WALK LONDON London borough walks (on London borough websites)
One of the cheapest ways to spend a summer day in the city is to go for a walk. And London has hundreds of walks to choose from. You'll find details of the capital's six major strategic walks at the Walk London website. But what about other walks, lesser walks, suburban walks, walks on your doorstep? How about one of those for an interesting day out?
So I thought I'd scour the websites of the 33 London boroughs to see what walks they have to recommend. And blimey, there are quite a few really interesting trails to follow, leaflets to download, pdfs to print, all for free. But only in certain boroughs, because a significant number of councils appear to have made little effort to encourage walkers to explore their leafy acres.
Here's my borough by borough London guide to free downloadable walks. Who'll spur you outdoors for a bit of healthy leisure and heritage, and whose website teams need a bit of a kick?
Nothing about walks or walking, because these websites are dull joyless places full of dry information about council services (no star boroughs) Barnet, Croydon, Hackney, Redbridge, Westminster
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
High Street 2012
The road east from Aldgate to Stratford has a long and mighty history.
This has been the main road to Essex from London for the best part of a millennium - a well-rutted route taken by armies and revolting peasants and stagecoaches. Once a rural ride through fields and farmland, it's since become a heavily built-up arterial rat run beset by traffic jams and exhaust fumes. It's a really wide street, almost all the way down, once plied by shuttling trams but now blighted by bendy buses. It marks the start of one of the UK's main trunk roads, the A11. Along its length are scores of fried chicken shops but not one Marks and Spencer. Only a few stretches are bland cloned high street, much of the remainder has lingering commercial and residential character. It cuts through some of the very poorest parts of the capital, through an East End long inhabited by the displaced and disadvantaged. And it's the road on which I live.
In four years time, for a few short hours, this road will be part of the route of the Olympic Marathon. Runners have to get from central London to the 2012 stadium somehow, so the Whitechapel Road and Bow Church are destined for a few fleeting minutes of global fame. The world's fastest long-distance athletes will go puffing right past my front door, just yards from glory in a billion pound stadium, while hovering TV crews look down from their helicopters and beam pictures of run-down architecture to an audience of billions. Heavens, Paula Radcliffe may even stop and squat on my doorstep. It's all terribly exciting, if tantalisingly brief.
But plans are afoot to promote this East End thoroughfare for longer than a couple of brief running races. Millions of pounds are to be thrown at these four miles of roadway in an attempt to create a more permanent heritage legacy for the East End. It's a unique Olympic opportunity to improve and celebrate the road that connects Aldgate with Stratford. And the project's going to be branded High Street 2012.
I know I know, it's a dreadful name, isn't it? Tower Hamlets council were originally planning to call it "Olympic Boulevard", but it seems tedious bureaucrats stepped in and objected to the use of a protected moneyspinning trademark. No matter that this is a municipal legacy project, not a fast food restaurant, but brand pedants are nothing if not predictable. And so we're lumbered with the less-than-thrilling "High Street 2012". It may be snappy, futuristic and easier to spell, but come 2013 it's sure to sound depressingly out of date.
The High Street 2012 project is currently at the consultation stage. Talkshops have been held with local residents, and key strategic personnel are aiming to drive forward an agenda of architectural excellence and communal transformation. They've promised to create a really exciting blueprint that brightens up my local linear neighbourhood and acts as a catalyst for future regeneration. If all goes to plan, I could be stepping out of my front door into a thriving cosmopolitan community buzzing with excited tourists and re-energised citizens. HS2012 could be about to bring landscaped public spaces, dynamic transport projects and fully-restored historic buildings to an urban landscape currently devoid of coherent charm. Or else some overpaid consultant will simply tie a few coloured balloons to four miles of lampposts and paint the 2012 Olympic logo repeatedly onto the pavement. Time will tell.
