Dr Sharman Kadish, a leading expert on British Jewish architectural history, has been working with the Survey of London in 2018. She has made a significant contribution to our current work in Whitechapel, reviewing research and draft texts pertaining to sites relating to Jewish history, principally synagogues, but also covering mikvaos (bathhouses) and secular buildings (hostels, clubs and schools). Building on this editorial contribution, she has written an introductory overview of Whitechapel's Jewish architectural history, which we are now delighted to be able to make available through our website. The essay can be downloaded here.
Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue in 2003, view to the Ark on the north wall (photograph by Peter Guillery)
Date and Time: Thursday 25th October, 2018 - Thursday 29th November, 2018
Derek Kendall's photography for the Histories of Whitechapel project has given us many wonderful images. Lately Derek has been chronicling aspects of Whitechapel during the hours of darkness. Here are some views across Whitechapel Road showing some of the vans that are fixtures on the market's roadside.
Date and Time: Thursday 25th October, 2018 - Saturday 27th October, 2018
This is the second post of photographs arising from the Survey of London's Whitechapel History Fest, held at the Idea Store Whitechapel in late October. The event drew more than 200 people to attend a range of talks and discussions, as well as poetry readings and the premiere of a film. We were delighted that Dan Cruickshank came to present the final talk of the occasion, a wide-ranging overview of Whitechapel's history from a personal point of view. He recounted his walks through the wider E1 area in the early 1970s, using his own photographs of that time as illustrations. Dan has now kindly shared these images with us, and we are posting a number of those of Whitechapel sites here. We will make use of a wider selection in the near future for a post in the Survey of London's main blog. All images are copyright Dan Cruickshank.
Greatorex Street
Dock Street
Wellclose Square
Alexandra Wing, London Hospital
Parfett Street
Alie Street and Leman Street (southeast corner)
Lambeth Street
Dock Street
Graces Alley, showing Wilton's Music Hall to the rear
Former sugar refinery converted to tea warehouse, Dock Street
Date and Time: Thursday 25th October, 2018 - Saturday 27th October, 2018
In late October 2018 the Survey of London hosted the Whitechapel History Fest at the Idea Store Whitechapel. The event drew more than 200 people to attend a range of talks and discussions, as well as poetry readings and the premiere of a film. The photographer Ron McCormick was among the numerous contributors. We were fortunate that Ron took time to record aspects of the occasion. He has kindly shared his images with us, and we are posting them here. All images are copyright Ron McCormick.
Bernard Kops reading his poem 'Whitechapel Library, Aldgate East', with Rachel Lichtenstein
Sarah Milne speaking about Whitechapel's Deutsche Kolonie
Mapping and Place discussion (Duncan Smith, Seif El Rashidi, Shlomit Flint, Laura Vaughan and Duncan Hay)
Shahed Saleem at the Mapping and Place discussion
Alan Dein speaking about Cockney-Jewish jazz
Kinsi Abdulleh speaking on the themes of sailors and settlement
Derek Morris, Tamsin Bookey and Kinsi Abdulleh discussing sailors and settlement
Malcolm Barr-Hamilton speaking about histories from the archives
Dor Duncan on histories from the archives
Aileen Reid, Celeste, Danny McLaughlin and Gary Hutton discussing the sharing of local history through social media
Dan Cruickshank taking questions after his concluding overview of Whitechapel's history across the last fifty years, with Peter Guillery
We've just taken down an exhibition of our project that was on display at the Idea Store Whitechapel throughout September. If you missed it, here are a few of the highlights.
The exhibition in the 4th floor gallery at the Idea Store, Whitechapel.
The interior of the Roman Catholic Church of the English Martyrs on Prescot Street, built in 1875-6 and designed by Pugin and Pugin, a London-based family firm of church architects (photo: Derek Kendall)
Aldgate Place under construction in 2017 (photo: Derek Kendall)
A warehouse building on the corner of Commercial Road and White Church Lane (27 Commercial Road), built in 1872-3 and demolished in 2016 to make way for a 270 bed, 21 storey hotel (photo: Derek Kendall)
The last plan of the Bell Foundry measured and drawn by Helen Jones for the Survey of London, just before it closed in 2016. (photos; Derek Kendall, Shahed Saleem)
Photographer David Hoffman lived in Whitechapel for fifteen years from 1970. Through this period he saw the area change as he lived in several different places, and he observed and documented the squatting movement at close hand. Some of his photographs and recollections are presented here as a major exhibition of his work opens this month at Gallery 46, 46 Ashfield Street, London E1 2AJ.
"I moved in there [Fieldgate Mansions] in 1973. There were lots of squats, I was quite involved with the squatting movement so we would go around generally opening places up. The council would board them up and move people out, and then we’d move in and take them over and put families in or friends in.
A friend of mine, Terry Fitzpatrick, was quite an important part of that – he started the Bengali Family Housing Association Group, I may have the name slightly wrong but it was something like that. And we were putting Bengali men with their families into squats as we opened them up. I mean there were no Bengali families at all in that area, there were a few along Old Montague Street when I first moved in, in some very shambolic buildings. But then more of them came over, brought their families, and Fieldgate became very Bengali.
