A council walking guide is the best free tour in E2, and following it turns up a whipping post, a vanished rookery and the reason Brick Lane has its name
Shoreditch History Walk: What the Streets Were Before They Were Fashionable
People come to Shoreditch for the bars, the street art and a particular sort of trainer. Fair enough. But the neighbourhood is very old, and its past is still lying about in plain sight if you know where to look.
The best guide I have found is not in a bookshop. It is a walking route produced by Tower Hamlets council for its community newspaper, exploring Shoreditch, Columbia Road and Brick Lane. It starts and ends at Shoreditch High Street station and takes a couple of hours. What follows is my account of what it shows and what I have added from reading around.
The Station and the Arches
The walk begins at the Overground station. The guide points out the red-brick arches beside it and explains that they were originally part of the 1840 Bishopsgate terminus, which became the Bishopsgate Goods Yard. This was where the railway from East Anglia first reached London. When the line was extended to Liverpool Street, the old terminus was turned over to freight. It burned in 1964 and has been mostly empty since.
The Old Nichol
North of the station, the guide mentions the packed Old Nichol slums. This was, in the late nineteenth century, among the most notorious districts in London: a warren of courts and alleys where thousands lived in conditions that shocked reformers. A novelist of the 1890s made it infamous under a thin disguise.
What replaced it is still there. The London County Council cleared the Nichol and built the Boundary Estate, which opened around 1900 and is generally counted as one of the first council housing estates in the world. Handsome red-brick blocks radiate from a raised garden called Arnold Circus, with a bandstand on top. The mound is made from the rubble of the slum.
The guide takes you along Calvert Avenue, the estate’s ceremonial approach, with its little shops.
The Church and Its Stocks
Calvert Avenue leads to Shoreditch High Street and the church of St Leonard. The guide notes that it was designed by George Dance the Elder, and that in the churchyard you will find the old parish stocks and whipping post.
They are easy to miss, under a small shelter. It is worth pausing. This is where the parish punished drunks and vagrants in public. A few yards away people queue for flat whites.
The church has another claim. It is the “Shoreditch” of the nursery rhyme about the bells of London, and it stands close to the site of two of the first purpose-built playhouses in England, where Shakespeare’s company worked before moving south of the river. Several actors of his day are buried here.
Columbia Road
The route continues along Hackney Road to Columbia Road, known for its Sunday flower market. The guide mentions the courtyards off Ezra Street. On any other day of the week the street is quiet and you can see the Victorian shopfronts properly.
Weavers and Brick Kilns
Turning south, the walk crosses Weavers’ Fields, a park whose name records the trade that once filled these streets. Silk weaving, brought by Huguenot refugees from France in the late 1600s, was the area’s main industry for a century and a half.
Then Cheshire Street, and Brick Lane. The guide explains the name: the kilns here fired bricks. Brick earth was dug locally and the lane was the route by which the bricks were carted. Much of the City rebuilt after the Great Fire was made from this clay.
The Brewery and the Signs
On Brick Lane the guide tells you to look at the former Truman’s Brewery, once one of the largest in the world. Further up, at a corner, it directs you to peer up at a trio of street signs including one reading “Sclater Street 1708.”
Going by the date the guide gives, it has been doing its job for a very long time.
Why Bother?
You could ask what any of this has to do with the Shoreditch of now. My answer is that it explains it.
The area has always been just outside the walls: beyond the City’s rules, close enough to serve it. That is why the theatres came, when they were banned from the City. It is why refugees settled, why noisy and smelly trades clustered, why the poor were housed here and why artists moved in when the industry left. The streets that, as a travel site puts it, now draw a creative crowd to the triangle of Great Eastern Street, Old Street and the High Street, with its independent shops, taprooms and galleries, are the latest use of land that has been remade a dozen times.
Knowing that takes some of the heat out of arguments about change. It also sharpens them. Each remaking displaced somebody.
Practicalities
Do it on a weekday if you want to see buildings and on a Sunday if you want markets. Wear shoes for cobbles. The guide is free to download. There are public toilets at fewer points than you would like.
A Thought at the End
The walk finishes where it began, at the station under the arches. A train goes over. Below, there is a queue for a pop-up. Behind the hoardings, the goods yard waits to become something else.
The stocks are still in the churchyard. I find that a useful corrective when the neighbourhood is feeling pleased with itself.
And for a Laugh
Local history and the people who lead tours of it are a gentle comic subject. The London Prat treats them in its English satirical news on local history and UK satirical news about walking tours. You will find my other pieces on Shoreditch there. Bohiney Magazine covers the American Main Street.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
