This B Road is a minor mishmash running approximately alongside the Great Eastern railway viaduct between Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. It has wildly trendy bits, mundane municipal bits, reclaimed green bits and a huge number of taxis. It's partly one-way, in alternate directions, so is yet another B Road you can't drive all the way. And it crosses a couple of B Roads I've already blogged, including the previous one...
The B135 starts in peak Hipsterville outside Shoreditch High Street station. It bears off from Bethnal Green Road (aka the A1209) and follows the quieter downtrodden road on the right (aka Sclater Street). One side is almost fully demolished bar a long brick wall and an old weaver's house, which is heavily graffitied and in a parlous state. Powerleague football is played in the derelict railway yards beyond, at least until the much-contested Bishopsgate Goodsyard development finally gets the go-ahead and its towers block out all the sunlight. Most of the other side of the road has already been replaced by mixed-use brick, its ground floor providing spaces for cocktails, a cinema and charred belly pork. Come on a Sunday and you can see the remnants of the famous street market, which these days means a couple of food stalls and maybe a cloth laid out with eBay rejects, but was once brimming with properbric a brac and before that live animals. In the 18th century this was Slaughter Street, for reasons best not delved into, although a classical stone plaque at the end of the road confirms it's been Sclater Street since at least 1798.
This brings us to Brick Lane, the aforeblogged B134, and swiftly across it into Cheshire Street. Its multiplicity of shops would once have been pleasingly ordinary but have been recruited en masse to the bohemian cause, this being a sideroad that exists to nudge weekend tourists out of Brick Lane. Its clothes shops are all 'Vintage', its barbers is a 'tonsorialist' and its plant-based cheesemonger is called 'La Fauxmagerie'. I hadn't expected the B135 to rankle quite so much, but oh for goodness sake, nobody needs an oneironautic incense shop in their life. Walk a bit further and thankfully the legendary Blackmansshoe shop breaks the spell with its cluttered Aladdin's cave of canvas-soled footwear, because they know what real people really want and it's £5 plimsoles. That's the one-way section over and done with (and the up-itself section too).
You can't miss the headquarters of Design and Art Direction, better known as D&AD, because its initials are painted in yellow across their frontage in such a way that the logo only looks right from one particular angle. This is exactly the sort of idea that might have won a coveted Pencil in their annual awards for excellence in advertising and design. Watch out for the alleyway that leads to a claustrophobic footbridge across the mainline, especially if you haven't seen enough graffiti yet, or stay on the B135 and wonder what made Tower Hamlets constrict the road with jutting crescent parklets. The B135 is briefly in residential territory here, although it's also possible to buy a ukulele (or ukulele sheet music or ukulele accessories) from the UK's very first specialist ukulele store, which naturally they named Duke of Uke.
The only pub on the B135 is the Carpenters Arms - innocuous today but in 1967 the Kray Brothers bought it so their mother Violet could be the landlady and many a shady deal played out across the bar. Reggie and Ronnie also attended the five-storey primary school behind the pub, hung out at the Repton Boys Boxing Club (where bouts continue in the Victorian gym) and more to the point lived a few yards away on Vallance Road (which is the B108 so we've beenthere donethat). I'm not aware of a connection with the disused dairy opposite, now the flagship store for Beyond Retro, nor the gloomy warehouse with a dummy in unflattering blue workwear propped up out front. This is Coppermill Ltd, seemingly a lowly repository of boiler suits, bath mats, towelling robes and duvet covers but which since 1984 has proudly displayed a Royal Warrant - "By Royal Appointment to HM Queen Manufacturers of Industrial Cleaning Cloths".
From here onwards the southern side of the B135 is essentially railway viaduct, which means a heck of a lot of small businesses squished into the arches underneath the tracks. One of the first is occupied by a bakery whose "hand-crafted" loaves are on display artfully wrapped inside individual sheets of brown paper, but this is not in any way indicative of what's to come. Instead it's all about London taxis, because Dunbridge Street is where you come to get your black cab repaired, insured or its exterior advertising tweaked. What little space there is outside each arch is rammed with taxis, inelegantly parked, and occasionally East End geezer types emerge and chat and point at things before wiping their overalls and heading back inside. I don't recommend stopping and taking too many photos.
The large park on the other side of the street is Weavers Fields, which sounds like it ought to have a long history but is actually a postwar creation replacing half a dozen streets. It also explains the B135's upcoming dogleg wiggle into Three Colts Lane which made a lot more sense under the previous street pattern. A further throwback is a souped-up Christian youth club called the Good Shepherd Mission, formerly the King Edward Institute, formerly a Sunday School if you rewind 150 years. The repair shop on the bend is under attack from unkempt shrubbery and will take any old vehicle, not just taxis. All are well served by Bethnal Green station, Overground edition, whose orange portal slots in where two viaducts diverge. For those who like to know which bus route we're following it's absolutely none at all, which is one reason why interchanging at Bethnal Green is a right pain.
The next curve of arches provides further space for taxi repairs and also a proper greasy spoon caff with plenty of local clientele. Further evidence of workingclassness hereabouts is provided by Neil's Sports Trophies & Darts Stockists (who have 40 years of engraving experience) and also by the presence of an extra cafe to provide Full English overflow. As the viaduct bends north Three Colts Lane is forced underneath, providing an excellent opportunity to stare up at indented Victorian brickwork. There's then your last chance to grab an MOT, in this case from a garage with a largemural that inexplicably depicts a sabre-tooth tiger snarling at a burning windfarm. And finally the B135 enters a drab canyon between student housing and budget hotels before grinding to a halt on Cambridge Heath Road. If you've ever wanted to play shuffleboard in a fake motel, start your exploration at this end.
Thank you for bearing with me through ten consecutive B Road write-ups from Tower Hamlets. Thankfully the chain breaks here. I don't have to bring you the B136, which was in Newham, because its 400m shortcut across the Carpenters Estate was declassified in the 1960s. Instead hang on in there for the B137 which is in Enfield and the furthest-flung I've yet had to walk.
