High Street 2012 7) MILE END WASTE Cambridge Heath Road to Cleveland Way
Mile End is well named. The Mile End turnpike was located precisely one mile from the City, at the foot of Cambridge Heath Road, and here travellers would stop to pay their tolls for the upkeep of the road. But this may not be where you thought Mile End was. It's nowhere near Mile End station (which is one and a half stops further up the Mile End Road). No, the official Mile End can be found at the start of the widest, greenest strip of High Street 2012 - a long thin patch of grass called Mile End Waste.
One beardy man has been honoured with two statues on Mile End Waste [photo]. His name is WilliamBooth, and he's the founder of the Salvation Army. In 1865 this former Methodist minister arrived in the East End from Nottingham and was shocked by the poverty and sin he saw. Walking along the Whitechapel Road one day he came across a religious meeting taking place outside the Blind Beggar public house and stepped up in front of the crowd to preach. His fiery rhetoric so impressed the organisers that they invited him to lead their small open air mission, with services held in an old tent erected on an old Quaker burial ground on Mile End Waste. From such a chance meeting sprung a lifelong vocation to better the lives of the wantonly sinful, and the inauguration of his great quasi-military tambourine-waving charity.
Another monument to benevolence can be found close by - the Trinity Almshouses. There are 28 redbrick cottages hidden behind the trees, in two parallel rows leading to a small chapel at the end of the avenue [photo]. They were originally built in 1695 by Trinity House, the charitable maritime authority, for the benefit of "28 decay'd Masters and Commanders of Ships, or ye widows of such". At least I think that's what the elegant script says on the twin plaques on the front of the buildings [photo]. A pair of intricate 17th century warships are perched further up, although these are only copies because the marble originals are stashed away for safe keeping in the Museum of London. Local campaigns have twice restored the almshouses after they fell into disrepair, and this far-sightedness has preserved a rare oasis of calm and just off the main drag.
four local sights » O'Leary Square: In sharp comparison to the Trinity Almshouses, the blocks of social housing on the southern side of the road are far less appealing. It's the first proper reminder along High Street 2012 that people actually live here, rather than just shop and drink. Step beneath the flats into lowly O'Leary Square and you might be able to pick up a beigel (or a slice of cheesecake) from Rinkoffs, the East End's last traditional Jewish baker. If it's still open. » Mile End Waste: Pedestrian footfall drops off sharply to the east of the White Hart [photo]. Turf and trees are to be found on both sides of the road here - part fenced off, part open - with housing and shops set back further from the street than usual. Just be careful if you choose to walk along the grass rather than the pavement, because it's a more popular spot than it looks and you don't want to step in any Mile End Waste. » Bust of King Edward VII: Yes, himagain. This time it's the local Freemasons who coughed up to cast their favourite just-dead monarch in bronze. A century later he sits in front of Anna's Nail Bar, beneath a canopy of trees, almost entirely overlooked [photo]. » Captain Cook's House: Shortly after marrying a lass from Barking, the great 18th century explorer James Cook bought a house at 7 Assembly Row to which he'd retire each winter to mark up his sea charts. His wife stayed on in the house after his death, outliving her husband by more than 50 years. The property eventually became a shop, ending up as a Kosher butchers before being condemned and demolished in 1959. On the site today is a distillery car park, with nothing more than a memorial plaque on a brick wall to remind passers by of one of the street's most famous residents [photo].
Your comments • From William Booth's quote I'm guessing he was not really a party person. (Mike) • As a child "going up to Mile End Waste" with my grandparents was a regular trip, but we weren't drawn in by grass or trees, but by the very long thin outdoor market of the same name. I can't remember exactly where it was though, does it still exist? (Three-Legged Cat) • The Current Whitechapel Market originally had licensed pitches starting from the junction with Vallance Road going east and stretching as far as the junction with Cleveland Way which is quite a fair way along the "Waste", it was also in its day a very busy market, it fell into decline in the late sixties / early seventies and gradually shrank back until it just about reached the junction with Brady Street. Following the demolition of the Albion Brewery and the building of the new Sainsburys superstore demand for stalls east of the Brady street junction increased as more and more people were shopping at that end of Whitechapel market, this section has now become the most sought after location along the whole of market. So in answer to Three-Legged-Cat No the market does not exist along the "waste" any more. (fishislandskin) • The last time I checked, Rinkoff's were still doing a great trade and had opened an additional outlet, with a nice cafe, on Vallance Road (just along from the house where the Kray twins grew up). Their cheesecake is truly sublime. Mmmmmmm. (Dan)
High Street 2012 8) STEPNEY Cleveland Way to Globe Road
High Street 2012 may pass through the centre of all the other settlements along here, but it misses the centre of Stepney. So I've got to miss the elegance of Stepney Green, millennial St Dunstan's and the Stepping Stones City Farm. They're all tucked away to the south of the A11, between here and the Commercial Road, where they can be easily overlooked by passing travellers. So instead I'm afraid all there is to see is another brewery, more pubs, another tube station and the odd shop. A really odd shop.
Wickhams department store was once known as the Selfridges of the East End. You can see the similarity, on the outside if not the inside, with bold pillared frontage in a stucco style. But Wickhams has one unique feature that Selfridges lacks, and that's a great big gapin the middle[photo]. When the store was being built in the 1920s, one stubborn existing retailer refused point blank to sell up, and so the rest of the store was built around them. "Never mind," thought Mr Wickham, "they'll sell up eventually." But Herr Spiegelhalter the jeweller held out the longest, until 1988 no less, whereas Wickhams closed down back in the 1960s. The giant building is now three separate stores, with only the easternmost DVD dispensary still open. The main shop beneath the tower used to hold a DIY "Direct Bargain Centre", and the central block a food store, both recently shuttered up. There are plans to breathe new life into Wickhams with a new retail development, hopefully sympathetic, although I can't imagine a John Lewis or a Waitrose would last as long round here as did Spiegelhalters.
There are some marvellous old houses interspersed with the new along this stretch of road. A row of four fine Queen Anne residences, tirelessly restored to their original glory by the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust, would look more at home in Chelsea than Stepney [photo]. Further east a brooding Dickensian tenement has defied all pressure to modernise and skulks darkly behind a bricked-off garden. A bunch of E1 solicitors make their money inside an elegant tall detached block, weighed down by an assortment of peculiar arched columns on the roof. These offices are all that remain of Charrington's Anchor Brewery (founded 1757, closed 1994), reborn as the characterless Anchor Retail Park [photo]. Who needs beer when you can shop at Halfords, PC World or Curry's instead?
