activities in the building. The former congregation has had leave to use the church for occasional services of worship. Since 2018 the Churches Conservation Trust has supported the Historic Chapel Trust’s continuance.[^26]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Elizabeth and Wayland Young, <em>Old London Churches</em>, 1956, p.295. This account is closely derived from Peter Guillery, ‘St George’s German Lutheran Church, Whitechapel’,<em> Georgian Group Journal</em>, vol.14, 2004, pp.89–103, which was based on an account of the church prepared by English Heritage for the Historic Chapels Trust for use as a guide to the building.</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Johann Gottlieb Burckhardt, <em>Kirchen-Geschichte der deutschen Gemeinden in London</em>, 1798: G. J. R. Cienciala, <em>From many nations: A history of Lutheranism in the United Kingdom</em>, 1975</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), TH/8662/3, ff.1-2; TH/8662/56</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Waltham Forest Archives, Acc.10199: THLHLA, TH/8662/3, ff.1-2: H.M. Colvin, <em>A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840</em>, 1995 (3rd edn), p.548</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: THLHLA, TH/8662/3, ff.3–4 and 6: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), CLC/L/PA/MS05668: The National Archives (TNA), PROB11/594/269: Ancestry: J. Douglas Stewart,<em> Sir Godfrey Kneller and the English Baroque Portrait</em>, 1983, pp.60,182</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: Nigel Yates, <em>Buildings, Faith and Worship: The Liturgical Arrangement of Anglican Churches 1600-1900</em>, 1991 (2000 edn), p.27</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: THLHLA, TH/8662/56; TH/8662/3, f.3: TNA, PROB11/921/158: Philip Broadhead, ‘Contesting Authority and Assimilation within Lutheran Churches in Eighteenth-Century London’, <em>London Journal</em>, vol.40/1, 2015, pp.1–20</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: THLHLA, TH/8662/4</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: THLHLA, TH/8662/3, f.26v</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: THLHLA, TH/8662/4; TH/8662/279; TH/8662/244</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: THLHLA, TH 8662/3, ff.20v,21v; TH/8662/241; TH/8662/244</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: THLHLA, TH/8662/7</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: THLHLA, TH/8662/419, items 24 and 27: <em>Architect’s Directory</em>, 1868</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: Historic Chapels Trust files (HCT), report on the stained-glass windows by Dr Michael Kerney</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: THLHLA, TH/8662/419, item 27; TH/8662/244</p>\n\n<p>[^16]: Yates, <em>Buildings, Faith and Worship</em>, p.26</p>\n\n<p>[^17]: THLHLA, TH/8662/34 and 241: HCT, report by and information from John H. Bowles</p>\n\n<p>[^18]: <em>Der Londoner Bote</em>, Sept. 1962, pp.3-9: Panikos Panayi, ‘The Settlement of Germans in Britain during the Nineteenth Century’, www.mawer.clara.net/ppanayi.html</p>\n\n<p>[^19]: THLHLA, TH/8662/9; TH/8662/23, item 12: LMA, District Surveyors Returns (DSR): Post Office Directories</p>\n\n<p>[^20]: THLHLA, TH/8662/23, items 26,34–49: Information from George Little</p>\n\n<p>[^21]: <em>Der Londoner Bote</em>, Sept. 1962, pp.5–15</p>\n\n<p>[^22]: THLHLA, TH/8662/229–30; TH/8662/241 and 244</p>\n\n<p>[^23]: HCT,<em>Deutsche Lutherische St. Georgs-Kirche</em>, fund-raising leaflet, April 1934: DSR</p>\n\n<p>[^24]: THLHLA, TH/8662/231; TH/8662/234: blogs.bl.uk/european/2014/01/-german-parish-life-in-london-and-an-east-end-church-library.html</p>\n\n<p>[^25]: <em>Church Building</em>, May–June 1999, pp.44–5: Jennifer Freeman, Daniel Golberg and Brian Lofthouse, ‘Conserve, Restore, Repair’, <em>Church Building</em>, vol.82, July/Aug. 2003, pp.16–19</p>\n\n<p>[^26]: Information kindly supplied by Steve Pilcher: www.hct.org.uk/articles/historic-chapels-trust-continue-be-supported-churches-conservation-trust</p>\n",
"created": "2020-07-31",
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"body": "<p>Garrick Court, on the corner of Scarborough Street and East Tenter Street, is a mixed-use building, with commercial and parking on the ground floor and ten 3-bedroom houses around a communal courtyard at podium level. It was designed by Davy Smith Architects for Genesis Housing Association as affordable-housing for key workers, and was built in 2006-7. Six of the houses are hung with cedar shingles while the other four have zinc cladding, contrasting with the concrete podium, which is painted rust red. The name refers to the Garrick Theatre, which stood nearby from 1830 to 1881 on land now occupied by Leman Street police station. The site, which previously consisted of 31-39 Scarborough Street and 3-7 East Tenter Street, was combined as a 3-storey office building in 1968. </p>\n",
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"title": "Garrick Court, 31–39 Scarborough Street (with Scarborough Street Synagogue)",
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"body": "<p>Tucked behind eight early Victorian houses at 31–39 Scarborough Street and 3–7 East Tenter Street was Scarborough Street Synagogue. On a typically constricted site, tucked well out of view at the end of a narrow cranked passage, and directly behind Nos 31–33, this synagogue was built in 1872, consecrated in 1873 and possibly enlarged around 1890. The congregation was a successor to the eighteenth-century Gun Yard ‘Polish’ Synagogue. The brick building was orientated east–west, its north wall backing onto the garden of St Mark’s vicarage at 29 St Mark Street. The interior was top-lit, with a ladies’ gallery to accommodate fifty, and spaces for ninety men below. Lewis Solomon assessed it for the Federation of Synagogues as a decent building, if cheap, but amalgamation with Great Alie Street Synagogue in 1923 was partly occasioned by the building’s failure to meet safety and sanitary standards. The disused synagogue remained extant into the 1960s.