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 last week 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 Crossways Estate
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How I would like to see beneath the surface of these old houses!
I am a householder in a suburb of Glasgow, with a rather shoddily built 1930’s suburban house. Its roof is slated and the nails are driven into sarking, a complete layer of timber planks, covered with waterproof felt. A roof for all seasons.
As a young man I helped my father maintain his 1890’s terrace house in Hackney. Here the slated roof was shoddy by comparison. The nails of the slates were driven into narrow battens, and there was no waterproofing felt. A roof to be ashamed of!
How were and are the roofs of these old houses constructed?
I love all the brick built buildings which show so much history and prosperity where relevant, not so, sadly, for the final block of hi-rise flats shown at the end. I was also interested in the Beehive stone on the Co-op building, but doing a quick ‘google’ discovered it was ‘Greeks and Romans – Beehives represented an ideal society and prosperity’. My elderly aunts, all now gone, could always remember their Co-op divi numbers.
When I’m in London I like to catch the tube from Whitechapel to Bow Road and then take a walk to Bow Church Station to catch the DLR to Greenwich. On the walk you can get an experience of the East End as it is now but with historic buildings still intact and in use. I’m now retired and living outside the UK but back in the 1980s I had a secondment job in Holborn for six months,including accomodation. During the weekends I explored the nearby East End. I was fascinated by it but it was a gritty and grimy place back then and often felt threatening., especially in some of the pubs. When I go back to my old stamping grounds from that time I marvel at how it has changed. For the better I have to say!