The southern side of the road is, sorry, far less interesting. It's the same story along most of the Mile End Road, to be honest, all social housing, social housing and not much else. But a few other small treats find their place. Opposite Wickhams is a row of mostly-Muslim takeaways and convenience shops, where beaming old gents lean sedately in doorways and barely a white face passes. A few grim pubs and bars are scattered here and about - the Hayfield's a scream, the E-One's no longer so camp, and the Soma bar is dead and boarded. And see the Khayrat Call Centre at number 182? [photo] It's a postwar building now, but in Victorian times it was the site of Augustus Atwell's butcher's shop, above which his sixth child was born in 1879. You've probably seen her artwork - Mabel Lucy Atwell's drawings of grinning chubby children were once much loved, and are still fairly collectable.
four local sights » Billy Bunter's Snack Bar: Adrift in a sea of pavement outside Wickham's, this tiny road-facing hut dispenses grease and chips 24 hours a day. Outlaw Burger, anyone? » Genesis Cinema: There used to be lots of cinemas along High Street 2012, but now there's only one[photo] (and it's only nine years old). In its time this site has been home to the Eagle public house (1848), Lusby's Summer and Winter Garden, Lusby's Music Hall, the Paragon Theatre of Varieties (1885), the Mile End Empire (1912) and the ABC Mile End (1960). Locally-produced film SparrowsCan't Sing, starring a young Barbara Windsor, received its Royal Premiere here in 1963. » Cash machine: I know people round here need cash, but whose idea was it to dump a big blue box in the middle of the pavement. We love our big wide pavements round here, please don't block them (and charge us £1.50 for the privilege). » Stepney Green station: The middle one of five underground stations along HS2012 [photo]. Apart from a brief deviation into the open air at Whitechapel, the District line runs a few feet beneath the street all the way from Aldgate East to Bow Road.
High Street 2012 9) MILE END ROAD Globe Road to Regent's Canal
There's less to see out beyond Stepney Green, so I'm speeding up a bit and covering a full half mile all in one go. Let's get the southern half mile out of the way first. Ah, the Ocean Estate. It's vast, it's packed full with apartment blocks, and you wouldn't live here. Not given a choice, anyway. The Ocean's one of the most deprived estates in Britain, with overcrowded flats packed with the poverty-stricken and the underemployed. And some very lovely positive people too, obviously, I'd hate you to think the estate was relentlessly grim throughout. The government's thrown lots of money at facilities and cleared up the heroin problem, for example, and you won't find a knife-wielding drug addict on every corner. But you still wouldn't live here.
You might live on the northern side, particularly if you're a student. Queen Mary's University dominates, spreading out along the Mile End Road from the Victorian Queen's Building [photo]. It could be a Torquay hotel, set back from the road behind a palm-treed lawn and clocktower, but in fact it's the college's main administrative centre. Various other faculty buildings line the street, the most striking of which is the repetitive stone-sliced grid of the Faculty of Engineering [photo] which spans Bancroft Road. The college chapel resembles half of Madonna's bra - all mammary and spiked - while further east a less suggestive Humanities building is about to spring up.
QMU has appropriated two historic buildings for campus use, the first of which is the People's Palace. This was the Idea Store of its day, a Victorian philanthropic centre for concerts, lectures and evening classes, complete with gymnasium, swimming baths and reading room. It was enormously popular with the local population (20000 came to an exhibition of chrysanthemums, for example, and double that to a pigeon show). But in 1931 it burnt to the ground, and the more formal building seen today was erected in its place [photo]. It's proudly understated, with five carvings by Eric Gill (representing Drama, Music, Dance, Brotherhood and Sport) enlivening the front wall. And it's still at the heart of a successful educational enterprise, used today for lectures and graduation ceremonies.
And the second QMU takeover is Albert Stern House[photo], built as a hospital and convalescent home for elderly Jews fleeing persecution in Spain and Portugal. A smattering of Hebrew text is carved into stone plaques on the front wall - a reminder of the days when Stepney's population was swelled by more than 100000 Jewish souls. Most of their descendants have long since decamped to northwest London, and so has the hospital, leaving the old building to be given over to student accommodation (think unmade beds, think unwashed plates, think mysterious sickly-sweet smoke). Meanwhile round the back (viewable only by appointment) is the Old Velho Sephardi Cemetery, the earliest known Jewish burial ground in the UK. You can read more about the East End's Jewish heritage here, here and here - there's a lot of it about already.
four local sights » Hair Development (UK): If you need a new syrup, you'll want to pop into Europe's leading authority on hairpieces on the Mile End Road. A large sign on the wall proclaims them "Wigbrokers", while another (rather more faded) proclaims them "A Breath of Fresh Hair". Oh the waggish wigsters. » Mile End Place: Nip off the main road through a dark arched courtyard (near the Wigbrokers) and you'll find this tranquil cul-de-sac of semi-rural cottages, which has somehow kept the big city at bay. Shame it's packed with parked cars, else it would be truly delightful. [photo] » The Half Moon: During the Thatcher dynasty this building was home to the Half Moon Theatre Company, a radical collective whose dramatic output rallied against the system. But the system rallied back, cutting their grant and causing the theatre to close. It's now a 10-year-old Wetherspoons pub (in a former Methodist chapel, oh the irony), while the theatre company perform for youthful audiences in a smaller building round the corner. » The Bancroft Arms: The matronly Doreen runs this oldpub, conveniently located for the Ambulance station round the corner, the uni over the road and Silvermans military suppliers nextdoor. [photo]
Your comments • Isn't QMU known just as "Queen Mary's" these days? When I was at UC, it was "Queen Mary's College", but I think it changed its name to just "Queen Mary's" when it amalgamated with some other sites back about 10 or so years ago. (Blue Witch) • It's actually Queen Mary, University of London, doesn't need an 's. I know this because my daughter graduated from there last year. It used to be Queen Mary & Westfield College and the "main street" of the on-campus student accomodation is called Westfield Way. (Christine) • Mile End Place is most unexpected, I remember being rather amazed when I first found it. It is a shame that the alley leading to it is often used as a public toilet. It is also a shame that the Bancroft is a really terrible pub. (DTL) • Walking past the old cemetery to get from the Arts building to the library was always an unnerving experience, especially in the dark. The view from the library across the river to Greenwich and beyond is a nice perk for all the time spent in there during 3 years of study. (s)
High Street 2012
10) MILE END Regent's Canal to tube station
At the Regent's Canal High Street 2012 crosses from E1 to E3. Most drivers would never notice the thread of water beneath [photo], and a bus shelter blocks most of the view for waiting bendy-riders. Instead this is a towpath level treat, where walkers squeeze beneath the low brick arch and pray they don't meet a speeding cyclist ting-tinging their way round the blind corner through the darkness. The local local, The New Globe, has scattered a handful of wooden tables down by the waterside, should patrons fancy a pint in sight of Mile End Lock. More likely, from what I saw, it's a secluded spot for mischievous youth to gather and set fire to things, not all of them smokeable.
The next bridge is unique. It's called the GreenBridge, even though from underneath it's definitely yellow[photo]. It was built at the millennium as part of a major regeneration project, designed to link the two halves of Mile End Park without the need to dodge through the busy traffic below. The 'green' name derives from the grass and shrubs planted all along the 25m-wide bridge, essentially an elevated extension of the park, and a proper local landmark. Except that the bridgetop trees have almost all died, the shrubs have mostly shrivelled and the grass has grown patchy and faded, so the GreenBridge really isn't very green any longer. Maybe the park's gardeners forgot to water it regularly, or maybe Tower Hamlets budget just couldn't maintain the original pristine landscape. Whatever, this drought-stricken span always seems overlooked and underused by local people... much like the rest of Mile End Park. It's a salutary warning to planners of the 2012 Olympic Park up the road that money can create an amazing public space but nothing can force people to use it.