So, for my annual local history month presentation, I thought I'd take you for a journey along High Street 2012. I've been for a wander with my camera all the way from Aldgate to Stratford, and I've divided up the walk up into sixteen chunks. While the 2008 Olympics play out in Beijing, diamond geezer will be tracing the East End heartland of London 2012. It's time to chronicle the current evolution of this ancient road before English Heritage and the planning bods move in. Trust me, there's much to see - including the source of American liberty, the Elephant Man's hideaway and a crucible of women's suffrage, just for a start.
High Street 2012 1) ALDGATE (EAST) Middlesex St to Commercial St
Aldgate's where London changes. To the west the towering blocks of the City, loaded with hard-won wealth and insurance money. And to the east, well, absolutely nothing like that at all. Aldgate's like a financial fault line across the capital, dividing the cufflinked from the unemployed and the well-heeled from the trainered. It's no accident that London's Olympic marathon will run round the western Aldgate roundabout twice, and the eastern roundabout just the once.
And this gyratory system is where High Street 2012 begins. Forget that interesting looking church, and that really ancient pub, and that spot where a Roman city gate once stood, and those lovely well-tended flowerbeds - they're on the wrong side of the divide. No, our first stop is a giant bleak traffic island cut off from the surrounding ordinariness through a warren of desolate subways. For reasons best known to themselves, local planners in the 70s and 80s thought that what this area needed was a mess of large scale office blocks and a subterranean shopping centre. They were very wrong about the shopping centre. The florists and coffee shops of Aldgate Barrs were never busy, maybe because no ground level passer-by would ever have guessed they existed, and this gloomy mall is now boarded up at both ends and lost to the world. I doubt that anybody misses it.
But Aldgate is in flux. Major roadworks are underway in an attempt to end the dominance of the car and to give pedestrians priority. And about time too. Stand here in the rush hour and you can watch City workers ignoring ubiquitous safety barriers to risk their lives crossing a relentless four-lane one-way system. Anything, absolutely anything, rather than waste time wandering through that labyrinth of forbidding subways [photo]. At the very top of High Street 2012 a pristine white four-pointed traffic island has appeared, its traffic lights still shrouded beneath bright orange covers [photo]. Even more heretical, push-button pelican crossings have sprouted ready to halt the oncoming vehicles. Deroundabouting is expected imminently. By Christmas a new cut-through feeder road will have been established, which will lead to the pedestrianisation of the whole of Braham Street (to be infilled with leafy public realm). To be honest it's a wonder Boris hasn't yet cancelled the Aldgate Masterplan, given the delays it'll bring to his beloved traffic flow.
Eastern Aldgate is currently a great big building site, in a wholly transformational but not yet got anywhere so still a complete mess kind of a way. One of the centrepieces of this change will be the Aldgate Tower, a curvaceous 16 storey landmark building, currently little more than a few straggly pipes and a series of fenced-off trenches. Nextdoor, on a similarly evacuated site [photo], are the foundations of Aldgate Place (who comes up with these names, have they no imagination?). This'll be another shiny glass tower, sliced diagonally in two because architects like to be a bit quirky like that. But for now only a futuristic entrance to Aldgate East tube station [photo], recently arisen out of the furrowed earth, gives a physical clue to the City extension to come. Give it time, and the prosperous end of town will have inched a few yards further east.
