Just off Commercial Road, half way to Limehouse, is Albert Square, a square of nearly perfect, neat, early Victorian houses, laid out in the 1840s, with a garden in the middle by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association and a sculpture of a ‘Shepherd Boy’ with sheaf and sickle, dated 1903 and bought in Paris:
Tag Archives: East London
Arbour Square
I often get in a muddle as to which of the east end squares is which and which was the model for EastEnders. Arbour Square is just north of Commercial Road, laid out in 1819 and built as a consequence of Commercial Road being driven through the neighbourhood to give direct access to the docks. Two sides of the square retain terrace houses:
Bishopsgate Institute
The Bishopsgate Institute was opened in 1895 to provide enlightenment to the east end and was designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, later architect of the Whitechapel Art Gallery and Horniman Museum too. It’s got fine, quite free art nouveau detailing on the terracotta entrance façade:-
Spitalfields (2)
After breakfast, I did some more exploration.
In Crispin Street, next door to what was Tracey’s shop, there’s the Convent of the Sisters of Mercy, with separate entrances for Men and Women:
Spitalfields (1)
After my Christmas haircut, I wandered round Spitalfields.
The church as majestic as ever, presiding:
Wapping (2)
The rest of my tour of the sights of Wapping included:-
Phoenix Wharf, one of the best preserved of the riverside warehouses, less poshed up and neo-Victorianised than the others. It turns out that it was designed by Sidney Smirke RA, the architect of our exhibition galleries, in 1840:-
Wapping (1)
I have been totally jinxed on a post at the weekend from Wapping. For some reason, it seems impossible to file.
Suffice it to say that I discovered, which I should have known, that it’s possible get down to the river by way of two small alleyways off Wapping High Street. The first is alongside New Crane Wharf:-
St. Mary and St. Joseph, Poplar
The last of my Poplar sights is the Catholic church of St. Mary and St. Joseph, which is said by Pevsner to be at odds with the picturesque surroundings of the Lansbury estate (‘the mannered modernistic Gothic detail is totally at odds with the character of the surroundings’). It is by Adrian Gilbert Scott, grandson of Sir Gilbert Scott, younger brother to Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and architect of the Anglican cathedral in Cairo and, to my eyes at least, is an effective marrying of Scandinavian modernist brickwork with robust French gothic massing:
Balfron Tower
I was castigated yesterday for having limited my Poplar excursion to Robin Hood Gardens and not having included the nearby Balfron Tower, Ernö Goldfinger’s monumental, if bleak, tower block which overlooks the entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel. I was told it was particularly fine in its relationship to its setting. I don’t see this. It’s not quite my style, but I can see that it’s impressive:
St. Anne’s, Limehouse
As it was such a sunny day, I called in at St. Anne’s, Limehouse to see the light on the great sculptural mass of the first of Hawksmoor’s east end churches and, at least in its exterior, one of the noblest and best preserved, like the mast of a ship as the boats came up the Thames:
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
You must be logged in to post a comment.