3 March 2020
Today we’re roughing it in the heart of London’s East End - or if not its heart, then certainly its spine, our route taking us along the A11, the old Roman road running from Whitechapel through Mile End to Bow. Our first surprise is how unfeasibly wide this road is. This already runs contrary to our preconceptions of the area, which admittedly are drawn almost entirely from Eastenders, the long-running BBC soap. On this basis, we also expect to conduct multiple extra-marital affairs, separate and get back together a couple of times, almost drown, suffer (or cause) a nasty road accident, fall out with the pub landlady and cry like Ian Beale - all in the space of the next few hours. This one should be a right roller-coaster.
The first person we almost fall out with is our guide Stephen Millar*, as his first set of directions from Whitechapel tube resemble the devilish work of a random number generator. Eventually we realise this is because the station exit has been relocated several hundred yards eastwards due to the Crossrail works. Whitechapel is to form a major intersection of the new Elizabeth line - assuming the project ever reaches a conclusion of course. Opposite, the historical front of the Royal London Hospital is also undergoing a make-over, one of its façades still standing defiantly while the main structure behind has been gutted. Meanwhile its modern high-rise units greet the arrival of an air ambulance onto the roof-top - a far cry from the days when Joseph Merrick, nicknamed the “Elephant Man”, was famously a patient in the late 19th century.
We’re intrigued by the Working Lads’ Institute, originally set up around the same time to “provide distractions for boys over 13 years old after they had finished work”. Wow. It’s the first of many reminders we will see today of the poverty and hard graft often associated with the area - and also its long tradition of philanthropy. Another recurring theme is the Jewish influence over the centuries - close to the tube there is a drinking fountain erected by East End Jews in 1911 in honour of Edward VII, who had been sympathetic to the Jewish community. Poor Edward, the impish child “Bertie” in ITV’s fascinating Victoria series, had only ruled for nine years before his death in 1910, having waited until the age of 60 as a result of his mother’s longevity. Was that a distant sigh I just heard from 71-year-old Prince Charles? It’s difficult to imagine an influx into the East End of as many as 150,000 Jewish immigrants fleeing rising antisemitism in Russia at the turn of the 20th century, but Millar reminds us that the East End has been home to waves of immigrants over the centuries - Sephardi Jews from Spain and Portugal, Ashkenasi Jews from Eastern Europe, Huguenots, Irish and more recently Bangladeshis, whose market today stretches out either side of Whitechapel station.
Soon we’re outside the Blind Beggar pub, where Reggie Kray shot George Cornell dead in 1966. We peer in apprehensively - next to a poster advertising “Gangster Tours”. This was very much the Krays’ “manor” in the sixties - you crossed the Kray family at your peril (later we are informed that the concrete supporting the flyover into Stratford likely enshrines an unknown number of other victims). Over the years the pub also bore witness to “death by umbrella” (not a Soviet-style assassination in this case, but a more mundane stabbing through the eye in 1904) and an attack by an Asian group in 2011 targeted at members of the English Defence League who were not actually in the pub at the time - maybe they were sitting quietly at home watching their favourite Hitler movies. Just nearby, the “Houndsditch murders” took place in 1910 when some Latvian Jewish anarchists killed three policemen, before being killed in a house fire after they had been tracked down and besieged under the orders of home secretary Winston Churchill. This is more like it.
Further up the Mile End Road, we later pass the Genesis cinema, which has won awards as the UK’s “Best Cinema” and, under its old name of the Paragon, was the setting in 1963 for the film premiere of Sparrers Can’t Sing, a locally made film starring Barbara Windsor and featuring a cameo appearance by the Kray brothers themselves. Millar notes that Princess Margaret was due to attend the premiere with her husband Lord Snowdon but had second thoughts about being seen in public with the notorious Krays, so was a “no show”. The Genesis website reveals the real backstory to this, as told by Windsor many years later: apparently Margaret did show up but went straight to the Kit Kat Club, a nearby pub owned by Ronnie and Reggie, where she proceeded to get drunk with the brothers while everyone else was across the road. Fittingly, Windsor went on - via many a Carry On film - to play the archetypal East End pub landlady, Peggie Mitchell, in Eastenders, the role for which she was surely predestined.
