291 Whitechapel Road

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287-291 Whitechapel Road
Contributed by Survey of London on Nov. 30, 2017

Development on this frontage (Nos 287–293) and manorial waste back to Ducking Pond Row can be traced to the 1620s when an establishment known as Daniel in the Lion’s Den was built by Daniel Allam. Henry Allam, a Whitechapel blacksmith and gunner, had leased the land in 1591. There were eight cottages grouped around by the 1650s. Thomas Grimley, a Mile End inn-holder, replaced these with five houses around 1701. The land later became part of the Spencer Phillips estate.¹

In 1900 the Whitechapel & Bow Railway Company acquired an irregular group of small-scale properties at 287–291 Whitechapel Road. Redevelopment in 1907–8 for shops with dwellings above was on a lease from George Henry Schofield and may have been for Abraham Gold, a wholesale tobacconist. Henry Wharton Ford of Kilburn, who had other railway derived work in Whitechapel, was the architect, with his firm, Ford & Walton Ltd, being the builders. J. Lyons & Co. Ltd took up tenancy of the shop at No. 287. The little-altered group retains muscular console brackets. The paler brick of No. 291 is due to the removal of white paint or render around 2012.²