High Street 2012 5) WHITECHAPEL Vallance Rd to tube station
The area either side of Whitechapel tube station really ought to be called Whitechapel High Street. It has all the credentials. Busy shops, a thriving street market, fast food, historic pubs and a Crossrail interchange slap bang in the middle [photo]. But no, this is still just the Whitechapel Road, deemed historically less important by its greater distance from the City. Now very much a Bangladeshi-oriented thoroughfare, but with underlying echoes of an international and criminal past throughout. Oh, and an enormous hospital.
The Royal London arrived in Whitechapel's leafy green fields 250 years ago. It's grown a lot since, into a huge sprawling multiplex spread across several buildings across several acres. The oldest wards are at the front, behind the imposing Georgian facade, while a multi-million pound extension soars craneward into the sky behind. The hospital has two main entrances - one up the steps to reception, and the other via A&E through a bustling courtyard. Here, for the cost of a free phonecall, kindly ambulance workers will unload you from a trolley in full public view and wheel you through into the heart of the hospital. If things are really serious you might instead arrive on the helipad on the roof, via London's Air Ambulance, which regularly interrupts the bustle of the street below as it choppers another patient in or out [photo].
Stand on the steps in front of the RLH and you can look across to the bustling retail side of the street [photo]. That pointed stone obelisk is the Edward VII Drinking Fountain, erected in 1911 by the local Jewish community in honour of the recently departed King. He and his wife Queen Alexandra were much revered round here - she merited a grand statue in a courtyard in the hospital grounds instead [photo]. To the right of the fountain at number 259 is an unprepossessing sari shop, specialists in "bed linnen, quilts and stainless steel house hold goods". The bright yellow frontage may be plaque-less, but this is the very shop in which the Elephant Man was 'discovered' in 1884. His real name was Joseph Merrick, cursed by congenital tissue deformity and an oversized skull, and exhibited here (in the Ukay International Saree Centre) as a sideshow freak. Merrick's saviour was physician Frederick Treves, who recognised Joseph's inner humanity and spirited him away to a brief life of medical respectability in the hospital across the road.
See that McDonalds on the corner of Fulbourne Street? [photo] At the turn of the 20th century it used to be a furniture store, and upstairs (in what is now the Eastenders Snooker Club) were the headquarters of the local Jewish Socialists. Nothing special, you might think, but in May 1907 this was the unlikely venue for the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. One of the delegates was Leon Trotsky and another was his nemesis-to-be Joseph Stalin - both meeting 'ere in 'umble Whitechapel for the very first time. Overnight they stayed in a doss house round the corner in Fieldgate Street, along with some other famous Russian bloke called Lenin. Also present at this landmark McCongress were a bevy of burgeoning Bolsheviks and a whole host of undercover Tsarist spies. I doubt they ever shared a happy meal.
four local sights » Grave Maurice: Reggie and Ronnie Kray (yes, I bet you wondered how long it would be before I mentioned them) used to hold court in this classic East End pub [photo]. Reader Andy Gray writes... "I have fond memories of the Grave Maurice in the late 80's. The GM was like a time capsule - walking in through a thick velvet curtain you entered a pub that wasn't retro, it simply hadn't changed for years. All the tables had chintzy lights and the decor was mostly from circa 1960 if not before. The bar staff were charming ladies 'of a certain age' and whilst it was a unique boozer in many respects you just knew that it wouldn't last once they'd gone." The moth-eaten atmosphere may not have lasted, but the Grave Maurice has at least survived as a pub after a recent unwise dalliance as a salsa bar. » Black Bull: A half-timbered pub with centuries of accumulated brand history, recently ditched in favour of the very non-heritage name "Bar Nakoda". » Woods Buildings: A grimy brick Victorian alleyway, only recently sealed off behind a locked metal gate, presumably because scores of Jack the Ripper hunters used to walk down it for a bit of genuine slum ambience. » Whitechapel station: Opened in 1876 as part of the East London Railway, and later linked to the District line via a separate (still visible) entrance nextdoor. This is a compact busy station, cursed by narrow twisting passageways which inhibit free flow from the ticket hall to the island platforms. But give it ten years and a major Crossrail-inspired makeover will be complete, with a brand new western ticket hall emerging in Fulbourne Street. Stalin might not have approved.