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>The eight houses and the synagogue were cleared and replaced around 1968 with a three-storey office building that was used by the Department of Health and Social Security, in part at least to receive benefit claimants. In 2004 Sladewick Properties Ltd proposed replacement of this building. An initial scheme for a five-storey building designed by Deborah Parker Architects was withdrawn and followed by a different project from Davy Smith Architects (Stephen Davy and Peter Smith), proposing ten three-bedroom houses over ground-floor commercial and parking space. This was built in 2006–7 as Garrick Court, the name deriving from the Garrick Theatre that had stood in the nineteenth century a short distance to the north on the other side of East Tenter Street. Construction involving Archer-Hoblin Ltd and Rosebank Building Ltd for Paddington Churches Housing Association, later Genesis Housing Association, was as ‘affordable’ housing for key workers. Six of the houses are hung with cedar shingles in echelon array facing East Tenter Street, the other four have zinc cladding to Scarborough Street, all on a concrete podium contrastingly painted rust red.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyors Returns; ACC 2893/133: Ordnance Survey maps (OS): Goad insurance maps: Cecil Roth, ‘The Lesser London Synagogues of the Eighteenth Century’,<em>Miscellanies</em> (Jewish Historical Society of England), vol.3, 1937, pp.1-7</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: OS: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: information kindly supplied by John Spouge, surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/24/detail/#history</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
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"body": "<p>The long row of houses built in the 1790s as Gloucester Terrace was not continuous. From the outset there were industrial premises on the site of Nos 69–75, backing onto Essex (Romford) Street. By 1806 these were maintained by (James) Taylor and Lorkin as a factory for the making of soap for use in sea or hard water, for sale to the navy and other seafarers, to a patent that had been granted to William Everhard Baron Von Doornik who had a factory on Well Street near Wellclose Square. New Road’s soap factory passed through the hands of numerous proprietors and lasted into the 1840s. The front range appears to have been replaced by three houses in the 1830s and New Road’s footpaths had been paved by 1851.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>By 1900 Jewish occupancy and shop use were widespread, and tailoring and other garment-based uses spread, the houses doubling as workshops. Nos 67–75 were replaced by Empire House in 1934, a clothing factory built to Moderne designs by Hume Victor Kerr, architect, following the precedent of Service House (101–107 New Road). Empire House was converted to flats in 2017–18 for Empire House was converted to office–workshops in 2017–18 for Medusa London Ltd, part of the Polish Medusa Group, to designs by Przemo Lukasik and Lukasz Zagala with Susan Walker Associates, for EGF Empire Ltd, a Jersey-based client.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>London Gazette</em>, 6 Sept. 1806, p. 1165: London Metropolitan Archives, Tower Hamlets Commissioners of Sewers ratebooks (THCS): LMA/4673/D/01/002/1810/013; LMA/4673/D/01/002/1811/039: Post Office Directories: Royal London Hospital Library and Archive, RLHLH/S/1/3: Ordnance Survey map, 1873 </p>\n\n<p>[^2]: RLHLH/F/10/3: THCS: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, L/SMW/C/12/1; Buildling Control files 41143, 41176: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>The Royal London Hospital is one of the capital’s largest teaching hospitals, serving a diverse population of 2.6 million in east London. The institution was founded in 1740 as the first charitable infirmary on the east side of London, intended to offer relief to merchant sailors and labourers, and supported largely by voluntary contributions and donations from its foundation until the establishment of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948. The hospital has been an important landmark on the south side of Whitechapel Road since it transferred to this site in 1757, when it was surrounded by open fields. Over the next 250 years the hospital expanded gradually to become a sprawling healthcare complex, due to local population growth and advances in medicine and surgery. Its piecemeal evolution was also a reflection of uncertain finances and fundraising efforts. From the late nineteenth century, the hospital spilled into purpose-built detached specialized blocks and a cluster of nurses’ homes was constructed in its immediate vicinity. The footprint of the hospital has recently contracted for the first time in its history, with its transferral to a modern tower block to the south of its historic base. Overlooked by its towering successor, the retained former hospital is set to be refurbished and extended to provide a new civic centre for Tower Hamlets Council. Along with its long and continuing significance to the public life of the area, the Royal London Hospital is celebrated for its association with brilliant minds and significant individuals, such as the pioneering surgeon Henry Souttar and the heroic nurse Edith Cavell. A darker fascination endures around the hospital’s faint connection with Jack the Ripper and its provision of a permanent and compassionate home for Joseph Merrick, known popularly as ‘the Elephant Man’. </p>\n",
"created": "2019-04-29",
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"body": "<p>Between 1890 and 1906, every part of the hospital was extended, rebuilt or remodelled under the supervision of the architect Rowland Plumbe. This ambitious building programme upgraded the hospital in line with shifting ideas, innovations and specialization in healthcare. The use of anaesthetics from the 1840s had extended surgical practice, contributing to an increase in the number of operations carried out in general hospitals. This pattern was reflected at the London Hospital, where 420 operations were performed in 1881, 1,114 in 1891, and 2,711 in 1901. New operating suites were designed with separate anaesthetic rooms to relieve patients from entering theatre in a conscious state. Ventilation was an established planning concern in hospitals due to the miasma theory, which held that disease is spread by noxious air. From the late 1850s, hospital planning was influenced by Florence Nightingale’s recommendation of cross-ventilated pavilion wards and sanitary towers separated by airy lobbies. Although miasma theory was outmoded from the 1880s by the acceptance of germ theory, the modern principle that disease is spread by bacteria, the tenets of pavilion planning continued to be widely adopted. An increasing focus on eliminating germs led to the redecoration of hospital spaces with smooth, impermeable and easily cleaned surfaces. Like other institutions of its kind, the hospital installed new manufactured and sanitary finishes such as terrazzo flooring, Opalite wall tiles, and linoleum. The discovery of Röntgen rays and the invention of the Finsen lamp in the 1890s led to the formation of specialized departments for radiography and light treatment. Alterations to the main hospital building were carried out in parallel with the construction of purpose-built blocks to accommodate specialized departments, including an outpatients’ department, an isolation block and a laundry. This ambitious building programme relied on the resourcefulness of the hospital’s chairman, Sydney Holland, the second Viscount Knutsford, to attract donations. Holland was elected to the chairmanship in 1896, and in the following year the Prince of Wales Hospital Fund (later known as the King’s Fund) offered an annual subscription of £5,000 on condition that the hospital would spend £100,000 of its own capital on making its buildings ‘up-to-date and efficient’.