Colin O’Brien’s Chatsworth Rd
Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien moved to Hackney from Clerkenwell in the early eighties and has been photographing the traders and shop faces of Chatsworth Road through the decades
Old sign uncovered at a former pie & mash shop
Wet fish shop in the eighties
Dave and his wife stand outside Jim’s Cafe, they had acquired it and kept the name
Paks is an African & Caribbean hair and cosmetic products shop that has been trading for more than thirty years
Greggs, Nigerian butchers
Poetry reading from the butchers shop in the eighties
Altun Food Store sold everything from chewing gum to whisky. Fatima and her two brothers ran the shop until it closed recently and became a Turkish restaurant
Keith’s electrical repair shop, T Jaden, which opens a few hours each day
Clapton Glazing
Chatsworth Rd seen from the butcher, eighties
Chatsworth Tyre Service was in business for over fifty years before they closed in 2010
Albert stands in the doorway of his shop on a cold day in November 2009
Jai Dee’s Seafood & Caribbean Restaurant
The cat of Chatsworth Rd in the eighties
Wayside Community shop run by Rev Jean John
Mighty Meats trading for more than half a century on Chatsworth Rd
Chatsworth Rd Market in the eighties
At Carnival Cards
Asif, Manager of Chatsworth 24-Hour Supermarket
Kentucky Fried Chicken in the eighties
At BJ Fashion
Star Discount Store where you can buy almost everything and anything
Staff at the Regal Pharmacy
Remy, Owner of L’Epicerie Delicatessen with a bottle of his best wine
Suleyman the cobbler, now closed
Now closed
Owner of The Regent, selling jewellery, Swiss lace, bags, shoes and men’s Italian shirts and trousers
Chatsworth Laundry
Bullet hole from a drive-by shooting in 2010
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
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Syd Shelton’s Rock Against Racism
Syd Shelton’s new exhibition ROCK AGAINST RACISM organised by Autograph ABP opens at Rivington Place in Shoreditch on 2nd October and runs until 5th December
Brick Lane 1978
Photographer Syd Shelton‘s enduring fascination with the East End was sparked by a childhood visit from Yorkshire with an uncle and aunt more than fifty years ago. “My cousin was was working in a mission somewhere off Bethnal Green Rd,” Syd recalled, “It was a scary part of London then and I remember my uncle looked out of the window every few minutes to check the wheels were still on his car!”
“The day I left college in 1968, I came down to London and I have worked here ever since, photographing continuously in Hackney and Tower Hamlets,” Syd admitted to me.
In the seventies, Syd became one of the founders of Rock Against Racism, using music as a force for social cohesion, and his photographs of this era include many affectionate images of racial harmony alongside a record of the culture of racism . “It was an exciting time when, after the death of Altab Ali, the Asian community stood up to be counted and the people of the East End became militant against the National Front,” he explained, “In 1981, I got a studio in the Kingsland Rd and I only gave it up recently because the rents became too expensive.”
Syd’s portraits of East Enders span four decades yet he did not set out consciously to document social change. “I never started this as a project, it’s only when I looked back that I realised I had taken swathes of pictures of people in the East End,” he explained, “So now I come back and spend a day on the streets each week to continue.”
“I say I am not a documentary photographer, because I like to talk to people before I take my picture to see what I can coax out of them,” he qualified,“Taking photos is what makes my heart beat.”
