Sarsaparilla & Mineral Water Sellers
By coincidence, two readers – Christine Osborne & Janice Oliver – both sent me photographs of their ancestors who produced and sold soft drinks in the East End – Brandon’s Mineral Waters of Virginia Rd, Bethnal Green, and Moody’s Sarsaparilla of Rathbone St Market, Canning Town
William Brandon and his mineral water business, 112 Virginia Rd, Bethnal Green c.1887
“William Brandon is my great-great-great uncle, born 10th August 1840 in Bethnal Green as the youngest of seven children. In 1881, he was living with his wife Matilda and their nine children at 112 Virginia Rd where he was a Mineral Water Manufacturer.
I am fascinated by the large framed photographs hanging up on the outside of the building – the one in the centre might be an advertisement as it looks like it says ‘W. Brandon’ and I can even make out ‘Brandon’ stamped on the crates under the table. If you look at the sign at top right of photograph it shows a picture of a bow tie and I believe this is his trademark, as I have obtained an old bottle dug up from a Victorian dump in Stratford with the name ‘Brandon’ and a bow tie symbol.
When William died in 1905 he left £2343 and Matilda took over the business. A newspaper obituary referred to “William Brandon, who was a mineral water manufacturer of note” and recorded his funeral “was of an imposing character.” He was a self-made man who lived all his life on the edge of the Old Nichol, but he must have had a good life compared to most people living there.” – Christine Osborne
Annie Moody of Moody’s of Rathbone St Market, Canning Town c.1910
“My grandfather, George Moody, was born in Ramsgate in 1879 into a long line of seafarers, and became an Officer in the Navy and travelled the world. After marrying my grandmother, Annie Andrews who was born in Broadstairs, they moved to Canning Town in 1909 where he opened a Herbalists in Rathbone St and started making potions for everyday ailments, using knowledge of herbal medicine he had acquired on his travels. He also offered Homeopathy and local people came for consultations. I remember as a child helping to put ‘Rathbone’ skin ointment into tins, and there was also ‘Rathbone ‘ cough mixture and various other concoctions.
Soon he formulated a recipe for making a Sarsaparilla drink – sarsaparilla is a medicinal root which is reputed to help purify the blood. This was sold outside the shop from a stall which was equipped with barrels of the cordial and a water urn. It was served hot in the winter and huge blocks of ice were put into the water barrel to chill it in aummer.
As a girl I used to ‘wash’ the glasses, which merely entailed dunking them into a bucket of cold water after use and leaving them upturned to drain. My mother told me that a famous drinks firm had offered money for the recipe but my grandfather would not part with it and I still have it until this day. So many people have requested it but it remains a family secret. My grandfather George died in 1945, but my mother and then an uncle continued with the business until the late seventies.” – Janice Oliver
Vera Moody of Moody’s of Rathbone St Market, Canning Town
You may also like to read about
The Last Sailmakers’ Loft In The East End
I am grateful to Paul Talling of Derelict London for permitting me to republish his recent photographs of the Caird & Rayner building in Limehouse, the last sailmakers’ loft in the East End
“Built in 1869 as a sailmakers’ and chandlers’ warehouse, 777 Commercial Rd was occupied by Caird & Rayner from 1889 to 1972 and never substantially altered, retaining its original cast-iron window frames and loading doors that open onto the Limehouse Cut. The building is the only original sailmakers’ and ship-chandlers’ warehouse surviving in the East End. A few years ago, a housing association tried to destroy it to build flats and even attempted to overturn the listed status of the property but this was blocked by English Heritage. Neighbouring derelict shops and small business units have already been demolished to make way for a large housing development. Yet, after various changes of ownership in recent years, there are no immediate plans for 777 Commercial Rd which remain vacant, apart from some live-in security and some very ferocious guard-dogs. This building is very dangerous and has some surprises for intruders.” – Paul Talling
“The company produced water treatment plant, often for naval use, and they were regarded as a strategic industry during the war. Due to the risk of being bombed out of London, the wartime government decreed that Caird & Rayner should have a shadow factory to which business could be transferred if the need arose. A property was located in Watford and taken over by Caird & Rayner ‘for the duration’ but remained in the company thereafter. During the sixties, when business declined and it was decided to relinquish the Commercial Rd site and concentrate on Watford, our family moved in about 1967 to a place in Hemel Hempstead.
