HTTP 200 OK
Allow: GET, HEAD, OPTIONS
Content-Type: application/json
Vary: Accept
{
"count": 1059,
"next": "https://surveyoflondon.org/api/v1/documents/?format=api&page=10",
"previous": "https://surveyoflondon.org/api/v1/documents/?format=api&page=8",
"results": [
{
"id": 452,
"title": "Foundation School enlargement and later history",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 452,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.06408176276412,
51.518388594133064
],
[
-0.064079076989357,
51.518451921601226
],
[
-0.064014118536147,
51.518467104995885
],
[
-0.063936244085074,
51.51842608315136
],
[
-0.06387175509906,
51.51844488660313
],
[
-0.063789009522268,
51.51833442643744
],
[
-0.063997611137361,
51.51827758805008
],
[
-0.06408176276412,
51.518388594133064
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "179",
"b_name": "Davenant Youth Centre (former Davenant School)",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Davenant Youth Centre, 179 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 18,
"search_str": "Davenant Youth Centre (former Davenant School)"
},
"tags": [
"Davenant",
"school"
]
},
"body": "<p>Alterations and enlargement of the Davenant School in the 1890s were occasioned by changes to the wider administrative framework for education. The formation of the Charity Commissioners in 1853 led to amalgamation of Whitechapel’s parish charities and the building of a Whitechapel Charities Commercial School on Leman Street. The Education Act and three Endowed Schools Acts of the years around 1870 and growing demand for school places were further backdrops to protracted discussions between the Whitechapel Trustees and the Charity Commissioners. Eventually in 1888 the Whitechapel Charities (embracing St Mary’s School and the Leman Street School) and the Davenant School were merged to form the Whitechapel Foundation, unified in adhering to Church of England religious instruction and amply provided for by historic charitable endowments. What had been Davenant’s Endowed Free School on Whitechapel Road, which had gone through a rocky period, was henceforward the Foundation School, a secondary school for 250 boys which was to be improved with new buildings (and a specified need for a chemical laboratory and workshops). The elementary schools were now, confusingly, called the Davenant Schools.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>With the new scheme settled, meetings chaired by the Rev. A. J. Robinson in 1888 quickly approved plans for new buildings by Frank Ponler Telfer, the 24-year old son of one of the new Foundation’s Governors, John Ashbridge Telfer, a pawnbroker of 88 Whitechapel High Street. Another Governor was John Ashbridge, a solicitor on the south side of Whitechapel Road and the brother of Arthur Ashbridge, the District Surveyor for Marylebone who on occasions also acted as a surveyor for the Whitechapel Foundation. They were cousins to John Ashbridge Telfer. Their fathers, John Simpson Ashbridge and Somerville Telfer (who married Maria Ashbridge), and grandfather, John Ashbridge, had all been East London pawnbrokers. John Ashbridge and J. A. Telfer were the only Governors besides Robinson to attend a meeting with the Charity Commissioners in July 1888. The young Telfer, whose mother Mary Ann was the daughter of John Ponler, a Wapping timber merchant, identified himself as a surveyor. He had served an apprenticeship in the City with George Andrew Wilson, architect and surveyor, during which the firm, as Wilson, Son & Aldwinckle, had overseen alterations to the Duke’s Head public house (181 Whitechapel Road) in 1881.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>A first complication to arise in 1890 was to do with the loss of light and air to the west with the building of the Victoria Home. Arthur Ashbridge dealt with this and Telfer prepared new plans for what was to be called a Commercial School, now working with a new headmaster, Henry Carter. In 1891 the Governors split five to four against a new roadside building and in favour of a new building in the ‘garden’ (the playground and former burial ground), envisaging the road frontage being freed up for shops. Land along Old Montague Street was purchased to supplement what was already owned through the William Rowland Charity and four courts of houses were cleared. On behalf of the Charity Commissioners Ewan Christian approved building in the playground, seemingly unaware that this would contravene the Disused Burial Grounds Act; his suggestions were otherwise bypassed. In 1892 nine firms of architects were invited to submit anonymised plans for a building behind the old school on the playground, to be on ‘columns and girders’ for an open ground floor so as not to lose the play space. Five schemes were received. That by Telfer was selected as the best, his father being one of the four inspectors. John C. Hudson and Herbert O. Ellis placed second and third respectively. Telfer worked up his scheme in 1893 and building work ensued in 1894–5 with J. S. Hammond and Son of Romford as contractors. Telfer was asked to ensure that ‘The East London Commercial School’ should appear in the floor and that a tablet should commemorate the governors. But the Charity Commissioners disapproved of the name and insisted on the Whitechapel Foundation School. Fitting out followed in 1896. Already in 1898 most of the sixth-form boys were of Jewish origin, fathers being teachers of Hebrew, a furrier, waterproof manufacturer, butcher, tailor, and poultry and horse slaughterers, coming from as far as Stoke Newington, Camberwell and Upton Park.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>Stylistically ‘splendid Neo-Jacobean’,[^4] perhaps influenced by E. W. Mountford, Telfer’s two-storey building is of red brick with terracotta dressings, including mullion and transom windows, some with leaded lights, and scrolled gables. The brief forced formal ingenuity and resulted in a distinctive parti that is something of an architectural statement, albeit devised from Board School precedents. Telfer was evidently accomplished, but despite this youthful opportunity his career did not take off. He identified himself in 1901 as an auctioneer, no longer a surveyor. He died in 1907, age 43. The ground-floor covered playground was outwardly articulated by arcaded piers. Within, there were cylindrical cast-iron columns and composite girders to support the superstructure. The five-bay east–west assembly hall is grandly gabled – an intended flèche was vetoed by Christian. It has an arch-braced and barrel-vaulted wagon ceiling with turned tie beams and king posts. The south façade was visible from the passage through the old building across a now cleared yard, and the hall was approached by an eye-catching covered staircase with a stepped open arcade. This had been designed to be central, but was moved to the east bay and given a lobby at its head at the building committee’s suggestion, presumably for the sake of a larger yard. A nine-bay north–south range housed six classrooms and staff accommodation.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>The LCC and the Board of Education imposed alterations and the addition of a Neo-Georgian north range parallel to Old Montague Street in 1908–9. Designed by Arthur W. Cooksey, this provided four more classrooms, a physics laboratory and an art room. There was no space or money for a gymnasium, but an enclosed fives court was added in 1915–17. This seems to betoken a consciousness of status in what became the Davenant Foundation School in 1928. This was, however, one of the smallest secondary schools in London and the only one unable to provide hot dinners. At the behest of the LCC, negotiations for an amalgamation or a move away from Whitechapel began in 1937, but these were interrupted by war and evacuation. There were wartime alterations to the front range for use as a rescue centre. In the early 1950s voluntary-aid grammar-school status was granted and, despite a falling roll, a new range was added along Old Montague Street for a biology lab, library and two additional classrooms. Meanwhile, in the face of a decreasing local population, the LCC planned comprehensive redevelopment of the area.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>The school moved to Loughton, Essex, in 1965, a shift first suggested by the Ministry of Education in 1956. The GLC’s Inner London Education Authority took the Whitechapel site and up to 1971 it was used for Walbrook College’s East London College of Commerce. The Victorian Society, Ancient Monuments Society and GLC Historic Buildings Division resisted a plan for clearance behind the already listed front building, use as a youth centre being suggested. This led to the listing in 1973 of the assembly hall and its staircase. Plans in 1975 to convert the school buildings to be an old persons’ club for the intended Davenant Street Development (see below) came to nothing and demolition north of the hall block ensued.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: School Board for London Minutes, 17 Jan. 1884, p.299 et seq: LMA, LCC/EO/PS/03/164: TNA, ED27/3236: Reynolds, pp.54–55,72–3</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: LMA, A/DAV/02/001; A/DAV/02/005; A/DAV/03/001: TNA, PROB11/1675/425; ED27/3238: Ancestry:<em> The Builder</em>, 9 April 1881, p. 462: Post Office Directories</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: LMA, A/DAV/02/001, passim; A/DAV/02/005; A/DAV/03/001; A/DAV/04/001; LCC/AR/BA/01/031; GLC/AR/BR/07/3533: <em>The Times</em>, 19 Dec 1895, p. 6: TNA, ED27/3237–41; IR58/84806/2303–5</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Bridget Cherry, Charles O’Brien and Nikolaus Pevsner, <em>The Buildings of England, London 5: East</em>, 2005, p. 400</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: Ancestry: Historic England, London Region photographs</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: London County Council Minutes, 17 March 1903, p. 664; 30 May 1905, p. 2081; 29 July 1908, p. 343; 16 March 1909, p. 618: District Surveyors Returns: LMA, A/DAV/02/002, p.6; LCC/EO/PS/03/163–6 and 169: THLHLA, L/THL/D/1/1/65; Building Control file 15464: Historic England, London Regions historians’ report TH1: Reynolds, pp. 80–87 </p>\n\n<p>[^7]: <em>Victoria County History</em>, <em>loc. cit</em>.: Reynolds, pp. 88–91: THLHLA, Building Control file 15464: Historic England, London Region historians’ report TH1 with report by Marjorie B. Honeybourne for the Ancient Monuments Society, March 1972; London Region photographs</p>\n",
"created": "2017-08-24",
"last_edited": "2021-09-14"
},
{
"id": 453,
"title": "The Davenant Centre",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 452,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.06408176276412,
51.518388594133064
],
[
-0.064079076989357,
51.518451921601226
],
[
-0.064014118536147,
51.518467104995885
],
[
-0.063936244085074,
51.51842608315136
],
[
-0.06387175509906,
51.51844488660313
],
[
-0.063789009522268,
51.51833442643744
],
[
-0.063997611137361,
51.51827758805008
],
[
-0.06408176276412,
51.518388594133064
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "179",
"b_name": "Davenant Youth Centre (former Davenant School)",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Davenant Youth Centre, 179 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 18,
"search_str": "Davenant Youth Centre (former Davenant School)"
},
"tags": [
"Davenant",
"school"
]
},