Bethnal Green 1980
Linda, Kingsland Rd 1981
Bethnal Green 1980
Bagger, Cambridge Heath Rd 1979
Columbia Rd 1978
Jubilee St, 1979
Petticoat Lane 1981
Brick Lane 1978
Aldgate East 1979
Brick Lane 1980
Hoxton 1979
Tower Hamlets 1981
Brick Lane 1976
Jubilee St 1977
Brick Lane 1978
School Cleaners’ Strike 1978
Petticoat Lane 1978
David Widgery, Limehouse 1981
Sisters, Bow 1984
Sisters, Tower Hamlets 1988
Bow Scrapyard 1984
Ridley Rd Market 1992
Ridley Rd Market 1992
Ridley Rd Market 1995
Whitechapel 2013
Shadwell 2013
Brick Lane 2013
Dalston Lane 2013
Bethnal Green 2013
Photographs copyright © Syd Shelton
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Paul Bommer’s Huguenot Plaque
Contributing Artist Paul Bommer has designed a commemorative Huguenot Plaque of twenty Delft tiles which is to be unveiled on Sunday 27th September at 1pm at the newly-renovated Hanbury Hall in Hanbury St, which was originally built as a Huguenot Chapel in 1719.
Funds raised by the Huguenots of Spitalfields festivals have paid for the plaque and there will be a service of dedication in the Hanbury Hall on 27th September. Admission is by ticket only which can be booked by clicking here. Tickets are free.
Additionally, there is a Huguenot Soirée this Thursday 17th September at 6pm at Townhouse, Spitalfields, when yours truly will be talking about the Cries of London created by Huguenot artist Marcellus Laroon and there will be a rare chance to see a set of his prints from 1687. Tickets can be booked by clicking here.
Nicholas Hawksmoor’s Christ Church, Spitalfields
Méreau with a chalice
La Neuve Eglise – now Brick Lane Mosque
Méreau showing the Lamb of God
Méreau showing the Dove of Peace, Shield with Cross of Lorraine & Swan
1598 – Edict of Nantes when Henry IV granted rights to Huguenots
Anna Maria Garthwaite, designer of Spitalfields Silk
1685 – Revocation of the Edict of Nantes which forced Huguenots to flee persecution
Fleur de Lys, méreau with crucifix and hare
Huguenot Silversmiths
Horticulture in Spitalfields
Psalms 9:9 – “The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble…”
Horticulture in Spitalfields
Huguenot Clockmakers
Spitalfields Silk Merchant
Méreau with a cross, a silk bobbin and an oak symbolising Strength & Fidelity
The Huguenot Cross
Méreau with crest of France, canary and oak symbolising Strength & Fidelity
Protestant preaching at La Neuve Eglise
Paul Bommer’s Huguenot plaque unveiled at Hanbury Hall, Spitalfields, on 27th September
Images copyright © Paul Bommer
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Eulogy For Elaine Dunford
Linda Wilkinson, ex-Head Girl at Central Foundation School in Spital Sq, remembers former Headmistress Elaine Dunford who inspired an entire generation of young women in the East End
Elaine at twenty-one
My first memory of Mrs Elaine Dunford, Headmistress of Central Foundation School for Girls in Spital Sq, was in 1963. Somehow – miraculously even – I had passed my 11 Plus in Maths but failed in English, yet nonetheless she invited me for interview.
It was a Grammar School and I had set my heart on going there, but my failure to pass part of the exam had put my acceptance in jeopardy. My mother was definitely against me attending the school since I was a nervous child and she was concerned that all that education would “worry your brain,” as she put it.
Yet, on a warm summer’s day, she and I were ushered into the school and the Headmistress’s Office. Neither mum nor I were prepared for the person we met. To date, teachers had been stuffy and sometimes scruffy, and definitely not anything like the beautiful elegant creature who welcomed us into her sanctum.
Due to my mother’s resistance, the interview did not go well. Finally, Elaine asked her to wait outside whilst she and I had a ‘private’ word. She didn’t quiz me on my English but on my hopes and aspirations for my future. She was funny, softly-spoken and I sensed she was kind too. When, some fifty-two years later, she passed away on 12th July 2015 – I felt strangely bereft.
She had not been a constant presence in my life, indeed I never saw her after I left school in 1970. Yet as I thought about my reaction, I realised that it was not Elaine herself but the way she had helped me see the world and my place in it that had been a constant. I was not alone in my feelings, as revealed by the comments on our Central Foundation School Old Girls’ Facebook page and I began to wonder where this woman, who had touched so many lives, came from.