The move out of Commercial Rd had it’s ‘moments’ – the building was a constructed as a sailmakers loft, which meant the main part had just a ground floor and a full height space in which to hang and manage sails, with a gallery round the insider perimeter at first floor level. In the building’s use as an engineering works, machine tools had been installed on the gallery – lathes, milling machines, drills and the like. As machinery came out for transport, the weights were tallied up, but only until the company got scared when they realised the place should have long ago collapsed under the load.” – John Kirkwood whose father worked at Caird & Rayner until his death in the eighties
Photographs copyright © Paul Talling
You may also like to take a look at
Save Spiegelhalters!
One of my favourite buildings in the East End is Wickhams Department Store, wrapped snugly around the former Spiegelhalters’ Jewellers in the Mile End Rd. But now the owners Resolution Property plan to demolish Spiegelhalters, erasing the extraordinary story it tells and sacrificing a unique architectural wonder for the sake of a glass atrium. Below I uncover the curious origin of this idiosyncratic landmark as a campaign to save Spiegelhalters gets underway with a Petition by David Collard demanding Tower Hamlets Council grant it locally-listed status.
Wickhams, Mile End Rd
Observe how the gap-toothed smile of this building undermines the pompous ambition of its classical design. Without this gaping flaw, it would be just another example of debased classicism but, thanks to the hole in the middle, it transcends its own thwarted architectural ambitions to become a work of unintentional genius.
Built in 1927, Wickhams Department Store in the Mile End Rd was meant to be the “Harrods of East London.” The hubris of its developers was such that they simply assumed the small shopkeepers in this terrace would all fall into line and agree to move out, so the masterplan to build the new department store could proceed. But they met their match in the Spiegelhalters at 81 Mile End Rd, the shop you see sandwiched in the middle. The first Mr Spiegelhalter had set up his jewellery business in Whitechapel in 1828 when he emigrated from Germany, and his descendants moved to 81 Mile End Rd in 1880, where the business was run by three Spiegelhalter brother who had been born on the premises. These brothers refused all inducements to sell.
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall of the office of those developers because there must have been words – before they came to the painful, compromised decision to go ahead and build around the Spiegelhalters. Maybe they comforted themselves with the belief that eventually the gap could be closed and their ambitions fully realised at some later date? If so, it was a short-lived consolation because the position of the Spiegelhalters’ property was such that the central tower of Wickhams Department Store had to be contructed off-centre with seven window bays on the left and nine on the right, rather than nine on either side. This must have been the final crushing humiliation for the developers – how the Spiegelhalter brothers must have laughed.
The presence of the word “halter” within the name Spiegelhalter cannot have escaped the notice of bystanders – “Spiegel-halter by name, halter by nature!” they surely observed. Those stubborn Spiegelhalters had the last laugh too, because the lopsided department store which opened in 1927, closed in the nineteen sixties, while the Spiegelhalters waited until 1988 to sell out, over a century after they opened. I think they made their point.
As part of a plan to redevelop this building in 2009, a planning application contained the following text,“the attractiveness and uniformity of 69-89 Mile End Rd is only marred by 81 Mile End Rd which is inferior in terms of appearance, detailing and architecture.” These people obviously have no sense of humour – proposing to demolish 81 and replace it with a glass atrium to provide access to the offices. Where are the Spiegelhalters when we need them?
Five years ago, you could look through the metal shutter and see Spiegelhalter’s nineteenth century shopfront intact with its curved glass window and mosaic entrance floor spelling out “Spiegelhalters.” Since then, with disdainful arrogance, the owners of the building have destroyed this, leaving just the front wall of the building – ready to proceed with their glass atrium once they get permission. Yet at this moment, while the facade of Spiegelhalters still stands, the entire building and the story it tells is legible. So I ask you to show some of that Spiegelhalter pluck and sign the petition to save this remarkable edifice for future generations as an embodiment of the East End spirit.
As self-evident testimony to the story of its own construction, the Wickhams building is simultaneously a towering monument to the relentless ambition that needs to be forever modernising, and also to the contrary stick-in-the-mud instinct that sees no point in any change. Willpower turned back on itself created this unique edifice. The paradoxical architecture of Wickhams Department Store inadvertently achieves what many architects dream of – because in its very form and structure, it expresses something profound about the contradictory nature of what it means to be human.