"body": "<p>A scheme for refurbishment of the two surviving school buildings to be a community centre emerged from the GLC in 1984. In a project spearheaded by George Nicholson, Chair of the Planning Committee in the GLC’s last and defiantly radical days, more than £1m was made available for the formation of the Davenant Centre. This ‘community resources and training centre’ was to extend to include a new building on the empty site at 181–185 Whitechapel Road, all to house eight local groups: the Asian Unemployed Outreach Project, Dishari Shilpi Ghosti (musicians who had left the scene by 1988), the Federation of Bangladeshi Youth Organisations, the Progressive Youth Organisation, Tower Hamlets Advanced Technology Training, the Tower Hamlets Trades Council, the Tower Hamlets Training Forum, and the Jagonari Asian Women’s Resource Centre (see 183–185 Whitechapel Road). With the Historic Buildings Division in close attendance, plans for the adaptation of the listed buildings were drawn up in 1984–5 by Julian Harrap Architects with Peter Stocker as job architect. Harry Neal Ltd carried out the building works in 1985–7, completion coming after the abolition of the GLC and despite an attempt by Westminster City Council to stop the works. The open ground floor under the hall was largely enclosed and the front block gained new stairs and partitions, an upper-storey tiered lecture room being preserved. The Centre’s Chair was Manuhar Ali and Adam Lazarus was the Development Worker. First use was as a youth club and for computer training, welfare advice, trade-union offices and meetings in the assembly hall. There was no reliable source of revenue so the hall had to be advertised for hire and the Centre opened as a music venue in 1990.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>The Centre could not sustain itself and Aliur Rahman was obliged to instigate a further conversion in 2002. Carried out in 2005–6 through ESA Architects (Nic Sampson, job architect), Peter Brett Associates, consulting engineers, and Killby & Gayford, contractors, this introduced much more lettable office use, retaining space for a youth club on the west part of the front block’s ground floor. To maximise floor space a mezzanine floor was inserted, the loft was converted, and to the rear a glazed staircase in a ‘cylindrical pod’ was added. The 1890s hall was also adapted for office use, the interior retained. Despite debts and with support from Tower Hamlets Council, the complex continued as the Davenant Centre until 2017 when in want of funding it was obliged to close. The YMCA George Williams College took occupancy of the front building in 2018.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: THLHLA, Building Control file 15464; <em>Davenant News</em>, 1985–8: <em>Tower Hamlets News</em>, Dec. 1985: <em>East London Advertiser</em>, 13 July 1984; 30 May 1986: Historic England, London Region photographs</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: THLHLA, Building Control files 81165, 83280: <em>East London Advertiser</em>, 14 Aug 2009</p>\n",
"created": "2017-08-24",
"last_edited": "2021-09-14"
},
{
"id": 616,
"title": "Ibis Budget Hotel and Adagio Aparthotel (formerly Brunning House), 100 Whitechapel Road",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 838,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.065140866189073,
51.51749259191283
],
[
-0.065233008086083,
51.51761193654102
],
[
-0.06501106090109,
51.51767073337619
],
[
-0.065011060901121,
51.51767073337608
],
[
-0.064826272017719,
51.51772204093931
],
[
-0.064714455817846,
51.51756528371057
],
[
-0.064653750501144,
51.51759910925953
],
[
-0.064619266144142,
51.517650076859034
],
[
-0.064602821596206,
51.51769910144263
],
[
-0.064665853515323,
51.51768072204304
],
[
-0.064724720688734,
51.517704100767936
],
[
-0.064771776731905,
51.51775193254255
],
[
-0.064586301294839,
51.51780638365135
],
[
-0.064354447256943,
51.517458232080315
],
[
-0.065004001704955,
51.51728162312535
],
[
-0.065140866189073,
51.51749259191283
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "100",
"b_name": "Ibis Budget Hotel (formerly Brunning House)",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "Ibis Budget Hotel, 100 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 5,
"search_str": "Ibis Budget Hotel (formerly Brunning House)"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>The Rivoli Cinema and St Mary’s Station site with other land extending back to Fieldgate Street was all redeveloped in 1959–63 in a speculative office scheme by R. Seifert and Partners, architects. The builders were Marshall-Andrew & Co. Ltd. This incorporated a petrol station and garage/vehicle depot with a basement car park, a semi-circular forecourt at ground-floor level and a first-floor car showroom in a podium across the frontage, on which an eight-storey slab block was set at right angles bisecting the semi-circle. The white-mineralite faced slab block had enamelled apron panels on the main elevations, originally dark gray, latterly blue. The first occupants of the offices were the Brunning Group Ltd, an advertising and marketing firm, from which the block took its name. Citroen moved in at the lower levels. In 1988–9 the east forecourt quadrant was infilled with a single-storey car showroom extension for the Citroen dealership. </p>\n\n<p>Around 2010, with the site now owned by Alyjiso Ltd, a Jersey-based company, Brunning House was converted to hotel use, its part-open ground floor crudely bricked up. The Ibis Budget Hotel was enlarged in 2015–17 on the west part of the site in a project by Bamfords Trust plc as developer and contractor, working with the Accor Hotels Group, and Webb Gray & Partners Ltd as architects. The single-storey depot on Fieldgate Street was demolished and an eight-storey brick-faced block erected for what became a 169-bedroom hotel above ground-floor retail (still intended in 2018). The same consortium gained permission in 2016 for a nine-storey 131-bedroom building, the Adagio Aparthotel, to replace the east side of the podium, leaving a gap for a pedestrian passage, to be named Zabadne Way after the surname of several Bamfords directors, and wrapping round on the south side of Vine Court. This was designed by T. P. Bennett.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, GLC/AR/BR/17/039144: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n",
"created": "2018-04-19",
"last_edited": "2020-10-20"
},
{
"id": 514,
"title": "Former Prudential premises, 271-273 Whitechapel Road",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 509,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.059977819355327,
51.51923308868319
],
[
-0.060071633969903,
51.51936604849084
],
[
-0.060006635113294,
51.5193833518181
],
[
-0.060020646194965,
51.519403838915515
],
[
-0.059965875043606,
51.519417175317656
],
[
-0.059852136458853,
51.51926262242245
],
[
-0.059977819355327,
51.51923308868319
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "271-273",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "271-273 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 3,
"search_str": "271-273 Whitechapel Road"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Two shophouses here were replaced in 1913–14 by the Prudential Assurance Company. The Prudential’s house architect was Paul Waterhouse, and the builders were Rice & Son of Stockwell. The result was an assured commercial classical building with a Giant Ionic Order and segmental pediment to a façade the surface area of which has less brown-brick walling than Portland stone dressing. The explanation for such atypically substantial premises for the locality lies with the Prudential’s central role in social welfare after the 1911 National Insurance Act, which led to the paying out of health insurance benefits by ‘Approved Societies’. The ground-floor interior had a central public hall facing a long clerks’ counter to the west. The superintendent’s office to the rear was top-lit. The Prudential had departed by 1946, just before the abolition of this form of welfare. A triple-arched rusticated ‘basement’ was replaced by the insertion of a full-width shopfront in 1957–8 in a supermarket conversion for Super Stores Ltd.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: District Surveyors Returns: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, L/THL/D/2/30/171: Post Office Directories: Michael Heller, ‘The National Insurance Acts 1911–1947, the Approved Societies and the Prudential Assurance Company’, <em>20th Century British History</em>, vol. 19/1, 2008, pp.1–28: Tower Hamlets planning applications </p>\n",
"created": "2017-11-28",
"last_edited": "2017-12-11"
},
{
"id": 47,
"title": "The Bar Locks (formerly the Horse and Groom public house), 21 White Church Lane",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 144,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.069158110074285,
51.515488807862255
],
[
-0.069158103007644,
51.5154888105693
],
[
-0.06909531726186,
51.51550668914688
],
[
-0.069053903152441,
51.51543679769293
],
[
-0.069174688254967,
51.51539510349721
],
[
-0.069229827889087,
51.51545856821285
],
[
-0.069158110074285,
51.515488807862255
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "21",
"b_name": "The Bar Locks (formerly the Horse and Groom)",
"street": "White Church Lane",
"address": "21 White Church Lane",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 4,
"search_str": "The Bar Locks (formerly the Horse and Groom)"
},
"tags": [
"public house"
]
},
"body": "<p>There was a Horse and Groom pub on this corner site by 1760. A two-storey building that had been run by Henry Levy was replaced in 1902. The developer was Jacob King of West Hampstead, the architect Ralph J. Miller of 9 Queen Anne's Gate, and the builder E. Messiter of Sloane Square. It had become a Truman, Hanbury & Buxton pub by 1910 and has recently had its stock brick painted.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, MR/LV/7/49: Land Tax returns: District Surveyors Returns: London County Council Minutes, 24 June 1902, p. 953: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 41974: The National Archives, IR58/84809/2620</p>\n",
"created": "2016-06-20",
"last_edited": "2016-10-20"
},
{
"id": 146,
"title": "Colour image of 137 Leman Street from 1964",
"author": {
"id": 22,
"username": "sarahannmilne"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1278,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.068658408633023,
51.51146627369375
],
[
-0.068538811045101,
51.511508211569634
],
[
-0.068452591919085,
51.511519961499616
],
[
-0.068438018925483,
51.51147592407288
],
[
-0.068395210250652,
51.5114724857868
],
[
-0.068387609820431,
51.511430171877294
],
[
-0.068534751108972,
51.51140353437027
],
[
-0.068607151788316,
51.511390427340054
],
[
-0.068658408633023,
51.51146627369375
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "137",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Leman Street",
"address": "137 Leman Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 4,
"search_str": "137 Leman Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Digitalised slide located in THLHLA: <a href=\"https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/782864075961270272\">https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/782864075961270272</a></p>\n",
"created": "2016-10-04",
"last_edited": "2019-05-31"
},
{
"id": 295,
"title": "View of Old Montague Street, 1971",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 117,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.06806827102344,
51.51747178453937
],
[
-0.068101460895763,
51.51750668263352
],
[
-0.068127081637937,
51.517498546917075
],
[
-0.068190979657861,
51.51758385745302
],
[
-0.06829264666674,
51.517552117841184
],
[
-0.068193960734805,
51.51742791101118
],
[
-0.068154357739905,
51.51743980556263
],
[
-0.068141906920262,
51.51742433319862
],
[
-0.068105152860582,
51.51743547923236
],
[
-0.068058267880135,
51.517384497187955
],
[
-0.068185267578645,
51.517342892799604
],
[
-0.068176984365513,
51.51733176372423
],
[
-0.068232283025454,
51.517312589784154
],
[
-0.068245264806965,
51.51732579782641
],
[
-0.068349859999212,
51.51729116780716
],
[
-0.068381711363567,
51.51732332091475
],
[
-0.068370261386016,
51.517328857540846
],
[
-0.068386883278381,
51.517345670853146
],
[
-0.068353452172759,
51.51735863808482
],
[
-0.068364356622077,
51.517372017514376
],
[
-0.068324950715624,
51.51738493821042
],
[
-0.068423503323907,
51.517510563231795
],
[
-0.068525811707463,
51.5174780488514
],
[
-0.068459279552895,
51.5173960957796
],
[
-0.06848999930739,
51.51738638811417
],
[
-0.068462444488936,
51.517352446533394
],
[
-0.06855236156189,
51.51732403201941
],
[
-0.068580214092029,
51.51735834023238
],
[
-0.068608963350004,
51.51734925521336
],
[
-0.068669270516383,
51.51742378261138
],
[
-0.068661546933835,
51.51742679419159
],
[
-0.068667297973198,
51.51743276025812
],
[
-0.068797448001574,
51.517394679413954
],
[
-0.068810502647693,
51.517410759726395
],
[
-0.068837814802948,
51.51740212878775
],
[
-0.068886801726823,
51.51746246921991
],
[
-0.068831490904135,
51.51747994803719
],
[
-0.068845898830914,
51.51749769522596
],
[
-0.068010308641992,
51.51776217191367
],
[
-0.068002801697141,
51.517750038795626
],
[
-0.067963954086376,
51.51776348409939
],
[
-0.067887414413438,
51.517668911097104
],
[
-0.068041157787481,
51.517620328198426
],
[
-0.068045878204274,
51.51761817542481
],
[
-0.068041681668751,
51.51761310235492
],
[
-0.068037199428783,
51.5176147798915
],
[
-0.067951551647237,
51.51750995146181
],
[
-0.06806827102344,
51.51747178453937
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "60",
"b_name": "Hopetown",
"street": "Old Montague Street",