She had been born Elaine Prevett in 1929 and attended the Fulneck Moravian School in Leeds before studying English at University College, London. This was at a time when university places were automatically given by preference to men who had missed out on education due to the First World War. Elaine was one of only two women in the intake that year. She came to our school as a student teacher and, by 1955, was the Head of the English Department. In 1961, aged thirty-one, she became the youngest headmistress in London and possibly in the entire country.
The school was small by today’s standards, at any one time there were only around four hundred and eighty of us. The intake was predominantly from the East End, with a few girls from out of London, and one third of pupils were Jewish.
Elaine once told me that we were both exhilarating and terrifying to teach, as we were all so clever that she never knew what questions we would ask. She ran a tight ship of staff and somehow managed to navigate the difficult task of maintaining harmony between older teachers and the trendy young ones of the ‘Swinging Sixties’ generation.
She was progressive in a quiet non-confrontational manner. She was a Humanist and our assemblies were not the dry-as-dust events suffered by our friends at other schools. It was not that God was never mentioned but presented in a different manner. She read us C S Lewis’ Perelandra, plus The Diary of Anne Frank, also Ruth First, and a host of other writing. At the heart of these readings always lay a moral message of fairness and caring for others.
As a teacher, Elaine was mesmeric and she insisted on teaching every class at least once a year, despite a heavy work load as Headmistress. She made Shakespeare sing in a way I have seldom encountered since.
Elaine also instigated sex education at Central Foundation School and when she overheard a group of girls, who after they been through the course were still unsure of how the ‘seed’ got to the ‘egg,’ she ushered them into the nearest empty room. Fifteen minutes later, they emerged having learnt what copulation was in no uncertain terms.
I had the privilege of being Head Girl and so I got to know another Elaine, distinct from the awesome creature wearing her gown who swept along the school corridors at speed – a more relaxed but, nonetheless, impressive character.
Some aspects of her marriage were not going well and on occasion she was upset by this. She knew I would never relay anything outside her office and that understanding went both ways. It was during the year that I began to grow up, I confronted by own limitations and she gave me the tools to overcome them. Although she never forgave me for spending the Head Girl’s prize money on a pair of boots and a handbag, rather than books.
For my part, I never told anyone until much later of the time we both had a cold and were required to sing or speak at the Christmas Service in our church of St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate. Her suggestion of a snifter of brandy to loosen up the vocal chords got a little out of hand – for me at least. We survived though, and I sang Once in Royal David’s City with what I hope was aplomb.
Since Elaine’s death, stories of a more personal nature have emerged. If pupil’s family situation was particularly difficult or violent, she would had them come to live with her for periods of time. She also personally supported the families of girls who were having emotional or financial problems. Her friendships with some pupils extended long after they had left school and some were still in contact at the time of her death.
I suspect we shall never see her like again and I would like to close this eulogy with these extracts from letters that I read at her funeral. It was put together by Elspeth Parris from recollections by pupils through the years.
“In person, your elegance and poise gave us an example that we could aspire to and the intellect you imparted to us allowed us to move forward in the world in a way many of us could never have imagined.”
“You were caring when we were in trouble and, in a world which often seemed to have an attitude that children were by nature ‘bad’ and needed that ‘badness’ worked or even beaten out of them, you believed that children were basically good. It was that caring, above all else, that has given you such a firm and important place in all our hearts.”
“In a world that, for most of us, had at least some dark places, you, as teacher, as Headmistress, but above all, simply as yourself, were a beacon of light. And for that, we thank you with all our hearts.”
Elaine ended her days in Rye where she had moved with her second husband Colin Robertson. It was a love match sadly cut short by his premature death. We understand Elaine’s death at eighty-six years old from Alzheimer’s disease was peaceful. Her coffin was a woven basketwork casket festooned with lilies. Just as she had been in her life, it was elegant and apposite.