Resolution Property’s proposal to replace the historic Spiegelhalters with an empty space
Wickhams seen from Whitechapel
Resolution Property’s proposal for the future of Wickhams with Spiegelhalters as a mere void
Spiegelhalters in 1900
At The Cutting Of The Baddeley Cake
Harry Nicholls cuts the Baddeley Cake with the cast of ‘Babes in the Wood’ in 1908
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I made one of our rare trips up to the West End this week to join the excited throng at Drury Lane celebrating London’s oldest theatrical tradition, the cutting of the Baddeley Cake, which has been taking place on Twelfth Night since 1795.
After the performance, members of the cast of “Charlie & the Chocolate Factory” gathered for the ceremony in the palatial neo-classical theatre bar dating from 1821, in front of a large party of fellow actors and actresses who had trod the boards of the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in former years, and Alex Jennings – who stars as Willy Wonka – cut the cake. Liberal servings of strong punch containing wine, brandy and gin, concocted by the Theatre Manager to a secret recipe handed down through the centuries, ensured that the evening went with a swing. In recent years, the cake has been themed to the show running at the theatre and we were treated to huge chocolate cake, cunningly baked in the shape of a Wonka bar by a Master Chocolatier.
It was an occasion coloured with sentiment as the performers, still flushed from the night’s performance, came to recognise their part in this theatre’s long history while the retired actors filled with nostalgic emotion to be reunited with old friends and recall happy past times at Drury Lane. The splendid event is organised annually by the Drury Lane Theatrical Fund which was founded by the great actor-manager David Garrick in 1766 to provide pensions to performers from Drury Lane and still functions today, for this notoriously most-uncertain of professions, offering support to senior actors down on their luck.
Twelfth Cake was a medieval tradition that is the origin of our contemporary Christmas Cake. Originally part of the feast of Epiphany, the cake was baked with a bean inside and whoever got the slice with the bean was crowned King of Misrule. The Baddeley Cake is the last surviving example of this ancient custom of the Twelfth Cake and – appropriately enough – owes its name to Robert Baddeley, a pastry chef who became a famous actor, and left a legacy to the Drury Lane Fund to “provide cake and wine for the performers in the green room of Drury Lane Theatre on Twelfth Night.”
A Cockney by origin, Robert Baddeley was pastry chef to the actor Samuel Foote when he grew stage-struck and asked his employer, who was performing at Drury Lane, if he could join him on the stage. “You are a good cook, why do you want to be a bad actor?” queried Foote, dismissing the request, but offering to find him a role on the stage if Baddeley was still keen in a year’s time.
With theatrical daring, Baddeley left his employer, travelled the continent for a year and returned to marry Sophia Snow, the glamorous daughter of George III’s State Trumpeter. On the anniversary of his original request, he presented himself at the Stage Door of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and asked Foote for the job which he had been promised. In fact, Baddeley turned out to be a talented actor and quickly made a name for himself in comic roles, playing foreigners. The attractive Sophia Baddeley was also offered roles, exploiting her musical abilities and natural charms, and her husband arranged with the management to pocket both their salaries himself. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it proved to be a volatile marriage, especially when she took revenge on her husband by working her way through all the male members of the company.
The situation came to crisis in a duel over Sophia Baddeley’s honour between George Garrick (David’s brother) and Robert Baddeley in Hyde Park, yet she managed to reconcile the opponents with a suitably theatrical demonstration of her astonishing powers of persuasion. It appears that the constant tide of marital scandal published in the newspapers did no harm to the careers of either Mr & Mrs Baddeley.
Eventually, Robert Baddeley became a permanent member of His Majesties Company of Comedians at Drury Lane at a salary of twelve pounds a week. He was best known for originating the role of Moses in ‘The School for Scandal’ which premiered at Drury Lane in 1777, and it was in costume for this character that he collapsed on stage on November 19th 1794 and died at home in Store St next morning.
Baddeley’s will extended to seventy pages, including the legacy of his house in Moulsey as an asylum for decayed actors and a three pound annuity for the provision of an annual Twelfth Cake and punch for the performers at Drury Lane. The asylum failed because the old actors did not like being labelled as decayed, so the property was sold and his estate merged with the Drury Lane Theatrical Fund – but the annual ceremony of the cake which bears his name lives on.
