178 Whitechapel Road
Contributed by Survey of London on July 3, 2018
Like the London Hospital Tavern, this shophouse was built in the late 1870s
following the construction of the East London Railway. The site had earlier
been that of an open shed pertaining to the tavern. Early or first occupants
were E. Andrews & Co., leather merchants, for whom the long workshop range
to the rear was reconstructed in 1901 by Walter Gladding. The premises housed
a notable bookshop from 1980 to 2008. Originally the Tower Hamlets Arts
Project Community Bookshop, first established at Watney Market in 1977, this
was known as Eastside Bookshop from 1994. It continues at 166 Brick Lane as
the Brick Lane Bookshop.
Further east on what became the enlarged Post Office site in the 1960s, George
Lambert, a coachmaker, and James Percival, a soapmaker, had adjacent premises
in the first years of the nineteenth century. Lambert was succeeded by Joseph
Norbury, a coppersmith, and then from 1853 to the 1890s by William Henry
Myers, a printer. Walter Gladding, builder, had premises here known as Byfield
Works from 1894. He had rebuilt a number of this frontage’s two-storey
properties on a larger scale by 1903. The Whitechapel Road Synagogue was under
a glass roof to the rear of 192 Whitechapel Road by that date up to 1932.
Tower Hamlets Arts Project - THAP! - and Despite TV
Contributed by gareth on Sept. 16, 2016
This was the location of THAP! - Tower Hamlets Arts Project - in the late
1970s and the 1980s. There was a bookshop on the ground floor and offices
above. THAP! published books on East End history. There was also a video
production project based here called Despite TV which made documentaries on
the Wapping newspaper dispute (Despite the Sun) and the re-development of
the Isle of Dogs (Despite the City). Both are still in circulation.