Your comments • Not quite correct on Woods Buildings. After numerous complaints to the Local Council over a period of several years by members of the public (as well as the people who's front doors open onto Woods Buildings) the alleyway was gated off due to the fact that numerous people were using it as a public toilet (and I am not talking about just urinating up the walls). The problem only originally started when the Council in all its wisdom / penny pinching closed down the very large, very handy, much frequented Victorian Underground Public Convenience a short distance away that that was located adjacent to The Black Bull Public House. A new "Restaurant" was built on the site of the old toilets and this was accidently demolished in the middle of the night by an out of control Coach on its way to Stansted Airport. (fishislandskin) • I'm forever grateful to the Royal London Hospital after my father went in there with an emergency haematoma in his head. I didn't have any expectation that it would the best hospital to be in, until I learnt the hospital specialises in this sort of surgery, as they have so many boxers in the area! (Clipper) • I understand the doctors' bleeps work in the Grave Maurice. (Debster) • And for those of us with short sightedness, if you need a class old school optician, look no further than Mr Sackwild, half way down the parade. (Martin)
High Street 2012 6) WHITECHAPEL Tube station to Cambridge Heath Road
Nothing much changes immediately beyond the tube station. The busy market continues, its green and white flapping stalls obscuring the adjacent bus stop from view. The cheap shops continue, which is perfect if you want a brightly coloured plastic bin, an unlocked mobile or a hookah. And on the opposite side of the road the hospital continues, until halted at a tiger-striped bar which was once the London Hospital Tavern.
And then, suddenly, startlingly, a five-storey glass box interrupts the street [photo]. Catch the right light and the green and blue rectangular panes shine out with a simple brilliance [photo]. This is the new Whitechapel Library, and its striking modern architecture was nominated for the StirlingPrize in 2006. Except it's not called a library, oh no. Round here in Tower Hamlets we call it an "Idea Store". You may mock, but this state-of-the-art learning facility (with dance studio, complementary therapy room, cafe and baby changing facilities) has already boosted library attendance threefold. Maybe free internet access is a contributory factor - certainly the Surfing Space on Level 1 is always packed. Maybe it's down to the welcoming entrance - one minute you're walking along the pavement and the next you've been swept beneath the sheer glass canopy of the main facade and escalatored inside. Maybe it's the extensive children's library with integral playgroup, or the top-floor TV set near the coffee and the free newspapers. Maybe it's the allure of the double-sealed stairwells which smell of wheelchair accessible toilet. Or maybe people still come here for the books. One can always hope.
Possibly the most famous, or indeed infamous, location in Whitechapel Road is the Blind Beggar pub [photo]. It's notoriety was sealed one dark Wednesday evening courtesy of local gangster Ronnie Kray. He and his brother Reggie ruled the underworld north of the river, while a gang called the Richardsons lorded over the south. On 7th March 1966 a gun battle broke out in a club in Catford, a shootout in which one of the Kray's cousins was fatally wounded. One of the protagonists was a burly sadistic meathead called George Cornell, formerly a Kray acolyte but lately defected across the river. Two days later Ronnie heard that George had dared to go drinking in his territory, at the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel, so he dashed round from a nearby pub to exact his revenge. George greeted Ronnie with a sarcastic comment querying his sexuality, so Ronnie whipped out a pistol and shot him three times in the head. Like you do. To the police's dismay not one of the regulars drinking in the pub that night was willing to testify against Ronnie, and so his fearsome gangland career stuttered on unchallenged for another year.
The Blind Beggar today is just an ordinary East End pub with bar food, conservatory and satellite TV. It still gets its fair share of curious visitors, popping in for a half of shandy as an excuse to hunt for evidence of bulletholes in the walls, bloodstains on the carpet or stuck records on the jukebox. And there are still just enough Whitechapel residents to keep the business ticking over, although not as many as before because most of the locals these days don't touch alcohol. But you won't see any gangland villains hanging out on the comfy sofas today, nor downing a pint of Courage Best by the Koi Pond in the exhaust-fumed beer garden. Still too risky, can't be too careful, know what I mean guv'nor?
four local sights » Whitechapel Market: Six days a week the pavement along the Whitechapel Road is thick with stalls selling everything from cleaning fluid to quality cloth [photo]. Burkhaed mothers with pushchairs and slow hobbling grandfathers crowd the remainder of the space - this is no place to try to walk fast. Meanwhile a surprisingly high number of Chinese peddlars hover near shop doorways touting the very latest movie releases on pirated DVD, with police intervention seemingly either ineffective or invisible. » Lord Rodney's Head: It's just a few doors down from the Grave Maurice, but this old pub's not been so fortunate [photo]. Reader Andy Gray remembers "a true real ale pub run by a small brewery who were even thoughtful enough to provide a Bar Billiards table." And I remember it too, having been dragged there by a real ale mate in the mid 90s - how characterful it was. And now it's a shoe shop. Remember Lord Rodney next time you stay in for the evening with a 12-pack of beer bought from the local supermarket, because his decapitation is your fault. » Whitechapel sorting office: Once upon a time, before the invention of email, the Royal Mail thought it necessary to build a ginormous "Eastern Sorting Office" on the south side of the Whitechapel Road - a towering featureless brick cuboid from which the East End's post was promptly distributed. It looks rather threatened these days, but soldiers on. In the basement was the eastern terminus of the Post Office miniundergroundrailway, capable of whisking an envelope from here to Paddingtom far quicker than is possible today. Now stamped out. » Albion Brewery: Founded in 1808 by the landlord of the Blind Beggar, a series of takeovers created the name now arched in gold across the front of the building - Mann, Crossman & Paulin and Company[photo]. Below the clock can be seen St George and the Dragon, a logo stamped onto every bottle of Mann's Brown Ale. Once one of the top ten brewers in the UK, the company was taken over once too often and was closed by Grand Met in 1979. The entrance is now flats, and a huge Sainsbury's has gobbled up the brewery site at the rear.
