This unadorned three-storey building was among the first to be built on Commercial Road’s extension. It began as a farrier’s shop, with an open ground floor, the plot leased from the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1872 by Thomas Watson (1833–1916), a farrier and veterinary surgeon previously in Spread Eagle Yard off Whitechapel High Street. His son William Watson maintained the business here into the 1930s. Use thereafter until 2018, with a shopfront inserted, was mostly for the rag trade. The upper floors became fully residential in 2000, extended at the first floor in 2004 to create two flats. Since 2018 the shop has been a convenience store.1
London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyors Returns: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 12 July 1872, p. 82: Post Office Directories: The National Archives, IR58/84823/4093: Ancestry: Tower Hamlets planning applications online ↩