four local sights » Tubby Isaacs: A proper East End jellied eelstall, tucked away on the corner of Goulston Street outside the Aldgate Exchange pub. It's £2.50 per pot of wriggly chewy stuff, or four quid for medium or a fiver for large. Established 1919, and there's depressingly little else round here as old, or as loved. (The kid in this photo shot me a withering glance after I took the shot. I thought he was a customer, but it turns out he works here and was just tweaking the condiments. He is not, I repeat not, Tubby Isaacs)[kid-free photo] » Aldgate East station: Gloomy underground chamber, with most of its heritage tiling removed, which Metronet were in the middle of upgrading/destroying when they went bust. » Royal Bank of Scotland: Not content with posting record-breaking losses, the RBS's staff have the misfortune to work in a soulless brown HQ isolated in the middle of the Aldgate East roundabout without even a coffee shop to support them. My heart bleeds for the bankers, obviously. » Sportec: Aldgate's very own Trainer Temple, where the shelves are piled high with Converse, Skechers, Reebok and whatever else the trendy mainstream are wearing footwearwise this season. A big poster of Mikey Streets beams out from below the counter, and there's a tastefully discreet menswear section tucked away at the back. For da yoof, and for everyone. [photo]
Your comments • I remember Tubby Isaacs from trips up to Petticoat and Brick Lanes. At one time (one of) the Tubby Isaacs seemed to get interviewed quite a bit on TV, (60s or 70s). Guess he wasn't the original if it was established in 1919. And yes I did eat eels but what I now miss are just the cockles smothered in pepper and vinegar. Better than lobster. (Les Abbey) • I was (un)fortunate enough to spend a year working in an office on Alie Street, just south of Braham Street, and remember wandering through Aldgate Barrs a few times while it was still open for business. It never had a good feeling about it and half the shops were closed, even then. (Dave) • Did you know that the subway used to talk? And Aldgate Barrs was OK when the building above was occupied, but it spent at least a couple of years empty - occupied again now though. (Eric) • I buy my trackies at that Sportec, though last time I went in, there was too much towel and not enough silk... (CT)
High Street 2012 2) WHITECHAPEL HIGH STREET Commercial St to Osborn St
As High Streets go, this one's piddly-short. It's no more than 400 metres long, and the western half (which I covered above) barely looks High-Street-y at all . But from Commercial Street east, on one side of the road at least, you could almost believe this was once the heart of the local community [photo]. Almost.
Don't expect a row of recognisable shops - Costcutter is about as chain store as it gets. A few independent stores hold court, but probably nowhere you'd go out of your way for (unless you have electrical needs, t-shirt requirements or demand use of an online money transfer service). Starbucks have yet to intrude, so the metal tables outside the D&G Espresso Bar see good service [photo]. For something a little stronger there's the White Hart, a proper narrow pub (established 1721). And there's a great big trench down the middle of the traffic-jammed road, very recent, very coned off, very unappealing.
But there is one big tourist attraction - the Whitechapel Art Gallery. It's probably the only serious draw between here and Stratford, which doesn't bode well for any sightseeing potential that High Street 2012 might want to inspire. And at present, with a major rebuilding project underway, it's barely a cultural magnet at all. Rainbow sheeting masks the distinctive castle-like facade, and the main entrance is shut away behind boards and scaffolding. Don't give up now, there's a new entrance hidden round the back, up Angel Alley.
It's badly named, is Angel Alley. It's a green-lit narrow passage leading to a devilish shadowy courtyard, and you can well imagine some Victorian prostitute leading her temporary partner up here for a bit of relief. Don't be put off. The brick walls are now lined with lefty murals, including a panel depicting international radical thinkers [photo] - a hint that the Freedom Press anarchist bookshop is tucked away beyond. Further still and a gleaming white doorway leads into what's left of the Art Gallery. That's the shop, then, and a dark room which turns out to be an auditorium where arty films play out to an audience of probably nobody. And that's it, for now. Really, I wouldn't bother, and the girl on the information desk looks similarly unexcited. Come back next year, it'll be much more fabulous by then.
Also reopening with the Gallery, but not in its previous form, is the famous Whitechapel Library[old photo]. There was an outcry when this fabled depository closed its doors three years ago after a century of service to local learners. Jacob Bronowski was one of thousands of Jewish immigrants who learned to speak English here, and the vast collection of Jewish (and later Bengali) literature was hugely appreciated. But the library's stone staircases proved a barrier to disabled access, and these days if a building can't accommodate everybody it has to close. The replacement library may have won architectural awards but, as we'll see further up the road, its only attempt at character is in the fiction section. Let's hope the old building reopens with respectful artistic intentions.
