24-26 Ensign Street
Contributed by Survey of London on March 5, 2019
24–26 Ensign Street. Thomas Smither had a carpenter’s yard on Well Street in the 1830s, and John and William Smither, carmen, and North & Light, also carmen, had yards at the south end of Well Street’s west side by 1841. In the 1860s John Smither acted as Secretary of the East London Association for the Suppression of Vice from this address. Three-storey stabling went up for John Smither & Sons Ltd in 1894–5. The site was redeveloped in 1963–4 for Monarch Ltd with William J. Harvey, architect, as a two-storey office fronting a warehouse. This was replaced by Liberty House, fourteen flats built in 2001–2 for Alfred McAlpine Homes London Ltd, with Moren Greenhalgh architects.[^1]
^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/549/1199973; M/93/159/1; District Surveyors Returns: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, P/FAR/1/3/7; Building Control file 21693: Post Office Directories: Tower Hamlets planning applications online
24–26 Ensign Street in 2019
Contributed by Derek Kendall