Continuing with the crime theme, Millar teases us with the odd mention of Jack The Ripper, the notorious serial killer of the 1880’s - an inquest here, an autopsy there - but doesn’t develop the topic further. One for another day. Meanwhile we’ve moved onto beer - not (yet) as refreshment but the brewing history of the area. Those brave (or foolish) enough to speak out against the perils of alcohol were “dealt with” in traditional East End style i.e. with intimidation and violence - including William Booth, who later founded the Salvation Army. Booth’s statue (as well as his wife’s) can be found in Mile End Waste, which, in defiance of its name, is actually a pleasant strip of parkland alongside the main road. A more surprising anti-alcohol campaigner was Frederick Charrington of the famous brewing dynasty, who had a sudden epiphany after witnessing a drunken assault by someone leaving one of his family’s many local establishments and was sufficiently moved to found the Tower Hamlet Mission, which still exists today as a charity for the homeless fighting alcohol or drug addiction. The influence of the Charrington family - in brewing, workhouse ownership and philanthropy - will continue to be pervasive throughout today’s walk.
We pause to admire a plaque in honour of local resident but generally more adventurous Captain James Cook - the only man named Cook to conquer Australia until his namesake Alastair, who scored 766 runs in the 2010/11 Ashes series. We’re also tickled by the story of a neighbourly dispute which blighted the progress of Wickham’s department store, long since closed down but formerly a retail powerhouse of this area, nicknamed the “Harrods of the East End”. Slap bang in the middle of this grand old store building still stands an apparent interloper, a much smaller white shop-front which was, in fact, there first and whose owner, a German clock-maker and jeweller named Spiegelhalter, refused to budge for exactly that reason, thus forcing the Wickham family to build around it. Although the Speigelhalters finally threw in the towel and closed down in 1982, by then they had outlasted the Wickhams by 13 years - a struggle lauded in Nairn’s London (1966) as “a perennial triumph for the little man, the blokes who won't conform” and also as “the best visual joke in London”. As recently as 2015, a petition gained enough support to save it from the bulldozers once again.
Shortly after passing the Genesis cinema, we go “off-piste” for the first time, exploring Stepney Green, the first of three occasions today where the splendour of the houses and sound of silence so close to the busy A11 almost take our breath away (the others are Mile End Place and Tredegar Square). The green itself, a strip of fenced parkland running down the centre of the street, looks resplendent in the watery sunlight, its daffodils in full bloom. (You will note I’m hedging my bets with the weather, which can’t quite make up its mind today). Further along Stepney Green, which leads south to the parish church of St. Dunstan, the buildings are more of the communal and charitable variety, including the Stepney Jewish School.
Back on Mile End Road, we’re now desperate for a reviving coffee and snackette - so desperate that we dive into The Half Moon, the local Wetherspoon. Our daughter Annabel loves a ‘Spoon's, myself, um, not so much - but it’s true that I could be overly influenced by the fact its owner is prominent Brexiteer and obnoxious loud-mouth Tim Martin. I text her to report that “I already feel dirty”, but - grudgingly - it’s really not that bad, at least at 11.30 in the morning. The pub is massive, boasting two spacious main bars and an outside area currently under renovation in preparation for what might pass as the English summer. And it’s SO cheap, almost unfeasibly so compared to almost any other pub in London - a pint of Shipyard pale ale for £2.75, a 500ml bottle of East London pale ale for £1.99. It’s like the 20th century revisited. Damn you, Martin, I'm almost liking you now! Small wonder then that ‘Spoons is so popular with students - I think I’d also be minded to overlook the owner’s political leanings if I could buy an unlimited supply of coffee refills for £1.60. The feel-good feeling is only slightly dented by the ominous warnings to “look out for your bags!”. And the fact that the unlimited coffee is, in practice, self-limiting due to being a bit crap. When one of the workmen starts up some loud drilling next to my head, it’s time to leave.
