East End Preservation Society Bulletin
The East End Preservation Society is eight years old now and I am republishing their latest bulletin to inform readers of current campaigns
We thought it time to update you on our battles to preserve the buildings, community and spirit of the East End. As always, corporate developers have their eye on profit opportunities in our area, ignoring its history and its people.
The East End Preservation Society is for those who care about the East End and are concerned about the future of its built environment. We value your support in making the council aware that the public at large is sick of this feeding frenzy at the expense of our history and community.
Developers think this is appropriate for the Whitechapel Conservation Area
101 WHITECHAPEL HIGH ST DEVELOPMENT
The consultation period ends on Friday 12th March and objections can be lodged on the Tower Hamlets Council website or by email development.control@towerhamlets.gov.uk quoting reference no. PA/20/02726/A1
The developers, a Panama-registered company, have submitted revised proposals for a huge office development on the corner of Whitechapel High St and Commercial St, within the Whitechapel High St Conservation Area.
This sixty-three metre high behemoth will completely overpower the setting of the Conservation Area including the nearby Whitechapel Gallery and Toynbee Hall. It will set a precedent for the wholesale destruction of the Conservation Area and create a development free-for-all, allowing the City of London to expand eastwards and destroy the historic fabric of Whitechapel.
Promised benefits to Canon Barnett School have been dropped – the school was not consulted – and the developer wants to move the children’s playground behind their building where it will receive little sunlight and be cold and windy. Nearby residents will suffer a loss of daylight up to 80%. This proposal takes away from the local community and gives nothing back.
Please object and help us to save the Whitechapel Conservation Area
The proposed block on Brick Lane
TRUMAN BREWERY DEVELOPMENT
The owners of the Old Truman Brewery want to build an ugly shopping mall with four floors of corporate offices on top at the corner of Woodseer Street and Brick Lane.
*It will undermine the authentic cultural quality of Brick Lane.
*The generic architecture is too tall and too bulky, ruining the Brick Lane & Fournier Street Conservation Area.
*It offers nothing to local residents whose needs are for genuinely affordable homes and workspaces.
*It is an approach that is irrelevant to a post-Covid world, with more people working from home and shopping locally or online.
*Where it meets the terraces of nineteenth century housing, the development is out of scale and causes up to 60% loss of light.
Instead of this arbitrary proposal, we are seeking a conversation about the future of the whole brewery – with input from the widest number of people – to create a plan for the entire site that reflects the needs and wishes of residents.
There is still time to object, please go to www.battleforbricklane.com to learn how
THE BOUNDARY ESTATE
The Boundary Estate is Grade II listed and Arnold Circus is a Historic England registered landscape.
The Liveable Streets team engaged by Tower Hamlets Council in October last year started hacking at Victorian pavements to allow buses to turn into narrow residential streets. They did not consult any heritage associations and did not complete their consultation with residents and local communities.
Residents, local businesses together with Dan Cruickshank, Spitalfields Trust and EEPS started a protest which lasted three days. Concerned public also joined in to help Save Arnold Circus and to stop the digger. The media wrote about the impasse. A coalition was formed to meet with the council, demanding that work must be stopped and proper consultation be carried out.
The council agreed and has since implemented temporary closure of the circus using planters and fencing. Spitalfields Trust is asking the council to drop their non-compliant designs and have provided detailed recommendations which the council have so far ignored.
Please follow twitter @ourArnoldCircus
THE BETHNAL GREEN MULBERRY
We are delighted to welcome Dame Judi Dench as patron of our campaign to halt Crest Nicholson’s appalling redevelopment of the London Chest Hospital, destroying part of a listed building and digging up the 500 year old Bethnal Green Mulberry Tree. Thanks to the generosity of our supporters we have crowdfunded a Judicial Review of Tower Hamlets’ decision to grant permission, which has its hearing at the High Court on 4th & 5th May. A public link to watch the hearing will be published in due course.
THE WHITECHAPEL BELL FOUNDRY
For five years, EEPS has been central to the campaign to Save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry as a fully working foundry, resisting the developer’s plans to convert it to a bell-themed boutique hotel.
We collected 28,000 signatures on our petition and persuaded the Secretary of State to call a Public Inquiry into the future of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry that happened last year.
Now we await the Inspector’s verdict which is due this spring. We hope for a decision in our favour, paving the way for Reform Heritage – who brought the Burleigh Pottery Factory back to life in Stoke – to do the same for the bell foundry in Whitechapel working in partnership with Factum Foundation, world leaders in digital casting.
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When they remove all the concrete and bricks from the present buildings where will they put it? Land fill? What land fill, where? Panama? Why can’t those owners who registered their company in Panama not see their multi-story building in the forest of Panama or next to where the cruise ships slowly pass from the Atlantic to the Pacific a pile of rubble by the side of the jungle. Not filled with office worker but just being landfill. We don’t need anymore ‘white glass elephants’ in this world. When the pandemic is over more people will be doing office work from their home offices so 64 metres cubed of glass (real sand washed to be used) should be able to stay on the desert or quarry.
Reason implies converting the existing interior of buildings to better use. Clearing out the old only fills the jungles of Panama. We do not want your ugly building as you do not want our rubble. Think clearer and save the conserved locations of this world. PRESERVE and CONSERVE!
nothing short of an outrage.
I was kind of proud we had a bell maker in England . But very upset to find out it’s gone