Down Memory Lane: Spitalfields

LOCAL HERITAGE WALKS from

TOYNBEE HALL

DOWN MEMORY LANE Spitalfields

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“The sign screwed to the brickwork was in stiff English capitals and the curlicues beneath were Bengali. No dumping. No parking. No ball games.”

Brick Lane by Monica Ali (2003)

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In 1905, Abraham Davis built an indoor shopping arcade in Fashion Street, spiced with Moorish architecture. But he misjudged the popularity of open-air markets and the venture failed. These days, it’s home to two fashion colleges.

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Brick Lane Jamme Masjid encapsulates the flux of Spitalfields residents over the centuries; built in 1743 as a Huguenot chapel, it later served as a Methodist chapel and Synagogue before being converted into a Mosque in 1976.

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French Huguenots’ silk-weaving skills transformed Spitalfields into a flourishing commercial centre. Many houses retain their weavers’ attics with windows that let in maximum daylight to illuminate intricate work.

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DID YOU SPOT THEM? The Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Company arch on Wentworth Street; Marija Tiurina’s witty lockdown mural on Gunthorpe Street; the former Mayfair Cinema and Café Naz on Brick Lane; sculpture outside Christ Church Primary School; decorated lamp-posts along Brick Lane.

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DOWN MEMORY LANE

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TOYNBEE HALL

Umbra Sumus (‘We are Shadows’) on Fournier Street; a playful Spitalfields Roundel in Puma Court; street art in Hanbury Street; mirrored map and Historic Spitalfields panel on Brushfield Street; women’s entrance to the former Providence Row hostel on Crispin Street; and former Jewish Soup Kitchen on Brune Street.

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For over 300 years Truman, Hanbury & Buxton brewed porter, stout and other beers for thirsty Londoners. These days, the old brewhouses and yards host weekend markets, bars and pop-up events.

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At Hanbury Hall, twenty Delft tiles designed by Paul Bommer include references to Huguenot silk weaving, silversmithing and clockmaking, as well as their love of horticulture and singing cage birds.

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“The 4am start of lorries unloading more fruit than Eden, figs that smelled of camel, bananas in vast King Kong bunches swinging from their hooks.”

Jeanette Winterson, author and Spitalfields resident (2007)

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Established in 1854 by a group of Dutch immigrants known as the Society of Loving Kindness, Truth & Comforters of Mourners, Sandys Row is one of the few surviving Synagogues in the East End.

EXPLORING SPITALFIELDS As you weave through the streets and alleyways of Spitalfields, in the heart of the old East End, you’re following in the footsteps of many immigrants that have settled here – French Huguenots, Eastern European Jews and most recently the Bengali community. The streets bustle with a rich cultural mix, past and present.

Walk East, 2021

WALKEAST