four local sights » Albert's: You have to look hard for Whitechapel's Jewish heritage these days. But an intricate six-pointed star emblem above the front door of this long-established menswear store reminds passers-by that here was once the editorial heart of the Jewish Daily Post. [photo] » Bloom's: ...whereas you'd never guess that the Burger King in Whitechapel High Street trades on the site of what was once Whitechapel's biggest Jewish restaurant. "M Bloom (Kosher) & Son" moved here from Brick Lane in 1952, but was closed down in 1996 to fend off insolvency after inspectors uncovered unkosher practices in the kitchens. Gefilte fish afficionados can still find their fill at Bloom's in Golders Green. » Gunthorpe Street mural: A tinysidestreet through an archway, enlivened by an informative historical panel on the wall, and a glazed map of the local area tiled overhead. [photo] » London Metropolitan University: The City Campus of London's largest unitary university is dotted around the area. But not in a gorgeous way.
Your comments • Above the menswear shop, Alberts, used to be where the anarchists gathered. (Ham) • The architect of the Whitechapel Gallery [Charles Harrison Townsend] also designed the Bishopsgate Institute, Horniman Museum and one of the most beautiful churches in Essex, St Marys in Great Warley. (Mikey G)
High Street 2012 3) WHITECHAPEL ROAD (west) Osborn St to Greatorex St
Without fanfare Whitechapel High Street morphs into the much longer Whitechapel Road [photo]. The change occurs at the bottom of Brick Lane (except it isn't actually Brick Lane, it's Osborn Street, which turns into Brick Lane a few hundred yards to the north, not that many curry-hunters and deluded local councillors tend to realise this).
First up is the area's one patch of open space - Altab Ali Park. It's named after the young Bangladeshi victim of a racial murder back in 1978, remembered through a wrought iron gateway at the entrance to the park [photo]. In one corner is the Bengali Martyr's Monument [photo], simplistically Japanese in style, though these days more a convenient spot to sit and swig cheap lager. The grass is patchy and covered with pigeons, and the whole place has the feel of somewhere frequented by those with nowhere better to go. But look more carefully and there's the stone outline of a large church laid out in the turf, and a handful of gravestones in the corner. It turns out that this park is the churchyard of medieval St MaryMatfelon, the original "white chapel" after which the local area is named. The church was rebuilt several times over the centuries - taller, grander, spire-ier - until bomb damage during the Blitz obliterated it forever. St Mary's lives on now only in name, and as somewhere for incoherent alcoholics to congregate while their mangy dogs squat in the nave.
Up the road an ugly brown office block has been built on the site of the East End's very own Hatton Garden - Black Lion Yard. This narrow alley once contained as many as 12 different jewellers shops and was the place to go for a nice bit of sparkle. Here brides came to select their wedding ring, here Jewish mothers haggled over the price of a necklace, here geezers bought their diamonds. But no longer. Black Lion House, the aforementioned bland shiny replacement, sells nothing blingier than Elizabeth Duke. It's one of High Street 2012's most modern parades of shops, utterly out of keeping with the rest of the street, kicking off with a Tesco Express, moving on to an Argos, passing through a Nat West and ending up with a Starbucks. Wrong wrong wrong, on so many levels. And it makes you appreciate the rest of the Whitechapel Road a little more, and to realise how easy it would be to lose its rough-hewn independent character.
There's a real independent treasure on the corner of Fieldgate Street - the Whitechapel Bell Foundry[photo]. This venerable business was founded in Elizabethan times, in 1570 no less, and is Britain's oldest surviving manufacturing company. Cunning of shareholders to specialise in a commodity resistant to centuries of change, because Britain will always need bells. And some right clangers have been cast here. Big Ben for one, at 13½ tons the largest bell ever to emerge from the foundry, and America's cracked Liberty Bell for another. An apology: It is possible to visit the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and to tour the workshops, if you book far enough in advance, but I underestimated quite how far in advance so I've not been yet. Rest assured that I should be getting inside soon, and then I'll come back and fill the space below with a proper update. In the meantime you might want to keep an eye on the foundry's tour page, just so that you can be amongst the first to book for 2009.
