Streets of London : 2017

In 1720, a fellow mapped out London, as it existed then. He noted that there were four parts: The City, Westminster, Southwark and a part "beyond the Tower". To the East. In the days of castles and baileys it would have been that area of land outside the castle walls, where the tinkers, tailors and candlestick makers lived in hovels huddled against each other for warmth and protection. So, just 300 years ago, and beyond that, the East End of London, that part 'beyond the tower' was on the outskirts of the city: the end of the world, to some. Kings used to hunt here, and Bishops held manor lands in exchange for guarding the tower, that they would rent out to folk to grow fresh vegetables.

A chapel of ease was coated in the crisp white chalk from the Dover cliffs mixed in a lime wash, giving it its distinctive appearance, and its name survives in the area today: 'Whitechapel'. Remnants of old tombs and pillars have been pulled from the ground and are now used as seating for the community in the grassy space where the white chapel once stood. Over time a hospital came to be built and the fields around it were called 'spitalfields': hospital fields. The foundations of the old St Mary 'Spital charnel house can still be seen today: protected under glass. A vegetable market, a rag and bone market, and a very trendy clothes and craft market still operate on the same land today: the Spitalfields Market.

The area came to be home to the trades servicing the wealthier inhabitants of the city. Horse skinning, tanning and leather making became centred here: the smell of the vats of skins soaking in urine for tanning was as far removed from the delicate nostrils of the gentlefolk behind the walls as was possible. Metal work foundries developed, too, making cauldrons, grilles and bells: giving off lots of heat. The Whitechapel Bell Foundry still exists. It has been sited here for well over three hundred years and is recognised as the oldest manufacturing company in the country. It has produced, to its credit, two of the most iconic bells of all time: The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, and Big Ben in London.

French Huguenots began to pour in to the area in great numbers after being massacred in the streets of France for their protestant beliefs. Over time some 80,000 came, though only half that number chose to live in London. They bought with them their silk weaving skills and for decade upon decade produced some of the finest silks in the land made in beautiful homes they built. As foreigners they were not allowed to settle in the city, or to join the guilds there, so here they built their homes. Many of which still stand today. Their looms were placed in the attics, close to the best sky light allowing them to better see their fine work.

Immigrants and slaves kept the population of the area growing. Black slaves who had served as seamen on ships during the War of Independence worked on the docks and in the shipping warehouses alongside the Irish dockers. The East India Company had its buildings here in the East End, with some 400 clerks working in this complex alone; and ten times that number of warehousemen were needed here: so over 4,000 workers employed in just this part of the street. The place was becoming crowded.

Cheap imported fabrics and the increase in mill production in Lancashire and Yorkshire destroyed the Huguenot silk industry. Their fortunes declined, they moved on, though many gradually became assimilated. One in four Londoners these days can trace their ancestry back to that French migration, an influx that had an amazing ripple effect on today's population. They left a touching inscription on the chapel and school they built on Fournier street in 1743. It still stands today: umbra sumus, which translates to: 'we are shadows'. As though they completley understood the fragility of their destiny.

After suffering terrible pogroms in Europe Jews started coming across the channel in vast numbers. Some 100,000 of them settled here in the East End, escaping decimation in Russia and Poland, from the late 1800s onwards. The sheer numbers stretched the infrastructure to breaking point. In one tiny shop CH N Katz sold string and paper bags, trying to make a living, however small. A badge, on another of the houses, proves the owner had dug deep to pay the premium needed to hire a private fire fighting firm in case a fire broke out, as many often did. So restrictive were these that rival companies would often not fight a fire if the policy was not held by their firm.

Old Huguenot houses that once held just a single family became, more often than not, home to many families. On each floor. Crammed into each room. The area became cramped, desperate, a ghetto. By sheer tragedy of numbers. Jack the Ripper ran amok and there was murder and violence in the streets. Water became contaminated. Smells from slaughter houses, burning tallow, and noxious fumes made the place unbearable.

Business men and philanthropists came to the fore. Humanitarian deeds were desperately needed. Almshouses came to be built for the poor. This set of charity homes are built on an interesting plot of land that identifies them as being part of Norton Folgate, a liberty. In this neighbourhood the Four Percent Industrial Dwellings Company built the Charlotte de Rothschild Model Dwellings, behind this arch, offering a four percent return on invested funds, much lower than the norm, in an attempt to enable lower rents for poor folk. In just over a decade it housed some 4,000 people and is still going strong today.

Toynbee Hall, an innovative startup of the nineteenth century ilk, involved young radical thinkers and volunteers from Oxford and Cambridge seeking to develop a community whereby the rich and poor might live together to better alleviate poverty and to encourage social inclusion. The charity trust fund remains to this day. Part of the building remains, too, after a fashion; its historic front held up by strong building supports awaiting a new structure to rise up from where the old has been rubbled: still following the earlier founding precepts from long ago, one of the neighbours informed us.

Another philanthropist built the Whitechapel Library and Art Gallery to enable East Enders access to culture. Both buildings stand today, though a modern library has just been constructed in the same area. Soup kitchens opened up for the poor, separating entrance and exit, to cater to the mass of 5,000 families turning up each week.

The Jewish population headed to more northern suburbs like Golders Green and surrounds, and the Bengalese moved into the East End. There have been Bengal seamen, or lascars, living in London since the days of the East India Company when the company virtually governed much of India. Many Bengalis followed families to London. They worked for the Navy during the wars, staying on after them. Others arrived as economic migrants as time went on. Their wives and children soon followed. Brick Lane came to be called Banglatown, famous for its curry houses: the heady scent of exotic spices still heralds restaurant after restaurant that line the street to this day.

