And now the short one. The B122 is ridiculously brief for a B road, a cut-through less than half a kilometre long linking Shoreditch High Street to Bethnal Green Road. It's also undriveable, having been severed by chunky planters at the end of 2020, so by rights shouldn't be a B Road at all. But once again the National Street Gazetteer thinks it is so it is, so I'm walking it anyway. In good news it's brimming with interest, including a famous church, a pioneering council estate and a Grade II listed roundabout.
Calvert Avenue is wide enough to once have been an important thoroughfare. It kicks off with a large Victorian building that I know used to be a bank because it has the word Bank emblazoned in the stonework, and wouldn't look out of place on a film set. This being Shoreditch the first parking space is occupied by a silver Airstream caravan offering Caribbean refreshment options. This pitch used to belong to Syd's Coffee Cart, a wheeled wooden cabin bedecked in flags from which rolls and hot beverages were sold for an astonishing 100 years. The last owner retired at the end of 2019 - good timing! - and donated the stall to the Museum of London (so expect to see it there when the new building opens). I doubt the current incumbent Jerk & Grind will be so blessed.
The churchyard on the left belongs to St Leonard's Shoreditch, a church reputedly of Saxon origin, although the current Palladian building dates to 1740. Its steeple is home to another bell from the rhyme Oranges and Lemons, the one that says "when I grow rich" (and gets a response from the bells of Stepney which I've just visited on the B121). For those who like to know which bus route we're following there isn't one, although the 78 used to terminate here before its stand was moved to the High Street in 2011. Nevertheless the bus stop remains in situ as does the accompanying turdis, a bleak-looking grey box in which drivers relieved themselves, there being no cash to move it somewhere more useful.
Boundary Road is so named because it marked the dividing line between the former boroughs of Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. Sorry, that's the last of Hackney you'll be seeing in this B road reportage, the previous two paragraphs proving to be an isolated interlude in a run of ten consecutive posts about Tower Hamlets. This is also where we enter the Boundary Estate, a major slum clearance project undertaken in the 1890s by the newly-formed London County Council. At the behest of the local vicar they erased the Old Nichol rookery and in its place created a new street pattern lined with 16 handsome Arts-and-Crafts-inspired mansion blocks. Arguably this was Britain's first council estate, and even now remains somewhere tenants are keen to live.
The shops along Calvert Avenue are quite something, a mix of low key amenities and screamingly hip fluff. The communal highlight is the Boundary Estate Community Laundrette, a fixture which has been washing the estate's laundry since 1992. It's hard to see the machines past the layer of printed notices affixed to the window, but the pot plants and book trolley hint at a friendly, supportive service. Check out the laundrette's blog for in-depth local history and further evidence of charitable loveliness. Other joyful throwbacks include the cluttered workshop of A. Broughton, traditional upholsterer, but these have increasingly been replaced by sparse boutiques selling tailored clothes and luxury unnecessaries. If it's £185 cookie jars, £300 clogs or a £440 hoodie you want then I question your taste but they're all here.
Arnold Circus is the centrepiece of the Boundary Estate, focused around a circular mound comprising rubble from the demolished slums. Climb the steps to the summit to discover a bandstand surrounded by an open public space, a recreational resource revolutionary in the Victorian inner city. Halfway up is a separate circular promenade with assorted benches dedicated to Michael, Bessie and Joseph ("who loved East London and who drank tea with five sugars"). The gardens between levels are a riot of shrubbery, including huge plane trees and a patch of the first snowdrops I've seen this winter. This artificial hillock also offers a fine view down each of the seven roads which meet here, and oversight of the five-storey blocks which fill the gaps like wedges of redbrick cake.
Things are less tidy at street level where an army of horticultural obstructions has been introduced. When Tower Hamlets proposed blocking orbital circulation in 2020 local uproar ensued because of potential damage to underfoot heritage. These planters are a temporarycompromise, but their gappy scattering has required a number of additional 'Road closed' signs and metal barriers to try to make things clear. It doesn't help that lampposts still have Buses on diversion and Kill Your Speed Not A Child signs which no vehicle needs to see. More whimsical is an additional yellow fingerpost which says Be careful on one side and Be curious on the other, installed last year by the Friends of Arnold Circus.
We leave this spectacular oasis via the fourth turn-off which is Club Row. Initially this passes through more of the Boundary Estate which means a massive long apartment block down one side and a defunct secondary school on the other. The school's bike shed has unexpectedly been converted into an acclaimed restaurant called Rochelle Canteen, which yesterday was serving up Ox Tongue, Tropea & Green Sauce for starters and Braised Rabbit, Fennel, Guanciale & Aioli for main. Even when you cross Old Nichol Street into the less cohesive streetscape beyond, what looks like a warehouse with a graffitied door turns out to be an upmarket fashion outlet migrated from Mayfair. That laundrette could be an entire world away.
For most of the 20th century the southern end of Club Row was notorious as London's one and only liveanimal market, the place to come everySunday to buy dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, monkeys and other potential pets. Animal rights legislation led to its closure in 1983 and Sundays now see young couples queueing for caffeine and pastries outside Jolene or wandering over to the main action on Brick Lane instead. The road ends with a couple of rare 250 year-old weavers' cottages, recently saved from demolition by the Georgian Group, and a corner pub that's evolved into an American-style cocktail bar. Those driving along Bethnal Green Road would no longer think to turn off here, and wouldn't get very far if they tried, but the brief B122 definitely merits closer inspection from anyone on foot.
To give you some idea how short these low-numbered B roads are, this is the 17th I've blogged and yet I've only walked a total of 16 miles. The B184 is twice as long as all of these put together, or will be if I ever get that far.