five local sights » The Nag's Head: No longer a pub, now a "Gentlemen's Venue". Sorry ladies, although I suspect you might not approve of the shenanigans that go on inside over a pie and a pint. There are Pole dancers aplenty, so I'm told, but I doubt that many are from Warsaw. » White Chapel fountain: Shifted to the corner of White Church Lane in 1879, healthy cholera-free drinking water would have emerged from the centre of a drilled stone for the benefit of the local populace [photo]. » St Mary's cemetery: Under the Altab Ali park lie several notable residents of Whitechapel past. Samuel Rowley, a playwright employed at The Rose theatre, wrote 'When You See Me You Know Me' and 'The Noble Soldier'. Richard Brandon, public executioner and probable remover of Charles The First's head. Admiral Christopher Myng, killed at sea fighting the Dutch. His funeral was attended by Pepys and his bereaved men offered to lead a fireship against the enemy for revenge. John Cass, local philanthropist whose bust survives at Aldgate Church and whose charity school still exists. Richard Parker, who was hanged for his part as spokesman at the Mutiny of the Nore in 1797. (Thanks to reader Mark McM for sending this in) » Worm gravestone: I'm not convinced this is serious, it's probably just art, but I couldn't help smile on discovering this tiny tombstone in Altab Ali Park (beside a human 1850s original) [photo]. » A11 mileage sign: It's outside Tesco, giving distances to three places which aren't actually on the A11 at all [photo]. Recently hidden from oncoming traffic behind a framed poster plonked in the middle of the pavement, because advertising revenue is more important than useful information.
Your comments • Ah, the Nags Head... I discovered it one afternoon after showing my mum around the Bodyworks exhibition down Brick lane. I was desperate for a drink and so we popped into the Nags Head. I thought something was strange because it was darker than most pubs, but in my blindness for anything other than a quick pint I wandered straight past the naked woman gyrating on the stage. It was only the sound of my mum pissing herself laughing that let me know that this probably wasn't the pub that I'd like to spend any time in. (Tom Reynolds) • Not Poles, but mostly native Londoner, Brazilian and ex-USSR, in my experience I'm told. (pdf) • No mention of the Rhythm Factory? - pretty forward thinking club/bar with a lot of good club nights, live bands in the week and cabaret at weekends. Libertines played here a lot and Peter Doherty often does 'secret' solo shows or with Babyshambles - Probably the only club of its kind on 'High St 2012'. People who work there and run it are pretty cool too. (Martin)
High Street 2012 4) WHITECHAPEL ROAD (middle) Greatorex St to Vallance Rd
It seems entirely appropriate that Whitechapel Road should be one of the two cheapest properties on London's Monopoly board. Admittedly you can't buy a house around here for twenty quid any more, nor a hotel for 450, but it's still true that prices are about a tenth of those in mighty blue Mayfair. In most European cities the upwind west is a more desirable location than the downwind east, and Whitechapel never managed to buck the whiffy trend. Even as early as the late 16th century John Stow was reporting on distasteful development in the area...
Conditions in Whitechapel have changed dramatically since the 1860s, helped on in no small measure by the Luftwaffe. But this is still a street frequented by Tower Hamlets' poorer souls and immigrant communities [photo]. At the Salvation Army's Booth House hostel, homeless men gather on the access ramp for a fag and a beer. In upstairs solicitors and downstairs travel agents, local families make distant plans for a well-earned trip back home. Shrouded women and prayer-capped men gather on the shadowy pavement in readiness for the appointed hour for worship. Workers from Eastern Europe sit at coffee-stained wooden tables in internet cafes to send smiling photos to loved ones via Hotmail. Along the street are hi-vis outerwear merchants for that job down at the construction site, and betting shops to gamble away the wages later. Other more multicultural wholesalers, meanwhile, offer everything from glittering saris to Friday best suits.