"address": "Hopetown, 60 Old Montague Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 6,
"search_str": "Hopetown"
},
"tags": [
"hostel",
"Salvation Army"
]
},
"body": "<p>This slide, below, from the Tower Hamlets Archives collection, shows the south side of Old Montague Street lin 1971 looking westwards across the fronts of Nos 66-70 and the entrance to Black Lion Yard towards the tower block of Denning Point on Commercial Street in the distance. All the buildings in the foreground have been demolished.</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/764117630311686144\">https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/764117630311686144</a></p>\n",
"created": "2017-03-15",
"last_edited": "2018-08-03"
},
{
"id": 482,
"title": "Jewish Working Girls’ Club (1903–c.1938)",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1448,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.070578995059682,
51.51446641575787
],
[
-0.070916294099672,
51.514341722525785
],
[
-0.071028314716768,
51.51446581892952
],
[
-0.070692872229902,
51.51458286029582
],
[
-0.070578995059682,
51.51446641575787
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "Leman Locke",
"street": "Leman Street",
"address": "Leman Locke, 15–17 Leman Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 12,
"search_str": "Leman Locke"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>By 1903 the former Mission School was in use by the Jewish Working Girls’ Club (JWGC), a sister group to the Butler Street (now Brune Street) Girls’ Club in Spitalfields. The JWGC began in 1881 as a small sewing circle which met in a house in Prescot Street but relocated to the Gravel Lane Board School in Wapping in 1886 where it grew in size and scope under the watchful eye of Lady Katie Magnus.<a href=\"#_ftn1\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftn1\">1]</a></p>\n\n<p>The purchase of the leasehold of the former Mission School building was made possible entirely through the support of one individual, Mrs Charles Henry, daughter of the prominent Jewish-American philanthropist, Leonard Lewisohn.<a href=\"#_ftn2\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftn2\">2]</a> Mrs Henry’s support was prompted by an anxiety to show American goodwill towards English Jews in the light of tightening immigration policies in the US, which restricted Jewish movement into the country as religious refugees. The building was adapted without significant architectural alteration to suit its new purpose by the architect M. E. Collins, who, on completion, reported that the Club contained ‘every accommodation, including the usual recreation rooms, a kitchen, scullery, library and other rooms’.<a href=\"#_ftn3\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftn3\">3]</a></p>\n\n<p>Following its move to the spacious Leman Street building, the Club ‘exceedingly flourish[ed]’ well into the 1920s.<a href=\"#_ftn4\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftn4\">4]</a> At the time of its opening the JWGC was formed of over 200 members, with 160 regularly attending evening and Sunday classes in such subjects as needlework, cooking, Hebrew and religion, singing and drilling.<a href=\"#_ftn5\">[^5]</a> The day-to-day running of the Club was reliant on voluntary contributions and teachers were mostly volunteers from the well-meaning middle classes. The Club was driven by the belief that ‘Jewish girls must be religious-minded, modest, well-mannered, good sisters, daughters and wives, and old-fashioned enough to believe that marriage was the finishing touch and the best touch of all.’ Girls were also encouraged to enter into respectable positions in domestic service or in the kitchens of local charitable institutions. Despite its traditional outlook, the Club engaged the girls in wider cultural, political and social concerns through social conversation, and a progressive class in business training was offered in the 1930s.<a href=\"#_ftn6\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftn6\">6]</a></p>\n\n<p>Despite securing funds to purchase the freehold of the site in 1928, the financial position of the Club was frequently unstable, reliant as it was on the patronage of local Jewish worthies. The JWGC appears to have continued on until at least the late 1930s before closure around the beginning of the World War Two.<a href=\"#_ftn7\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftn7\">7]</a></p>\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref1\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftnref1\">1]</a>: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em> (hereafter JC), 27 November 1936, p. 51</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref2\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftnref2\">2]</a>: <em>JC</em>, 12 December 1903, p. 18</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref3\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftnref3\">3]</a>: <em>JC</em>, 1 May 1903</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref4\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftnref4\">4]</a>: <em>JC</em>, 16 March, 1923</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref5\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftnref5\">5]</a>: <em>JC</em>, 6 February 1903</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref6\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftnref6\">6]</a>: <em>JC</em>, 5 March 1909, p.29; <em>JC</em>, 4 November 1938, p. 22</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref7\">[</a>^<a href=\"#_ftnref7\">7]</a>: <em>JC</em>, 4 November 1938, p. 22</p>\n",
"created": "2017-10-06",
"last_edited": "2020-10-23"
},
{
"id": 529,
"title": "Abdul Shukar Khalisdar's childhood memories on Scott Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1505,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.061260017048567,
51.52278202234212
],
[
-0.060907831969678,
51.52278914933802
],
[
-0.060902182048455,
51.522681232568644
],
[
-0.061254366294509,
51.52267410558088
],
[
-0.061260017048567,
51.52278202234212
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "",
"address": "Greater Whitechapel",
"feature_type": "GREATER_WHITECHAPEL",
"count": 1,
"search_str": "Greater Whitechapel"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Abdul Shukar Khalisdar, local businessman and community activist, was a child when he came from Bangladesh with his family to a flat on a building on this site in 1982. He describes life growing up in Whitechapel & Spitalfields through the 1980s and 1990s.</p>\n\n<p>I was born in Sylhet in Bangladesh in 1978, [my] family moved to the UK in 1982. I was around 4 years old.</p>\n\n<p>They moved [off]…Brady Street..Codrington House, which no longer exists. It was quite an old dilapidated [Council] building. The conditions were quite squalid. We lived on the third floor Flat Number 19…One part had three stories, the other part had four stories…in total, there's about 44 flats…maybe '50s or '60s built. It was really really in poor condition..no central heating, no double glazing. Although double glazing came in the late '80s, early '90s but by then, they had taken the decision to pull the building down and we were moved. In..January 1991 we moved to a block of flats in Spitalfields.</p>\n\n<p>My primary school and everything was literally opposite my block of flats. My very early childhood memories [are of] growing up in Britain, I don't remember anything about Bangladesh. I was at three/four years old when we came here. My earliest memories [are of] growing up …in Whitechapel in that area…</p>\n\n<p>Lots of memories, some good, some bad. We also faced, which is very typical I suppose of someone growing up in the '70s and '80s in Britain, racism. It was a big issue because [we were] the first wave of Bangladeshi migrant families coming over…</p>\n\n<p>My grandfather used to work on a Naval merchant ship, for the British navy..he docked in Liverpool. My grandfather was able to come to the UK regularly on what was called the \"Seaman's Voucher\". That paved the way, or rather that secured the passage for my uncles, and my father to come to the UK. They were entitled automatically because when they were recruiting you automatically have this right to first refusal.. I think somewhere, somehow, that was the basis of which my family history in the UK began.</p>\n\n<p>…Shortly after they all settled, [my grandfather] went back to Bangladesh and that was it, he passed away he was buried in Bangladesh. He never came back to the UK. He settled the children here, but the idea was always, from conversations I've had with my father and one of my uncles in particular, they never quite pictured the second and the third generation settling down.</p>\n\n<p>They had the same vision as their father, which was eventually, we'll go back. My eldest uncle went back, got married and all the other siblings followed suit but none of them thought of or even considered bringing the family over..[until] the late '70s after the war in Bangladesh with Pakistan…It was a very dangerous situation..</p>\n\n<p>[In Codrington House) there were 10 of us, seven brothers, three sisters. Four of us were born in Bangladesh. The rest of the family was born in the UK. All the typical multiple depravation issues that you can think of, we were subjected to that…Overcrowded home, poor schooling. The state of Tower Hamlets..was really not what it is now. [Now] it’s a..top performing local authority now has been for many years, it's a beacon council…Not only did we grow up..in one of the ten most worst deprived wards in the whole of England and Wales…We grew up in a very poor, very deprived environment… in a three bedroomed flat.</p>\n\n<p>Then we moved to a five bedroomed flat. The council did eventually move us into a building called McGlashon House, it still exists..It felt new.. different straight away in terms of aspirations, just moving into the flat just changed my whole perception..my own vision or views of life…I just felt, \"This is progress.\" Therefore, I want to build on that progress…</p>\n\n<p>…[My father] used to work in a factory..further down towards Commercial road. He also worked in Alie Street..[and] for a short while..he used to work in a factory on Greatorex Street. One of my part-time jobs I still remember was as a cotton cleaner. I used to clean cotton on jackets that were finished.. Just before you put the plastic coat over it or plastic sleeve and say it's finished somebody would go around and snip it with a snip knife…To clean the cotton basically. Do the finishing stages.</p>\n\n<p>…[In 1991] my elder brother had just finished his G.C.S.Es and he went to college. He was working part-time. I was still of school age but I was working part-time. I wasn't really depending on my father for pocket money....Economically things were improving [for us] so straight away two of us were not a burden on our father.</p>\n\n<p>That gave him a bit of rest, and also we weren't just looking after ourselves.. my elder brother, from his part-time earnings, he was also contributing. By the time my youngest brother was maybe 12, 13 the family did not understand poverty anymore or the younger ones didn't see poverty… Four-five of us [siblings] that migrated to the UK, to this day we've an additional drive compared to the rest of our siblings.</p>\n\n<p>We all went to University, we worked very hard, I went in as a mature student because my older brother made it to Uni before me and he had a choice either he gets a job and allows me to go to Uni and that would have been his sacrifice and so he and I sat down and we actually made a decision look, \"You go to Uni there's no guarantee I will make it,\" because back then educational attainment was not as good as is now especially for British Bangladeshis.</p>\n\n<p>He was the first of our generation to make it to University, in fact, he was the first in our entire family to make it to University…in England. He studied law at Colchester University. He lived in the halls for a while and then he moved out that helped two things straight away, he allowed me to have my own bedroom, but also.. it added pressure on me to keep things together and contribute financially to the family. It brought out an early maturity in me.