[^69]</p>\n\n<h3><strong>Rowland Plumbe</strong></h3>\n\n<p>In 1883 the House Committee decided to abolish the position of consulting architect and seek advice from ‘various persons from time to time instead of keeping to their own officer’.[^70] In the following year Plumbe was requested to draw up plans for a large extension to Old Home, the nurses’ home adjoining the east wing (XREF). Plumbe was an experienced architect with local origins. He was born in 1838 in Goodman’s Fields, where his parents managed a business selling arrowroot for medicinal use. The Plumbe family had links with the Wycliffe Chapel in Philpot Street; his father served as a deacon at the chapel and was a friend of its minister, Dr Andrew Reed. Plumbe studied architecture under T. L. Donaldson at University College London and was articled to N. J. Cottingham and Frederick Peck, followed by an interlude with F. C. Withers in America. After returning to London in 1860, Plumbe started working as an architect from Tokenhouse Yardin the City, establishing an extensive and varied practice. Plumbe developed an interest in medical buildings, taking on commissions at Poplar Hospital, St Mark’s Hospital and the National Orthopaedic Hospital. Despite its fruitfulness and longevity, Plumbe’s association with the London Hospital was not formalized till 1906 by his appointment as consulting architect and election to serve on the House Committee. Plumbe’s involvement in the hospital’s affairs continued till his death in 1919 at the age of eighty-one. A bronzed terracotta bust by Sir George Frampton, a gift from one of Plumbe’s daughters, was subsequently placed in the surveyor’s office of the works department.[^71] </p>\n\n<h3><strong>Front Block, 1890–1</strong></h3>\n\n<p>The front block, built in 1890–1 by Perry & Co., was intended to improve the practicality of the central block, yet also to bestow the hospital with a dignified public entrance. A five-bay arcade provided a porte cochère for horse-drawn ambulances, with sloped side approaches and a central stepped entrance for pedestrians. The principal storey was occupied by a chapel, expressed externally by round-arched traceried windows. The composition was crowned by a pediment with a clock, and flanked by a pair of pavilion towers with pyramidal roofs and finials.[^72] The front block was designed to remedy a number of deficiencies in the central block, including the obstruction of the main corridors by the double-height chapel and the impracticality of a stepped entrance for emergency cases. The operating theatre and space for clinical teaching were also outdated due to the rising number of operations and the implementation of anaesthetics and sterile surgical techniques. </p>\n\n<p>The porte cochère opened into a vestibule with a porter’s box and an office for medical students. A hallway beyond provided access to a waiting room, examining rooms and a receiving room. The upper floors were separated from the central block by a light well. The first floor of the front block contained a new chapel, furnished with a pulpit, seats and chancel furniture from its predecessor. A five-light stained-glass memorial windowby Arthur J. Dix, depicting ‘Christ Healing the Sick’, was donated by Emily Mary Coope in memory of her husband Octavius Edward Coope, the local benefactor and brewer. Dormitories for nurses and servants were in the attic storey. The transferral of the chapel to the front block enabled the reconfiguration of the upper floors of the central block, including the provision of a clinical lecture theatre and an operating theatre on the second floor.[^73]</p>\n\n<p>These building works were undertaken in collaboration with Dr Louis Parkes, a leading sanitary expert engaged as assistant professor of hygiene at University College London. The hospital’s matron Eva Lückes had raised concerns about conditions in 1889, after observing illness among the nursing staff. The matron’s observations were reinforced by reports of blood poisoning and infected wounds among patients. Parkes was appointed to consider ‘every sanitary detail connected with the hospital’, and submitted an exhaustive report in 1890. The hospital resolved to carry out the most critical recommendations, including the removal of old brick sewers and the construction of a new drainage system formed of salt-glazed pipes with manholes and traps. Parkes stressed the importance of building sanitary towers to the east wing, the west wing and the Alexandra Wing, each containing baths, water closets and sink rooms. He also recommended the replacement of ceiling ventilators with Tobin’s tubes in the old wards, the installation of sash and hopper windows, and redecoration with impermeable surfaces such as glazed tiles and linoleum. After examining the improvements in 1893, Parkes concluded that the work had been ‘exceedingly well done’.[^74] Between 1888 and 1894 the hospital invested approximately £38,000 on building works, including £18,560 on the front block. The addition of sanitary towers cost £7,616, while £8,000 was spent on other improvements. Outbuildings at the east end of the hospital were reconstructed by Perry & Co. to provide a Jewish mortuary (or <em>Bet Taharah</em>),a new carpenters’ workshop, a destructor and a disinfector.[^75]</p>\n\n<h3><strong>Remodelling and extension of the main hospital building, 1899–1905</strong> </h3>\n\n<p>The front block extension and sanitary improvements were the first components of an extensive building programme overseen by Plumbe. The works intensified between 1899 and 1905, when each portion of the hospital was remodelled and extended. The scale and scope of the works were determined by 1901, when the House Committee announced plans to enlarge and reconfigure the hospital and construct a number of purpose-built blocks in its vicinity, including an outpatients’ department, a post mortem department, an isolation block, and a laundry. The estimated cost of £370,000 was described as ‘huge but absolutely necessary expenditure’, yet it was calculated that the final cost reached nearly £410,000.