Precisely four years from today, the men's London Olympic marathon will come powering along this central stretch of the Whitechapel Road. The elite runners won't be here for long, not if they can help it, and the TV cameras probably won't want to linger on this substandard streetscape either [photo]. But the world will still see a far less negative image than has existed here in any bygone era. And if High Street 2012 works its magic, the future could be even brighter.
four local sights » East London Mosque: Completed in 1985 and paid for by the local community (and the King of Saudi Arabia), the East London Mosque's golden dome and triple minarets dominate this part of the street. The brick building's not quite so ornate below roof level, with separate arched entrances for male and female worshippers. Nextdoor is the white-tiled London Muslim Centre with its striking Islamic patterned overhang, and then a rather large office block which looks like it helps to pay the rent. Most impressive, but I've never quite managed to take a really decent photograph of the place. [photo][photo] » Rivoli Cinema: The site of the East London Mosque was previously home to the Rivoli Cinematograph Theatre (bombed), which was previously the site of a venue for boxing and music hall called "Wonderland" (obsolete), which was previously the site of the New East London Theatre (burnt down). » St Mary's station: Between 1884 and 1938 there used to be another underground station between Aldgate East and Whitechapel, next to the Rivoli Cinema, serving through services to the East London line via St Mary's Curve. But a mid-street halt wasn't really necessary, and few shed a tear when it was Blitzed a couple of years after closure. On the site today, a Citroen showroom. [photo] » Express Packaging UK: Printed carrier bag specialists, for all your garment rail requirements and display sundries. An Aladdin's Cave for local retail outlets, with naked trade mannequins on parade in the window. [photo]
Your comments • If you explore the Citroen showroom you'll find in the middle of it an emergency exit door (complete with LU signage) from the closed station (Mr Easy) • There's a tiny vertical fragment of decorated tiling to the left of the Citroen showroom which is all that remains of the Rivoli (which encompassed St.Mary's station on three sides) (Bowroaduk) • ...and St.Mary's Curve was disconnected from the LU system about a month ago as a consequence of the East London Line closure. Rumour is that it will be singled, de-electrified, and reconnected for engineers' trains once the ELL reopens. (Bowroaduk)
NDWALK LONDON
High Street 2012
This has been the main road to Essex from London for the best part of a millennium - a well-rutted route taken by armies and revolting peasants and stagecoaches. Once a rural ride through fields and farmland, it's since become a heavily built-up arterial rat run beset by traffic jams and exhaust fumes. It's a really wide street, almost all the way down, once plied by shuttling trams but now blighted by bendy buses. It marks the start of one of the UK's main trunk roads, the A11. Along its length are scores of fried chicken shops but not one Marks and Spencer. Only a few stretches are bland cloned high street, much of the remainder has lingering commercial and residential character. It cuts through some of the very poorest parts of the capital, through an East End long inhabited by the displaced and disadvantaged. And it's the road on which I live.
But plans are afoot to promote this East End thoroughfare for longer than a couple of brief running races. Millions of pounds are to be thrown at these four miles of roadway in an attempt to create a more permanent heritage legacy for the East End. It's a unique Olympic opportunity to improve and celebrate the road that connects Aldgate with Stratford. And the project's going to be branded High Street 2012.
The High Street 2012 project is currently at the consultation stage. Talkshops have been held with local residents, and key strategic personnel are aiming to drive forward an agenda of architectural excellence and communal transformation. They've promised to create a really exciting blueprint that brightens up my local linear neighbourhood and acts as a catalyst for future regeneration. If all goes to plan, I could be stepping out of my front door into a thriving cosmopolitan community buzzing with excited tourists and re-energised citizens. HS2012 could be about to bring landscaped public spaces, dynamic transport projects and fully-restored historic buildings to an urban landscape currently devoid of coherent charm. Or else some overpaid consultant will simply tie a few coloured balloons to four miles of lampposts and paint the 2012 Olympic logo repeatedly onto the pavement. Time will tell.
High Street 2012
Aldgate's where London changes. To the west the towering blocks of the City, loaded with hard-won wealth and insurance money. And to the east, well, absolutely nothing like that at all. Aldgate's like a financial fault line across the capital, dividing the cufflinked from the unemployed and the well-heeled from the trainered. It's no accident that London's Olympic marathon will run round the western Aldgate roundabout twice, and the eastern roundabout just the once.