Never mind. If you lot don't want to use the Green Bridge much, it means I can stand up here more often and enjoy the view in peace. To the west is the half of HS2012 along which I've already walked, with a cluster of City skyscrapers just visible through Queen Mary's campus past the octagonal tower of The Guardian Angels[photo]. Bit close that church, isn't it? To the east stretches the glorious vista of, erm, Mile End[photo]. A gorgeous view for connoisseurs of tower blocks and dual carriageway - one side all leafy and avenue-y, the other rather more built-up and retail. The considerable breadth of the road is immediately evident - trams and trolleybuses used to run all along here without upsetting the rest of the traffic.
The Green Bridge provides an illusory crossing place, a secluded vantage point, somewhere to stand and stare. We really don't have enough contours in this part of London, so any accessible elevation is duly welcome. But the one thing you won't see from up here is the bustling parade beneath the green-glazed parapets - home to a series of restaurants and food shops whose construction helped to fund the project in the first place. Alas, that's where all the people are - down below buying frozen peas rather than up top enjoying the view. Their loss.
four local sights » New Globe: It's a pub near a university. It's got to be full of students, n'est-ce pas? [photo] » Club E3: The building on the corner with Burdett Road is Club E3, formerly known as Purple (formerly known by lots of other now-defunct names, formerly the Royal Hotel), where local hedonists queue for RnB, funky house and Old School Garage.
» Mile End station: The station with the oh-so-convenient cross-platform interchange between the District and Central lines, currently looking a right mess because Metronet ripped all the tiles off and then went bust. [photo] » Onyx House: Piers Gough, designer of the Green Bridge, was also the architect of this two-tone office block opposite the station. Previously on this site an Odeon cinema, and before that a large mansion called Essex House (HQ of the Guild of Handicraft).
Your comments • I think the idea of the Green Bridge has been misunderstood. I thought the intention was to enable wildlife to travel further safely and thus ensure greater diversity and therefore a healthier population. A narrower bridge would have been offputing for Mr. Fox and friends. (Pedantic of Purley)
To read the remainder of my HS2012 journey, click here.
High Street 2012 11) BOW (west) Mile End tube to Bow Road tube
Beyond Mile End station, High Street 2012 changes somewhat. Up until now this has been a mostly retail street, with shops on either one side or the other almost all of the way along. No longer. From here onwards there's only the occasional parade of shops, and HS2012 has evolved instead into a neighbourhood where people live. You'd be hard pushed to spot a semi or anything detached - it's all flats, terraces, and terraces divided up into flats. But some of the terraces on the northern side of the road are rather splendid - all uniform Georgian with arched sash windows and parallel chimneypots [photo]. It's a bit of a hint that round the corner lies TredegarSquare, an impressively well-preserved white stucco quadrangle where E3's most well-to-do still reside. Welcome to leafy Bow.
The official changeover between Mile End Road and Bow Road comes in front of St Clement's Hospital (there's still a plaque on the wall proclaiming the edge of the Borough of Poplar, 1900). St Clement's started out as a workhouse 150 years ago before evolving into Bow Infirmary, then Bow Institution, and eventually a wholly psychiatric hospital. So full of depressed patients was the area that Mile End station had to have a Samaritans hotline installed on the westbound platform, at the "jumping" end closest to the oncoming trains. That telephone remains, if you know where to look, but the hospital closed down a couple of years ago. It's since been locked away to await redevelopment, and now a series of eerie empty towers loom through a screen of forbidding trees. Whatever the umpteen-acre site's fate (undoubtedly flats, it's always flats), I trust that the hospital's classical entrance and whitewashed front walls (with green and red shield insignia) will long remain. [photo]
Across at 39 Bow Road lived an unassuming man of the people, the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition in the early 1930s, the Right Honourable GeorgeLansbury MP. A lifelong campaigner for social justice, he fought tirelessly for pacifism, the suffragette movement and the rights of the working man. In 1921, as Mayor of London's most poverty-stricken borough, he led the Poplar Rates Revolt by diverting local taxes to the local poor. Thirty councillors were sent to prison for defying the courts, and council business had to be conducted from inside Brixton prison. One of those imprisoned was George's daughter-in-law Minnie, who died shortly afterwards from pneumonia. Bowler-hatted George became Labour leader almost by default, after the party's rout in the 1931 General Election had left no credible alternative. But his pacifist nature was at odds with the growing threat from Germany, and after four years he was replaced by his younger deputy Clement Attlee. Lansbury remained a popular and principled elder statesman right up to his death in 1940. Germany, alas, responded by flattening the family home a few months later.
At number 39 today there's a rather ordinary block of council housing, and a plaque, and a small stone memorial, and quite possibly a couple of spliff-smoking winos on the bench outside [photo]. George would no doubt approve, at least of the former. Daughter-in-law Minnie is remembered up the road at Electric House, where a recently restored memorial clock gleams proudly above a betting shop [photo]. But you're probably most aware of Mr Lansbury's legacy through his grand-daughter Angela, the internationally renowned actress. Sadly (or perhaps thankfully) CBS decided to locate JessicaFletcher's murder capital far from her childhood home in Bow, and so E3's innocent gangsta hoodies remain unchampioned.
four local sights » The Milestone: A Mile End pub that can't make up its mind what it's called. Over the last decade or so it's been the Cornucopia, Horn of Plenty, Flautist and Firkin, Matter of Time, Virtue, and (as of a couple of months ago) The Milestone. No desperate rebranding would encourage me to venture inside, however. » Spratts: Until a few months ago Tower Hamlets Planning team hung out at 47 Bow Road in what was once the sales office of the world's first dogbiscuitcompany (founded by an electrician from Ohio). » Milepost: A rusty black and white metal mileage marker outside Electric House declares "Whitechapel Church 2", "Stratford 1½". This 200-year-old relic is best seen from a vantage point in the middle of the road, should you dare to risk standing in the path of an oncoming stagecoach to photograph it. [photo] » Bow Road station: "This simple brick and timber building, set above the railway cutting, is typical of an Edwardian station. The platforms, situated where the railway emerges from the 'below street' tunnel to the surface, is notable for the brick retaining walls and the massive cast iron columns, set along the curved platforms, that support the roof structure with their brick lined 'jack arches' above the tracks." So says the newly installed heritage plaque in the ticket hall, brilliantly positioned in a corner where nobody will ever stop to read it. [photo]
Your comments • "Spratts", once at 47 Bow Road, was the building where Tower Hamlets Planning team were located up until about six months ago. It was then vacated and locked up prior to selling the site for another new residential development, but in the meantime it has been squatted and now boasts several anti war posters in the first floor windows. (fishislandskin) • I'm not certain but I'm sure the Council had reserved the St Clements site to extend the Southern Grove buildings into a new town hall - the lease on the current town hall towers must have been extended if they're still there. (Bina) • In fact Both the St Clements site and the Southern Grove site have been earmarked for residential redevelopment, the lease on the current town hall at Clove Crescent E14 has indeed been extended and the Council have also leased the major part of an additional building next door to it, this has enabled them to empty out many various buildings around the borough such as 47 Bow road. (fishislandskin)
High Street 2012 12) BOW ROAD Bow Road tube station to Fairfield Road
A century ago, this next stretch of road would have been the part of Bow everybody visited. Here was the municipal hub of a growing suburb, the civic centre, the social heart. It doesn't feel quite so must-see today.