Each year before the Baddeley Cake is cut, the Master of the Fund proposes a toast to Robert Baddeley and everyone raises their glasses of punch – as we all did this week – in celebration of London’s oldest living theatrical tradition and in remembrance of the Cockney pastry chef who fulfilled his dream of becoming an actor.
Robert Baddeley (1733-1794) The pastry chef who became a famous actor
Painted by Zoffany, Robert Baddeley as Moses in Sheridan’s “The School for Scandal,” which premiered at Theatre Royal Drury Lane in 1777
Robert Baddeley “I have taken my last draught in this world” Henry IV Part II
Baddeley’s Twelfth Cake
William Terriss cuts the Baddeley cake in 1883
Cutting the Baddeley Cake on the stage of Drury Lane in 1890
Alex Jennings (currently starring as Willie Wonka) cuts the Baddeley Cake 2015, accompanied by the cast of “Charlie & The Chocolate Factory”
Theatre Royal Drury Lane
New photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Click here to learn more about the Drury Lane Theatrical Fund
Spitalfields In Kodachrome
While the weather is grey, enjoy a tour of Spitalfields in Kodachrome courtesy of Photographer Philip Marriage who rediscovered these colourful images of his over the holiday – taken on 11th July 1984 and published here for the first time today.
Brushfield St
Crispin St
Widegate St
White’s Row
Artillery Passage
Brushfield St
Artillery Passage
Brushfield St
Fashion St
Widegate St
Artillery Passage
Gun St
Brushfield St
Gun St
Brushfield St
Parliament Court
Leyden St
Fort St
Commercial St
Brushfield St
Photographs copyright © Philip Marriage
You may also like to take a look at
Eleanor Crow’s East End Ironmongers
Daniel Lewis & Son Ltd, Hackney Rd
As you can see, illustrator Eleanor Crow shares my love of ironmongers. “The inventive displays and signage of hardware stores make these my favourite shopfronts,” she confessed to me, “I have only to see the serried ranks of brooms, pots, latches and pans to be reminded of some useful item that needs purchasing immediately.” Alas, three favourites have closed recently but we trust the others will be fulfilling our architectural ironmongery and plumbing requirements for years to come.
C W Tyzack, Kingsland Rd
Bernardes Trading Ltd, Barking Rd
Bradbury’s, Broadway Market
Chas Tapp, Southgate Rd
Emjay Decor, Bethnal Green Rd
General Woodwork Supplies, Stoke Newington High St
Diamond Ladder Factory, Lea Bridge Rd
Farringdon Tool Supplies, Exmouth Market
Histohome, Stoke Newington High St
KAC Hardware, Church St
Leyland SDM, Balls Pond Rd
KTS the Corner, Kingsland Rd
Mix Hardware, Blackstock Rd
City Hardware, Goswell Rd
Travis Perkins, Kingsland Rd
SX, Essex Rd
Illustrations copyright © Eleanor Crow
You may also like to see Eleanor Crow’s other East End illustrations
Eleanor Crow’s East End Bakers
Eleanor Crow’s East End Fish Shops
and read about more ironmongers
At London’s Oldest Ironmongers
Receipts from London’s Oldest Ironmongers
Objecting To The Goodsyard Proposals
Today I publish the complete text of The East End Preservation Society‘s formal objection letter to the Bishopsgate Goodsyard Proposals as sent to the Planning Officers at Hackney & Tower Hamlets Councils this week. There is still time to make your own voice heard and you can read the Society’s guide to How to Object Effectively by clicking here.
Bishopsgate Goodsyard development proposals – Applications PA/14/02011 & PA/14/02096 (Tower Hamlets) 2014/2425 & 2014/2427 (Hackney)
We wish to register our strong objection to these applications for the proposed redevelopment of the Bishopsgate Goodsyard site.
Difficulty in assessing applications
We would like at this point to state that this application has proved extremely hard to access and interpret, despite the commitment made by the applicant in its statement of community involvement. The Design and Access Statement alone is in three volumes and split into over one hundred and eighty separate downloadable documents on Tower Hamlets’ planning website. The document has no executive summary, making an already extremely complicated application even harder to penetrate. With this in mind we appreciate that your Council is accepting responses to these applications beyond the statutory consultation period of twenty-one days.