Elaine as a young woman
Elaine’s marriage to Steven Dunford
Elaine Dunford (1929-2015)
Central Foundation School for Girls, Spital Sq
A London memorial service for Elaine Dunford (Robertson) is being organised by her former pupils on October 17th – any enquiries regarding this may be directed to lindaswilkinson@gmail.com
Bishopsgate Institute is collecting a digital archive of memorabilia from Central Foundation School for Girls. If you have photographs, reports, magazines or any other material that the Institute can copy for the archive, please contact archivist stefan.dickers@bishopsgate.org.uk
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Hop Picking At Lamberhurst
Flossie Reed & Vi Charlton
Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien & I joined two coachloads of East Enders on a trip to Kent last week for a spot of hopping at Little Scotney Farm, courtesy of Company Drinks. As you can imagine, it was not the first time in the hop gardens for many of the participants which cast a certain emotionalism upon the day – Flossie Reed first visited in 1927 and Vi Charlton in 1930, as babes in their mothers’ arms.
Hop harvest in Kent takes a month and we were blessed with a warm September day for our visit in the midst of the picking season. The pickers set to work enthusiastically pulling the flowers from the bines and tossing them into a long bin set on the grass, just up the hill from the hop gardens and in the shadow of the oasthouses looming overhead.
The pungent bittersweet smell of the hop flowers proved a powerful catalyst for memories of hop picking years ago. Vi Charlton recalled her childhood joy at encountering the fresh green of the rural world after the dirty sooty atmosphere of Wapping in the thirties. “I had an aunt who was a champion picker,” she admitted to me,“Nobody liked her because she showed everyone else up.”
“It was a matriarchal society,” Vi confirmed with a philosophical shrug,” but the men would come down at the weekend and drink away the money the women had earned in the week.”
“We were greedy pickers,” continued Flossie Reed widening her eyes with enthusiasm, “We had to borrow money from a money-lender to come down and we had nothing left at the end once we’d paid for our food, but it was a lovely holiday.”
“I first came here when I was ten and now I’m eighty-four,” declared Ronald Prendergast without pausing from his picking,“it was a way of life. There were eleven of us in my family and we came down every year from West Ham. We were very poor in those days and by coming here we earned a little money to buy things for Christmas.”
As we sat along either side of the bin at our work, tractors rattled up and down the lane all day delivering the bines from the gardens to the barn at the top of the hill. There they were hooked onto chains that carried them through a machine which stripped off the flowers. Then a conveyor belt whisked the hops up to where it was stored in sacks prior to being spread out to dry in the oasthouses. Thus a dozen people were able to achieve a harvest once undertaken by armies of pickers.
I climbed up into the loft where Graham Watkins was shovelling hops through a chute in the floor to the room below, where it was parcelled up into bales ready for sale. Graham showed me the conical oasthouses in which hops is dried for six hours at a stretch night and day, and as he opened the doors I was hit by a wave of humid air emanating from within.
Little Scotney is one of the last of a handful of farms in Kent still growing and processing hops in the traditional way, yet numbers stencilled on the wall testify to the growing output of the farm through the decades and the rapidly-increasing demand in this century, thanks to the revival in brewing led by microbreweries.
In the afternoon, Evin O’Riordan founder of Kernel Brewery in Bermondsey arrived to collect the hops we had picked that would find their way into a green hop ale before the end of the day. “It’s an opportunity to express something of a place and a moment in time,” he confided to me with succinct eloquence.