100-ish years back: Come, let us traverse eastwards from the brand new Metropolitan District Railway station. Here is Tredegar House where many hundreds of nurses have been been trained, including no lesser angel than the formidable Miss Edith Cavell. How splendid is the new police station with its capacious stables at the rear. One wonders many tiresome suffragettes have spent the night within its gloomy lock-ups before crossing the street to be tried in Bow Court House! Today: Oi, let's walk down to the takeaway. Do stop to pick up a free newspaper from the racks outside the tube station, there's bound to be one in your language [photo]. I see there are flats for sale in Tredegar House for 300K. I bet the Police Station will be turned into flats too soon - the front desk's only open 35 hours a week[photo]. Oops, mind that dollop of steaming horseshit. Hey, isn't that wotsisname, the drug-addled pop star, stumbling down the steps in front of the Thames Magistrates Court surrounded by paparazzi?
100-ish years back: Hark, a locomotive of the London & Blackwall is belching smoke across the railway bridge before halting at the elevated Bow Road station. To which of the two cinemas immediately beyond shall we give our custom? I must say I rather fancy viewing the jolly electrographic spectacle of The Count of Monte Cristo. A pint of finest milk stout in the Little Driver will slip down a treat for thruppence, and then perchance a crumpet or two for tea. Today: Hardly any trains ever cross the off-network Ferodo Bridge, which must be how that intrusive spraypaint sketchin got daubed up there [photo]. I need to punt a fiver in the betting shop (it's the old station's ticket office you know), and then I thought we'd grab a DVD from the Somerfield on the garage forecourt. Dunno about you but I'd kill for a greasy breakfast from the tiny Mighty Bite caff. And then let's join the gang in the LittleDriver beer garden and get rat-arsed on real ale.
100-ish years back: Bow station boasts a mighty edifice, does it not, with four platforms beneath road level and a bustling tram stop directly outside the main entrance. Up above are the rooms of the Bow and Bromley Institute, where I need to pay my subscription to Henry the secretary. I'm certain that the tellers at the Aid in Thrift Mutual Benefit Building Society on the second floor will provide. And thence to my piano lesson with Mistress Mumford at number 147, such sweet music shall we make! Today: Watch out for dem bastard pickpockets beneath the windswept canopy of Bow Church DLR. Jeez, the ticket inspectors are everywhere, I think I'll hop on the free bendy bus to Whitechapel instead. But first I need to get a packet of fags from the bloke in the lock-up kiosk, so long as the Barclays cash machine nextdoor isn't buggered again. Those bleeding kids in the playground at Bow School ain't half making a racket, but they'll be off down the kebab shop soon enough.
100-ish years back: Let us away to the Bromley Vestry Hall for an evening of light flirtatiousness and merry dance. It is a far better use of land, is it not, than the humble almshouses which once stood upon this very spot. And then we shall partake of another pint or three in the Bow Bells, until the landlord ejects us out onto the gas-lit street to stumble home. I trust that Doctor Lightburne, in his surgery on the corner of Fairfield Road, will have the patience to patch us up in the morning. Today: Mind out, there's a tattooed wedding party blocking the pavement outside the Registry Office. They'll probably end up in the bright orange boozer nextdoor, watching some unconvincing Elvis impersonator and vomiting in the urinals, before crossing to the sliproad outside the old Town Hall and piling into their pink stretch limo back to Plaistow. Nice 'ere, innit? [photo]
four local sights » Mornington Grove: Still bears the original stone street name of Mornington Road, carved into a wall, punctuated with a totally unnecessary full stop. [photos of local street signs] » Kitcat Terrace: Not a row of chocolate townhouses, but a cul-de-sac named after the Reverend Henry J Kitkat, Rector of St Mary's Church between 1904 and 1921. » Enterprise Rent-A-Car: A small forecourt dispensing temporary wheels to weekend drivers, doing business on the site of the Kray Brothers' first club - the Double R. » Poplar Town Hall: Between 1938 and 1965 the London borough of Poplar was governed from a tall triangular wedge of a building resembling a slice of multi-layered chocolate cake [photo]. Industrious Thames-side activities are depicted in a colourful mosaic map on the underside of the Members Entrance porch [photo]. Meanwhile five carvings of generic labourers grace the sharp curve above Fairfield Road - an architect, a stonemason, a navvy, a carpenter and (of course) an oxy-acetylene welder. Now that Poplar has been consumed into Tower Hamlets, the building lives on as the Bow Business Centre.
Your comments • Some of your blog readers who are fans of "The Bill" may recognise the Ferodo bridge that crosses Bow Road as this view featured in the opening credits in the Original series where a Police car would screech to a halt with a clear view of the bridge in the background. (fishislandskin) • Wouldn't use that cash machine if you value your bank details... (James)
High Street 2012 13) BOW VILLAGE Fairfield Road to Flyover
I live in a medieval village. No anonymous housing estate on the site of a former field for me, oh no. The spot where I live has been part of a thriving settlement for many hundreds of years, a cluster of cottages astride the main East Road whose importance hasslowlygrown over the centuries. My home is built by the old village green, around which generations of bakers and blacksmiths and brewers have plied their trade. But today it's no longer easy to recognise Bow, heavily built up and choked by dual carriageway traffic, as a long-standing location. Only one obvious clue to our village history remains, and that's the church in the middle of the road.
St Mary's church dates back to 1311 when Edward III granted use of a patch of land "in the middle of the King's highway'. Neither the site nor the road have shifted since, although the building has taken a bit of a battering in its time. A storm in 1829 caused the top half of the medieval tower to collapse (cue rebuild 1). By the end of the century the entire building had become unsafe and was threatened with being pulled down to improve traffic flow (cue restoration campaign and rebuild 2). And then, on the very last night of the Blitz, a wayward bomb caused serious damage to the western half and the tower (cue restoration campaign and rebuild 3). The church we see today is a bit of a mishmash of styles [photo], but the lower half of the tower is still very 14th century and the font is even older.
St-Mary's-By-The-Flyover continues to minister to an indifferent parish, severed from the rest of the community on its isolated traffic island. But on the inside, with Bow's buzz and bustle blanked out, it's a delightful building. The roof has ancient oak rafters, the walls are littered with antique memorials and the stained glass window conceals a secret squirrel... as I discovered whilst attending the vicar's summer fete last weekend. Old ladies chatted on wooden chairs in the nave, sipping tea and nibbling cakes, while a second-hand bookstall dispensed Mills & Boon and Blue Peter annuals beneath the belltower. [No, these aren't the famous Bow Bells, because those are at St Mary-le-Bow in the City instead]. I may have failed abjectly to Splat The Rat in the churchyard, but I did manage to walk away from the tombola clutching a photo frame and two cans of Stella. Now that's my kind of church fete.
Bow Road divides in two to pass the church, with considerably older buildings along the northern slipstream. Look east past Mr Gladstone's statue and you'll see what I mean [photo]. The Roman Catholic church opposite the pedestrian crossing was once coupled with a Victorian convent, whose nuns specifically targeted this area in 1868 because they wanted to work "in the worst part of London". How quickly, and desperately, the village of Bow had been swallowed up by the sprawling city. One group who suffered were the matchgirls working at the Bryant and May factory round the corner in Fairfield Road (now Bow Quarter), and whose 1888 strike initiated one of the very first trade unions for women workers. The girls' impoverished lives were improved when their leader, the radical Annie Besant, established the East London Working Women's Club at number 193 (now Link House apartments).