Our next port of call is Mile End Place, a small cobbled turning that would be very easy to miss. It’s a narrow road lined with pretty 19th century workers’ cottages that would not look out of place as a Belgravia mews. Only the workshop garages at the entrance to the street give away its working class heritage. At its end lies the first of a number of historic Jewish cemeteries, the Betahayim Velho. The newer burial ground, the Betahayim Nuevo, is to be found nearby at Queen Mary College and sits rather incongruously in the middle of the campus, surrounded by lecture halls on all sides. True to the Sephardi tradition, the tombstones are laid flat “as we are all equal in death”; one larger plot, however, appears to be fenced off from the rest, maybe proving the old adage that some of us are more equal than others. Despite the presence of dead bodies in its midst, the campus otherwise is pleasant enough, offering a nice statue of Clement Attlee and a striking plaque honouring 18th century local pugilist, Daniel Mendoza, who is fêted for inventing modern, or “scientific”, boxing. Our guide credits the college with an impressive five Nobel prize-winners, but the flags flying on campus claim an even more awe-inspiring nine such recipients. Either Mr Millar has miscounted or the college has massively outperformed its peers since his guidebook was published in 2014.
We cross the Regent’s Canal, approaching the end of its journey from Paddington to Limehouse Basin, and pass under the Green Bridge - so called as it has a park, rather than a road or railway, running over its top and has won prizes for its environmental impact. We climb its steps just to make sure. Opened for the millennium, the bridge joins up the two sides of Mile End Park, which leads to Victoria Park in the north (and from there onto the site of the London Olympics) and looks like it stretches all the way to the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf in the south (it stops a mile or so short, but it’s a nice optical illusion from our vantage point). The volume of space here without housing has, of course, a sadder background - this was the area of London most badly hit by the Blitz, with the first V-1 flying bomb to hit London landing in Mile End, killing eight and injuring 30 more.
Our next excursion from the main road is Tredegar Square, which is so at odds with its immediate neighbourhood, it’s as if we have wandered into the posh parts of Kensington and Chelsea. Fortunately there’s a tale of gruesome murder at number 40 to remind us which part of town we’re in: a wealthy businessman killed his mistress and buried her body under his factory floor in Whitechapel, but later made the mistake of selling the factory which meant he had to move the rotting remains and was caught red-handed (literally) in the process. Fortunately, this well-to-do neighbourhood comes equipped with all mod cons, especially a local pub, the Morgan Arms. The pub, like the street it sits on, is named after the original land-owner, Sir Charles Morgan, Baron of Tredegar. A quick Wikipedia search (yes, yes, I know!) reveals there were a number of Sir Charles Morgans of Tredegar, but my uneducated guess is that this one was the 2nd Baronet, as opposed to his father Charles, the 1st Baronet, or his eldest son, Charles, the 1st Baron. (Confused? You will be). Rather oddly, the 2nd Baronet appears to have suffered an imagination by-pass and named three of his four sons - you’ve guessed it - Charles. The second-born son, George, was the only one to escape but his Dad probably called him “Charlie” anyway. Yet, for all his faults as a son-namer, Morgan’s modern-day pub is excellent, offering a fine range of draft ales (we choose a brace of established favourites, a pint of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, £4.95, and a half of Beavertown Neck Oil, £3.15). There’s also a well-stocked food menu - we order a lunch of smoked haddock on new potatoes and spinach, topped with a poached egg (£15) and crushed avocado and poached eggs on sourdough toast (£9). It’s superb. Jayne awards it the accolade of “Best Pub Lunch Ever On Our Walks”, which is much sought after, I can tell you. Thank goodness we didn’t succumb again to the Italian/Spanish (delete as applicable) cold meat platter.