Ronald Prendergast – “I’d sooner pick hops than sit in front of a computer”
Delivering the bines from the garden
Hooking up the bines
The bines move along a conveyor
The bines heading into the machine that strips the flowers
Sorting the hops
Hops drying in the oasthouse
Inside the oasthouse roof
Recording the number of pockets (bales) of hops produced each year
Graham Watkins
Baling up the hops
Bales of hops ready for sale
Evin O’Riordan of Kernel Brewery in Bermondsey
Little Scotney Farm
The hopping party (click photograph to enlarge)
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
Movements, Deals & Drinks is a project by international artist group Myvillages, founded in 2003 by Kathrin Böhm, Wapke Feenstra & Antje Schiffers. The project was commissioned by Create and is registered as a Community Interest Company with the name Company Drinks. Company Drinks is supported by the Borough of Barking & Dagenham.
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The Life Of Frederick Jury
Courtesy of Nicola White, author of Tide Line Art, I publish this edited version of the story behind a name on a luggage tag she discovered in the river last month, piecing it together by consulting records available online.
“It was a simple mud-larking find at Enderby Wharf one evening after work in Greenwich on Thursday 27th August 2015. The luggage tag was a small piece of metal so insignificant I almost passed it by but then I noticed, through the mud and drizzle, an engraved name “F. Jury” and a faded address. So I popped it in my bag for closer examination. “Perhaps it was a shop in Woolwich?” I thought.
On returning home, I cleaned it off and the engraving was revealed as“F. Jury, 72 Woolwich Road, SE” – 72 Woolwich Rd is in Greenwich, SE10. Occasionally, the discovery of an innocuous find in the Thames can be compared to opening a book – here is a brief outline of the life of Frederick Jury, owner of the luggage tag.”- Nicola White
Frederick Jury was born in Bermondsey in 1873 to Frederick (Senior) and Julia Jury. Fred grew up in Maidstone and Aylesford, where his parents originated, and he had a younger brother William. The Electoral Register of 1901 revealed that by the age of seventeen, he was a gas stoker and renting a first floor furnished room at Sarah Carter’s house at 572 Old Kent Rd, where (according to the 1901 census) she ran a coffee shop. Sarah married James Carter at the age of twenty-two and they had two children but, by the time Fred came along, James had died and she and Fred fell in love. The register of marriages records that, on 24th August 1901, Fred and Sarah married. He was twenty-nine and she was forty-two years old. They did not have any children of their own.
So where does “72 Woolwich Road,” the address engraved on the luggage tag that I found on the Thames foreshore come into it? According to the Electoral Register of 1904, Fred and Sarah had moved to this address and Sarah ran a coffee shop there. But ten years later, at the outbreak of World War I, Fred and his brother William both enlisted in Australia within one month of each other – as recorded in the records of the Australian Imperial Forces. William enlisted aged twenty-five on 3rd March and Fred enlisted on 19th March 1916 aged forty-two years. Was Frederick following his younger brother? Did they go all the way to Australia to enlist because the pay was apparently three times as much as in the British Army? In Fred’s case, it could have been that he was too old to enlist in Britain, whereas the upper age limit was higher in Australia.
Or maybe Fred wanted to protect his brother William? He travelled to Melbourne and enlisted at Cootramundra in New South Wales leaving Sarah in Greenwich at 72 Woolwich Rd. Then, on 22nd August 1916, Fred embarked from Sydney, returning to Britain on HMAT Wiltshire, and proceeding directly from Folkestone to France on the SS Arundel in December. He fought with the Australian Imperial Forces 3rd infantry battalion, 19th reinforcement, who were sent to the Western Front in 1916. For two and a half years, the unit served in the trenches in France and Belgium, taking part in many of the major battles.
Fred was severely wounded on several occasions during active service in Meteren. Notably, in March 1918 when he was hit by a stick bomb which fractured his left foot and then, on 24th June that year, he was hit by a grenade at close range. I can only begin to imagine how terrifying it must have been. He received significant injuries to his chest, jaw, arm, finger, thigh and foot. Then he had several fingers amputated as a result of his wounds and received further major injuries to his left foot.