[^76]</p>\n\n<p>Not a single patient bed was closed during the building works, owing to the construction of temporary buildings in the hospital’s gardens. A single-storey iron building containing wards for ninety-eight patients and space for the photographic and X-ray departments was constructed in 1898–9 by the Bermondsey builder William Harbrow, who claimed a specialism in iron buildings. This shed also contained the hospital’s first Finsen lamp, a pioneering light radiation machine designed to treat lupus vulgaris, a tuberculous skin infection. The lamp was named for its Danish inventor and Nobel laureate Niels Ryberg Finsen, and donated by Queen Alexandra in 1900. Another temporary building was assembled on the house governor’s garden in 1899–90 to provide space for the outpatients’ department. This shed was constructed by Humphreys of Knightsbridge, a leading supplier of prefabricated iron hospitals. Both buildings were demolished in 1905.[^77]</p>\n\n<h3><strong><em>Central block and front block</em></strong></h3>\n\n<p>Significant alterations were undertaken in the central block and the front block by Perry & Co. between 1900 and 1903, after the acceptance of a tender of £61,380. Building works proceeded immediately, commencing with the underpinning and strengthening of the walls in preparation for two new storeys. Spacious top-lit well staircases were inserted at the east and west ends of the wing, connected on each floor by the existing corridors. Each staircase lobby contained separate lifts for passengers and dead bodies, along with sink rooms and water closets. In the basement, the kitchens and the porter’s offices were replaced by dormitories for the housekeeping staff and laundry maids. A boiler room was installed for supplying hot water and sterilized air to the operating theatres. The ground-floor receiving room was extended and remodelled, and most of the chapel was converted into staff dormitories and a clinical theatre. A redecoration scheme included the application of mosaic floors by Diespeker & Co. over the main lobby and the receiving room, and linoleum in the main corridor.[^78] </p>\n\n<p>The third-floor extension secured an extensive operating department containing a large theatre for teaching demonstrations, four operation rooms, and adjoining anaesthetic rooms. Only one operating theatre and three operation rooms were intended initially, but a modification to the building contract secured an extra suite. The department was arranged along the north side of the central block, with large windows forming a rambling sequence of glazing that has not been altered substantially. A top-lit corridor divided the operating suites from a series of south-facing offices, including examination rooms, waiting rooms, surgeon’s offices, and rooms for instruments and sterilization. Recovery rooms were conveniently flanked by rooms for sisters and nurses, who were also allocated bedrooms on the fourth floor. The £13,000 cost of the operating department was donated anonymously by Benjamin (or Benn) Wolfe Levy, a businessman and philanthropist, on condition that the theatres were ‘open to every poor patient irrespective of creed or nationality’. Levy’s generosity was commemorated by a plaque erected after his death in 1908. A flat roof was fitted with water tanks with a capacity of 10,000 gallons, approximately a day’s supply for the hospital.[^79] </p>\n\n<h3><strong><em>East wing and west wing</em></strong></h3>\n\n<p>Plans for the remodelling and extension of the east wing were approved in 1901. The work was carried out by Perry & Co. in collaboration with W. G. Cannon & Sons as hot water engineers and James Slater & Co. as ventilating engineers. Works commenced with the underpinning and strengthening of the spine walls with stanchions for the construction of two new storeys. The basement laundry was transferred to a purpose-built detached block, and its former rooms converted into porters’ accommodation. A number of alterations were effected to improve ventilation in the wards, including the enlargement of windows and the raising of ceilings on the second floor. The insertion of openings between the back-to-back wards provided a degree of natural cross-ventilation. The attics were rebuilt to provide a new ward on the third floor. The fourth-floor extension provided a new kitchen with a scullery, pantries, offices, and an external goods lift. The south end of the floor provided bedrooms for nurses and sisters, adjacent to Old Home.[^80]</p>\n\n<p>The west wing was also extended by two storeys and its existing wards remodelled. Plumbe’s plans were submitted in June 1901 and Perry & Co. instructed to start work immediately. Yet the impracticality of builders taking over the west wing, which housed the medical outpatients’ department, swiftly became apparent. The building work was postponed till the completion of the new outpatients’ department, and carried out in 1903–4. The basement rooms formerly occupied by the medical outpatients’ department were converted into a series of isolation and padded rooms for psychiatric cases and patients requiring constant supervision. The rest of the basement was devoted to an ophthalmic department containing specialist wards, an operating theatre, and a refraction room for eye examinations. The wards on the upper floors were remodelled to improve ventilation and the comfort of patients. The first- and second-floor wards had access to external balconies, reflecting a growing interest among medical practitioners in the beneficial effects of fresh air and sunlight. </p>\n\n<p>The fourth-floor extension was devoted to Jewish patients, with two wards divided by a central lobby containing a kosher kitchen and a scullery. One for men and one for women, these wards were named ‘Rothschild’ and ‘Goldsmid’ respectively. The reinstatement of dedicated Jewish wards reflected the reality on the ground that the London Hospital was the principal hospital used by the now significantly larger Jewish community. These wards were formally opened in November 1902 by the prominent banker and philanthropist Leopold de Rothschild, in his capacity as vice-president of the hospital. Other Jewish philanthropists such as Sir Samuel Montagu and Sir Benjamin L. Cohen served on the House Committee, organized appeals, and made personal donations to the hospital.