Significance and planning history
The Bishopsgate Goodsyard is the site of a major Victorian London terminus, originally the main passenger station for the lines to Norwich and Yarmouth. Its construction began in 1839 under John Braithwaite. It was therefore part of the early, pioneering railway age in Britain. The original building – an elegant Italianate design – was redeveloped as a goods station in 1880-81 following the opening of Liverpool Street station in 1875. This new building had three storeys, a street-level basement, the goods station above that and a warehouse at the top.
These buildings were extensively damaged by fire in 1964. However, the surviving structures were nevertheless later recognised by English Heritage as of great importance – both on account of the remains of the two-level goods station but also of the Braithwaite Viaduct (listed in 2002) built as part of the original development in the eighteen-thirties. Despite this recognition and a hard-fought conservation campaign, demolition of the unlisted structures was granted in 2003 – and the site was substantially cleared. Sir Neil Cossons, Chairman of English Heritage in 2002, commented at the time (with extraordinary prescience) ‘Bishopsgate Goodsyard is one of London’s forgotten treasures. To reduce it to a pile of rubble with no clear idea of what would replace it would be tragic, generating years of uncertainty and blight’.
This recent history makes the surviving historic structures within Bishopsgate Goodsyard exceptionally important both to the history and character of the area and also in the wider context of Britain’s railway heritage.
The site has been identified as the location for tall buildings in the Mayor of London’s draft City Fringe Opportunity Area Planning Framework (see below). Unhelpfully, the Interim Planning Guidance (IPG) does not give any actual indication of what height might be acceptable but designates the western end of the site, west of Braithwaite Street, as the location for tall buildings, with a graduation in height across the site to the east where ‘street’ scale buildings that relate to the scale of Brick Lane should be located.
Furthermore, new guidance issued by the Mayor of London (see ‘Policy’ section below) makes it clear that new development in any part of London should take into account the character and history of the surrounding area.
SUMMARY OF OBJECTIONS
This objection is based on a number of grounds. We are concerned a) about the level of demolition of existing structures b) about the height, massing and design of the proposed new buildings and c) of the failure to deliver affordable housing on the site.
1. Substantial harm to designated and undesignated heritage assets
We consider that the new development would cause substantial harm to the following designated heritage assets:
– the listed entrance and forecourt walls of the Goodsyard,
– the setting of the Grade II-listed Braithwaite viaduct,
– the setting of the five surrounding conservation areas (the Brick Lane and Fournier Street Conservation Area, South Shoreditch Conservation Area, Boundary Estate Conservation Are, Redchurch Street Conservation Area and the Elder Street Conservation Area) and the eighty-two listed buildings that surround the site.
Substantial harm will also be caused to some of the undesignated heritage assets on the site including a number of nineteenth-century railway arches which survived demolition in 2003 and which are to be demolished under this scheme. The unlisted structures are arguably curtilage-listed – the appropriate tests for demolition should therefore be applied (NPPF 133). 66-68 Sclater Street, undesignated assets within the Brick Lane and Fournier Street Conservation Area are also proposed for demolition. This represents callous destruction of the historic environment and would result in the loss of an important piece of streetscape, which the conservation area designation is intended to protect.
2. General impact on the area
This is an exceptionally sensitive urban setting. As well as the designated and undesignated heritage assets within the Goodsyard itself there are five conservation areas which extend almost to the boundaries of the site (see above). These conservation areas contain some of the most outstanding survivals of historic townscape in London. It is inevitable that new development on the Goodsyard site will have an impact on these surrounding areas.
Owing to a failure by the owners to adequately maintain the historic buildings on the site, the current state of the structures is poor (the two listed structures on site are on English Heritage’s Buildings at Risk Register). This has helped create an air of neglect which has a detrimental affect on the wider area. There is clearly an opportunity here for a new development which regenerates the urban fabric in a way that draws its energy from the character of the surrounding conservation areas – and learns from their success.
We accept that the site was identified as a potential location for tall buildings in the Mayor’s draft City Fringe Opportunity Area Planning Framework and that the Interim Planning Guidance (Hackney and Tower Hamlet’s Councils, 2010) stipulated that the western extremity of the site should be the location for tall buildings. However, a tall building is generally defined as one that is significantly taller than its surroundings. This area is characterised by buildings which are generally no more than 6 storeys but with some warehouses and commercial structures which rise to 8. The proposed towers on site range from 15 to 46 storeys making them grossly out of scale with their immediate surroundings and representing an incursion of the City of London’s commercial district into this vulnerable and fragile ‘fringe’ area.