</p>\n\n<p>I used to work in a restaurant..on Brick Lane.. in the evenings, every evening and I'd work six days a week.. during my G.C.S.Es. The fact that my brother made it to Uni straight away told me well [that was] the only way forward…Education was something that my parents did put into us at an early age the value of education, good education. For example, my father used to despite all the difficulties we used to have private tutors teachings us Bangla. I could read and write Bangla but not everyone in my family can and that's purely through no state support it was funded privately by my father and also Arabic education there's more for religious reasons but again there was that.</p>\n\n<p>Education was an integral part of growing up and despite all the difficulties the lack of space even the financial difficulties but we understood education is the key and that was told to us again and again, it was drawn into us I would say by my mother and my father, and my mother would often tell us, you know your father works really hard so that you can go to school, so that you can learn Bangla, so that you can read and write Bangla but also Arabic.</p>\n\n<p>We understood look the whole purpose of my father's struggle was to get us educated and when my brother made it to University I knew then that I have no option but to make it to Uni as well. Whether I go through the conventional means or whether I go in later on as a mature student but it's something that I will have to do. In some respect my older brother was the gatekeeper in that because he made it, we knew we have to achieve more, more than him because he had to go through a lot more to achieve what he really did.</p>\n\n<p>[My older brother would] share stories with us and he'd share the things that he's learnt. And I was argumentative by nature, I'd always find a way of arguing with him but through those arguments I would go away a lot more wiser and a lot more learned and sometimes I'd argue just to wind him up but he was very eloquent, a sort of orator. He'd hold his arguments really well and I could see it was the university and the teaching and the education that brought that out in him but also his vocabulary.</p>\n\n<p>His vocabulary was already very extensive, he's four years my senior and I used to quietly make notes of big words like all the big words at the time I used to, but he'd use this big words and I was so embarrassed to ask him what it meant, but I'd always make a note of it mentally and then I'd come back later on during peace period with him and I'd ask him what did you mean by that. Straight away I knew that hang on a minute. There's life, there’s more to life than Tower Hamlets because up until that point we were really like sardines, and sardines would live in Tower Hamlets from one council estate to another.</p>\n\n<p>…I took a different path completely so once [my elder brother] was doing all of that I finished my GCSE's and left with C's and D's which was enough really to get me into A levels but with a bit of struggle, but I had a lot of distractions because obviously I was working full time then. [I had the] responsibility of watching over my younger siblings, and I had a lot of them don't forget. I had four, five younger siblings… My brothers were a handful and I always had to keep an eye on them and it was very easy to get into fights, scuffles and street crime even.</p>\n\n<p>….[Eventually I found] work [via an apprenticeship].. as a central government [administrator] and that’s where I studied [part-time], I did a degree in law at Westminster University.. and then I studied for my masters in urban regeneration. I've always had an interest in community development purely because of [my] background, and what I've experienced and what I've witnessed and I do genuinely consider myself one of the fortunate few. I was able to break away from the shackles of deprivation, really, coupled with racism and all the other issues that were prevalent to a British Bangladeshi..in the '80s and '90s.</p>\n\n<p>[After graduating] I was working for Lambeth Council as a policy advisor and I also had a small consultancy role for the ODPM, office of the deputy prime minister, John Prescott, deputy prime minister at the time. Advising them on their tackling social disadvantages… You can see how my own experiences of life and my professional qualifications all played a part in the role that I was performing at the time.</p>\n\n<p>..I did that for two years, and in 1996 I decided to pack and own it and do my own things. I wasn't sure at the time what I was going to do but for about three months I was just brainstorming, looking at ideas and options… in 2002 we moved out of Tower Hamlets.'</p>\n\n<p>Abdul Shukar Khalisdar was interviewed by Shahed Saleem on 10.06.16</p>\n",
"created": "2017-12-02",
"last_edited": "2018-03-02"
},
{
"id": 64,
"title": "Hult International Business School and Tower, 33 Commercial Road",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 295,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.067818209826392,
51.51529176188959
],
[
-0.06764487976478,
51.515339414001744
],
[
-0.067607750809999,
51.515285910919964
],
[
-0.067575873484414,
51.51517071197488
],
[
-0.06753593722878,
51.51499574438642
],
[
-0.068296238211366,
51.515029912353455
],
[
-0.067732324854293,
51.51515294140592
],
[
-0.067818209826392,
51.51529176188959
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "33",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Commercial Road",
"address": "Hult International Business School (with Hult Tower), 33 Commercial Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 11,
"search_str": "Hult International Business School (with Hult Tower), 33 Commercial Road"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>From 1900-1 John Walker & Sons Ltd of Kilmarnock (Johnnie Walker) held the former St George's Brewery building (see adjacent site) as bonded whisky stores and a bottling plant that soon came to be known as St George's Bond. A beer-house aside, land along the Commercial Road frontage had been left an open yard. In 1902 it was built on to add a two-storey 'duty paid' warehouse, with a narrow-fronted range of offices to the far east, along with a house to the west. Davis & Emanuel were the architects, S. J. Jerrard & Sons the builders. Bottle stores replaced the engine house and by 1912 what remained of a receiving and dispatching yard had been roofed over.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Johnnie Walker continued here as part of Distillers Company until the early 1970s when the Amalgamated Investment and Property Company acquired the site and planned its redevelopment for offices, a scheme that fell through.[^2] New development proposals in 2006 mooted a 35-storey tower. This was refused and plans for Broadstone Ltd working with Burland TM Architects were revised to gain permissions in 2010. The project, largely student housing in 346 rooms, was seen through as Assam Place in 2012–14 for ADPL (Alternative Developments) and Mace with HKR Architects. A zinc- and brick-clad 18-storey tower, this height permitted as part of an ‘emerging cluster’, was inserted to the north-east where there had been bottle-storage and garage buildings. Single-storey retail and office spaces on the Commercial Road flank a student entrance, early twentieth-century facades retained. The developers had indicated that London Metropolitan University students were in mind, but the complex was in due course taken by the HULT International Business School to be an undergraduate campus. [^3]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: District Surveyors Returns: London Metropolitan Archives, O/064/034: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 40304: The National Archives, IR58/84806/2385–2400; IR58/84809/2644–6 </p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>East London Advertiser</em>, 14 March 1975: Post Office Directories </p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Tower Hamlets planning</p>\n",
"created": "2016-06-24",
"last_edited": "2018-11-13"
},
{
"id": 707,
"title": "83 Whitechapel High Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 316,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.070306608348073,
51.51590379026539
],
[
-0.070402382622295,
51.515878235675025
],
[
-0.070475794745731,
51.51596525618837
],
[
-0.07038236169326,
51.51599140113509
],
[
-0.070366233397564,
51.51597619453782
],
[
-0.070306608348073,
51.51590379026539
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "83",
"b_name": "83 Whitechapel High Street",
"street": "Whitechapel High Street",
"address": "83 Whitechapel High Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 3,
"search_str": "83 Whitechapel High Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>A utilitarian rebuilding of 1957, originally with steel Crittall windows and a step-back to the fifth floor at the rear. In 2007 the upper floors were converted to self-contained flats (known as Gouldy House, 82a Whitechapel High Street) and the top floor setback infilled with a mansard extension in 2010.[^1] The building sits on the footprint of a war-damaged stolid Jacobethan building by John Hamilton, architect (1845-1907), of four brick stories with composite-stone dressings, a shallow oriel, and an attic floor in a shaped gable, and wide display window lighting the first-floor showroom. It was built in 1899 by Coulsell Bros of Morpeth Street for Philip Moses, outfitters who remained till c. 1915.[^2] The 1899 building replaced a sixteenth- or early seventeenth-century timber-framed shop house, of three storeys with shallow oriels to the first and second floors and a tiled gambrel attic, very likely an eighteenth-century alteration. William Hart, a hat manufacturer who went bankrupt in 1846 was there from the 1840s to c. 1865, letting residential rooms ‘with use of a pianoforte’ above, and, after a brief interlude as a jewellers, in 1870, Samuel Gaved, set up as an ironmonger after four years as a tobacconist next door at <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/388/detail/\">82</a>, the business taken over in 1885 by Philip Cohen, ‘the cheapest house for furnishing ironmongery in the East End’. He was replaced by the oft-moving Philip Moses, outfitter, who rebuilt the premises in 1899.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>Use after 1915 included Hines, china and glass retailers, and from 1933 Alberts menswear, who later opened a branch at <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/412/detail/\">No. 145</a>. After bomb damage, Alberts relocated to <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/320/detail/\">No. 88</a> and following rebuilding, shop use (fabrics etc) with offices above continued till c. 1970 when Instone, a specialist travel agent arranging house parties – ‘for the “discerning traveller” ... no family groups, boisterous children or rowdy teens’ - and escorted tours to Russia continued till c. 2005, followed by a newsagent until opening as Exmouth Coffee Company, an independent coffee shop, in 2012. [^4]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online (THP)</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), District Surveyors Returns (DSR): THP: Post Office Directories (POD): Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Census: POD: <em>Evening Chronicle</em>, 15 June 1846, p. 4: <em>East London Observer (ELO)</em>, 10 Jan 1863, p. 4: <em>Clerkenwell News</em>, 18 April 1864, p. 4: <em>Evening Standard</em>, 26 Jan 1866, p. 5: <em>Clerkenwell News</em>, 20 July 1870, p. 2: <em>ELO</em>, 12 Dec 1885, p. 5</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: POD: <em>Sunday Times</em>, 14 May 1989: <em>The Herald</em>, 9 Jan 1993</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-07-10",
"last_edited": "2018-10-10"
},
{
"id": 147,
"title": "'Poor Man's Hotel: A Rowton House Building for Whitechapel'",
"author": {
"id": 14,
"username": "rebecca.preston"
},
"feature": {
"id": 839,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.064497563558549,
51.517361628803805
],
[
-0.064496408109862,
51.51736309395909
],
[
-0.064348901589247,
51.517381493231476
],
[
-0.064343975983599,
51.51736612215419
],
[
-0.064054660314112,
51.517402209452214
],
[
-0.064059058880887,
51.517415936099994
],
[
-0.063880964779871,
51.51743814997979
],
[
-0.063877096358366,
51.517426077614196
],
[
-0.063528073193922,
51.517469610821024
],
[
-0.063478650874795,
51.517449375087956
],
[
-0.063465163734058,
51.51737222076246
],
[
-0.063672133997618,
51.51734725578329
],
[
-0.063667407479579,
51.51723290068993
],
[
-0.063724830703042,
51.51723384881843
],
[
-0.063725147296712,
51.517226384957326
],
[
-0.063667724082622,
51.517225436829115
],
[
-0.063646330595039,
51.51716533088115
],
[
-0.06369299365168,
51.51713771882066
],
[
-0.063728249907456,
51.517153239118066
],
[
-0.063773509194633,