[^81] </p>\n\n<h3><strong><em>Alexandra Wing and Grocers’ Company’s Wing</em></strong></h3>\n\n<p>The external appearance of the Alexandra Wing was not much altered during the building programme, yet its interior spaces were remodelled extensively. The alterations were completed in 1905 by Perry & Co., with Cannon & Sons as hot water engineers, Slater & Co. as ventilating engineers, and the plumber R. A. Marshall. The removal of the surgical outpatients’ department from the basement provided space for a coroner’s court with a public gallery, a witness room and a coroner’s office. The basement also contained a massage department and offices for the hospital’s surveyor. The ground floor was converted entirely to administrative use, with a new committee room, secretarial offices and an estate office. The rest of the wing was devoted to maternity cases, with a first-floor obstetric operating theatre and a south-facing ward with a balcony. The Marie Celeste maternity department was formally opened on the second floor in 1905. Named in memory of the wife of James Hora, a vice-president of the hospital, the suite contained a labour room, an isolation room and a lecture room. Three small wards extended along the south side of the second floor, opening onto a balcony with views over the rear garden. The attic dormitories were assigned to the maternity staff and pupil midwives.[^82] The Grocers’ Company’s Wing was altered on a comparatively modest scale. South-facing ward balconies were installed and windows were enlarged and fitted with patented ‘Luxfer’ prism glass to maximize light. The basement was reconfigured to form a large surgical ward for male patients, and the ground floor contained a female surgical ward equipped with an operating suite. These alterations were completed in 1905.[^83]</p>\n\n<h3><strong><em>Gardens and forecourt</em></strong></h3>\n\n<p>Plans were produced for redesigning the gardens in 1906, after the building works created a state of disarray. The rear quadrangle was bestowed with a bronze statue of Queen Alexandra created in 1907–8 by George Edward Wade, a favoured sculptor among the royal family. The statue commemorated her longstanding support of the hospital and consent to serve as its president, a title she retained from 1904 to her death in 1925. Alexandra agreed to pose for the sculpture, which depicts her standing with dignified composure, holding a sceptre in her right hand. She is garbed in coronation robes, her state crown, jewels and a pearl necklace. The robust stone plinth has an inscribed bronze plaque and a bronze bas-relief panel depicting a royal visit to the Finsen light department in the outpatients’ department. At the centre of the composition, Alexandra bends to observe a patient receiving treatment with the use of a Finsen lamp. She is accompanied by King Edward VII and an entourage of representatives of the hospital, including its chairman Sydney Holland, the surgeon Sir Frederick Treves, and the matron Eva Lückes. Wade’s statue is currently positioned on the south side of Stepney Way, in an incongruous spot beneath the canopy of the new hospital.[^84]</p>\n\n<p>In its original position on a raised plinth at the centre of the quadrangle, the statue was encircled by an asphalt path with straight offshoots leading to the central block, the east wing and the west wing. A pair of timber shelters for patients was positioned at the south end of the quadrangle, screening it from the open ground on the north side of Stepney Way. A porter’s lodge was also built at the south-east corner of the garden. Perry & Co. were contracted to construct the lodge and the shelters, along with the weighty stone pedestal of the statue. The narrow wedge-shaped courtyard to the east of the hospital, known colloquially as ‘Bedstead Square’ for its proximity to the steward’s stores, was decorated with planters gifted by the local brewing firm Mann, Crossman & Paulin. Timber shelters were also built on the forecourt of the hospital to accommodate patients’ relatives and friends, these constructed in 1912 by Perry & Co. to designs by J. G. Oatley.[^85]</p>\n\n<p>[^69]:RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/49, p. 531; RLHLH/A/24/9; RLHLH/A/5/48, pp. 162, 270–1, 314, 367, 386; RLHLH/A/5/49, pp. 42–3: <em>BMJ</em>, 24 May 1902, pp. 1305–6: H. Richardson (ed.), <em>English Hospitals, 1660–1948: A Survey of their Architecture and Design </em>(Swindon: RCHME, 1998), pp. 3–4, 9–11, 139: J. Taylor, <em>Hospital and Asylum Architecture in England, 1840–1914 </em>(London: Mansell, 1991), pp. 11–14: A. Smith, ‘The Expansion and Remodelling of the London Hospital by Rowland Plumbe, 1884–1919’, <em>London Journal</em>, DOI 10.1080/03058034.2019.1583455. </p>\n\n<p>[^70]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/34, pp. 460, 465–6, 469–70; RLHLH/A/5/41, p. 236. </p>\n\n<p>[^71]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/55, pp. 158, 225, 244: <a href=\"http://www.ocotilloroad.com/geneal/plumbe1.html\">http://www.ocotilloroad.com/geneal/plumbe1.html</a>: <em>Building News</em>, 6 June 1890, p. 793: <em>The Builder</em>, April 1919, p. 381; <em>RIBA Journal</em>, April 1919, pp. 140–1: RLHA, RLHLH/S/5/12; RLHLH/A/24/7–9: <em>London Evening Standard</em>, 3 April 1865: <em>The Building News</em>, 6 June 1890, p. 793: <em>London Daily News</em>, 2 July 1862: <em>RIBA Journal</em>, April 1919, pp. 140–1: <em>Builders’ Journal</em>, 20 May 1896, p. 230:RIBA Biographical file: <em>Directory of British Architects, 1834–1919</em>, Volume 2, p. 383.</p>\n\n<p>[^72]: RLHA, RLHLH/S/2/149–50. </p>\n\n<p>[^73]: <em>The Builder</em>, 4 July 1891, p. 18: <em>The Lancet</em>, 4 July 1891, pp. 36–7: <em>The Lancet</em>, 29 March 1890, p. 714. </p>\n\n<p>[^74]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/44; RLHLH/A/5/45, p. 216: <em>The Lancet</em>, 29 March 1890, p. 714; 4 July 1891, p. 36: <em>The Hospital</em>, 18 November 1893, pp. 110–12. </p>\n\n<p>[^75]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/45, pp. 108, 113, 122, 132, 143–4, 180. </p>\n\n<p>[^76]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/48; RLHLH/A/24/9. </p>\n\n<p>[^77]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/47, pp. 192–4, 337, 402; RLHLH/A/5/49, p. 31; RLHLH/A/24/7: https://historic-hospitals.com/2015/08/30/humphreys-hospitals:<em>Tower Hamlets Independent and East End Local Advertiser</em>, 4 June 1898: DSR: <em>ILN</em>, 24 August 1901, p. 286. </p>\n\n<p>[^78]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/47, p. 460. </p>\n\n<p>[^79]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/48, pp. 162, 270–1, 314, 367, 386; RLHLH/A/5/49, pp. 42–3; RLHINV/440; RLHLH/A/5/48: <em>Bolton Evening News</em>, 19 December 1908: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, 