The applicant’s Heritage Statement inevitably plays down the impact of the effect of the height of the new development on the conservation areas, with statements like ‘Fournier Street and associated streets will be unaffected for example.’ It’s very hard to believe that Wilkes Street and Brick Lane which both adjoin Fournier Street will be unaffected since both have direct views to the site and, indeed, the CGIs of the proposals from the surrounding streets tells a very different story – highlighting the overwhelming impact of the proposed towers.
Towers F and G (of 46 and 42 stories) are the tallest and have the greatest and most far-reaching impact. They are both within a few hundred metres of the Elder Street Conservation Area which is made up predominantly of buildings of 4 and 5 stories including many important early eighteenth-century houses.
One of the major associated effects of the height of the proposed development is the literal overshadowing of the surrounding areas. The applicant’s Daylight Assessment concludes that 43% of the buildings surveyed will have major reductions of sunlight. Unsurprisingly, many of these buildings are in the conservation areas to the north of the site, including buildings along Sclater Street, Redchurch Street and Old Nichol Street. This result speaks for itself in terms of the profoundly negative effect of the proposed tall buildings on the surrounding area.
The design of those buildings which are covered by the full planning applications is very disappointing, failing to relate in any way to the character of the surrounding area. It is admittedly difficult to articulate and detail a 46 storey tower so that it responds appropriately to its historic setting. but even the lower blocks on Plots D and E appear bland and bulky. The very nature of very tall buildings means they have an uncomfortable relationship with the street, requiring larger footprints at the lower levels and tall podiums to support the upper levels.
PROPOSALS
A. The Development
As discussed above, the proposals include a series of towers. At the south-west corner are the tallest at 46 and 42 storeys (with plant above that, increasing the height further). In the north-west corner is a large block (in plots A and B) which ranges in height between 10 and 12 storeys and would run along much of the length the site where it meets Bethnal Green Road, creating an overbearing presence on this northern boundary.
In the middle of the site are two further towers of 34 and 30 storeys on a podium of lower blocks. To the eastern end of the site are a series of buildings ranging from 24 down to 9 stories with lower building around the perimeter of the site.
B. Designated and Undesignated assets
The site includes a number of designated and undesignated heritage assets. The listed Braithwaite Viaduct is due to be repaired and converted to a shopping arcade, a use it is well suited to. The ‘shell’ of the grade II forecourt walls and gateway will also be repaired. We disagree with the assessment in the Heritage Statement that concludes that the boundary walls are not listed with the gate and forecourt walls – they are all of the same date and form the same structure.
The walls are also an important part of the setting of the Goodsyard and the listed structures there. The original Goodsyard needed to be a secure area – and the surviving walls are therefore integral to its history. The walls also form part of the setting of the surrounding conservation areas – they define the historic relationship of the Goodsyard to its residential and commercial surroundings. The stretch along Commercial Street is particularly handsome and well preserved despite recent neglect. The permeability of this boundary could be increased by creating openings without such extensive demolition.
The applicant attempts to mitigate the demolition of these walls by the restoration of the listed Oriel Gateway, a Building at Risk. This is disingenuous – the Oriel Gateway is a Building at Risk largely because the current owners have not maintained it and only the shell is proposed to be repaired as part of these applications. This justification for demolishing the surrounding walls should therefore not be taken into account.
Vaults V1 and V2 which are behind the wall running along Commercial St (at a lower level) are curtilage to the gateway and forecourt walls and are due for demolition, along with vaults V3 to V11 and G9 to V1 which are unlisted but Victorian vaults all the same. These are on Plots F and G which is the proposed location for the 46 and 42 storey towers. The justification given for the demolition is the need to increase permeability to the site and to create wider public benefit (such as improved public realm and the provision of some public open space). Preserving and reusing these attractive historic structures (perhaps building a few storeys above them) would in our view result in a far more exciting, contextual and engaging scheme.
The former Mission Room and Weavers’ Cottages are within the Brick Lane and Fournier Street Conservation Area. As the applicant states, the buildings are interesting examples of their type with the former Mission Hall, a rare survival highlighting the role of social welfare in the neighbourhood. Unfortunately, despite the proposals to repair these interesting survivals they will be cast into almost permanent shadow by the new blocks to south of them, ruining their setting.
