High Street 2012 8) STEPNEY Cleveland Way to Globe Road
High Street 2012 may pass through the centre of all the other settlements along here, but it misses the centre of Stepney. So I've got to miss the elegance of Stepney Green, millennial St Dunstan's and the Stepping Stones City Farm. They're all tucked away to the south of the A11, between here and the Commercial Road, where they can be easily overlooked by passing travellers. So instead I'm afraid all there is to see is another brewery, more pubs, another tube station and the odd shop. A really odd shop.
Wickhams department store was once known as the Selfridges of the East End. You can see the similarity, on the outside if not the inside, with bold pillared frontage in a stucco style. But Wickhams has one unique feature that Selfridges lacks, and that's a great big gapin the middle[photo]. When the store was being built in the 1920s, one stubborn existing retailer refused point blank to sell up, and so the rest of the store was built around them. "Never mind," thought Mr Wickham, "they'll sell up eventually." But Herr Spiegelhalter the jeweller held out the longest, until 1988 no less, whereas Wickhams closed down back in the 1960s. The giant building is now three separate stores, with only the easternmost DVD dispensary still open. The main shop beneath the tower used to hold a DIY "Direct Bargain Centre", and the central block a food store, both recently shuttered up. There are plans to breathe new life into Wickhams with a new retail development, hopefully sympathetic, although I can't imagine a John Lewis or a Waitrose would last as long round here as did Spiegelhalters.
There are some marvellous old houses interspersed with the new along this stretch of road. A row of four fine Queen Anne residences, tirelessly restored to their original glory by the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust, would look more at home in Chelsea than Stepney [photo]. Further east a brooding Dickensian tenement has defied all pressure to modernise and skulks darkly behind a bricked-off garden. A bunch of E1 solicitors make their money inside an elegant tall detached block, weighed down by an assortment of peculiar arched columns on the roof. These offices are all that remain of Charrington's Anchor Brewery (founded 1757, closed 1994), reborn as the characterless Anchor Retail Park [photo]. Who needs beer when you can shop at Halfords, PC World or Curry's instead?
The southern side of the road is, sorry, far less interesting. It's the same story along most of the Mile End Road, to be honest, all social housing, social housing and not much else. But a few other small treats find their place. Opposite Wickhams is a row of mostly-Muslim takeaways and convenience shops, where beaming old gents lean sedately in doorways and barely a white face passes. A few grim pubs and bars are scattered here and about - the Hayfield's a scream, the E-One's no longer so camp, and the Soma bar is dead and boarded. And see the Khayrat Call Centre at number 182? [photo] It's a postwar building now, but in Victorian times it was the site of Augustus Atwell's butcher's shop, above which his sixth child was born in 1879. You've probably seen her artwork - Mabel Lucy Atwell's drawings of grinning chubby children were once much loved, and are still fairly collectable.
four local sights » Billy Bunter's Snack Bar: Adrift in a sea of pavement outside Wickham's, this tiny road-facing hut dispenses grease and chips 24 hours a day. Outlaw Burger, anyone? » Genesis Cinema: There used to be lots of cinemas along High Street 2012, but now there's only one[photo] (and it's only nine years old). In its time this site has been home to the Eagle public house (1848), Lusby's Summer and Winter Garden, Lusby's Music Hall, the Paragon Theatre of Varieties (1885), the Mile End Empire (1912) and the ABC Mile End (1960). Locally-produced film SparrowsCan't Sing, starring a young Barbara Windsor, received its Royal Premiere here in 1963. » Cash machine: I know people round here need cash, but whose idea was it to dump a big blue box in the middle of the pavement. We love our big wide pavements round here, please don't block them (and charge us £1.50 for the privilege). » Stepney Green station: The middle one of five underground stations along HS2012 [photo]. Apart from a brief deviation into the open air at Whitechapel, the District line runs a few feet beneath the street all the way from Aldgate East to Bow Road.
High Street 2012
Wickhams department store was once known as the Selfridges of the East End. You can see the similarity, on the outside if not the inside, with bold pillared frontage in a stucco style. But Wickhams has one unique feature that Selfridges lacks, and that's a great big gap in the middle [photo]. When the store was being built in the 1920s, one stubborn existing retailer refused point blank to sell up, and so the rest of the store was built around them. "Never mind," thought Mr Wickham, "they'll sell up eventually." But Herr Spiegelhalter the jeweller held out the longest, until 1988 no less, whereas Wickhams closed down back in the 1960s. The giant building is now three separate stores, with only the easternmost DVD dispensary still open. The main shop beneath the tower used to hold a DIY "Direct Bargain Centre", and the central block a food store, both recently shuttered up. There are plans to breathe new life into Wickhams with a new retail development, hopefully sympathetic, although I can't imagine a John Lewis or a Waitrose would last as long round here as did Spiegelhalters.
There are some marvellous old houses interspersed with the new along this stretch of road. A row of four fine Queen Anne residences, tirelessly restored to their original glory by the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust, would look more at home in Chelsea than Stepney [photo]. Further east a brooding Dickensian tenement has defied all pressure to modernise and skulks darkly behind a bricked-off garden. A bunch of E1 solicitors make their money inside an elegant tall detached block, weighed down by an assortment of peculiar arched columns on the roof. These offices are all that remain of Charrington's Anchor Brewery (founded 1757, closed 1994), reborn as the characterless Anchor Retail Park [photo]. Who needs beer when you can shop at Halfords, PC World or Curry's instead?
four local sights