25 December 1908, p. 19: <em>Maitland Weekly Mercury</em>, 26 December 1908, p. 2: <em>Jewish Herald</em>, 25 December 1908, p. 4. </p>\n\n<p>[^80]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/48, pp. 122, 173, 241, 314, 420; RLHLH/A/5/49, pp. 42–3, 531: POD. </p>\n\n<p>[^81]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/48, pp. 205, 209–10, 241; RLHLH/A/5/49, pp. 42–3, 364–70; RLHLH/A/24/6–9: Eugene C. Black, <em>The Social Politics of Anglo-Jewry, 1880–1920 </em>(Oxford: Blackwell, 1988), p. 161. </p>\n\n<p>[^82]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/49, p. 531; RLHLH/A/24/6–9: LCC Minutes, 31 January 1905, p. 267: HEA, BF079954. </p>\n\n<p>[^83]: RLHA, RLHLH/A/24/6–9; RLHLH/A/5/48; RLHLH/A/5/49, p. 531. </p>\n\n<p>[^84]: <em>Exeter and Plymouth Gazette</em>, 23 February 1906: <em>Ross Gazette</em>, 16 July 1908: <em>London Evening Standard</em>, 11 July 1908: <em>Morning Post</em>, 8 March 1906: <em>East London Observer</em>, 11 July 1908: ODNB: RLHA, RLHLH/P/6/12/36/1; RLHLH/A/24/6: Historic England, List Entry Number: 1065789. </p>\n\n<p>[^85]: OS 1913: RLHA, RLHLH/S/2/48; RLHLH/X/79/1; RLHLH/A/5/45, pp. 400–1, 415; RLHLH/A/5/50, pp. 129, 145, 154, 277, 335, 365, 371; RLHLH/A/24/9.</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>At Prescot Street’s west end, between Mansell Street and West Tenter Street, a row of five modest shophouses (Nos 37–41) (Nos 37–41, previously Nos 33–38) included the home of Samuel Falk (the <em>Ba’al Shem</em> of London) from 1747 into the early 1750s (see p.xx). He lived here with his factotum, Zevi Hirsch of Kalisz, whose diary records remarkably detailed particulars of their struggles with poverty as Falk established a reputation as a kabbalist, maintaining a private synagogue in the house.[^1] In the nineteenth century there were coffee rooms and a fried-fish café. An adjoining three-storey house at No. 42 was held in the early nineteenth-century by Benjamin Louis Lecand, a carver, guilder, stationer, looking-glass manufacturer, and paper-hanger. He was perhaps responsible for installing a dainty pair of bow windows. Edward Scotchburn Snell, a silver tinplate worker, followed through the late nineteenth century.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>Nos 43 and 44, set back, were a grander pair, with a well-proportioned five-bay façade of early eighteenth-century appearance, gables to the rear perhaps indicating origins in the 1680s, this being at the west end of the site leased to William Chapman in February 1685. No. 43 spanned a passage that was the only way into the Tenter Ground until 1815. Early occupants of Nos 43 and 44 were a locally typical mixture of captains and merchants. In 1777, No. 44 was described as having a ‘genteel parlour to make an office’.[^3] John Wilson, a second master in the Navy, had a lease in the 1820s. In the 1840s, No. 43 accommodated a ‘modest and humble’ school run by John Levy then by Godfrey Jacob Fles, Ashkenazi Jews, and No. 44 a boarding house for ‘ladies and gentlemen of the Jewish persuasion’. After the First World War, No. 43 was used by the Jewish Ex-Servicemen’s Legion.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Michal Oron, <em>Rabbi, Mystic, or Imposter? The Eighteenth-Century Ba’al Shem of London</em>, 2020, pp.35–6,69: <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography</em> </p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Post Office Directories (POD): <em>Morning Post</em>, 20 Nov 1804: London Metropolitan Archives, CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/484/968797; /487/983615; Collage 20266–7, 47840, 119530</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Daily Advertiser</em>, 13 Nov 1777, p.1</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, 18 Sept 1846, p.220; 9 July 1847, p.180; 25 May 1900, p.22: Ancestry: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 24 Nov 1831, p.4: POD</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>Built in 1886–7 by Goodman to designs by Plumbe, this large detached house provided comfortable living quarters for the hospital chaplain in close proximity to his duties. A handsome west front incorporated a stepped entrance porch and a bay window with views over the hospital’s gardens. A kitchen and servants’ quarters were provided in a raised basement and a steeply pitched roof with dormer windows. The house lost its detached status by the construction of the Alexandra Home to the east in 1895–6. After the Rev. Sidney Vatcher, the incumbent of St Philip’s Church, assumed control of the hospital’s chaplaincy in 1898, the residence was converted into a temporary isolation block to accommodate infectious patients. It was demolished around 1915 to make way for the further enlargement of Alexandra Home.[^114]</p>\n\n<p>[^114]: <em>London Evening Standard</em>, 15 July 1886: DSR: RLHA, RLHLH/S/2/39; RLHLH/A/5/47, pp. 180, 207, 232, 245–6.</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>The provision of nurses’ accommodation was extended significantly by the construction of the Alexandra Home in 1895–6 by William Shepherd to designs by Plumbe. This tall six-storey block was positioned at the crossing between Stepney Way and East Mount Street, abutting the chaplain’s house to the west. With its utilitarian and neatly fenestrated stock-brick elevations, the Alexandra Home matched the austerity of Old Home, with which it was linked by a covered bridge. Plumbe adopted a similar plan to the earlier home, squeezing around ninety bedrooms into an L-shaped footprint. On each dormitory floor a series of single-bay bedrooms for individual nurses flanked a central corridor. A projecting sanitary tower at the north-east corner of the block contained bathrooms, water closets, sinks and fire escape staircases. The attics contained wooden lockers allocated to the nurses. A six-storey west addition of about 1915 designed by J. G. Oatley provided larger bedrooms for sisters with access to bathrooms and hair-washing rooms, a luxury introduced contemporaneously at Edith Cavell Home.[^115]</p>\n\n<p>[^115]: DSR: RLHLH/S/2/72; RLHLH/S/2/39; RHLHLH/S/2/73; RLHLH/3/2/24; RLHLH/S/2/25; RLHTH/S/10/6; RLHLH/P/2/43.