51.517148149709364
],
[
-0.063793395289669,
51.517131845319966
],
[
-0.063867317624302,
51.51712375146289
],
[
-0.063900994386595,
51.517134287085675
],
[
-0.064225680705438,
51.51709706728731
],
[
-0.064219264541115,
51.517072344955054
],
[
-0.064310349325468,
51.51706187287984
],
[
-0.064316793729717,
51.51708593036503
],
[
-0.064372224762903,
51.517078933034306
],
[
-0.064422011504583,
51.51705414924394
],
[
-0.064459090927727,
51.517083143770165
],
[
-0.064448950765029,
51.51709642076694
],
[
-0.064497563558549,
51.517361628803805
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "81",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Fieldgate Street",
"address": "Tower House, 81 Fieldgate Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 8,
"search_str": "Tower House, 81 Fieldgate Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>'To-morrow the fifth of the Rowton Houses will be opened to receive guests. Situated 400 yards from St Mary's Station, Whitechapel, it stands with its frontage in Fieldgate-st., in the very midst of an enormous population. Within two or three weeks probably every one of its 816 cubicles will be occupied. The rent of 6d. a night, or 3s. 6d. a week, covers the cost of all accommodation by day as well as night. So perfect has been the construction of these Rowton Houses that, except in trifling details, it has not been possible to introduce any improvement in the last building. Without a retrogression, the primary conception has been adhered to of giving each man a separate cubicle with a separate window under his control; and such privacy and such a bed that, in the words of Lord Rowton, an Archbishop might sleep there in decency and comfort. All other accommodation - dining-room, smoking-room, reading-room, and bathrooms - is found on the ground floor. In the locker corridors are fitted the wardrobe cupboards, where each man may keep his clothes and possessions under lock and key. Other conveniences include dressing-rooms, barber's shop, and a room each for shoemaker and tailor, where cheap repairs may be carried out, and new or secondhand goods obtained. The finest apartment in this \"Poor Man's Hotel\" is the dining-room, which has table room for 456 men. Here anything may be bought at cost price - from cooked meat at 4d. to a farthing's worth of milk or sugar. There are also provided all necessary cooking utensils for the gratuitous use of lodgers desirous of catering for themselves.'[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Rowton House, Whitechapel, opened in August 1902. Designed by Harry B. Measures, FRIBA, it was the fifth of six Rowton Houses to be built in the capital between 1892 and 1905, and the first lit by electricity. Since converted to flats, it is now known as Tower House.</p>\n\n<p>https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/history/research/researchprojects/athomeintheinstitution/athomeintheinstitution.aspx</p>\n\n<p>http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions-and-displays/gallery-2009/Default.aspx?id=29536&page=3</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Press clipping from unidentified local newspaper, August 1902 (Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives).</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2016-10-19",
"last_edited": "2019-10-04"
},
{
"id": 317,
"title": "Hopetown, 60 Old Montague Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 117,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.06806827102344,
51.51747178453937
],
[
-0.068101460895763,
51.51750668263352
],
[
-0.068127081637937,
51.517498546917075
],
[
-0.068190979657861,
51.51758385745302
],
[
-0.06829264666674,
51.517552117841184
],
[
-0.068193960734805,
51.51742791101118
],
[
-0.068154357739905,
51.51743980556263
],
[
-0.068141906920262,
51.51742433319862
],
[
-0.068105152860582,
51.51743547923236
],
[
-0.068058267880135,
51.517384497187955
],
[
-0.068185267578645,
51.517342892799604
],
[
-0.068176984365513,
51.51733176372423
],
[
-0.068232283025454,
51.517312589784154
],
[
-0.068245264806965,
51.51732579782641
],
[
-0.068349859999212,
51.51729116780716
],
[
-0.068381711363567,
51.51732332091475
],
[
-0.068370261386016,
51.517328857540846
],
[
-0.068386883278381,
51.517345670853146
],
[
-0.068353452172759,
51.51735863808482
],
[
-0.068364356622077,
51.517372017514376
],
[
-0.068324950715624,
51.51738493821042
],
[
-0.068423503323907,
51.517510563231795
],
[
-0.068525811707463,
51.5174780488514
],
[
-0.068459279552895,
51.5173960957796
],
[
-0.06848999930739,
51.51738638811417
],
[
-0.068462444488936,
51.517352446533394
],
[
-0.06855236156189,
51.51732403201941
],
[
-0.068580214092029,
51.51735834023238
],
[
-0.068608963350004,
51.51734925521336
],
[
-0.068669270516383,
51.51742378261138
],
[
-0.068661546933835,
51.51742679419159
],
[
-0.068667297973198,
51.51743276025812
],
[
-0.068797448001574,
51.517394679413954
],
[
-0.068810502647693,
51.517410759726395
],
[
-0.068837814802948,
51.51740212878775
],
[
-0.068886801726823,
51.51746246921991
],
[
-0.068831490904135,
51.51747994803719
],
[
-0.068845898830914,
51.51749769522596
],
[
-0.068010308641992,
51.51776217191367
],
[
-0.068002801697141,
51.517750038795626
],
[
-0.067963954086376,
51.51776348409939
],
[
-0.067887414413438,
51.517668911097104
],
[
-0.068041157787481,
51.517620328198426
],
[
-0.068045878204274,
51.51761817542481
],
[
-0.068041681668751,
51.51761310235492
],
[
-0.068037199428783,
51.5176147798915
],
[
-0.067951551647237,
51.51750995146181
],
[
-0.06806827102344,
51.51747178453937
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "60",
"b_name": "Hopetown",
"street": "Old Montague Street",
"address": "Hopetown, 60 Old Montague Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 6,
"search_str": "Hopetown"
},
"tags": [
"hostel",
"Salvation Army"
]
},
"body": "<p>The Salvation Army’s women’s hostel on the south side of Chicksand Street known as Hopetown moved to Old Montague Street to make way for the Greater London Council’s Hopetown Estate development, against the wishes of Tower Hamlets Council which wanted fewer hostels in the borough. With Black Lion Yard and the south side of Old Montague Street cleared, the Salvation Army was given this site, larger than that on Chicksand Street, and the hostel went up in 1977–9 and was formally opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 20 February 1980. The project was undertaken by the Salvation Army Housing Association Ltd with the GLC and the Department of the Environment, and designed by the Salvation Army’s own architects under David Blackwell (John M. Maxwell, job architect). It used Broderick lead-faced panel cladding and had 107 beds in three-storey flat-roofed blocks, mostly in individual rooms in place of the predecessor’s dormitories.</p>\n\n<p>The Salvation Army Housing Association wholly replaced this building in 2005–7 for supported housing (109 beds), eighteen bedsits and a disabled unit in four-storey blocks with polychrome brick facing. Designed in 2003 by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects, this project was seen through by Darren Bland, architect. Still called Hopetown, the premises continued as what the Salvation Army refers to as a Lifehouse for homeless women up to the end of 2017. The women were then displaced to make space for men following the closure of the Salvation Army’s Booth House (see p.xx). The building was renamed Founder’s House to downplay the association with women.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 165/15055; pamphlet LC9231: Tower Hamlets online planning applications: <em>East London Advertiser</em>, 13 Sept. 2017 and 12 June 2018</p>\n",
"created": "2017-03-30",
"last_edited": "2018-08-03"
},
{
"id": 93,
"title": " The Model Establishment, c.1847 to 1871",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1447,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.073620345272929,
51.51568885255038
],
[
-0.073978291920849,
51.515581075868006
],
[
-0.074105154053684,
51.51572542989613
],
[
-0.073829058934223,
51.51581988475423
],
[
-0.073816416255057,
51.51580549883457
],
[
-0.073765536685163,
51.515822645959325
],
[
-0.073818338832879,
51.51587274604106
],
[
-0.073896057393162,
51.515850404112115
],
[
-0.073900642179228,
51.51585546922409
],
[
-0.073811510459007,
51.51588294615875
],
[
-0.073751379811388,
51.51582774828753
],
[
-0.073609777363084,
51.515693181519985
],
[
-0.073620345272929,
51.51568885255038
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "25",
"b_name": "The Wash Houses, London Metropolitan University, former Whitechapel Baths",
"street": "Old Castle Street",
"address": "The Wash Houses, London Metropolitan Univeristy, 25 Old Castle Street, London E1 7NT",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 19,
"search_str": "The Wash Houses, London Metropolitan University, former Whitechapel Baths"
},
"tags": [
"cholera",
"library",
"swimming",
"washing",
"women"
]
},
"body": "<p> </p>\n\n<p>Following Edwin Chadwick’s sanitary reports of 1842, a ‘Committee for Baths for the Labouring Classes’ was formed in October 1844 as a result of a high profile public meeting organised to address the issue. The group, based in London and made up of notable citizens, aimed to improve the sanitary conditions of the poor through the construction of publically accessible washing facilities. Among their number was Robert Dickson (1804–1875), a physician who had married Mary Ann Coope, of the locally prominent sugar-refining and brewing family. This gentlemanly enthusiasm for bath houses was spurred on by pressing concerns regarding the ability of the ‘industrious’ classes to rid themselves of ‘personal and domestic dirt’ in order to prevent further outbreaks of cholera. The Committee agreed to make their first specific intervention in Whitechapel and private subscriptions were sought to support the new Baths. This exemplar project was to be sited between Goulston Street on the west and Castle Alley on the east. P. P. Baly was appointed to design the building, Messrs Piper the builder, and work duly began in December 1845. [^1] </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>Although a date stone on the Castle Alley façade was inscribed with the year 1846, the Baths were not officially opened until July 1847 and even then only in part. Reliant on public subscriptions and loans, this delay was caused by alterations and additions to Baly’s original design which pushed the total cost up from £15,000 to £23,000. The project reached eventual completion in 1851. Inspecting the Baths, <em>The Builder</em> lauded its ‘Useful’ design, but held that the scheme was entirely devoid of the ‘Beautiful’, disparagingly noting that its appearance was ‘not simply plain and unpretending, but downright ugly.’ Whilst the Committee acknowledged the severe aesthetics, it diverted criticism away from the architect by drawing attention to the lack of financial backing which necessitated such functionalism. On account of funding difficulties, the Committee was forced to abandon its original intention to build four such establishments of several storeys each. The single storey Whitechapel Baths was their only success. [^2]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>The building claimed two principal elevations, both of red-brick construction with white-brick window dressings. The washing department was located and entered from the east with one entrance, for women only (see figure 1). The bathing department was accessed from the west, with separate entrances for men and women. Inside, the accommodation was divided roughly in two, fitted out with ninety-four slipper baths and ninety-six washing places. Slate washing cubicles were arranged in three rows with individual stations facing ‘back-to-back’ in pairs, each supplied with a boiling tub, a washing tub and a drying horse (see figure 2). The sunken cast-iron slipper baths were divided equally between first and second class but two thirds of the baths were assigned to men and one third to women, correctly pre-empting an imbalance of use. Positioned to the north of the Baths, facing onto Goulston Street, a modest ‘plunge’ bath lined with dressing boxes sat below rooms allocated to the superintendent of the establishment. [^3]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<h3><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2016/07/27/wash_houses_1851002.jpg\"></h3>\n\n<p><em>Figure 1: ‘As built’ plan of Baths and Wash-house printed in</em> The Builder, <em>8 Feb 1851, p.90</em></p>\n\n<p>As former superintendent of I. K. Brunel’s Hungerford Bridge, Baly drew on his expertise in ironwork to engineer a structure which facilitated the efficient flow of water around the building. The ground floor rested on a basement formed of inverted brick arches and walls tied together with iron rods. Iron columns rose up on these vaults, projecting up to support a slate roof divided into ten bays. Below ground, two coal-fuelled boilers provided hot water and a steam engine enabled it to be pumped up from the underground reservoir to an elevated water tank positioned next to the central brick chimney stack. Gas heated the irons and mechanical ventilation was aided by roof openings. [^4]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<h3><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2016/07/27/women_washing003.jpg\"></h3>\n\n<p><em>Figure 2: Engraving of women at their washing stations (possibly in Baly’s Westminster Wash-house of 1849), ‘The Pictorial Handbook of London’, 1854, p.255</em></p>\n\n<p>Fulfilling the ambitions of the Committee, the Baths were judged to be both nationally and world-leading. Indeed, the attention the Whitechapel project attracted influenced Parliament to pass the important ‘Baths and Washhouses Act’ of 1846. Critically this Act gave boroughs and parishes the power to raise rates and borrow public funds to support the construction of public baths to be governed by bodies of commissioners. The Act required that twice as many baths were be provided for the labouring classes as for the upper classes and set out maximum fees of 1d for a cold bath, 2d for a warm one, and 1d for one hour’s use of a washing place. By the time the Whitechapel ‘Model’ reached completion in 1851, seven bath houses had been constructed within London. Reflecting later on its influence, the <em>Illustrated London News</em> noted that either Whitechapel’s design had been ‘unimprovable perfection’ or architects of later establishments had been ‘copying one another with a touching fidelity’. It was reported that representatives from France and Belgium, where Baly worked as resident railway engineer from 1845-49, took up the invitation to inspect the Model. Made more widely known through the distribution of drawings, it was upon the Whitechapel precedent that several bath houses were approved for Paris. Awareness of its success also contributed to the provision of similar facilities in the United States. The Model was however not the first of its kind in England, nor indeed London. It followed after a small-scale experiment at London Docks in Glasshouse Yard and, as a result of the delays during the construction of Whitechapel’s Baths, the bath house at St Pancras opened before it in 1846. [^5]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>In spite of these considerable successes, the ghost of financial difficulty haunted the Whitechapel Baths far beyond the construction stage and the Model struggled to make a sustainable turnover. The challenges facing the establishment made it hard to find men willing to partake in its governance. Seeking a way forward, in 1854 the Baths were offered to the City Corporation for £13,000, the sum of its liabilities. The transfer did not come to fruition however and the Baths struggled on. Crippled by debt, they were closed in March 1871, intended for sale. A six-year period of disuse followed while campaigners sought to protect the institution, and the building fell into near dereliction. As an exemplar, the Baths proved a success. As proof of the long term financial viability of bath houses, they did not. [^6]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>Illustrated London News</em>, 19 Oct 1844, p.256: <em>The Builder</em> (hereafter <em>B</em>), 8 Feb 1851, p.83-4: <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) sub </em>Dickson: DSR</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>B</em>, 7 April 1854, p.167; 29 May 1847, p.249; 3 Oct 1846, p.470</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>B</em>, 3 Oct 1846, p.470</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Ibid.; <em>BDCE</em>, Vol 2, p.45</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: <em>B</em>, 8 Feb 1851, p.83-4; 18 Oct 1851, p.664; 15 May 1847, p.229; R. O. Allsop, <em>The British Architect</em>, 15 Jan 1892, p.44; A. Campbell, <em>Report on Public Baths and Wash-houses in the United Kingdom</em>, 1918, p. 4; <em>ILN</em>, 2 July 1853, p.522; P. P. Baly, <em>Baths and Wash-houses for the Labouring Classes</em>, 1852; H. G. Bohn, <em>The Pictorial Handbook of London</em>, 1854, p.256; M. T. Williams, <em>Washing ‘the Great Unwashed: Public Baths in Urban America, 1840-1920</em>, 1991; <em>BDCE</em>, Vol 2, p.45</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>B</em>, 7 April 1854, p.167; 19 April 1873, p.311; THLHLA, Pamphlet, ‘Whitechapel Public Swimming Baths’, n.d., 611.1</p>\n",
"created": "2016-07-27",
"last_edited": "2021-02-10"
},
{
"id": 232,
"title": "Phoenix Hall (demolished), 1971",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 767,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.064737657751254,
51.51485039890695
],
[
-0.064742835894136,
51.51492592216918
],
[
-0.064754311328682,
51.515093290769045
],
[
-0.064376857101836,
51.51510336495307
],
[
-0.06436047992943,
51.51486447563641
],
[
-0.064737657751254,
51.51485039890695
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "81-91",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Commercial Road",
"address": "London Enterprise Academy (formerly Aneurin Bevan House), 81-91 Commercial Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 4,
"search_str": "London Enterprise Academy (formerly Aneurin Bevan House), 81-91 Commercial Road"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>A digitised colour slide from the Tower Hamlets Archives collection:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/762966548994723840\">https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/762966548994723840</a></p>\n",
"created": "2016-12-19",
"last_edited": "2017-08-30"
},
{
"id": 382,
"title": "Peabody estate A Block",
"author": {
"id": 153,
"username": "danny"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1350,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.069232175663529,
51.51046430830265
],
[
-0.069032508859417,
51.510505874761336
],
[
-0.069000503212806,
51.51044593058072
],
[
-0.069049530086345,
51.510434504947405
],
[
-0.068977295333485,
51.51031040352003
],
[
-0.068931067217321,
51.5103218752112
],
[
-0.068896263190324,
51.510261884916495
],
[
-0.069085913548265,
51.51021432855069
],
[
-0.069232175663529,
51.51046430830265
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "Block A",
"street": "John Fisher Street",
"address": "Block A, John Fisher Street, Peabody Estate Whitechapel",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 15,
"search_str": "Block A"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>I have lived in this block since 1970. My mum and dad moved into this block when it was modernised. Before that, we lived in one of the other blocks on the estate - C block, further down (south) on the street. When we moved into A Block it was the first time ever that we had a proper bathroom and separate toilet as well as running water (hot and cold) inside. </p>\n\n<p>Before then, we shared two communal toilets along the landing in C Block with four other flats and we got our water, cold only, from a tap at two communal sinks adjacent to the toilets. </p>\n\n<p>Before the modernisation was completed, I remember climbing with other kids up the scaffolding surrounding the block as work was underway and peering in the windows hoping that we might get a chance to live in one of these new flats. </p>\n\n<p>At the time, my dad worked for London Transport on the underground at Monument Station and I think my mum worked in a clothing factory at that time as a tea lady. Both had come from Co. Donegal in Ireland in the late fifties. I was born like my two sisters in the London Hospital in Whitechapel Road.</p>\n\n<p>1970 was a big year, it was the year I transferred to secondary school - I had until then attended my local primary. Tower Hill Catholic School which had originally been in Chamber Street and which had transferred to a new building in St Mark Street when it became English Martyrs JM&I Primary School in 1969. In 1970, I started at the London Oratory School in West Brompton, Fulham which was also a brand new building. </p>\n\n<p>During the summer of 1970, me and my sisters had all learnt to swim at the new St George's Swimming Pool on the Highway just past Cannon Street Road.</p>\n\n<p>A Block was, in its modernised condition, home to 20 flats. Four on each of its 5 floors (ground to fourth floor). Our neighbours were a mix of English, Irish, Maltese, but at that time few Bangladeshi or Black people. Over the years, the block had many comings and goings of people and in more recent times our neighbours have included people of Irish descent like us, Poles, Ethiopean, Sudan, Portuguese, Scottish, St Lucian, Bangladeshi, Brazil, and even some English people who were always a rarity!!</p>\n\n<p>Eventually, my dad and then in more recent times, my mum died and I got married to a girl of Irish descent too. We were given a flat and have raised three daughters here. We brought our girls up in a two bedroomed flat. I found the only place I could get treble bunkbeds was in France and I bought some and travelled to France to pick them up in our car in the mid 1990s. The girls have grown up very close to each other and we remain a typical closeknit London Irish family. All the girls went to the same primary school I did, and to the same Catholic secondary girls school in Hackney that my sisters went to. They all got places at UCL in London, one of the world's top universities and have graduated with 2.1 degrees. </p>\n\n<p>As a family, we were fortunate to have had Irish parents who came from that generation who although not having benefitted to a great extent from education themselves, because of poverty and the need to contribute to family incomes by going to work at fourteen, they did recognise the joys and importance of learning. We always had books in the house, and our parents always took us out on trips when they could afford to do so by train or bus and neighbours kids too if possible. We did quite well at school and we passed on this joy of learning and knowledge to our own kids. I strongly disagree that poverty is a barrier to learning and success. Cultural influences and support from a strong family can overcome these potential obstacles. </p>\n\n<p>In recent years, the block has remained a great community to live in with a good set of close neighbours who have always kept an eye out for each other. I was fortunate to work in a public sector role for many years and then in the business consulting arena with lots of opportunities to work with big companies overseas. I even spent a short time working in the Middle East. These chances to travel and to facilitate the rest of the family to do so, stood in often stark contrast to many of our neighbours. Poverty, joblessness, low-paid jobs and mental health issues took their toll on many of our neighbours. It is clear to me, that having access to a little extra money, doing jobs that are not hard manual labour nor involving long, anti-social hours with little reward, have a major impact on one's health. My own father worked many night shifts in his job for London Transport and did not live more than three years beyond his retirement. I hope I will not befall the same fate. I'm assured that at least having worked for forty years, I have some reasonable additional pension available above and beyond the state one to see me through. </p>\n\n<p>The local area has seen many changes over the years - an increasing Bangladeshi population although that group may well be following others on that journey to the suburbs and home ownership. We never had the concept of Right to Buy in these Peabody flats and I'm politically opposed to it and what it has done to affordability of homes for most people in Britain. Certainly, my own kids see no way they can afford to live in the area they grew up in, nor in London because of prices. Drugs dealing has become a major problem in recent years. A local charity once had a hostel in a former seaman's home locally, and their residents brought major dealing and purchasing to local streets. That problem persists today even though the hostel is now a BackPack hostel for travellers. Many tenants seem to have serious mental health or dependency issues and these also cause disruptive behaviour in the area. A gang culture amongst local youths also leads to problems and occasional clashes. Much of this gang culture is also related to drug dealing and lack of opportunity as well as some degree of alienation from their parents' generation because of language and traditional cultural expectations about jobs, relationships and religion.</p>\n\n<p>The area has at the same time become more gentrified. In the late 1970s - the area was actually dying - the docks has closed, this was still a place littered with post-war 'bomb sites' and derelict warehouses that we kids took great pleasure in playing in. But with the incessant increase in house (or should I say apartment) prices, new builds have been going up all round the area bringing many new Europeans and other world citizens who frequently work in financial services, the law or other business in the City. This has led to us seeing a local Safeway store in St Katharine's become firstly a Morrisons and then (best of all) a Waitrose. These are generally positive developments but the area has become even more divided between haves and have-nots.</p>\n\n<p>Our block is well over 140 years old. It features in an illustration from the Jack London book <em>People of the Abyss</em> and records of the Old Bailey even recount a vicious murder in the block in the late 1800s. But it still provides decent homes as George Peabody, the founder of the Peabody trust sought to do, and long may it do so.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2017-06-04",