But Aldgate is in flux. Major roadworks are underway in an attempt to end the dominance of the car and to give pedestrians priority. And about time too. Stand here in the rush hour and you can watch City workers ignoring ubiquitous safety barriers to risk their lives crossing a relentless four-lane one-way system. Anything, absolutely anything, rather than waste time wandering through that labyrinth of forbidding subways [photo]. At the very top of High Street 2012 a pristine white four-pointed traffic island has appeared, its traffic lights still shrouded beneath bright orange covers [photo]. Even more heretical, push-button pelican crossings have sprouted ready to halt the oncoming vehicles. Deroundabouting is expected imminently. By Christmas a new cut-through feeder road will have been established, which will lead to the pedestrianisation of the whole of Braham Street (to be infilled with leafy public realm). To be honest it's a wonder Boris hasn't yet cancelled the Aldgate Masterplan, given the delays it'll bring to his beloved traffic flow.
four local sights
Don't expect a row of recognisable shops - Costcutter is about as chain store as it gets. A few independent stores hold court, but probably nowhere you'd go out of your way for (unless you have electrical needs, t-shirt requirements or demand use of an online money transfer service). Starbucks have yet to intrude, so the metal tables outside the D&G Espresso Bar see good service [photo]. For something a little stronger there's the White Hart, a proper narrow pub (established 1721). And there's a great big trench down the middle of the traffic-jammed road, very recent, very coned off, very unappealing.
It's badly named, is Angel Alley. It's a green-lit narrow passage leading to a devilish shadowy courtyard, and you can well imagine some Victorian prostitute leading her temporary partner up here for a bit of relief. Don't be put off. The brick walls are now lined with lefty murals, including a panel depicting international radical thinkers [photo] - a hint that the Freedom Press anarchist bookshop is tucked away beyond. Further still and a gleaming white doorway leads into what's left of the Art Gallery. That's the shop, then, and a dark room which turns out to be an auditorium where arty films play out to an audience of probably nobody. And that's it, for now. Really, I wouldn't bother, and the girl on the information desk looks similarly unexcited. Come back next year, it'll be much more fabulous by then.
four local sights
First up is the area's one patch of open space - Altab Ali Park. It's named after the young Bangladeshi victim of a racial murder back in 1978, remembered through a wrought iron gateway at the entrance to the park [photo]. In one corner is the Bengali Martyr's Monument [photo], simplistically Japanese in style, though these days more a convenient spot to sit and swig cheap lager. The grass is patchy and covered with pigeons, and the whole place has the feel of somewhere frequented by those with nowhere better to go. But look more carefully and there's the stone outline of a large church laid out in the turf, and a handful of gravestones in the corner. It turns out that this park is the churchyard of medieval St Mary Matfelon, the original "white chapel" after which the local area is named. The church was rebuilt several times over the centuries - taller, grander, spire-ier - until bomb damage during the Blitz obliterated it forever. St Mary's lives on now only in name, and as somewhere for incoherent alcoholics to congregate while their mangy dogs squat in the nave.
five local sights
Conditions in Whitechapel have changed dramatically since the 1860s, helped on in no small measure by the Luftwaffe. But this is still a street frequented by Tower Hamlets' poorer souls and immigrant communities [photo]. At the Salvation Army's Booth House hostel, homeless men gather on the access ramp for a fag and a beer. In upstairs solicitors and downstairs travel agents, local families make distant plans for a well-earned trip back home. Shrouded women and prayer-capped men gather on the shadowy pavement in readiness for the appointed hour for worship. Workers from Eastern Europe sit at coffee-stained wooden tables in internet cafes to send smiling photos to loved ones via Hotmail. Along the street are hi-vis outerwear merchants for that job down at the construction site, and betting shops to gamble away the wages later. Other more multicultural wholesalers, meanwhile, offer everything from glittering saris to Friday best suits.
four local sights