Your comments • As for the Idea Store. I remember the old libraries and nobody was ever in them. Gorgeous Victorian buildings but usually empty. I've been in the Bow, Chrisp St, Whitechapel and Canary Wharf Stores and they have been full of people. Maybe they did did need to break away from the use of 'Library'? The staff are very helpful and one spent 10 minutes making sure I got the right book, checking one that wasn't there, making sure that I'd be sent an email when it arrived back and letting me choose which library I could pick it up. Libraries/Reading Rooms have been central to East End life for over a hundred years. They've just changed a bit. (Mike)
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.
NDHigh Street 2012
The area either side of Whitechapel tube station really ought to be called Whitechapel High Street. It has all the credentials. Busy shops, a thriving street market, fast food, historic pubs and a Crossrail interchange slap bang in the middle [photo]. But no, this is still just the Whitechapel Road, deemed historically less important by its greater distance from the City. Now very much a Bangladeshi-oriented thoroughfare, but with underlying echoes of an international and criminal past throughout. Oh, and an enormous hospital.
Stand on the steps in front of the RLH and you can look across to the bustling retail side of the street [photo]. That pointed stone obelisk is the Edward VII Drinking Fountain, erected in 1911 by the local Jewish community in honour of the recently departed King. He and his wife Queen Alexandra were much revered round here - she merited a grand statue in a courtyard in the hospital grounds instead [photo]. To the right of the fountain at number 259 is an unprepossessing sari shop, specialists in "bed linnen, quilts and stainless steel house hold goods". The bright yellow frontage may be plaque-less, but this is the very shop in which the Elephant Man was 'discovered' in 1884. His real name was Joseph Merrick, cursed by congenital tissue deformity and an oversized skull, and exhibited here (in the Ukay International Saree Centre) as a sideshow freak. Merrick's saviour was physician Frederick Treves, who recognised Joseph's inner humanity and spirited him away to a brief life of medical respectability in the hospital across the road.
four local sights
And then, suddenly, startlingly, a five-storey glass box interrupts the street [photo]. Catch the right light and the green and blue rectangular panes shine out with a simple brilliance [photo]. This is the new Whitechapel Library, and its striking modern architecture was nominated for the Stirling Prize in 2006. Except it's not called a library, oh no. Round here in Tower Hamlets we call it an "Idea Store". You may mock, but this state-of-the-art learning facility (with dance studio, complementary therapy room, cafe and baby changing facilities) has already boosted library attendance threefold. Maybe free internet access is a contributory factor - certainly the Surfing Space on Level 1 is always packed. Maybe it's down to the welcoming entrance - one minute you're walking along the pavement and the next you've been swept beneath the sheer glass canopy of the main facade and escalatored inside. Maybe it's the extensive children's library with integral playgroup, or the top-floor TV set near the coffee and the free newspapers. Maybe it's the allure of the double-sealed stairwells which smell of wheelchair accessible toilet. Or maybe people still come here for the books. One can always hope.
Possibly the most famous, or indeed infamous, location in Whitechapel Road is the Blind Beggar pub [photo]. It's notoriety was sealed one dark Wednesday evening courtesy of local gangster Ronnie Kray. He and his brother Reggie ruled the underworld north of the river, while a gang called the Richardsons lorded over the south. On 7th March 1966 a gun battle broke out in a club in Catford, a shootout in which one of the Kray's cousins was fatally wounded. One of the protagonists was a burly sadistic meathead called George Cornell, formerly a Kray acolyte but lately defected across the river. Two days later Ronnie heard that George had dared to go drinking in his territory, at the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel, so he dashed round from a nearby pub to exact his revenge. George greeted Ronnie with a sarcastic comment querying his sexuality, so Ronnie whipped out a pistol and shot him three times in the head. Like you do. To the police's dismay not one of the regulars drinking in the pub that night was willing to testify against Ronnie, and so his fearsome gangland career stuttered on unchallenged for another year.
four local sights
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.