</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>The former Louis London factory on Alie Street and a warehouse that replaced the Jews’ Infants’ School on Buckle Street were combined for Inonder Ltd (incorporated in Jersey) for a large development project. A first scheme of 2004 designed by Humphrey Cook Associates, architects, was withdrawn. The project was taken through planning in 2007–8 to designs by Hamiltons Architects. It was built in 2011–14 for Barratt London in a joint venture with L&Q, the housing association that originated as London and Quadrant, to revised designs by BFLS Architects that were delivered by RMA Architects. Getjar Ltd was the contractor, Silcock Dawson & Partners the engineers. The complex is dominated by a twenty-seven storey tower (Altitude Point) that is a residential block of 235 flats on a four-storey podium housing commercial and retail use. The lowest seven storeys include social housing, sixty-four ‘affordable’ flats, known as Goldpence Apartments and accessed separately to the rear on Buckle Street where the Consulate of Ecuador has adjacent tenure. A seven-storey office building to the east at 81 Alie Street lies beyond a landscaped passage linking Alie Street and Buckle Street that has been named John Sessions Square. Through this development Tower Hamlets Council secured more than £2m in Section 106 contributions to local improvements. With rounded shiny white neo-Moderne surfaces, and massing that is more bulbous than curvaceous, Altitude Point lords its anti-contextual height in fabric as in name.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: <em>Building Design</em>, 15 Dec 2010: www.skyscrapercenter.com/building/altitude-aldgate/18702</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>Built in 1903–5 by F. Gough & Co. of Hendon to designs by Plumbe, Eva Lückes Home was a sprawling five-storey block with a U-shaped plan, comprising a north range fronting Stepney Way and an extensive south range overlooking Newark Street, linked by an intervening corridor range. The Lückes Home replaced a substantial portion of the hospital’s estate, including the British Oak Public House, to provide more than 270 nurses’ bedrooms. Decoration was restricted to gables with diaper patterns, a moulded brick cornice, and shallow bow windows set within relieving arches. A porch facing Stepney Way opened into an entrance hall leading to various offices, a visiting room, a writing room and a sitting room. An iron and concrete covered bridge over Stepney Way linked the nurses’ home with the Alexandra Home opposite. Plumbe repeated the configuration deployed at Old Home and Alexandra Home, dividing each dormitory floor into compact single-bay bedrooms and larger bedrooms with fireplaces for sisters. Bathrooms and water closets were confined to sanitary towers at the east end of each range. A basement provided servants’ bedrooms and a sitting room. The attic was reserved for a locker room, a linen room and water tanks.[^116]</p>\n\n<p>[^116]: OS 1876: ODNB: RLHA, RLHLH/TH/S/10/23; RLHINV/752: LCC Minutes, 23 June 1903, p. 974: Morris, p. 314.</p>\n",
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"b_name": "Former Royal London Hospital",
"street": "",
"address": "Former Royal London Hospital ",
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"body": "<p>Edith Cavell Home was positioned at the north-east corner of the junction of East Mount Street with Stepney Way. At its completion, this six-storey block provided 122 bedrooms for nurses and sisters. Construction by Perry & Co. was delayed by the First World War, yet nurses eventually moved into Cavell Home in June 1918. The clearance of terraced houses provided a narrow rectangular site for this addition to the nurses’ accommodation. A stone porch with neo-Baroque flourishes departed from the austerity of the earlier nurses’ homes, hinting at delegation by Plumbe. The customary arrangement of small bedrooms flanking a central corridor suited the constraints of the site. The ground floor had a sitting room, a library and a visiting room, along with bedrooms for sisters and nurses, while a basement contained servants’ quarters. Accessed by a central lift and a well staircase, each dormitory floor contained twenty nurses’ bedrooms and two larger bedrooms for sisters, who enjoyed the comfort of a fireplace. Water closets were confined to a sanitary tower at the rear of the block. Bathrooms, hair-washing rooms, and linen cupboards were positioned at the north end of each floor, adjacent to a subsidiary staircase. On the second floor, a covered bridge extended across East Mount Street to Old Home. The hospital named the home in honour of Edith Cavell, the British nurse executed in October 1915 for assisting the escape of allied soldiers from German-occupied Brussels. Cavell had trained at the hospital as a probationer in 1896–8 and served on the institution’s private nursing staff until 1901. A plaster bust of Cavell by Sir George Frampton was placed in the sitting room, and survives in the Royal London Hospital Museum.[^117]</p>\n\n<p>[^117]: RLHA, RLHTH/S/10/9; RLHLH/A/5/55, pp. 384–5, 511; RLHPP/KNU/2/8/18: ODNB.</p>\n",
"created": "2019-04-29",
"last_edited": "2021-05-10"
},
{
"id": 552,
"title": "Kearley & Tonge",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
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"properties": {
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"street": "Durward Street",
"address": "57-71 Durward Street",
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"body": "<p>Kearley & Tonge was a tea-importing firm founded in 1876 by Hudson Ewbanke Kearley with headquarters at Mitre Square near Aldgate. The company diversified into provision wholesaling and by 1890 had 200 branches known as International Stores. It first moved into Whitechapel to a bacon factory on the west side of Thomas Street immediately south of the Vallance Road recreation ground, enlarging it in 1892. Then a former soda works to the south on Durward Street was taken for replacement in 1894–5 by a six-bay, six-storey block, part warehousing, part a factory for making jams, cakes, biscuits and sweets. William Eve & Son were the architects. Kearley & Tonge’s wholesale grocery business, henceforward also known as International Tea Company’s Stores, had what it called its London Central Depot on Durward Street, employing 140 men and 51 women at what was said to be the largest facility of its kind in the UK.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Expansion eastwards to the Thomas (now Castlemaine) Street corner was blocked in 1896 in a dispute with Arthur Crow, District Surveyor, about regulations regarding warehouse sub-division. The plans were altered and carried forward in 1902–4 as an eight-storey block with five more bays to Durward Street and nine to the Thomas Street return. In 1911–12 a separate six-storey seven-bay eastern block went up on the other side of what had become Fulbourne Street, with linking bridges and a tunnel, all designed by William Eve & Sons. There was internal steel-frame construction and some concrete flooring.