Over on the southern side of the road, razed to create the Bow Bridge council estate in the 1930s, is a more famous location in the feminist struggle. It was at a former baker's shop, now long demolished, that campaigningsuffragetteSylviaPankhurst set up her campaign headquarters in 1912. She painted the words "Votes for women" in big gold letters above the door and set out to mobilise local support for George Lansbury's upcoming pro-suffrage by-election. George narrowly lost, and Sylvia & Co moved on to protest from cheaper premises on the Roman Road. But the issue wouldn't go away, and Bow Road was the scene of many an angry protest, and broken window, and arresting behaviour, before the vote was finally won.
four local sights » Gladstone statue: The respected Liberal Prime Minister gazes out across Bow Road from his lofty plinth, gazing down over a set of barricaded gents urinals that may one day be transformed into a mini subterranean art gallery. William's hands are covered with red paint, daubed by some anonymous protester in the early 90s. [photo] » Co-Op beehive: Above the flagpole at my local Costcutter, formerly part of the Stratford Co-Operative, is an eye-catching stone carving of a beehive and associated buzzy insects. [photo] » Bow Arts Trust: A community of over 100 artists, who splatter and carve and construct, and whose studios are open one weekend every June should you fancy a look inside. In the alleyway between the two buildings, optimistically named "Bow Arts Lane", a selection of brightly coloured fluorescent tubes dangle from the sky. [photo] » Bow Baptist Church: Once a lofty rose-windowed chapel, then a squat post-war brick hall, then (a fortnight ago) completely bulldozed to the ground to make way for another block of tall shiny flats. But a block of flats with a small ground floor chapel, no less. [photo]
Your comments • The statue of Gladstone, sculpted by Albert Bruce-Joy and donated by the directors of Bryant and May’s match factory, dates from 1887. The tradition of daubing the statue with red paint (for blood!) comes from a misapprehension that it was paid for in part by a forced levy from the match worker’s wages. (Bina) • Right where McDonalds is now used to be the offices of Kango Wolf Power Tools Ltd. Suppliers of professional tools - such as jack hammers to dig up concrete - and even had a royal warrant. I seem to remember they disappeared in the late 1980s. (Brendan) • It's surprising that the traditional church fete lives on in Bow of all places, with its multi-everything population. I don't suppose your MP put in an appearance, by any chance? (trad or anon)
High Street 2012 14) STRATFORD HIGH STREET (west) Bow Flyover to Greenway
The Bow Flyover is a point of transition. Previously High Street 2012 has been a bit old-fashioned, a bit retail/residential, a bit compact. And suddenly all that's wiped away. The rest of the road up to Stratford is a bit new-fangled, a bit light industrial, and a bit wide-open. Oh, and just marginally Olympic. All change please.
It's actually the River Lea that marks the boundary proper, the traditional dividing line between Middlesex and Essex. It's been a barrier to east-west travel for millennia, but it wasn't until Queen Matilda nearly drowned trying to get across in the 12th century that a bridge was first built. Its unusual shape resembled the curve of a longbow, and so the area became known as Stratford atte Bowe. Geoffrey Chaucer wrote about the place, you know, which is probably more than can be said for the suburb where you live.
There's still an arched bridge here crossing the Lea [photo], but it's now a 1960s concrete road on stilts [photo]. The Bow Flyover is part of a destructive post-war motorwayscheme designed to speed up road traffic around the edge of inner London. Great for through traffic, but curtains for carved-out communities and farewell to any character this river valley might ever have had. Beneath the flyover the replacement ground level bridge is depressingly mundane. A flat concrete slab crosses the low-ceilinged waterway, beneath which the occasional narrowboat disappears into darkness between a Calor Gas dealer and a closed-down graffitied caravan park [photo]. Meanwhile walkers and cyclists are forced up from the towpath and have to dash across the busy main road where no safe crossing is provided. It's not the Lea's finest moment.
High Street 2012 continues eastwards along the old Stratford Causeway, threading its way through the braided waterways of the Lower Lea. The road used to be lined by marshes, mills and factories, the most famous of which was the BowChina Works. In the mid 1700s it churned out world-class porcelain, both "useful and ornamental", specialising in glazed figurines and blue and white chinaware. The factory site is now covered by a cluster of newly-constructed apartment blocks [photo], part of a series of opportunistic developments along Stratford High Street. Some were planned before the Olympics were announced, even more have started springing up since, capitalising on the readily-available easily-knocked-down post-industrial landscape. The dominant architectural style appears to be "shiny and colourful", and anyone buying a penthouse flat will have an excellent view of the adjacent Olympic Park come 2012.
The road rises slightly to cross Joseph Bazalgette's Northern OutfallSewer. Flush a north London toilet and your effluent will eventually pass this point powered by gravity through giant Victorian pipes. The sewer-top is now a long distance footpath called the Greenway [photo] ('Brownway' would surely be more appropriate), which will be appropriated in 2012 to transfer thousands of Olympic visitors from West Ham station to the Olympic stadium. It's a very long walk - I hope they don't mind the smell.
four local sights » J Bulman & Sons Ltd: A not-so-old carpet factory by the flyover, very plain and bricky, and typical of scores closed down and boarded up over the past few years. The "Staff Wanted" sign pictured here hangs jobless from the wall in Cooks Road (although you can't see it any more because some insensitive security firm has nailed their own "keep out, under surveillance" notice over the top). » The Dane Group of Companies: A rare pocket of surviving industry at the top of Sugar House Lane, established by James Dane in 1853 as a manufacturer of printing inks. Their day-glo doggy logo really brightens up the street. [photo] » Porsche showroom: I laughed when I saw Porsche building a showroom on Stratford High Street a few years ago. Now, surrounded by emerging high-rise affluence, the choice doesn't seem quite so stupid. » City Mill Lock: This gated water-step on the Three Mills River at Groves Bridge never really took off as a beauty spot. The council have kindly provided a semi-circle of off-road metal benches overlooking the large tidal basin here, but I've never seen anyone (sober) sit here.
Your comments • What about the usual Ron n'Reg connection with the "Mad Axeman" holding up one of the piles on Bow Flyover? (Allegedly...) (Bowroaduk)
High Street 2012 15) STRATFORD HIGH STREET (east) Greenway to Great Eastern Road
Is there a less High Street-y High Street in the country than Stratford's? No department stores, not a single high street chain, in fact barely even a shop in sight. You might just be able to buy a Mars Bar or get your hair cut, but don't count on much more than that. Instead Stratford High Street is little more than a fast track east, an ex-industrial thoroughfare, a road in transition. Few hang around to find out more.
The nicest building along here is the Yardley factory, a creamy lido-style Art Deco structure, blessed by an attractive "Lavender Girls" mural on the wall above the entrance [photo]. Its location by the Greenway seems a strange place to base a perfumier - beside a none too fragrant river and a stinky sewer - but back in 1903 it made perfect scents. Your great gran no doubt daubed herself with the company's finest flowery essence, once produced and packed herein (until Yardley moved out to new premises beside the Wickford bypass in the 1960s). The old building looks like being a rare survivor of Stratford's pre-Olympic goldrush, its shell now standing alone in a sea of high-rise development (good grief!blimey!). A few metres further west and the Lavender Girls would have been absorbed by the 2012 security frisking zone, but instead their smiling Cockney faces should remind international visitors that not everything round here is shiny and fresh.
