34 Newark Street

c.1835, terraced house. | Part of 26–34 and 40–42 Newark Street

Historic England list description for 34 Newark Street
Contributed by Amy Spencer, Survey of London on Aug. 26, 2016

Excerpt from Historic England list entry for 34 Newark Street (listed at Grade II):

NEWARK STREET E1 1. 4431 (South Side) No 34 TQ 3481 15/496 II GV 2. Early C19. Stock brick with parapet, roof not visible. 3 storeys and basement. 2 windows. Gauged flat arches to recessed 1st and 2nd floor windows, those on 1st floor in round arched recesses. Sashes with glazing bars. Brick band below coping. Stone band at 1st floor. Iron balconies to 1st floor windows. Round headed door with segmental fanlight and thin fluted columns to door frame.

No 28 to 42 (even) form a group with St Augustine with St Philip's Church, Stepney Way.1


  1. Historic England, National Heritage List for England, list entry number: 1357859 (online: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list- entry/1357859, accessed 26 August 2016). 

26–34 and 40–42 Newark Street
Contributed by Survey of London on Feb. 17, 2020

The portion of Newark Street lying on the London Hospital’s estate is divided into three blocks from New Road eastwards to Cavell Street. Originally New Street, sections were called Little Rutland Street, New Terrace and Stebon Place up to 1864. It all became Newark Street in 1890. Leases were granted for completed dwellings close to New Road between 1810 and 1813.1

The surviving three-storey houses on the south side of Newark Street (Nos 26–34 and 40–42), opposite St Philip’s Church, were originally named New Terrace and were among the largest dwellings on the London Hospital estate, matched only by those in Philpot Street. Nos 26–28 were built as a pair of two-bay houses with two-room plans, rear staircases and raised basements, No. 26 being entered from Turner Street. Mary and Ann Parker were granted a building lease for these lots in 1830. The houses were acquired by the hospital in 1886 and converted into a nurses’ residence that became a boarding house for medical students in the 1930s, then, after the Second World War, accommodation for senior sisters, who each had a bedroom and a private sitting room.2

A variation to the pattern of two-bay façades with evenly spaced sash windows is evident at 30–32 Newark Street, where a central first-floor relieving arch encloses a pair of narrow windows. A building lease was granted to Mary Eleanor Haines in June 1826. These houses were also made nurses’ accommodation in 1886, and converted into laboratories and offices for the dental department in the 1980s. More recently, they have been divided into flats. Nos 34, 40 and 42 Philpot Street, separated by the former St Philip’s National School and vicarage, have first-floor relieving arches and round-arched doorways with fluted door surrounds. No. 34 was completed in 1835, when a lease was granted to Joseph Adams. A building lease for Nos 40–42 was taken in 1839 by Henry Cook Maister, who agreed to complete this pair with 67–69 Philpot Street. No. 34 was purchased by the Rev. Sidney Vatcher in 1894 and converted into offices for the East End Emigration Society, an organization that assisted with migrations to Canada, America, South Africa and Australasia.3


  1. Ordnance Survey maps: Royal London Hospital Archives (RLHA), RLHLH/S/1/3: Shoreditch Observer, 25 Aug 1860: Morning Advertiser, 22 May 1865: Pall Mall Gazette, 14 March 1865: East London Observer (ELO), 28 May 1870 

  2. RLHA, RLHLH/Z/2, Gwynne House subject file 

  3. RLHA, RLHLH/A/5/45, p.424; RLHLH/A/5/46, p.205: ELO, 26 Dec 1896: Tower Hamlets planning applications online