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>Through all this David Stanton & Sons, hay and straw dealers, had held on to stabling premises of 1891 on the south side of the bacon factory. That firm had also built a warehouse and dwellings at the west end of the north side of Durward Street in 1894–5, and redeveloped on Thomas Street in 1901–4. Kearley & Tonge swallowed up their site and almost all of the rest of the block south of the recreation ground and built further to a height of eight storeys in 1924–8. The provisioners were taken over by British American Tobacco in 1972; the Whitechapel premises were promptly sold and the site cleared.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), District Surveyors Returns (DSR); GLC/AR/BR/22/037446/01–02; GLC/AR/BR/22/ES/000280: http://www.internationalstores.co.uk</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>The Builder</em>, 12 Dec 1896, p. 501: LMA, DSR; GLC/AR/BR/22/037446/01–02; GLC/AR/BR/22/ES/000280</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>The Builder</em>, 13 June 1891, p. 480: Post Office Directories: LMA, DSR; GLC/AR/BR/22/037446/02</p>\n",
"created": "2018-01-04",
"last_edited": "2020-09-21"
},
{
"id": 560,
"title": "Whitechapel West",
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"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
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"body": "<p>Following the failure of shopping-mall schemes, plans for developing the five-acre area north of the east end of Durward Street were advanced in 1991 by the Spitalfields Development Group, headed by Michael Bear with John Miller and Partners as architects, proposing 118 low-rent flats (58) and houses (60) and a public leisure centre with two swimming pools, a leisure pool having been part of the shopping-mall scheme from 1986. This ‘community benefit package’ was put forward as part of a deal for the redevelopment of the Spitalfields Market site.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>A second scheme that was submitted in 1995 led to the building of the Whitechapel Sports Centre, but the housing project was not resolved until 2000 when plans by MEPK Architects (led by Marcus Nelson) were approved, working with Alan McEwan and Associates, engineers. Building proceeded and the Tower Hamlets Community Housing estate opened in 2003 as Whitechapel West. It comprises terraces of two- and three-storey stock-brick and faintly neo-Georgian houses, with intermingled blocks of flats, distinguished by the incorporation of red-brick spandrel panels, at 57–71 Durward Street, 22–30 Vallance Road (with shops), 3–71 Wodeham Gardens (with a community room at the Vallance Road corner), and 1–15 and 26–40 Trahorn Close. There is a small railed circular garden in Trahorn Close.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>East London Advertiser</em>, 27 Sept. 1991: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Whitechapel Shopping Centre Development Brief, 1986]</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n",
"created": "2018-01-04",
"last_edited": "2020-09-21"
},
{
"id": 389,
"title": "Memories of World War II from the Family Gilford",
"author": {
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"username": "sarahannmilne"
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"properties": {
"b_number": "47",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Adler Street",
"address": "St Boniface German Church, 47 Adler Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 14,
"search_str": "St Boniface German Church, 47 Adler Street"
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"tags": [
"Catholic Church",
"Germans"
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},
"body": "<p>Tony Gilford recalls his family's connection to St Boniface focusing on what it was like during World War II:</p>\n\n<p>I was just 130 days old on 3 September 1939 and probably with my Dad (1912) and Mum (1910) at the start of the 11 o'clock high mass at the St Boniface German Catholic Mission Church in Aldgate, London E1. At 11.15am in this very hour, history records, the primeminister Neville Chamberlain was making his BBC Home Service radio broadcast speech to the nation declaring war on Germany. Of course I do not recall this event personally.</p>\n\n<p>Every Sunday the St Boniface Church was a friendly meeting place for the Anglo-German catholic community in London: butchers, bakers, hairdressers, jewellers, waiters, wine merchants, domestic staff, musicians, au-pairs, etc. Some were born in England but with one or both parents of German lineage. Some, especially the older generation like my grandparents, born in Germany but had emigrated to England and taken up British naturalisation before 1939. Some were recent German migrants staying with families to learn English, find employment, perhaps a new homeland. My parents, Peter and Lily Gilford, had a corner back street shop and bakery at 72 Marmont Road in Peckham SE15. A ride across Tower Bridge on a 78 bus and a short walk along Whitechapel Road led to St Boniface Church in Adler St.</p>\n\n<p>Our paternal grandparents, Peter and Monika Gilsdorf, originally lived in a small village, Nagelsberg, Wurttemberg, south Germany, before emigrating. My own Mum and Dad were born in London before WWI, spent their childhood as refugees repatriated to Germany, and came back to London in the late twenties. Master bakers and butchers were exempted from military service but many of the St Boniface young men volunteered or were conscripted.</p>\n",
"created": "2017-06-08",
"last_edited": "2021-04-15"
},
{
"id": 844,
"title": "2 Cable Street with 1 Dock Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
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"body": "<p>This three-storey group, six bays in all, with a recessed quadrant corner, cornice intact, was built in 1853–4 by Joseph Clever of Haggerston for Nathaniel James Powell of Mead & Powell, wholesale stationers. John Loane, a druggist and a churchwarden at St Paul’s, was the first occupant of the larger corner and Dock Street shop, followed from the 1870s by Joseph and Thomas Loane, surgeons, until after 1910 – Joseph Loane was John Liddle’s successor as Whitechapel’s Medical Officer of Health. Manuel Galdeano then Joseph Cenci had a café here from the 1940s to the 1980s. 2 Cable Street was coffee rooms in the years either side of 1900.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: The National Archives, WORK6/144/1,9; IR58/84822/3956: Post Office Directories</p>\n",
"created": "2019-03-04",
"last_edited": "2020-09-21"
}
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}