The area seems as yet undecided whether it's serving the old community or the new. There are still sufficient grease-covered workers to support a greasy spoon or two, plus the obligatory betting shop and fried chicken dispensary. Giuseppe's barbers shop struggles on, though judging by the photo of a moustached model in the window this hairdresser hasn't trimmed any locks since the Seventies [photo]. Local ladies can sometimes be seen puffing and gossiping outside the entrance to the Gala Bingo Hall, before vanishing swiftly back inside for another eyes down. But facilities are thinning out - there's just the one garage now and only a single pub - as the street's upmarket transformation begins to plays out. The Labour Party have seemingly given up, as a half-vanished sign in front of their former West Ham HQ bears witness.
As Stratford nears, the older buildings stand firm against the modern onslaught. Stratford Market station hasn't seen a train for 50 years but the southern pavement still diverts beneath its litter-strewn urine-stained Victorian portal. The closed down nightclub opposite is the StratfordRex, born as a three-thousand seat Theatre and Opera House (opera in Stratford! How things change!) before metamorphosing into an Art Deco cinema. And some architect had fun decorating the front of Essex House [photo], topped off with three rampant griffins, not that anybody ever thinks to look up and notice. Yes, those really are palm trees down the centre of the road [photo], plus a few shiny metal sculptures for good measure to celebrate the area's inherent Newham-ness. But there's still nowhere to buy bread, furniture or shoes. Keep walking, genuine High Street approaching.
four local sights » Holiday Inn Express: It's hard to imagine anyone wanting to stay here, on Stratford High Street, no matter how "vibrant" the website claims the area is. This identikit hostel may be ideally situated for the Olympic Park, but I can't believe local construction workers get paid enough to stay overnight. » Pie Crust Cafe: One of my readers recommends checking out the Pie Crust. "It's a place that I love very much. A small run down looking cafe serving Thai dishes alongside the usual bacon and eggs. Run by friendly Thais the place is decorated with golfing trophies, colourful Thai pictures and a British Rail clock. Nothing beats a hot plate of chilli beef and onions with rice on a damp and cold Saturday morning. Funnily enough it does not seem to serve many pies. Kind of opposite the Holiday Inn, it is quite easy to miss. It is mostly frequented by local builders and is by far the best place to eat in Stratford."[photo] » Log Cabin: Former coaching inn, now a forlorn semi-boarded-up pub with drooping green and gold sunshades [photo]. Wholly inappropriate black and white photos of grinning Cockneyfolk fill each first floor window. » Greenwich meridian: There's a plaque in the pavement on Stratford bridge, above the Jubilee line, marking passage from the western to the eastern hemisphere. There's no such plaque on the Bingo Hall on the opposite side of the street (they don't do zero, obviously).
High Street 2012 16) STRATFORD Great Eastern Road to St John's church
Four miles from the City, at the eastern end of High Street 2012, we finally reach Stratford. Apologies, it's not the most uplifting end to a journey, is it? Unlike its upon-Avon counterpart, this Stratford is nowhere any tourist would ever dream of visiting. Its shops are absolutely nothing special, its attractions are limited and its amenities well buried. But in just four years time all this should have changed. The eyes of the world will be on the Olympic Park immediately to the west, and East London's shoppers will be flocking to the Stratford City development adjacent to the north. Can the traditional heart of Stratford survive the transformation?
This striking spiky sculpture stands on a traffic island on the western edge of Stratford's inner ring road [photo]. It's called RailwayTree and, according to its creator, it "symbolises Stratford as a focal point of arrival and departure by featuring a dynamic series of curved steel beams that radiate and rise out of the ground to converge at a central point before reaching for the sky in all directions". Obviously. Stratford has considerable railway heritage, and indeed most of the 180 acres of Stratford Citydevelopment is taking place across former railway marshalling yards. Look past the bus station and you can already see the first buildings climbing above the skyline. A new footbridge is due to connect the old to the new, and the old is going to need all the help it can get.
Onward into the traditional centre of town, along Stratford Broadway [photo]. The whole of Broadway's left flank dates from the mid 60s when the previous buildings were compulsorily purchased and replaced by Stratford Shopping Centre[photo]. And it shows. However state-of-the-art its design at the time, the echoing mall boasts little to attract today's discerning shopper. You'll search in vain for haute couture or an organic delicatessen because there's nothing here more sophisticated than Boots and Woolies. Most local shoppers are more at home in the artificial market near the pound shops, or in the warren of "accessibly-priced" retailers hidden away down an uninviting passage behind Wilkinson. Oh yes, Stratford has been credit-crunch-ready for years.
Exit the shopping centre onto the Broadway, beside an unlikely Starbucks, and you'll more than likely be met by some evangelical leaflet-waver (although last time I was here a BBC journalist thrust a microphone under my nose and tried to ask me about the Olympics instead). There's a real multicultural mix out here, and usually a youthful vibe, although some might interpret the ambience as edgy and a little insecure. The far side of the street is usually a little quieter, at least away from the bus stops, maybe because that's where the older buildings are. You may not be able to see the Old Town Hall at the moment because it's shrouded in scaffolding, but the occasional rooftop statue still pokes out defiantly above the green sheeting. And if you want to go drinking in a pub with even a smidgeon of character then be sure not to stay in the 60s zone, be sure to cross the road.
Finally, on this long journey up High Street 2012, to St John's Church. It's 1834 vintage, built in the Early English style with a ornate southwestern spire. Outside is another tall stone spire - a Martyr's Monument commemorating the burning to death of thirteen Protestant souls on this spot (or hereabouts) in 1556 [photo]. A bit brutal, even by Stratford standards, especially given that two of their number were female and one of those was pregnant. Several thousand turned up to watch the unrepentant Essex zealots go up in flames, whereas nowadays the churchyard attracts considerably smaller crowds for its charismatic open air August services. In fact to most Stratford residents St John's is little more than a useful cut-through, or maybe a secluded spot to enjoy lunchtime sandwiches or an illicit bottle of White Lightning. As we've seen almost all the way along HS2012, the only constant on this street is change.
four local sights » Samuel Gurney Obelisk: Sam was a rich City banker who lived locally in Ham House (now West Ham Park). As a Quaker philanthropist he did much charitable work in the area of penal reform, along with his more well-known sister Elizabeth Fry. And I'm willing to bet that 99% of the people who walk past his obelisk don't know any of that. [photo] » Ye Olde Black Bull: I'm not quite sure how a pub founded in 1892 dares to call itself "Ye Olde", but the "Black Bull" part evidently comes from a statuette lurking two storeys above the entrance. » King Edward VII: Decent boozer and gastropub, serving guest beers and hand-cut chips. Originally called the "King of Prussia", which suited just fine until World War I broke out, at which point the locals promptly renamed it after our own dear just-departed monarch. Now more endearingly known as "King Eddie's". [photo] » Gerard Manley Hopkins memorial: A memorialstone dumped on the pavement outside the library commemorates one of the Victorian era's greatest poets, born at 87 The Grove. Except, hang on, that's not part of High Street 2012 at all, I've gone slightly too far. Enough already.