"last_edited": "2017-09-12"
},
{
"id": 273,
"title": "Neil House in the 1980s - use for the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England",
"author": {
"id": 97,
"username": "IanLeith"
},
"feature": {
"id": 124,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.069556671088283,
51.51621233474082
],
[
-0.06967294190097,
51.51632485336538
],
[
-0.069672936003738,
51.51632486398551
],
[
-0.069456940485552,
51.516417993393475
],
[
-0.069315254259344,
51.51648945259358
],
[
-0.06935498784689,
51.51651427989568
],
[
-0.069323722398521,
51.51653030469722
],
[
-0.069327905465092,
51.51652782902118
],
[
-0.069152029727788,
51.51639516169656
],
[
-0.069556671088283,
51.51621233474082
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "3-15",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Whitechapel Road",
"address": "E1 Studios (formerly Neil House), 3-15 Whitechapel Road",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 5,
"search_str": "E1 Studios (formerly Neil House), 3-15 Whitechapel Road"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Due to the risk of flooding before the construction of the Thames Barrier (1982), I was instructed by Eric Mercer to help organize the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (or RCHME, later part of English Heritage/Historic England)'s transfer of the contents of the basement archive store at Great Westminster House on Horseferry Road to Neil House, Whitechapel Road, around 1979-81.</p>\n\n<p>It was very suitable for the RCHME/National Monuments Record since it was (a) above Thames flood levels, (b) it had semi-industrial floor-loading, and (c) it was close to Aldgate East tube station, as well as offering us far more space than the Commission had ever had – probably bigger than any previous office space since 1908. I am pretty sure the RCHME could never have afforded any remotely proper archive facility, and we may well have obtained plans from official sources who were helping us to find a suitable property purely for ‘storage’. The total extent of archival advice was, as explained to me by a structural engineer: carefully space out the filing cabinets to distribute the sheer weight of glass negs. In the huge piles of plans and oversize copies deposited on the floor, I found more than a few large-format prints taken by the great Victorian photographer Roger Fenton – since then we have found dozens more.</p>\n\n<p>The various rooms (four) on two floors were fitted out with racking which formed the basis of filing backlogs arranged topographically – these largely still exist here, where I work now in the Historic England Archives in Swindon. The actual physical move from vans or lorries was carried out by RCHME staff and I remember several boxes of Bedford Lemere negatives (12x10 inch glass plates) being smashed accidentally as they were passed on from hand to hand up stairways: this only proves the then almost total lack of concern in grasping that photography was a historic recording medium, thus the insufficient resources for proper handling and storage in a building without any air-handling or dust filtering, i.e., an era as distant to conceive as possible given the current attitudes towards the photographic legacy and its conservation constraints which we now take for granted.</p>\n\n<p>The name Neil was never evident, and the building seemed rather connected to the surrounding garment industry in the area so it could have been built as a speculative property for the rag trade, though one wonders how this came into any official ownership or lease. There was a bed for a night security man and no other tenants that I can recollect. I forever link it with Bloom’s restaurant near the Whitechapel Art Gallery where I would get a take-away of salt-beef on rye with new green pickles and then cycle back to the Royal Commission's headquarters at Savile Row in the West End, or home.</p>\n",
"created": "2017-02-10",
"last_edited": "2017-05-03"
},
{
"id": 318,
"title": "Old Montague Street's early history",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 117,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.06806827102344,
51.51747178453937
],
[
-0.068101460895763,
51.51750668263352
],
[
-0.068127081637937,
51.517498546917075
],
[
-0.068190979657861,
51.51758385745302
],
[
-0.06829264666674,
51.517552117841184
],
[
-0.068193960734805,
51.51742791101118
],
[
-0.068154357739905,
51.51743980556263
],
[
-0.068141906920262,
51.51742433319862
],
[
-0.068105152860582,
51.51743547923236
],
[
-0.068058267880135,
51.517384497187955
],
[
-0.068185267578645,
51.517342892799604
],
[
-0.068176984365513,
51.51733176372423
],
[
-0.068232283025454,
51.517312589784154
],
[
-0.068245264806965,
51.51732579782641
],
[
-0.068349859999212,
51.51729116780716
],
[
-0.068381711363567,
51.51732332091475
],
[
-0.068370261386016,
51.517328857540846
],
[
-0.068386883278381,
51.517345670853146
],
[
-0.068353452172759,
51.51735863808482
],
[
-0.068364356622077,
51.517372017514376
],
[
-0.068324950715624,
51.51738493821042
],
[
-0.068423503323907,
51.517510563231795
],
[
-0.068525811707463,
51.5174780488514
],
[
-0.068459279552895,
51.5173960957796
],
[
-0.06848999930739,
51.51738638811417
],
[
-0.068462444488936,
51.517352446533394
],
[
-0.06855236156189,
51.51732403201941
],
[
-0.068580214092029,
51.51735834023238
],
[
-0.068608963350004,
51.51734925521336
],
[
-0.068669270516383,
51.51742378261138
],
[
-0.068661546933835,
51.51742679419159
],
[
-0.068667297973198,
51.51743276025812
],
[
-0.068797448001574,
51.517394679413954
],
[
-0.068810502647693,
51.517410759726395
],
[
-0.068837814802948,
51.51740212878775
],
[
-0.068886801726823,
51.51746246921991
],
[
-0.068831490904135,
51.51747994803719
],
[
-0.068845898830914,
51.51749769522596
],
[
-0.068010308641992,
51.51776217191367
],
[
-0.068002801697141,
51.517750038795626
],
[
-0.067963954086376,
51.51776348409939
],
[
-0.067887414413438,
51.517668911097104
],
[
-0.068041157787481,
51.517620328198426
],
[
-0.068045878204274,
51.51761817542481
],
[
-0.068041681668751,
51.51761310235492
],
[
-0.068037199428783,
51.5176147798915
],
[
-0.067951551647237,
51.51750995146181
],
[
-0.06806827102344,
51.51747178453937
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "60",
"b_name": "Hopetown",
"street": "Old Montague Street",
"address": "Hopetown, 60 Old Montague Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 6,
"search_str": "Hopetown"
},
"tags": [
"hostel",
"Salvation Army"
]
},
"body": "<p>Taking its name from the family that acquired the land hereabouts in 1643, Montague Street was in existence from about that time. In the 1680s another Montague Street was laid out close by to the north in Spitalfields (this later became part of Hanbury Street). By the 1790s the street in Whitechapel was regularly differentiated by a prefatory ‘Old’. The road was largely built up by 1700 and pubs included the Half Moon and Seven Stars, documented as present around 1730, and the King of Prussia’s Head, around 1770 by when the Cock and Key was on the south side, east of King's Arms Court, eventually No. 52. By 1840 the Cock and Key had become the Commodore. There was also the Black Bull, later if not always at what was eventually renumbered as No. 24 on the south side. John Frostick, the Black Bull’s victualler by the 1780s, owned property on the east side of Brick Lane. He or another John Frostick was a carpenter at a house on the site of No. 5 on the street’s north side, adjacent to what is now Frostic Walk, previously Frostic Place, which had a few houses on its east side by the 1790s. It had been preceded by Montague (later Manby Court).</p>\n\n<p>Early Jewish presence appears to be represented by Moses Israel Brandon, a tobacconist on the north side in 1787. Joshua Levy was refining sugar on the street by the 1820s and by 1832 Kaufman Meyers, a cane umbrella stick and rib manufacturer and dealer in Russia mats, was at the top end of Osborn Street’s east side. With sugarbaking and distilling having been established to the south and dying to the north in the eighteenth century, it is unsurprising that other noxious trades arrived in the early nineteenth century, among them soapmaking, lamp-black manufacturing and scum-boiling. Courts of tiny two-storey houses were squeezed in: Montague Place (fourteen) between what became Nos 30 and 32 and backing on to Size Yard, and Easington Buildings (sixteen) between Nos 46 and 48 just west of King’s Arms Court, where the census of 1891 recorded 98 residents.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Later nineteenth-century rebuildings for small houses and tenements included Nos 47–63, a row of 1887 called Pauline Terrace, and Nos 66–70 (Montague Houses) on the east side of Black Lion Yard, a tenement block of 1891–2 put up by Davis Brothers. By 1898 the street was ‘all Jews’, shopkeepers living above their premises. In 1909 a Passover Cake oven was built to the rear of the Black Bull, and in 1911 the pub was converted to shop use.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>The <strong>Chevrah Shass Synagogue</strong> (demolished) stood to the rear of 42 Old Montague Street, its name being Hebrew for ‘society for studying the Talmud’. A group that may have originated in 1875 settled here around 1896 through the conversion of a toplit warehouse. As at the nearby Great Garden Street Synagogue, which was somewhat larger, the building was squarish on plan and given galleries. Its entrance at the end of a short alley was distinguished through the reuse of ornamental double doors salvaged from Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre on Westminster Bridge Road. The synagogue was wound up by the Federation of Synagogues in 1959, and demolished in 1971–2 as part of a wider clearance programme.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>Old Montague Street remained generally low-rise retaining a number of open-fronted shops. In the early 1960s No. 36 was the Star India Sweet Meat Mart (Nawab Din, lessee, living with a family of eight above), and No. 44 was Eastern Grocers (Abdul Hannan Moklis Faron Miah Mazemmil Ali, lessee, with another eight or nine living above). Yet to Emanuel Litvinoff Old Montague Street remained the ‘heart’ of the Jewish quarter even in the 1970s, and Raphael Samuel looked back in the 1980s and recalled it as ‘the nearest thing in the East End to the way I imagined a <em>shtetl</em> … In its last days it still seemed to be an entirely Jewish street with vats of pickled herring occupying strategic places on the pavements, and shops which served customers at the window for want of internal space. Shops with no names but forcefully present proprietors.’ [^4]</p>\n\n<p>The Greater London Council planned slum clearance around Old Montague Street from 1961. By 1968 the entire stretch of Nos 16–78 on the south side with attendant courts was set to go, but most of the demolition there happened in the 1970s. Clearance of the north side followed on, as part of the Hopetown Estate development.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Richard Horwood's map: <em>Survey of London</em>, vol. 27, 1957, p. 278: Land Tax: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), THCS/261: CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/ 341/526043; 347/538187; 378/587984; 495/1006161; 496/1014498; 531/1123839 and 1143394; 541/1172878 and 1175428: Census</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: London School of Economics Archives, Booth/B/351, p. 133: District Surveyors Returns: LMA, LMA/4453/F/01/051</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: LMA, ACC/2893/250; SC/PHL/02/1219: <em>Illustrated London News</em>, December 1972, pp. 49–50: Gina Glasman, <em>East End Synagogues</em>, 987, p. 11: Sharman Kadish et al, <em>Building Jerusalem: Jewish Architecture in Britain</em>, 1996, p. 16: Historic England Archives, photographs AA100197, AA054033</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Raphael Samuel, ‘The Pathos of Conservation’, in (eds) Mark Girouard et al, <em>The Saving of Spitalfields</em>, 1989, pp. 141, 146: Emanuel Litvinoff, <em>Journey Through a Small Planet</em>, 1972, p. 10: LMA, GLC/MA/SC/03/1425; Collage 167468: Post Office Directories</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: LMA, GLC/MA/SC/03/1424–7; GLC/DG/PRB/35/002/297; GLC/DG/PRB/35/004/233</p>\n",