[It was] very secular then, there was no mosque of course, and I mean the women would just be out on the street, chatting, no headscarves… and it’s become much more, well very, very dominated by the mosque now. It was much more integrated then. We’d have a cup of tea with them, chat about the problems with the building, kids would play outside, very much freer.
Before I moved in, it was pretty much all white. Not entirely Jewish by any means, probably 30-40 per cent Jewish by then. But there were Irish, there were Maltese. All sorts of people that had a crappy council tenement flat. The whole of that area was council. They were trying to decant everyone, they were trying to knock it down and build I don't know what. Lovely buildings, they were beautifully built, lovely brickwork.
They would come in with a council team, and they would put a sledgehammer through the lavatory or pour cement down it. Put a sledgehammer through the window, rip out the wiring. That’s what the council would do. They would move whoever was there out to some probably better, well it would have to be better place, and they would make sure it was really unoccupiable. And then we’d go in, take out the lavatories and put in new ones, take out the windows and put in new ones, rewire it. It was a lot of work. They wanted to keep it empty, so they could eventually have an empty place that they could demolish, and we just stopped that for about ten years and by then the demolition wasn't possible.
The east side, the block on the furthest east of Romford Street, was I think owned or sold, or given to or let to the hospital, so the whole of the east side was medical; nurses and students or doctors. But the block on the west side of Romford Street and the east side of Myrdle Street, they were Tower Hamlets, later became GLC and then they became [housing association], they were all fully squatted. When I left they were probably 50-60 per cent Bengali and the rest were students from London College of Furniture, there were jewellers, there were artists, there was a guy running a bicycle-repair shop in a basement.
Tower Hamlets, the council, was very discriminatory. It was a liberal council at the time, but they had this father and son policy or friends and family policy or something like that, but if you had no white grandfather, you were stuffed. And then they started moving Bengali families, well if you were a family they had to put you somewhere, but they were really shitty estates. I remember when they moved the first Bengali family into Clark Street, which was quite a reasonable estate, and the night before they were due to move in somebody daubed ‘No Paki’ about forty times in massive letters across the front of the house, nailed a pig's head to the door, I got pictures of that. And they were attacked. Presumably young Bengalis were attacked a lot. Of course then most of them were first-generation Bengalis here, and they were not big and strong so most of them were pretty easy prey for racists.
It led to one of the biggest mistakes of all I think, which was to put the Bengali families into ghettoes, to keep them together, because they felt safer together and they had less harassment. But it meant that there was not integration. I think the Bengali families themselves wanted to be near other Bengali families – language, food, culture, protection, all those reasons, very understandable. But it led to prevention of integration. Clark Street Estate became pretty much purely Bengali.
Fieldgate was very mixed and very open, until the mosque really came to its strength. I was there while they built it. The synagogue was still working, and there was a little temporary mosque in a Portakabin type thing, and this big open area, bombsite area, and they were raising money for the mosque and there were signs up saying we need this money that money. And then they started the building project, and we were pretty amazed at the size of it.
Over 1970–84 [Whitechapel] really changed, it was the period that it really changed its nature. It was the march of the City is how I saw it, because there were none of those big flash buildings. When I was first there we still had, I don’t think it was trading anymore, Gardiner’s Corner… I remember going down to look at the fire when it was blazing. I was standing the other side of the street by Aldgate East Station, and it was just too hot, we had to move away. And the sign outside the tube saying Aldgate East was melting, the plastic was buckling. I’m sure it was arson, the whole thing just went up. There was a lot of arson around then, around Butler’s Wharf, where the land was clearly more valuable without buildings on it, but they were all listed.
There were loads of empty sites. It had been pretty worthless, nobody wanted to live around here, there was no trade around here, no income, it was pretty much a wasteland. It was fairly busy but very, very derelict, very impoverished."
make:good have been commissioned by Tower Hamlets Council to design a series of wayfinding and public realm elements along Whitechapel Road. Over the last few months we have been running design workshops with local schools, the IDEA Store Whitechapel and also popping up along the market to speak to local people about what Whitechapel means to them. An important part of this project is to gather an understanding of the local history but also present day stories around people's individual experiences of the Whitechapel area.
Our approach has involved looking at the patterns and textures behind local landmarks, memories, stories and experiences that they have and we have invited people to combine and pull together these memories to develop a new visual language and a unique 'Patchwork Whitechapel'. This participatory process aligned very well not only with the Survey of London, mapping people's individual stories of places along Whitechapel, but also with Swanlea School GCSE class's theme of fragments.
On a sunny Friday afternoon in the bright top floor of the Whitechapel Gallery, 13 GCSE students delved into their memories and personal experiences of Whitechapel to create a collective patchwork Whitechapel made up of individual fragments, both of written stories and memories and also patterns and textures that represented the local area to them.
