High Street 2012 7) MILE END WASTE Cambridge Heath Road to Cleveland Way
Mile End is well named. The Mile End turnpike was located precisely one mile from the City, at the foot of Cambridge Heath Road, and here travellers would stop to pay their tolls for the upkeep of the road. But this may not be where you thought Mile End was. It's nowhere near Mile End station (which is one and a half stops further up the Mile End Road). No, the official Mile End can be found at the start of the widest, greenest strip of High Street 2012 - a long thin patch of grass called Mile End Waste. Good grief, I'm been going a week now, and I'm still only one mile up the road. Be patient, we'll get to Stratford eventually.
One beardy man has been honoured with two statues on Mile End Waste [photo]. His name is WilliamBooth, and he's the founder of the Salvation Army. In 1865 this former Methodist minister arrived in the East End from Nottingham and was shocked by the poverty and sin he saw. Walking along the Whitechapel Road one day he came across a religious meeting taking place outside the Blind Beggar public house and stepped up in front of the crowd to preach. His fiery rhetoric so impressed the organisers that they invited him to lead their small open air mission, with services held in an old tent erected on an old Quaker burial ground on Mile End Waste. From such a chance meeting sprung a lifelong vocation to better the lives of the wantonly sinful, and the inauguration of his great quasi-military tambourine-waving charity.
Another monument to benevolence can be found close by - the Trinity Almshouses. There are 28 redbrick cottages hidden behind the trees, in two parallel rows leading to a small chapel at the end of the avenue [photo]. They were originally built in 1695 by Trinity House, the charitable maritime authority, for the benefit of "28 decay'd Masters and Commanders of Ships, or ye widows of such". At least I think that's what the elegant script says on the twin plaques on the front of the buildings [photo]. A pair of intricate 17th century warships are perched further up, although these are only copies because the marble originals are stashed away for safe keeping in the Museum of London. Local campaigns have twice restored the almshouses after they fell into disrepair, and this far-sightedness has preserved a rare oasis of calm and just off the main drag.
four local sights » O'Leary Square: In sharp comparison to the Trinity Almshouses, the blocks of social housing on the southern side of the road are far less appealing. It's the first proper reminder along High Street 2012 that people actually live here, rather than just shop and drink. Step beneath the flats into lowly O'Leary Square and you might be able to pick up a beigel (or a slice of cheesecake) from Rinkoffs, the East End's last traditional Jewish baker. If it's still open. » Mile End Waste: Pedestrian footfall drops off sharply to the east of the White Hart [photo]. Turf and trees are to be found on both sides of the road here - part fenced off, part open - with housing and shops set back further from the street than usual. Just be careful if you choose to walk along the grass rather than the pavement, because it's a more popular spot than it looks and you don't want to step in any Mile End Waste. » Bust of King Edward VII: Yes, himagain. This time it's the local Freemasons who coughed up to cast their favourite just-dead monarch in bronze. A century later he sits in front of Anna's Nail Bar, beneath a canopy of trees, almost entirely overlooked [photo]. » Captain Cook's House: Shortly after marrying a lass from Barking, the great 18th century explorer James Cook bought a house at 7 Assembly Row to which he'd retire each winter to mark up his sea charts. His wife stayed on in the house after his death, outliving her husband by more than 50 years. The property eventually became a shop, ending up as a Kosher butchers before being condemned and demolished in 1959. On the site today is a distillery car park, with nothing more than a memorial plaque on a brick wall to remind passers by of one of the street's most famous residents [photo].
High Street 2012
One beardy man has been honoured with two statues on Mile End Waste [photo]. His name is William Booth, and he's the founder of the Salvation Army. In 1865 this former Methodist minister arrived in the East End from Nottingham and was shocked by the poverty and sin he saw. Walking along the Whitechapel Road one day he came across a religious meeting taking place outside the Blind Beggar public house and stepped up in front of the crowd to preach. His fiery rhetoric so impressed the organisers that they invited him to lead their small open air mission, with services held in an old tent erected on an old Quaker burial ground on Mile End Waste. From such a chance meeting sprung a lifelong vocation to better the lives of the wantonly sinful, and the inauguration of his great quasi-military tambourine-waving charity.
"I saw multitudes of my fellow-creatures not only without God and hope, but sunk in the most desperate forms of wickedness and misery that can be conceived. I went out and looked on the wretched Sons and daughters of debauchery and vice and crime who were all about me. The drunkenness, and harlotry, and pauperism, and slumdom, and blasphemy, and infidelity of these crowds had a fascination for me... I not only saw but compassionated the people sunk in the sin and wretchedness that I beheld, and the everlasting woe that I knew must follow." (William Booth)Another monument to benevolence can be found close by - the Trinity Almshouses. There are 28 redbrick cottages hidden behind the trees, in two parallel rows leading to a small chapel at the end of the avenue [photo]. They were originally built in 1695 by Trinity House, the charitable maritime authority, for the benefit of "28 decay'd Masters and Commanders of Ships, or ye widows of such". At least I think that's what the elegant script says on the twin plaques on the front of the buildings [photo]. A pair of intricate 17th century warships are perched further up, although these are only copies because the marble originals are stashed away for safe keeping in the Museum of London. Local campaigns have twice restored the almshouses after they fell into disrepair, and this far-sightedness has preserved a rare oasis of calm and just off the main drag.