In June this year, I found an unexploded World War II hand grenade very close to where I discovered Fred’s luggage tag at Enderby Wharf. The controlled explosion was enough to cause a stir in Greenwich, so I can only imagine what it might be like having one thrown right at you. From December 1916 until April 1919 must have been an anxious time for Sarah, anticipating hearing the worst at any moment. During the course of the war, the Australian Imperial Forces 3rd Battalion suffered 3,598 casualties, of which 1,312 were killed in action.
Fred spent time in two military hospitals, the Harefield Hospital in Hillingdon and the Military Hospital at Shorncliffe in Kent. His fingers were amputated at Shorncliffe, while at Harefield Hospital Fred had his foot operated on after it was hit by the stick bomb. Then Fred was medically assessed as disabled and discharged from service in London on 23rd April 1919, after serving three years and thirty-six days. He received a Silver War Badge, sometimes known as the Discharge Badge, Wound Badge or Services Rendered Badge, first issued in September 1916, along with an official certificate of entitlement.
After the War, Fred returned to live at 72 Woolwich Rd until he died on 27th January 1932. Although eighteen years his senior, Sarah outlived Fred, remaining at 72 Woolwich Rd until 1933, moving to Greenwich South St where she died in 1936.
Fred’s younger brother William, who had enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force just a few months before he did, was also seriously wounded in action, receiving multiple gun-shot wounds to the head, and was committed to Sunnyside Mental Hospital in New Zealand in the forties. He died there in the sixties, in the same hospital, and he never married or had children. We do not know if the two brothers ever saw each other again after the War.
You might think that is the end of Fred Jury’s story, but I wanted to find out where he was buried, so I could go and pay my respects to him. And it just so happens that he is buried in Greenwich Cemetery, just around the corner from where I live. I made my way there straight after work, accompanied by a friend to help me search the gravestones.
As we drove straight into Greenwich Cemetery, realising we only had fifteen minutes to find Fred before it shut at 7pm, we were on a mission. Sunlight was streaming through clouds illuminating the view over London but we had no time for that, as we leapt out of the car at Area Z, trying to locate Fred’s final resting place from a rather vague map I had downloaded from the internet. It was like searching for the needle in the haystack with the added possibility that we might end up locked in the cemetery for the night.
At 7.01pm, we realised we should head back to the gates and since, to our great relief, they were not closed, we decided to wait until the gatekeeper came to close them. Sure enough, at 7.05pm precisely, a car sped through the gates and the driver looked at us rather curiously as we got out of our car to greet him. We explained the whole story and the wonderful Jason, grave digger with Royal Greenwich Parks, putting aside the notion that we were quite bonkers, agreed to help us to fulfil our mission of finding Fred’s grave.
I had never been in a cemetery office before and I was overwhelmed to see the beautiful leather-bound books dating back to the early eighteen-hundreds with every burial registered inside. Jason unfurled a copy of a parchment map of the cemetery so that we could try to pinpoint Fred’s grave. But, would you believe that there was a big rip in the map, where Fred’s grave was located? There was nothing for it but to go and search, even though Jason explained that it was in an area reserved for paupers’ graves, so there might not even be a stone.
Jason kindly accompanied us and helped us to search. We set off, aware that dark rainclouds were gathering and the light was fading. The paupers’ area was sadly very overgrown, with small tombstones arranged back-to-back and, in some cases, completely covered with brambles and nettles. I was not feeling optimistic. In some areas, you needed a machete.
But then, after getting entangled many times in nettles and thorns, and peering beneath horizontal gravestones, my friend shouted “I’ve found Frederick.” And so we all went to see him, and Jason straightened the stone. It was a moving moment, to see his final resting place. Now he has no relatives left to visit him. Indeed, there are no relatives left to visit anyone in area “Z.” There was only a fox which seemed to have earmarked this as his patch.
