A Lost Corner Of Whitechapel
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At the rear of Whitechapel Station is a sports centre and an empty square, but photographer Philip Cunningham recorded the vanished streets and yards that former occupied this lost corner
Winthrop St
“I first started taking photographs of Winthrop St and Woods Buildings in Whitechapel in the mid-seventies. I remember the first time I went to Winthrop St on a cold frosty morning with a bright blue sky. A woman came out of one of the houses and asked what I was doing. ‘Photographing the streets,’ I said. ‘You’d better hurry up they’re coming down!’ she replied. She was right, within a few months they were gone.
‘Comprehensive Development’ was the only philosophy pursued by the London County Council and Greater London Council for rebuilding London after the war. Their planners complained that too much pre-war building was left, making comprehensive planning really difficult. Yet it would not have taken much imagination to have incorporated streets like these within any new development, creating a richer and more diverse urban landscape.
Even Mile End Place, where I lived in my grandfather’s house, was designated for demolition in 1968 to become a car park for Queen Mary College. Fortunately, the council did not have enough money to build flats for us to be decanted into so our street was saved.”
Winthrop St
Durward St School was built in 1876 and eventually restored by the Spitalfields Trust in 1990
Winthrop St
Winthrop St
Winthrop St
Winthrop St
Woods Buildings looking towards Whitechapel Market
“Woods Buildings was a subject I photographed over and over, it always held that feeling for me of Dickens’ London. To the left, as you approached the arch under the buildings, was a urinal and when I climbed the wall to take a look, it appeared to be for public use but had been bricked up. It must have been quite intimidating to pass through that passage at night.”
‘We live here, it’s not a toilet’
Entrance to Woods Buildings in Whitechapel Market
“By 1984, the land opposite Woods Buildings on the north side comprised a combination of wasteland and sheds where a boot fair would be held every Sunday. It was licensed by the Council and very popular. One Sunday, I observed a group of Romanians selling secondhand clothes just outside the compound which did not go down well with the gatekeepers as they had not paid a fee. There followed a quite violent fracas, although fortunately no one was seriously hurt and only a little blood spilt. I felt sorry for the children, it must have been frightening for them. Those were desperate days!”
Durward St
Photographs copyright © Philip Cunningham
You may also like to take a look at
Philip Cunningham’s East End Portraits
Out of respect
I wish to honour a friend John Kling who lived in Winthrop street the very photo you begin with .
He was a relative of President Dwight D Eisenhower.
I had this confirmed by his wife and was very pleased to pass the letter over from
Her Mama Doud Eisenhower .
It amazed me how anyone with such a connection could line in such a poor house .
Life is life .
Love the sheaf of corn over the doorway on Winthrop Street
I worked at the London Hospital Medical College in Turner St from 1953 to 1956 and used to ramble in the area around there during my lunch-hours because my father was brought up in the vicinity. These images bring the sights back to life, although I don’t think I actually visited these streets.
The picture with the corrugated boarding in the derelict gateway is, if I’m not mistaken, where Polly Nichols was found on 31st August 1888. She was the first canonical victim of ‘Jack The Ripper’.
This photographer had the “eye” for contradictory-and-therefore-compelling images. I stayed with the image of the corner shop on Winthrop Street for quite some time. In just one photo, there is the old weathered venerable brick building although a “modern” high-rise loomed (menacing) over its shoulder. And the graceful/enduring embellishment of wheat shafts over-looked a scaly
doorway; studiously hand-painted with wobbly letters. (I’ve never been a fan of vertical typography, but I am making an exception here. I love the idea of someone, perhaps on a rickety ladder, trying to get the spacing of the letters just right. Not a bad job.) I try to imagine what the interior of the little building looked like, stacked high with a jumble of scattered possessions. I expect that although it might have been a sad array, there were some hidden gems in the back of drawers. I wonder………..
I too wonder — who would have originally commissioned the building-in of that wheatsheaf? A baker, probably. And when? It looks as thought it must have been when the shop building was first constructed. When would that have been? How early in the 19th century?