We hear a lot about the decline of the high street, but some High Streets really are a shadow of their former selves. Here are three near me where the rot set in decades ago.
Bromley High Street, E3
The village of Bow grew up in medieval times astride the main road to Essex. As the village grew a separate lane looped off to the south, rejoining the main road by Bow Bridge, and this eventually became Bromley High Street. The village green was built over with a string of shops. Several pubs opened to support a rising population. A large brewery grew up closer to the Lea. The thrum of commercial activity was high. And yet Bromley High Street today has become an insignificant backwater, and all it took was 20th century redevelopment.
A photo taken on this spot 100 years ago would have included a bakery, laundry, dining rooms, undertakers and cats' meat dealer. Today there's only a long wooden fence shielding a row of flats, while over on the right-hand side are more flats where an umbrella maker, tobacconist and greengrocer once traded. The Rose and Crown now serves peri-peri chicken, the former Bromley Dairy fixes smartphones and if a single market stall turns up on the piazza to sell fruit and veg it counts as a busy day. At least there's still some retail activity hereabouts on Stroudley Walk, but the thinning out of Bromley-by-Bow's local shops has been brutal.
After Bromley High Street bends left to run parallel to the main road no further businesses survive. This is mostly thanks to the LCC who turned much of the heart of Bow into mansion blocks in the 1930s, and Poplar HARCA who filled in the gaps half a century later. A parade of empty retail units below the tower block is now permanently shuttered. The BlueAnchor pub was demolished last year and is currently arising as flats. The Moulders Arms across the road was considerably unluckier and has been reborn as a small car park.
Hardly any traffic passes this way these days, although the D8 bus still deviates through (in one direction only) to pick up hardly anyone. The chief culprit is the A12 which swallowed up the eastern end of Bromley High Street in the 1970s, not to mention the parish church, so the road ends abruptly amid an excessive number of parking spaces. I often have to remind myself that I live in a medieval village because East London's relentless need for housing and roadspace has ripped that history away. On Bromley High Street it's almost impossible to imagine at all.
Poplar High Street, E14
In Roman times Poplar High Street was part of a causeway linking Londinium to the river at Blackwall, and by 1600 was lined by a few red-roofed cottages (if a pictorial map of the time is to be believed). The coming of the West India Docks brought it to greater prominence, this neighbouring street being ideal for living, drinking, spending... and likely whoring too. A fine Greek-style church was built to the north, followed by more pubs, a public library, a post office and all the usual palaver. But the new East India Dock Road proved a better draw for through traffic, and Poplar High Street now has a somewhat bypassed feel.
The road starts a little further east than you might think, as part of the cul-de-sac leading to Blackwall DLR station. This end of the street is very much in residential flux, with highrise showhomes to boot, but for the time being half of Robin Hood Gardens still overshadows the entrance to the Blackwall Tunnel. Beyond Poplar High Street's first junction comes a minor shopping parade, which peaks with a Tesco Express but could also sell you a car battery, all day breakfast or mobility scooter. Most traffic turns off at this point, but those who cycle ahead will see the road change completely.
From this point onwards Poplar High Street feels more 1980 than 2020, courtesy of Tower Hamlets' postwar flat rebuilding programme. Occasionally you'll see the shield of the LCC on a building signifying something older, and the old brick GLC Coroner's Court really stands out, and you can't miss the octagonal dome of the heritage Lansbury Hotel, and the Georgian almshouses nextdoor are a deservedly listed building, but the overall vibe is of quiet lowrise council estate suburbia.
It only takes a quick glimpse between the buildings to pierce the illusion and spot the intruder on the skyline. Canary Wharf's lofty towers are unnervingly close, but also cleanly segregated behind a railway and a dual carriageway with minimal access between the two. Somehow Poplar High Street has become the dividing line between ordinary Tower Hamlets and financial hothouse Tower Hamlets, an unspoken boundary that bankers very much prefer to live south of. There's nothing high about this street any more.
Stepney High Street, E1
Stepney is the original Tower Hamlet, once the sole village amid the fields immediately to the east of London. Its church was founded in the year 972 and for centuries had a parish which covered most of what's now the East End. The area surrounding St Dunstan's remained mostly openfields until the early 19th century, with a ring of cottages along the lanes encircling the churchyard. What's now Stepney High Street ran down the western edge, from the tip of Stepney Green to Lady Mico's Almshouses, becoming more important as the village was eventuallyswallowed on all sides by housing.
Other than the road's name, you'd never guess its former importance today. What's left of Stepney High Street is a stunted 100 metre link road squished between two sets of railings, and with barely a building to its name. One side is still St Dunstan's churchyard, with the backside of a youth centre squeezed in for good measure. The other side, once brimming with terraced houses, shops and at least three pubs, failed to survive the onslaught of the Luftwaffe and postwar planners and has been left as empty space.
Stand here and your nose will soon confirm that this is Stepney City Farm, founded in 1979 on the site of a bombed out church. Its pungent acres are home to sheep, goats, rabbits and donkeys, but no longer cows because the engineers at Crossrail needed their field for a major engineering project. A ventilation shaft marks the precise point where the purple line's two eastern branches diverge, which explains why construction workers have been busy here for the best part of a decade. Their archaeologists also found the remains of a Tudor manor house on site, mostly unshafted, whose history should one day be showcased at the City Farm's swish new Visitor Centre.
The land to either side of Stepney High Street is therefore brimming with historical interest, from a church with a starring role in the nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons to a subterranean railway junction bursting to the surface through a marquis's moat. But Stepney's high street itself is a miserable non-entity, several rungs below Poplar's and lower even than Bromley's. To ensure the decline of your local high street, start early.