There was Frederick Jury’s final resting place. We spent a few moments next to his grave. It seemed sad to me that after such a life, we had to search in the overgrown brambles and grass to find Fred’s headstone but Jason – who is familiar with such observations over the years – said he thought that it was not about the material things we bequeath or the state of the gravestone, but the legacy we leave behind in the people we touched during our lives.
There must be hundreds and thousands of other stories lying in the Thames waiting to be uncovered. In the case of Frederick Jury, many decades passed before the Thames tide washed away the layers of thick mud to reveal the engraved luggage tag and I found myself face-to-face with Fred.
I have to ask myself what is my fascination with a stranger from Woolwich who died over seventy years ago? What led me to take a name on a tag and delve deeper into history? Maybe it is because none of us want to be forgotten? None of us want to be just a name on a tag that ends up in the river. We want to leave a footprint in the world and to know our lives to mean something.
This is my outline of Frederick Jury’s life pulled together from the databases and heritage sites that have information about him. We can only imagine the feelings, thoughts and emotions that Fred experienced, the decisions, considerations and worries, what made him laugh and what made him happy. Why did he go to Australia? What did he see when he looked out from the decks of the HMAT Wiltshire? What were his dreams?
Marriage certificate for Fred & Sarah Jury (Click to enlarge)
Fred Jury’s enlistment papers with his signature
Fred Jury’s medical certificate
Fred Jury’s certificate of discharge
Certificate accompanying Fred’s Silver War Badge
Map of Greenwich Cemetery with a rip in the bottom left where Fred Jury’s grave is positioned
Frederick Jury’s headstone in Greenwich Cemetery
Frederick Jury’s fellows in Greenwich Cemetery
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The Ruins Of The Fruit & Wool Exchange
This is a view I never expected to see – Christ Church, Spitalfields, peering through the ruins of the London Fruit & Wool Exchange. Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, is personally responsible for this tragic scene, by overturning the unanimous democratic decision of Tower Hamlets Council to reject the new development.
A dignified edifice of brick and stone, constructed to complement the historic buildings which surround it and which was entirely capable of reuse, is being destroyed and replaced by an overblown generic block of undistinguished design. More than two hundred small local businesses have been displaced for the sake of one international corporate law firm who have already leased all the office space in the new building.
It is paramount that Boris Johnson does not become the agent of destruction of Norton Folgate in the same way, by also overturning the decision of the Council to refuse British Land’s scheme which replaces the historic warehouses there with corporate blocks of fourteen storeys, destroying 72% of the fabric of their site which sits entirely within a Conservation Area.
Boris Johnson has British Land’s Norton Folgate planning application in front of him now and he has until 25th September to decide whether to get involved. If you have not already done so, please write to Boris Johnson and ask him not to interfere in Norton Folgate.
This is a simple guide to how to write to the Mayor of London, asking him to show respect to the people of the East End by upholding the decision of Tower Hamlets Council and not intervening on behalf of British Land.
You can write by email mayor@london.gov.uk (please also provide your postal address in the email) or by post to Boris Johnson, Mayor of London, Greater London Authority, City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London, SE1 2AA
Please quote application numbers PA/14/03548 & PA/14/03618 and write in your own words giving your own reasons why you think Boris Johnson should not interfere with Norton Folgate, but you might like to consider including the following points.
1. The decision to reject British Land’s application was made democratically by Tower Hamlets Strategic Development Committee with 4 votes against, 4 abstentions and o votes in favour. This is what the people of East London want.
2. There were more than 550 letters of objection but only 7 in favour.
3. The site is entirely within the Elder St Conservation Area which is protected by the Council’s own Conservation Policy, recommending repair of the buildings – not wholesale demolition as proposed by British Land.
4. The Spitalfields Trust has produced a viable alternative scheme which addresses local housing and employment needs, and preserves the heritage assets for future generations.
Note the troughs of plants along the top of the blue hoardings to compensate us for the demolition
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A New Scheme for Norton Folgate
