In Old Bow
Mid-ninenteenth century Gothic Cottages in Wellington Way
Taking advantage of the spring sunshine, Antiquarian Philip Mernick led me on a stroll around the parishes of Bromley and Bow so that I might photograph just a few of the hidden wonders alongside the more obvious sights.
Edward II granted land to build the chapel in the middle of the road at Bow in 1320 but the nearby Priory of St Leonard’s in Bromley was founded three centuries earlier. These ecclesiastical institutions were the defining landmarks of the villages of Bromley and Bow until both were absorbed into the expanding East End, and the precise locations of these lost territories became a subject of unending debate for residents. More recently, this was the location of the Bryant & May factory where the Match Girls won landmark victories for workers’ rights in manufacturing industry and where many important Suffragette battles were literally fought on the streets, outside Bow Rd Police Station and in Tomlin’s Grove.
Yet none of this history is immediately apparent when you arrive at the handsome tiled Bow Rd Station and walk out to confront the traffic flying by. In the nineteenth century, Bow was laced with an elaborate web of railway lines which thread the streets to this day and wove the ancient villages of Bromley and Bow inextricably into the modern metropolis.
Bow Rd Station opened in 1902
Bow Rd Station with Wellington Buildings towering over
Wellington Buildings 1900, Wellington Way
Wellington Buildings
Suffragette Minnie Lansbury was imprisoned in Holloway and died at the age of thirty-two
Eighteen-twenties terrace in Bow Rd
Bow Rd
Bow Rd
Bow Rd Police Station 1902
Under the railway arches in Arnold Rd
The former Great Eastern Railway Station and Little Driver pub, both 1879
This house in Campbell Rd was built one room thick to fit between the railway and the road
Arnold Rd once extended beyond the railway line
Arnold Rd
Former Poplar Electricity Generating Station
Railway Bridge leading to the ‘Bow Triangle’
In the ‘Bow Triangle,’ an area surrounded on three sides by railway lines
Handsome nineteenth century villas for City workers in Mornington Grove
Former coach house in Mornington Grove
Bollard of Limehouse Poor Commission 1836 in Kitcat Terrace
Last fragment of Bow North London Railway Station in the Enterprise Rental car park
Edward II gave the land for this chapel of ease in 1320
In the former Bromley Town Hall, 1880
Former Bow Co-operative Society in Bow Rd, 1919
The site of St Leonard’s Priory founded in the eleventh century and believed to have been the origin of Chaucer’s Prioress in the ‘Canterbury Tales’ – now ‘St Leonard’s Adventurous Playground’
Kingsley Hall where Mahatma Ghandi stayed when he visited the East End in 1931
Arch by William Kent (c. 1750) removed from Northumberland House on the Embankment in 1900
Draper’s Almshouses built in 1706 to deliver twelve residences for the poor
The refurbished Crossways Estate, scene of recent alleged election skullduggery
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How excellent that the Draper’s Almshouses was built to provide good quality homes for the poor.. you would normally expect the poor, sick and unemployed to be living in squalour.
Good to see so many landmarks have remained as I remember from way back when, and it all looks in good repair. Valerie
My heart lies in the country of the forefathers and not in my birth country. Such beautiful homes, buildings and everything is so clean until you see the graffiti painted on the buildings/ bridges and some untidy gardens.
Mahatma Gandhi insisted on staying at Kingsley Hall among the common people and the poor when he came to London to negotiate partition with Winston Churchill in 1931. He daily walked to Whitehall clad only in his meagre robes. He also met Charlie Chaplin at this time. In KH he set up his spinning wheel in a cell on the top of the building where he slept.
Kingsley Hall is the first purpose built community centre in the world, established by the Lester sisters in 1928 with the support of H.G.Wells amongst others.
‘Our greatest Englishman’ Winston Churchill said of Gandhi:-
It is alarming and nauseating to see Mr Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the east, striding half naked up the steps of the viceregal palace, while he is still organising and conducting a campaign of civil disobedience, to parlay on equal terms with the representative of the Emperor-King.
Commenting on Gandhi’s meeting with the Viceroy of India, 1931
What a nasty shock the last photo was after all the beautifully detailed nineteenth century architecture!
I wonder if we will ever get back to creating well proportioned, well considered buildings?
Great photographs… you have an eye for a good photo.
Mark
Kingsland hall saw not only Gandhi , but some of the Jarrow marchers stay overnight
Greetings from Boston,
GA, I enjoyed your tour through Bromley and Bow parishes with their Victorian (and other) style of architecture through spring blossoms. Great pics. Just hope that these sturdy structures and not subject to “urban renewal” of some sort…
Kitcat Terrace–what a wonderful name! Any idea where it comes from? As always, beautiful and evocative photos.
The Bow Road Co-op was probably erected by the Stratford society, one of its last developments before it was amalgamated into the LCS in 1920, along with the Edmonton, Hendon and West London Societies.
In the 1970’s there were only two of those houses standing on Wellington Way. One of them was a dentist. The rest have been built since, but in the same style.
I’m interested to find out the name of what was once a large, presumably, Victorian building that stood on the site adjacent to the platform at Bromley by Bow underground station, which has been redeveloped now.