28 Whitechapel Road

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28-30 Whitechapel Road
Contributed by Survey of London on June 27, 2016

Two eighteenth-century houses on the site of Nos 28–30 had a yard that turned east to extend to what is now Plumber's Row. There was a  sugarhouse there from around 1736, first run by John Brissault, then by James Lewis Turquand from about 1765. It passed to George Wolrath Holzmeyer in 1779, and then in 1799 to William Wilde, who, it appears, had by 1805 built a new sugarhouse on a larger and deeper rectangular footprint on the site that was later that of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry’s back workshop where a vault survives, possibly connected with the sugarhouse. John Henry Wagentrieber ran this sugarhouse by 1812 up to about 1827 after which it may have been demolished.¹

On the roadside a replacement pair of shophouses was built in 1846 for John Turner, by Little and Sons, local builders at Size Yard. The first occupants of the shops were William Platt, a cabinet maker, and William Hooper, a butcher. In the early years of the twentieth century Morris Datzkovsky & Co., wine merchants, and William Minn, ironmonger, were here. Buck & Hickman Ltd, toolmakers, had No. 30 by 1928. The premises were listed in 1973, but had fallen into a state of dilapidation by 1980, No. 30 gutted internally and shored up at the front by 1991. The owner, K. S. Sidhu of Kay Textiles and Kewal Investments, agreed a refurbishment scheme, his architect being Peter Black of Scott Brownrigg & Turner (later the Barlow Black Partnership). In the event Black oversaw complete rebuilding in 1997. ²