1 Vine Court

1954-7 as a textile warehouse | Part of Vine Court

Vine Court
Contributed by Survey of London on April 24, 2018

Vine Court was formed around 1700 on land then or soon after held by Thomas Turner, a house carpenter, and was originally known as Walnut Tree Street. Houses included a group called Dupaz’s Buildings, named for Solomon de Paz, a Sephardic Jewish merchant. The court as a whole comprehended about twenty small houses by 1770.1 Its south side was largely lined with brick-built houses by 1817. On the north side timber outbuildings were gradually redeveloped and enlarged to serve Whitechapel Road premises. A scheme in 1867 for redevelopment of the west end of the court with ‘new streets’ came to nothing. The old two- and three-storey houses were generally in poor repair by 1910 and thirty years later there was extensive bomb damage. Little survives.2

Nos 11–14 to the south-west are two three-storey grey-brick clad houses built in 2016–17 to plans by Parker Clark, architects, for Ismail Parekh and Ahmed Bhayat.3


  1. The National Archives (TNA), C13/2777/49; C107/175; PROB11/799/423: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Land Tax returns; Tower Hamlets Commissioners of Sewers ratebooks 

  2. TNA, C13/2777/49; IR58/84803/2001–20: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 27 Sept. 1867, p. 1133 

  3. TNA, C13/2777/49: LMA, District Surveyors Returns: Post Office Directories: Goad maps: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 41742: Tower Hamlets planning applications online 

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