We support the Victorian Society’s objection to the demolition of 66-68 Sclater Street. These are handsome nineteenth-century buildings which the conservation area designation should protect.
C. Lack of Affordable Housing
Hackney and Tower Hamlets are two of the London’s most densely populated boroughs with combined housing waiting lists of over 40,000 people. Remarkably, the applicant gives no commitment to affordable housing within this scheme (instead stating 10% affordable housing as an aim). This is in clear conflict with local planning guidance (see ‘Policy’ section below) and has already been criticised by the Mayor of London in his initial assessment.
POLICY
A. The Interim Planning Guidance
The purpose of the Interim Planning Guidance (IPG), published in 2010 by Hackney and Tower Hamlets Councils, was to ensure that the new development on the site achieved a number of basic principles. The proposals fail to achieve these basic design principles regarding character and height.
The IPG states one of its principal aims is:
“to ensure new development on the site integrates with the surrounding area taking into account local character”
The application comprehensively fails to achieve this. The overwhelming scale of the proposed buildings and their complete disregard for the architectural character and materials used in the surrounding areas means the development will loom over the neighbourhood and utterly dilute its distinctive character.
The applicant even states that:
“It will be a new place with its own distinct scale, identity and character; it will not attempt to become a seamless part of the existing neighbourhood.”[Design and Access Statement, Volume 1]
The IPG also directed:
“In line with current planning policies a minimum of 35% affordable housing (calculated by habitable room) should be provided on site.”
However, the developers offer no commitment to providing a specific percentage of affordable housing. They state only that they will aim to provide 10% affordable housing on the site. This 20% less than the required 35% by Tower Hamlets and Hackney Councils for new development.
B. Height
The IPG states that the west end of the site (west of Braithwaite Street) should be the location for any tall buildings. Also, that in accordance with the Mayor’s advice development should be
“acceptable in terms of design and impact on their surroundings.”
The IPG’s principle of graduated heights across the site is adhered to in the proposals but the tall buildings are not restricted to the area west of Braithwaite Street. Buildings of 34, 30, 20, 17 and 15 stories in this area are undoubtedly also tall buildings in that they are significantly higher than the majority of the structures in the local area. Buildings of these heights are proposed for the middle and east of the site, all eastward of Braithwaite Street.
The proposals therefore do not conform with the Guidance set out in the Interim Planning Guidance on building heights.
c. The London Plan
A Supplementary Planning Guidance document on Character and Context was published in June 2014 under the London Plan. Policy 7.4 entitled ‘Local Character’ which is particularly relevant to this application states:
“Development should have regard to the form, function, and structure of an area, place or street and the scale, mass and orientation of surrounding buildings. It should improve an area’s visual or physical connection with natural features. In areas of poor or ill-defined character, development should build on the positive elements that can contribute to establishing an enhanced character for the future function of the area.”
And
“Buildings, streets and open spaces should provide a high quality design response that:
a. has regard to the pattern and grain of the existing spaces and streets in orientation, scale, proportion and mass
c. is human in scale, ensuring buildings create a positive relationship with street level activity and people feel comfortable with their surroundings;
d. allows existing buildings and structures that make a positive contribution to the character of a place to influence the future character of the area;
e. is informed by the surrounding historic environment.”
The applications for redeveloping the Bishopsgate Goodsyard fail to take account of this guidance through an apparent disregard of the character of the surrounding area.
CONCLUSION
The Goodsyard should be seen as an opportunity to reunite the surrounding areas with an exemplary development that is sensitive and contextual – worthy of the area that surrounds it. What is proposed will effectively undermine the fabric of this characterful and creative area and blight the surrounding conservation areas. The popularity and interest of Spitalfields and Shoreditch which is now so commercially attractive to property developers depends upon the flexible historic fabric and intimate urban spaces that lend themselves to reinvention – something the IPG attempts to capture. The subtle approach needed is totally absent in this vast, intrusive and alien development.
Yours sincerely,

THE EAST END PRESERVATION SOCIETY
Follow the East End Preservation Society
Facebook/eastendpsociety
Twitter/eastendpsociety
Click here to join the East End Preservation Society
You may also like to read about