Onto the final stretch (surely): this takes us through Tower Hamlets Cemetery, one of the “Magnificent Seven” large burial grounds of London, which were established by a change in the law when church graveyards became too full. While not as grand as Highgate, it covers an impressive 27 acres and today is home to a mix of dog walkers, a gaggle of schoolchildren and locals taking a detour back from work. At the entrance there appears to be a kids’ playground built in amongst the gravestones - how odd. Sephardi equality is not a concept here though, as some of the graves rise head, shoulders and several bodies higher than their neighbours, while Millar reminds us that the less fortunate were laid to rest in mass public graves holding up to 30 bodies. In another contrast to monied Highgate, the most famous resident he can come up with is a doctor who performed the autopsy on one of the Ripper’s many victims.
Onward we trudge, still enjoying the many hidden treasures offered up but by now willing the walk to end soon. I expect you feel the same. I decide I need another pit-stop (old age), so we duck into another famous pub, the Bow Bells. They don’t serve coffee, this is a proper pub, not like that cheapo ‘Spoons from earlier, but a pint of Neck Oil sets me back less than a fiver, which I suppose is something to be grateful for these days. Jayne’s none too impressed that the pub used to be haunted by a ghost which flushed the ladies’ toilet while they sat on the seat. But it’s a long way home from here, so she decides to take her chances. Back on the road, we do our best to admire the art deco frontage of the former Poplar Town Hall, now a business centre, but it’s a bit of an eyesore to be honest. We’re more confused that the building opposite is claiming to be Bromley Town Hall, which we had last seen near where we live in, er, Bromley. But then I recall that the full name for this area is Bromley-by-Bow, mystery solved. We take one last detour to see the old Bryant & May match factory, home to some of the most notoriously dangerous working conditions in the late 19th century - such as direct exposure to white phosphorous, which meant workers’ jaws become deformed and started to glow in the dark. not generally a sign of rude health. When the workers went on strike, they were threatened with the sack (and a short route from there to the workhouse) but stood firm and succeeded in forcing the owners to back down in the face of bad publicity. Shocking really.
At last, we reach the famous landmark of St. Mary’s Church of Bow, built on a religious site dating from 1311. This may well be the church referred to in the definition of a true Cockney, who has to be born “within the sound of Bow Bells”. But as Millar points out, it could equally well refer to the church of St Mary le Bow, several miles to the west at Cheapside. The important thing, as we experienced in Paddington, is that every church must be named after St. Mary, nobody else will do. A statue of William Gladstone, erstwhile Prime Minister, stands with outstretched blood-red hand at the head of the church grounds. The blood stains are a legacy of another protest by the match factory girls - this time not against their conditions but the deduction of money from their wages to pay for a drinking fountain erected by the owners. It certainly wasn’t much fun to be a worker in Victorian times.
Summary: Advertised as 5¼ miles, this was over a mile shorter than our previous walk in Paddington and Marylebone - yet it seemed much longer. It took us the best part of six hours (though admittedly we made three different pub stops, so need to deduct a couple of hours from that), but by the end we had achieved no more than 17,000 steps. There was simply so much to take in - a total of 71 different landmarks and related anecdotes spread over 36 pages of our Metro guide. It was fascinating but exhausting - arguably more on the brain than the feet. The East End certainly has a varied and often bloody history, so this has definitely whetted our appetite to explore more of this part of London - but only after a couple of picturesque river walks to recover. Next stop Hammersmith and Chiswick!
*Acknowledgements: Richard and Jayne were following Stephen Millar’s “London’s Hidden Walks: Walk, Explore. Discover…”, Volume 3 - Whitechapel & Bow Walk, pp 290-335, 2014 edition published by Metro Publications Ltd. Photography by Jayne Burton (thanks!)
Thanks Brian! You’re right about Cook of course, but it seems the East End is still claiming him as one of their own.
Super read Richard. Sorry to nag but you really must try and get these published. James Cook was from Middlesbrough; just saying. :)