"created": "2017-03-30",
"last_edited": "2018-08-03"
},
{
"id": 916,
"title": "137 Leman Street",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 1278,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.068658408633023,
51.51146627369375
],
[
-0.068538811045101,
51.511508211569634
],
[
-0.068452591919085,
51.511519961499616
],
[
-0.068438018925483,
51.51147592407288
],
[
-0.068395210250652,
51.5114724857868
],
[
-0.068387609820431,
51.511430171877294
],
[
-0.068534751108972,
51.51140353437027
],
[
-0.068607151788316,
51.511390427340054
],
[
-0.068658408633023,
51.51146627369375
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "137",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Leman Street",
"address": "137 Leman Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 4,
"search_str": "137 Leman Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>This double-fronted three-storey and attic house appears to have been built around 1825, seemingly a speculation by John Restall, a carpenter who in 1808 took a lease of this frontage and a large site to the rear that ran to 1856. The roadside had previously accommodated part of his workshops. The house has impost bands to its first-floor blind arcading, originally probably of artificial stone but remade, and there was once an ornamental fanlight in a ground-floor façade that has been rebuilt. The property line at the time of building forced an unusual plan, a three-room layout, one room deep to the south with the staircase between front and back rooms to the north.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>From 1839 to 1845 John Liddle (1805–85), Medical Officer of Health to the Whitechapel Union from 1838, lived in this house, having resided close by since birth. His father, also John Liddle, a druggist/chemist, owned and lived in a house on the east side of White Lion Street at the Rosemary Lane (Cable Street) corner by 1790 and into the 1830s.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>Restall’s property, the house and the large yard to the rear, was reunified with the former Rohde yard to its north up to Hooper’s Square by 1850–1 when Charles & John F. Bowman, sugar refiners, replaced the earlier sugarhouses and associated buildings on this backland with a substantial ten-storey refinery with linked three-storey warehousing, employing Charles Dyson, architect, and Thomas Burton, builder. ‘Fireproof’ construction included wrought-iron girders to iron-plate and slate floors. The house at No. 137 was adapted to be a manager’s house and offices. The Bowmans fell bankrupt in 1866. The freehold of the site and its buildings (including an artesian well) was auctioned in 1868 and in the following year Joseph Devitt & Co. adapted the refinery to be wool warehouses, keeping No. 137 in use as a front office. In 1870–1 Devitts added a new five-storey ‘fireproof’ warehouse to the southeast, and raised and extended warehouses to the north to five-storey heights, incorporating Dennett & Ingles lime-concrete arches on wrought-iron girders.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>Proprietorship passed to Hyatt, Devitt & Parker, thence to Hyatt, Parker & Co. by 1881 when the top five storeys of the refinery were taken down and replaced with two storeys with greater headroom, and the southern warehouses were each raised a storey under glass roofs for the shewing of wool and, at least once, the exhibiting of pictures. In 1885 the complex was acquired by the London Tilbury & Southend Railway Company for warehouse use pending completion of its Commercial Road goods depot. For a brief period the East and West India Dock Company stored tea and other produce here, then what came to be called the Hooper Street Warehouses reverted to use for wool storage by C. H. Cousens & Co. from 1888 until 1925. In 1889 the northern warehouses were each raised a storey to plans by Herbert O. Ellis. From 1926 the London Midland & Scottish Railway Company, the freeholders, used the buildings for its own warehousing purposes and let out sections, to the Cockerill shipping line for glassware, the Gillette Razor Co., and in the 1930s, the Co-operative Wholesale Society for its slipper department. The complex continued in warehouse use until the mid 1970s when it was demolished.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>No. 137 retained association and served as the railway company’s Goods Manager’s office from the 1880s to the 1920s, with some rebuilding to the rear in 1905. It saw brief use as a blouse and then a gown factory before the Second World War. Thereafter it was adapted to be a restaurant with bed-and-breakfast accommodation, run in the 1950s by Hersi Hassan and Ahmed Hassan. In 1995 John Polycarpou formed a basement wine bar. Refitting for the establishment of the Red Chilli restaurant in 2005 was by Papa Architects Ltd and there are flats above.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), THCS/409,424; Land Tax returns (LT); Collage 118709: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), P/GLC/1/6/3; Building Control files 22426, 22428</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Post Office Directories (POD): <em>The Champion</em>, 10 Nov. 1839: LMA, LT; Tower Hamlets Commissioners of Sewers ratebooks: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS14943/002, pp. 133, 157, 264, 306; /003, pp. 71, 86; /008, pp. 11–12; CLC/B/017/MS15627/033; Collage 22763; District Surveyors Returns (DSR): Mawer: Ordnance Survey maps: Census 1851: POD: <em>The Standard</em>, 7 Feb. 1866, p. 7: <em>Shipping and Mercantile Gazette</em>, 4 Feb. 1867, p. 5: <em>Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser</em>, 2 May 1866, p. 2, 29 June 1867, p. 1: Tim Smith, ‘Commercial Road goods depot, Whitechapel’, <a href=\"http://www.glias.org.uk/journals/2-a.html\">http://www.glias.org.uk/journals/2-a.html</a></p>\n\n<p>[^4]: POD: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/88: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS14943/004, p. 19; /008, pp. 11–12, 58, 78; /009, p. 102; /010, pp. 104, 147; /011, p. 134; /012, pp. 46–7, 59; CLC/B/017/MS19444/021, pp. 2–4, 83–85; GLC/AR/BR/17/077204; DSR: Smith, ‘Commercial Road goods depot, Whitechapel’</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: DSR: Goad insurance maps: POD: Smith, ‘Commercial Road goods depot, Whitechapel’: THLHLA, L/SMB/C/C/1/3; Building Control files 22425–9, 82447</p>\n",
"created": "2019-05-10",
"last_edited": "2019-05-31"
},
{
"id": 550,
"title": "S. Schneiders & Son's factory",
"author": {
"id": 2,
"username": "surveyoflondon"
},
"feature": {
"id": 615,
"type": "Feature",
"geometry": {
"type": "MultiPolygon",
"coordinates": [
[
[
[
-0.061912426696935,
51.520202313072325
],
[
-0.061874785965162,
51.52020632400268
],
[
-0.061889838776397,
51.520270600539185
],
[
-0.061772606596072,
51.52027912769503
],
[
-0.061761274604345,
51.52022643741218
],
[
-0.061628238435086,
51.52023839485955
],
[
-0.061602171287638,
51.52013104478763
],
[
-0.061573162136184,
51.520127096195324
],
[
-0.061544517048737,
51.52011514494444
],
[
-0.061534860531212,
51.52010343868477
],
[
-0.061529168139568,
51.52006888501374
],
[
-0.061526425989946,
51.520048706748355
],
[
-0.061514408930299,
51.52003660718366
],
[
-0.061495102107996,
51.52002913056525
],
[
-0.061475241885438,
51.52002590044315
],
[
-0.061460589950224,
51.52002438689717
],
[
-0.061438363000579,
51.52002476509692
],
[
-0.061426370471038,
51.52003077384237
],
[
-0.0614153485846,
51.52003879812201
],
[
-0.061405729871782,
51.520049304430415
],
[
-0.061402315101561,
51.52005856401746
],
[
-0.061402724606023,
51.52007404708882
],
[
-0.061405755392364,
51.52008528050189
],
[
-0.061122177806162,
51.52022899048914
],
[
-0.061091504623702,
51.520085764968634
],
[
-0.060963368011847,
51.51993513884966
],
[
-0.060938560956953,
51.51990598454681
],
[
-0.061198284937537,
51.519823605100925
],
[
-0.061528142251785,
51.51970437567786
],
[
-0.061544781135941,
51.51969783671064
],
[
-0.061556075859584,
51.51969339795934
],
[
-0.061560863910158,
51.519688671562044
],
[
-0.061562478644049,
51.51968225561496
],
[
-0.061562600959662,
51.51965870894303
],
[
-0.061734852890324,
51.51964663949438
],
[
-0.061767969632807,
51.519786788205614
],
[
-0.061805132613926,
51.51978453796883
],
[
-0.061827146831599,
51.519876199669575
],
[
-0.061912426696935,
51.520202313072325
]
]
]
]
},
"properties": {
"b_number": "",
"b_name": "",
"street": "Durward Street",
"address": "Whitechapel Sports Centre, Durward Street",
"feature_type": "WHITECHAPEL_BUILDING",
"count": 7,
"search_str": "Whitechapel Sports Centre, Durward Street"
},
"tags": []
},
"body": "<p>Sadok Schneiders, a Jewish immigrant from Amsterdam, was making caps in Whitechapel from the mid 1840s. Moves to Stepney and Bow indicate success that was reinforced by his son Michael who established S. Schneiders & Son’s large hat and cap factory on the north side of Buck’s Row, on the south part of the land that had been the distillery and that now houses the Whitechapel Sports Centre. The eastern section of this was sold as surplus East London Railway property in 1876; there three five-storey and attic blocks were built in 1879–81. John Hudson was probably the architect. The premises were extended westwards with three more blocks in 1892–3 for a continuous eighteen-bay frontage.[^1] Schneiders employed ‘a rough but respectable set of young women’.[^2] Two thousand (mainly women) were thrown out of work by a devastating fire in 1901, but reinstatement followed and the factory made clothes and caps for the military during World War One, the workforce successfully striking in 1916 against having to buy trimmings from the firm at elevated prices. After the Second World War Schneiders remained one of East London’s largest wholesale clothing factories, a still largely female workforce making overcoats, suits, jackets, trousers and sportswear, in both branded ready-to-wear and bespoke forms. The premises were purchased by the Greater London Council in 1966, Schneiders moving to Basingstoke while also continuing as tenants for a few more years until clearance in the 1970s.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), ACC/0224/13: District Surveyors Returns: Jill Waterson, ‘Cap Makers in Mid Nineteenth Century Whitechapel’, 2010, see <a href=\"http://www.history-pieces.co.uk/Docs/Capmakers_Whitechapel_1851.pdf\">http://www.history-pieces.co.uk/Docs/Capmakers_Whitechapel_1851.pdf</a>: <em>The Builder</em>, 22 Nov 1884, p. 713: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes 15 July 1887, p. 124 </p>\n\n<p>[^2]: London School of Economics, Booth/B/351, p. 243</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Los Angeles Herald</em>, 29 June 1901: District Surveyors Returns: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/34/004349: Post Office Directories: D. L. Munby, <em>Industry and Planning in Stepney</em>, 1951, p. 194: Samantha L. Bird, <em>Stepney: Profile of a London Borough from the Outbreak of the First World War to the Festival of Britain 1914–1951</em>, 2011, p. 40: <a href=\"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02b2m63\">http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02b2m63</a></p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2018-01-03",
"last_edited": "2018-03-09"
}
]
}