Looking at different photographic fragments of the local area and how they work together to make whole geometric shapes and patchworks, the workshop focused on each student dividing a hexagon into five unique fragments, inspired by the traditional Chinese puzzle of a tangram.
We began by filling these fragments with hand written stories and memories of the local area, asking the group "what makes your Whitechapel?" and "what do you think of when you imagine Whitechapel"? Students responded with a rich variety of memories and personal experiences ranging from sights, smells, sounds through to childhood memories and present-day rituals. We brought all the fragments together to make one whole hexagon of all the stories and then divided them again to locate them on the survey of London map. You can read these individual stories on the main map under Whitechapel Road.
Moving on to a more visual patchwork, students selected five different patterns and textures from a wide array of samples from the area; colourful scarves, slimy fish scales, rooftops of buildings, reflective windows,familiar brickwork, the list continued with over 50 different local patterns spread across the table.
"It was amazing to see how carefully selected and matched these fragment compositions were. The students gave a lot of thought to the colours, patterns and textures from the local area that meant something to them." Nataly, make:good
The result was a beautiful and vibrant patchwork, a unique collection of fragments, each representing a personal experience, memory or story, coming together to make one whole Patchwork Whitechapel which will be used in different elements along Whitechapel Road to help people find their way and introduce a new visual language to the area.
With each fragment, students described their choice with one line, explaining what it means to them. These came together to compose a collective poem which captures the essence of what Whitechapel means to this group of Swanlea students.
A few of the fragments that the students wrote are posted below, all of the comments can be seen on the Whitechapel Road purple strip on our main map.
We're delighted to welcome two energetic researchers to our team to further the Survey's work in the community. Nishat Alum and Tanha Quadi are both Whitechapel born, and have themselves witnessed and been part of the changes that the area has seen. They will primarily be involved in oral histories and working with local groups to access those experiences of Whitechapel that can be more difficult to uncover.
Nishat is passionate about local history and also works at Redbridge Archives, and can be seen here interviewing Mahera Ruby about growing up in Whitechapel.
Tanha is actively involved in local community initiatives, and has recently worked with Toynbee Hall on their archives project. Here she is speaking to people on Whitechapel Road about their experiences of the market, in a consultation exercise alongside design firm Make Good.
Watch this space for more work from Nishat and Tanha.
Last December it was announced that the Whitechapel Bell Foundry would close in May 2017, and this year has witnessed its closure and the end of what has been a remarkable story. Business cards claim the bell foundry as ‘Britain’s oldest manufacturing company’ and ‘the world’s most famous bell foundry’ – the first not readily contradicted, the second unverifiable but plausible. The business, principally the making of church bells, had operated continuously in Whitechapel since at least the 1570s. It had been on its present site with the existing house and office buildings since the mid 1740s. Derek Kendall's wintry photographs of the bell foundry in 2010 provide an insight into its historic buildings and the preservation of traditional craftsmanship until its closure. If you would like to read the Survey's full account, please click here to find the draft text.
Oral histories are a core part of our work on the Whitechapel project. Our interviewees have come from all walks of life and from the many communities that make up Whitechapel past and present. They have also ranged widely in age, from 30-something to 99. But what all the interviewees had in common, until recently, was that they all, even if no longer in Whitechapel, still live in or near London. Many old Whitechapel-ites, however, have roamed rather further than Newbury Park or Edgware, and last month one of the Survey historians met four who now live 2,000 miles away, in Israel.
A world away from 1980s Whitechapel...the beach at Haifa where the interview with Jack and Gwen White was conducted.
David Shaffer (b. 1947) left Whitechapel when he married at 21 but then spent nearly 40 years in the US before 'making Aliyah' to Jerusalem in 2005. Gloria Spielman (b. 1963) has lived near Tel Aviv since 1988, though her mother Sophie still lives in Vallance Road and has been in the news recently, fighting to save her home there. Jack White (b. 1925) and Gwen White (b 1930) also moved, to Karmiel in northern Israel, in the 1980s. Interesting lives, a world away from the East End, but these interviews, conducted in balmy November weather in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, were all about Whitechapel. Or were they?
The project's map follows the 'official' borders of Whitechapel, as defined by the old parish of St Mary Matfelon, or the London borough as it was up to 1900. But Whitechapel as understood by those who grew up there is a much more elastic entity. Strictly speaking, none of the interviews grew up in 'Whitechapel'. David Shaffer grew up around Thrawl Street, off Brick Lane, what is technically Spitalfields, to the north of Whitechapel. Jack White lived in Jubilee Street, just to the east of Whitechapel, in Stepney. But they both thought of it as Whitechapel. By contrast Gwen White did not think of where she lived, in Wellclose Square, to the south, as Whitechapel, at all. Yet the west side, where she recalled the faded grandeur of 18th-century houses (once the Danish embassy) and the tiny cottages of Harad's Place (now just a railed pathway next to Shapla Primary School), is 'official' Whitechapel. One thing that is certainly emerging from our interviews and contributions to the Whitechapel map is that identification of 'place' is just as mutable and variable as any other kind of identity - cultural, religious, racial or national.