Your comments • My father was the landlord of the King Edward in 1960. I recall that on occasions he let Joan Littlewoods Theatre Workshop have script readings in the dining room between lunch and evening opening times. There was a dumb waiter from the kitchen to the dining room. I used to earn my pocket money by 'bottling up' the shelves after school. I sang in St John's Church choir - on Saturday we could have as many 6 weddings to sing at, for which we were paid 2/- (two shillings) per wedding. We then rushed up the road to the pie and eel shop for a feast. (Gnome) • Samuel Gurney gives his name to a road in Maryland E15 formerly associated with another famous Stratford product, MMMMattessons sausages and black puddings. Another old name swept away by the Ring road was the Leach Marathon hand-made bicycle. (felix)
NDHigh Street 2012
One beardy man has been honoured with two statues on Mile End Waste [photo]. His name is William Booth, and he's the founder of the Salvation Army. In 1865 this former Methodist minister arrived in the East End from Nottingham and was shocked by the poverty and sin he saw. Walking along the Whitechapel Road one day he came across a religious meeting taking place outside the Blind Beggar public house and stepped up in front of the crowd to preach. His fiery rhetoric so impressed the organisers that they invited him to lead their small open air mission, with services held in an old tent erected on an old Quaker burial ground on Mile End Waste. From such a chance meeting sprung a lifelong vocation to better the lives of the wantonly sinful, and the inauguration of his great quasi-military tambourine-waving charity.
"I saw multitudes of my fellow-creatures not only without God and hope, but sunk in the most desperate forms of wickedness and misery that can be conceived. I went out and looked on the wretched Sons and daughters of debauchery and vice and crime who were all about me. The drunkenness, and harlotry, and pauperism, and slumdom, and blasphemy, and infidelity of these crowds had a fascination for me... I not only saw but compassionated the people sunk in the sin and wretchedness that I beheld, and the everlasting woe that I knew must follow." (William Booth)Another monument to benevolence can be found close by - the Trinity Almshouses. There are 28 redbrick cottages hidden behind the trees, in two parallel rows leading to a small chapel at the end of the avenue [photo]. They were originally built in 1695 by Trinity House, the charitable maritime authority, for the benefit of "28 decay'd Masters and Commanders of Ships, or ye widows of such". At least I think that's what the elegant script says on the twin plaques on the front of the buildings [photo]. A pair of intricate 17th century warships are perched further up, although these are only copies because the marble originals are stashed away for safe keeping in the Museum of London. Local campaigns have twice restored the almshouses after they fell into disrepair, and this far-sightedness has preserved a rare oasis of calm and just off the main drag.
Wickhams department store was once known as the Selfridges of the East End. You can see the similarity, on the outside if not the inside, with bold pillared frontage in a stucco style. But Wickhams has one unique feature that Selfridges lacks, and that's a great big gap in the middle [photo]. When the store was being built in the 1920s, one stubborn existing retailer refused point blank to sell up, and so the rest of the store was built around them. "Never mind," thought Mr Wickham, "they'll sell up eventually." But Herr Spiegelhalter the jeweller held out the longest, until 1988 no less, whereas Wickhams closed down back in the 1960s. The giant building is now three separate stores, with only the easternmost DVD dispensary still open. The main shop beneath the tower used to hold a DIY "Direct Bargain Centre", and the central block a food store, both recently shuttered up. There are plans to breathe new life into Wickhams with a new retail development, hopefully sympathetic, although I can't imagine a John Lewis or a Waitrose would last as long round here as did Spiegelhalters.
There are some marvellous old houses interspersed with the new along this stretch of road. A row of four fine Queen Anne residences, tirelessly restored to their original glory by the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust, would look more at home in Chelsea than Stepney [photo]. Further east a brooding Dickensian tenement has defied all pressure to modernise and skulks darkly behind a bricked-off garden. A bunch of E1 solicitors make their money inside an elegant tall detached block, weighed down by an assortment of peculiar arched columns on the roof. These offices are all that remain of Charrington's Anchor Brewery (founded 1757, closed 1994), reborn as the characterless Anchor Retail Park [photo]. Who needs beer when you can shop at Halfords, PC World or Curry's instead?
four local sights
You might live on the northern side, particularly if you're a student. Queen Mary's University dominates, spreading out along the Mile End Road from the Victorian Queen's Building [photo]. It could be a Torquay hotel, set back from the road behind a palm-treed lawn and clocktower, but in fact it's the college's main administrative centre. Various other faculty buildings line the street, the most striking of which is the repetitive stone-sliced grid of the Faculty of Engineering [photo] which spans Bancroft Road. The college chapel resembles half of Madonna's bra - all mammary and spiked - while further east a less suggestive Humanities building is about to spring up.
four local sights
At the Regent's Canal High Street 2012 crosses from E1 to E3. Most drivers would never notice the thread of water beneath [photo], and a bus shelter blocks most of the view for waiting bendy-riders. Instead this is a towpath level treat, where walkers squeeze beneath the low brick arch and pray they don't meet a speeding cyclist ting-tinging their way round the blind corner through the darkness. The local local, The New Globe, has scattered a handful of wooden tables down by the waterside, should patrons fancy a pint in sight of Mile End Lock. More likely, from what I saw, it's a secluded spot for mischievous youth to gather and set fire to things, not all of them smokeable.
The next bridge is unique. It's called the Green Bridge, even though from underneath it's definitely yellow [photo]. It was built at the millennium as part of a major regeneration project, designed to link the two halves of Mile End Park without the need to dodge through the busy traffic below. The 'green' name derives from the grass and shrubs planted all along the 25m-wide bridge, essentially an elevated extension of the park, and a proper local landmark. Except that the bridgetop trees have almost all died, the shrubs have mostly shrivelled and the grass has grown patchy and faded, so the Green Bridge really isn't very green any longer. Maybe the park's gardeners forgot to water it regularly, or maybe Tower Hamlets budget just couldn't maintain the original pristine landscape. Whatever, this drought-stricken span always seems overlooked and underused by local people... much like the rest of Mile End Park. It's a salutary warning to planners of the 2012 Olympic Park up the road that money can create an amazing public space but nothing can force people to use it.
The Green Bridge provides an illusory crossing place, a secluded vantage point, somewhere to stand and stare. We really don't have enough contours in this part of London, so any accessible elevation is duly welcome. But the one thing you won't see from up here is the bustling parade beneath the green-glazed parapets - home to a series of restaurants and food shops whose construction helped to fund the project in the first place. Alas, that's where all the people are - down below buying frozen peas rather than up top enjoying the view. Their loss.
Beyond Mile End station, High Street 2012 changes somewhat. Up until now this has been a mostly retail street, with shops on either one side or the other almost all of the way along. No longer. From here onwards there's only the occasional parade of shops, and HS2012 has evolved instead into a neighbourhood where people live. You'd be hard pushed to spot a semi or anything detached - it's all flats, terraces, and terraces divided up into flats. But some of the terraces on the northern side of the road are rather splendid - all uniform Georgian with arched sash windows and parallel chimneypots [photo]. It's a bit of a hint that round the corner lies Tredegar Square, an impressively well-preserved white stucco quadrangle where E3's most well-to-do still reside. Welcome to leafy Bow.
