WHITECHAPEL ROAD Colour group: brown Purchase price: £60 Rent: £4 Length: 1 kilometre Borough:Tower Hamlets Postcodes: E1
Were the Monopoly board based on today's property prices, rather than 1935's, Whitechapel Road would be the first square. Instead it's the second brown, the more expensive of the cheapest, and like the Old Kent Road is a former Roman road. It's very much the East End's commercial artery, a necklace of small traders and historic institutions with only a few stretches of bland cloned high street. It's always been a magnet for minorities, once Irish, later Jewish and today is the heart of the UK's Bangladeshi community. Let's start at the far end, a mile from the City, at the big crossroads where the Mile End tollgate used to stand.
The pub on the corner is the Blind Beggar, whose notoriety was sealed one Wednesday evening in March 1966 when the Kray Brothers dropped in to confront George Cornell, a former acolyte who'd jumped ship to join a rival gang south of the river. After a brief slanging match Ronnie coolly shot George in the head, and to the police's dismay not one of the pub's regulars was willing to testify against him. There are fewer regulars today, but also a steady drip of curious visitors come to hunt for evidence of bulletholes and to enjoy downing a pilsner by the koi pond. Nextdoor-but-one are the gates of the Albion Brewery, a former Blind Beggar offshoot, although the front building is now flats and the main yard out back is now occupied by a very large Sainsburys.
The five-storey glass box which interrupts the street is Whitechapel Idea Store, the local library, whose striking architecture was nominated for the Stirling Prize in 2006. The escalator which once swept up visitors from the street proved impractical and has had to be closed, but the multiple facilities within greatly boosted attendance compared to the days when it was all just books. As for the hulking concrete block opposite this used to be Whitechapel Sorting Office from which the mail for every E postcode was distributed, and also the eastern terminus of the Post Office's mini underground railway. Closed in 2012 it remains mostly vacant, bar a scruffy parcel collection counter, while a less Crown-like Post Office has been installed in a nearby shop unit slotted underneath the Methodist church.
Whitechapel's famous market stretches most of this end of the street, a linear bazaar flogging fruit and fabrics to a dedicated clientele six days a week. On the seventh day you get a much clearer view of the shops behind, a motley collection with few familiar names, spread to either side of the entrance to Whitechapel station. Most of the units at the eastern end have recently closed pending scaffolded renovation, or perhaps redevelopment, although you can't do much substantial when the District line runs directly underneath. The bookmakers at number 269 used to be a wine bar and before that the Grave Maurice, a classic old school boozer oft frequented by the Krays (and less so by Morrissey). More unprepossessing is number 259, now a sari store and jewellers but in 1884 the very shop in which Joseph Merrick, the 'Elephant Man', was exhibited as a sideshow freak.
A lot has been happening recently on the other side of the street. The Royal London Hospital has retreated to a new purpose-built complex clad in blue glass, and occasionally causes everyone to look up as London's Air Ambulance lands on its tower-top helipad. Meanwhile Tower Hamlets mayor Lutfur Rahman has adopted the former hospital building as his new town hall, retaining the imposing Georgian facade but little else behind, and a triumphant amalgam of architecture it truly is. The hospital's postwar annexe and the older Outpatients building are next to face the developmental whirlwind with plans to replace them with a 3½ acre 'life sciences cluster'. The labs closest to the Whitechapel Road will rise no higher than four storeys but further back they're planning a seven, an eight and a fifteen.
House: Booth House(153-175 Whitechapel Road)
The Booth in question is William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, whose very first open air sermon took place outside the pub in paragraph two. It's perhaps not surprising then that when his organisation came to open their very first purpose-built hostel for the homeless they did it here on Whitechapel Road. It was designed in the mid-60s using reinforced concrete and didn't so much contain rooms as cubicles, 252 of them, with communal washrooms, canteen and lounge. A millennial refurb made things more ensuite and added that steel-framed frontage, then in 2018 the Salvation Army closed it down and relocated their 'Lifehouse' tenants to a nearby property in Old Montague Street. Booth House is now being targeted for student accommodation (of course it is, see yesterday's post for potential reasons).
What dominates the next part of the street are the golden dome and triple minarets of the East London Mosque. Part paid for by the local community and part by the King of Saudi Arabia, the mosque has been serving a growing community since 1985. Nextdoor is the white-tiled London Muslim Centre with its striking Islamic patterned overhang, and to either side a surprisingly large number of shops catering specifically for worshippers. Clothing, perfumes, religious books, financial solutions and agent-booked pilgrimages are all on offer. See how wide the road is here - room for two lanes each way plus two swooshing cycle superhighways - hence the need for whopping pedestrian crossings.
Hotel: Whitechapel Bell Foundry
Well that was the plan anyway, to convert Britain's oldest surviving manufacturing company into a boutique hotel, but thankfully it hit the buffers. They'd been making bells here since 1570(!), including Big Ben and the Liberty Bell, until the product finally became economically unviable as the country increasingly became new-churchless. Hence in 2017 the owner sold out to a holding company, an American venture capital firm, and they eyed up the site as a 100-room hotel with a pseudo-foundry churning out dinky handbells. Tower Hamlets council gave the go-ahead but the Secretary State thankfully called it in, ending the hotelier's dream, and the building remains unused with an entirely uncertain future. What a waste.
Beyond the foundry some familiar names make an appearance including an Argos, a Tesco and two high street banks. When Starbucks unexpectedly appeared in 2007 it was the East End's very first. The Nag's Head is one of very few two-storey buildings hereabouts, less a pub and more a "gentlemen's venue" where strutting showgirls strip to please. Or so the website tells me anyway. Across the street is Altab Ali Park, a patch of patchy grass named after a murdered Bangladeshi textile worker. It covers the former churchyard of medieval St Mary Matfelon, the original "white chapel" after which the local area is named, which was enlarged several times until the Blitz delivered it a direct hit. And here Whitechapel Road ends, or rather morphs unnoticed into Whitechapel High Street on the final run-in to Aldgate. Nothing else on the Monopoly board comes close.