The official changeover between Mile End Road and Bow Road comes in front of St Clement's Hospital (there's still a plaque on the wall proclaiming the edge of the Borough of Poplar, 1900). St Clement's started out as a workhouse 150 years ago before evolving into Bow Infirmary, then Bow Institution, and eventually a wholly psychiatric hospital. So full of depressed patients was the area that Mile End station had to have a Samaritans hotline installed on the westbound platform, at the "jumping" end closest to the oncoming trains. That telephone remains, if you know where to look, but the hospital closed down a couple of years ago. It's since been locked away to await redevelopment, and now a series of eerie empty towers loom through a screen of forbidding trees. Whatever the umpteen-acre site's fate (undoubtedly flats, it's always flats), I trust that the hospital's classical entrance and whitewashed front walls (with green and red shield insignia) will long remain. [photo]
At number 39 today there's a rather ordinary block of council housing, and a plaque, and a small stone memorial, and quite possibly a couple of spliff-smoking winos on the bench outside [photo]. George would no doubt approve, at least of the former. Daughter-in-law Minnie is remembered up the road at Electric House, where a recently restored memorial clock gleams proudly above a betting shop [photo]. But you're probably most aware of Mr Lansbury's legacy through his grand-daughter Angela, the internationally renowned actress. Sadly (or perhaps thankfully) CBS decided to locate Jessica Fletcher's murder capital far from her childhood home in Bow, and so E3's innocent gangsta hoodies remain unchampioned.
Today: Oi, let's walk down to the takeaway. Do stop to pick up a free newspaper from the racks outside the tube station, there's bound to be one in your language [photo]. I see there are flats for sale in Tredegar House for 300K. I bet the Police Station will be turned into flats too soon - the front desk's only open 35 hours a week [photo]. Oops, mind that dollop of steaming horseshit. Hey, isn't that wotsisname, the drug-addled pop star, stumbling down the steps in front of the Thames Magistrates Court surrounded by paparazzi?
Today: Watch out for dem bastard pickpockets beneath the windswept canopy of Bow Church DLR. Jeez, the ticket inspectors are everywhere, I think I'll hop on the free bendy bus to Whitechapel instead. But first I need to get a packet of fags from the bloke in the lock-up kiosk, so long as the Barclays cash machine nextdoor isn't buggered again. Those bleeding kids in the playground at Bow School ain't half making a racket, but they'll be off down the kebab shop soon enough.
four local sights
St Mary's church dates back to 1311 when Edward III granted use of a patch of land "in the middle of the King's highway'. Neither the site nor the road have shifted since, although the building has taken a bit of a battering in its time. A storm in 1829 caused the top half of the medieval tower to collapse (cue rebuild 1). By the end of the century the entire building had become unsafe and was threatened with being pulled down to improve traffic flow (cue restoration campaign and rebuild 2). And then, on the very last night of the Blitz, a wayward bomb caused serious damage to the western half and the tower (cue restoration campaign and rebuild 3). The church we see today is a bit of a mishmash of styles [photo], but the lower half of the tower is still very 14th century and the font is even older.
Bow Road divides in two to pass the church, with considerably older buildings along the northern slipstream. Look east past Mr Gladstone's statue and you'll see what I mean [photo]. The Roman Catholic church opposite the pedestrian crossing was once coupled with a Victorian convent, whose nuns specifically targeted this area in 1868 because they wanted to work "in the worst part of London". How quickly, and desperately, the village of Bow had been swallowed up by the sprawling city. One group who suffered were the matchgirls working at the Bryant and May factory round the corner in Fairfield Road (now Bow Quarter), and whose 1888 strike initiated one of the very first trade unions for women workers. The girls' impoverished lives were improved when their leader, the radical Annie Besant, established the East London Working Women's Club at number 193 (now Link House apartments).
four local sights
The Bow Flyover is a point of transition. Previously High Street 2012 has been a bit old-fashioned, a bit retail/residential, a bit compact. And suddenly all that's wiped away. The rest of the road up to Stratford is a bit new-fangled, a bit light industrial, and a bit wide-open. Oh, and just marginally Olympic. All change please.
High Street 2012 continues eastwards along the old Stratford Causeway, threading its way through the braided waterways of the Lower Lea. The road used to be lined by marshes, mills and factories, the most famous of which was the Bow China Works. In the mid 1700s it churned out world-class porcelain, both "useful and ornamental", specialising in glazed figurines and blue and white chinaware. The factory site is now covered by a cluster of newly-constructed apartment blocks [photo], part of a series of opportunistic developments along Stratford High Street. Some were planned before the Olympics were announced, even more have started springing up since, capitalising on the readily-available easily-knocked-down post-industrial landscape. The dominant architectural style appears to be "shiny and colourful", and anyone buying a penthouse flat will have an excellent view of the adjacent Olympic Park come 2012.
four local sights
The nicest building along here is the Yardley factory, a creamy lido-style Art Deco structure, blessed by an attractive "Lavender Girls" mural on the wall above the entrance [photo]. Its location by the Greenway seems a strange place to base a perfumier - beside a none too fragrant river and a stinky sewer - but back in 1903 it made perfect scents. Your great gran no doubt daubed herself with the company's finest flowery essence, once produced and packed herein (until Yardley moved out to new premises beside the Wickford bypass in the 1960s). The old building looks like being a rare survivor of Stratford's pre-Olympic goldrush, its shell now standing alone in a sea of high-rise development (good grief! blimey!). A few metres further west and the Lavender Girls would have been absorbed by the 2012 security frisking zone, but instead their smiling Cockney faces should remind international visitors that not everything round here is shiny and fresh.
As Stratford nears, the older buildings stand firm against the modern onslaught. Stratford Market station hasn't seen a train for 50 years but the southern pavement still diverts beneath its litter-strewn urine-stained Victorian portal. The closed down nightclub opposite is the Stratford Rex, born as a three-thousand seat Theatre and Opera House (opera in Stratford! How things change!) before metamorphosing into an Art Deco cinema. And some architect had fun decorating the front of Essex House [photo], topped off with three rampant griffins, not that anybody ever thinks to look up and notice. Yes, those really are palm trees down the centre of the road [photo], plus a few shiny metal sculptures for good measure to celebrate the area's inherent Newham-ness. But there's still nowhere to buy bread, furniture or shoes. Keep walking, genuine High Street approaching.
This striking spiky sculpture stands on a traffic island on the western edge of Stratford's inner ring road [photo]. It's called Railway Tree and, according to its creator, it "symbolises Stratford as a focal point of arrival and departure by featuring a dynamic series of curved steel beams that radiate and rise out of the ground to converge at a central point before reaching for the sky in all directions". Obviously. Stratford has considerable railway heritage, and indeed most of the 180 acres of Stratford City development is taking place across former railway marshalling yards. Look past the bus station and you can already see the first buildings climbing above the skyline. A new footbridge is due to connect the old to the new, and the old is going to need all the help it can get.
Exit the shopping centre onto the Broadway, beside an unlikely Starbucks, and you'll more than likely be met by some evangelical leaflet-waver (although last time I was here a BBC journalist thrust a microphone under my nose and tried to ask me about the Olympics instead). There's a real multicultural mix out here, and usually a youthful vibe, although some might interpret the ambience as edgy and a little insecure. The far side of the street is usually a little quieter, at least away from the bus stops, maybe because that's where the older buildings are. You may not be able to see the Old Town Hall at the moment because it's shrouded in scaffolding, but the occasional rooftop statue still pokes out defiantly above the green sheeting. And if you want to go drinking in a pub with even a smidgeon of character then be sure not to stay in the 60s zone, be sure to cross the road.
four local sights