A building, now called the Jamme Masjid Mosque, is one of their prayer places. Amazingly, it was once a synagogue where the Jewish folk prayed when they were here, And before that it was a chapel for the French Huguenots. It is the only prayer place in England to have serviced the three religions over time. Albeit remodelled. The building wears the Umbra Sumus timepiece high under its eaves. We are shadows, it reminds us.

An art installation on the grounds of the old 'Spital displays an authentic Turkish boat, used recently to bring refugees to the Greek islands, beautifully illustrating how this area has provided shelter to so many, for so long, in such need.

Today, the city is closing in. The Gherkin is prowling down at the end of the 'Spital square. The Walkie Talkie peeks from another. New glass and steel monoliths are being lifted into place on most every surrounding street. Little lanes are filled with trendy bars and pubs. Young tech start up firms and avant garde coffee shops are in on the ground floor.

English, as a first language, is rare here: though that is as it ever was. Tracy Emin, the controversial contemporary artist, paid £4million for this old silk weaver place. Property has become incredibly valuable. Even the few shabby homes that remain unrenovated are prohibitively expensive, we were told. Too expensive for the poor. These hamlets, Spitalfields and Whitechapel, once beyond the pale of the city, are now in its looming territorial shadow, looking terribly vulnerable today, as though likely to be swallowed completely some time really soon.

Home of the original White Chapel

St Mary 'Spital charnal house

Rag & Bone, Spitalfields Market

Here Big Ben was built

Jordan family home

Love the shutters on these Huguenot homes

Attics for the looms and the light

Queue at Denis Sever's house

East India Warehouse

Tiles after the Huguenot style

Umbra Sumus: We are shadows

Mr Katz sold string and paper bags from here

Fire insurance medallion

Down this lane Jack the Ripper stalked his prey

Almshouses, in a liberty

Arch signifying the four percent Industrial Dwellings

Toynbee Hall facade: held up by restraints

Old Whitechapel Library and Art Gallery

New Whitechapel Library

Soup Kitchen, fed 5,000 families a week

Banglatown

Mosque, synagogue and chapel

Other buildings cast shadows on new ones

Wooden boat with seven people

The Gerkin at the end of 'Spital square

Smart Arabic mezze menu

Snappy street art

At home here

The house that Tracy bought

Shabby chic, but still expensive

Today we walked a single street and it took us so long, photographing, chatting to folk seeking clarification or information, stopping for lunch, then again later for a cuppa, that the whole day just flew. It was one of those magical days that are so special in their happening that you know that trying to go back and replicate the experience will never work. It never happens the same. So this is one for the memory bank.

The street is Redchurch Street. It is technically in the East End as Brick Lane actually runs vertical to it and that is now the famous Bangladeshi street. We visited Redchurch Street solely because we listened to a podcast by Rick Steves, and one of his travel writer guests when asked by Rick what was the one thing he would recommend someone doing in London, replied: walk Redchurch street. So, we did.

We found it chaotic, colourful, filled with characters, élan, individuality and creativity. Quite different from the usual sterility of most modern urban spaces. Old cheap buildings are being given a new lease of life by street artists, unique traders, start-up tech companies and coffee shops. Ten years ago, many traders told us, you would not turn into the street its reputation was so bad. Today, there is even a Versace store to be visited here.

Though, somehow, it is all quite different from the norm. Business hours are flexible. One shop is open all hours for example, though its door is not. Its sign says it all. Another shop owner must have received a telephone call from her customers as she arrived at the store with a key to open it just as they arrived and animatedly started pulling clothes from the shelves, exploring the stock. Another was a dedicated shoe shop. Odd shoes. Designed in Hackney, and made by a Spanish cobbler in Alicante who has been making shoes since the 19th century, so highly skilled is the message. Another sold men's clothes. The clothes collected were considered 'curated'. As with a rare collection in a museum.

Another occupied an old street corner pub and named it Labour and Wait after a Longfellow poem we were told, advising that the fruit of hard labour pays off if you have the patience to wait for it. This store sold one-off iconic products, be they old or new. I was delighted to find a measuring cup I have always loved on their shelves. One I had for many decades, then lost, then, only recently found a replica replacement at home. This one is likely a replica too, but someone like me will happily buy it. And that is what this store is all about. Waiting for the right person to turn up. It was packed. People were touching the products, like specialty pieces, enjoying them, recounting their history with the piece.

One shop had windows dressed with blow up clothes: for days when you feel thin, I guess. Another, run by an Antalyan barber from Turkey, is around the corner in Brick Lane and plays on the theme of the Victorian serial killer who operated around these streets. He calls himself Jack the Clipper. He does his best work with razors. In the neck area. He demonstrated.

We tried beigels at one shop, touted as the best in London. They are nearly as good as New York's. And lusted after the fresh whitloff and truffles sold in a tiny corner sandwich shop where the chef was making his own massive loaves of bread daily in an large open bakery at the back, cutting them into thick outsized slices for sandwiches, and folk were slathering on their own fillings from giant bowls of possibilities, then sitting around large share tables busily engaged in conversation while trying to get their mouths around their lunch.

Small tech firms, start-ups, advertising agencies and small film companies run their businesses from sofa chairs in vast spaces with computers on communal tables hooked up to power. And occasionally move into a coffee shop for a dose of intensity. Or chat to someone in the street during an inspiration break. One firm sold 'bunker space': here, where you could hire congenial spots around a vast warehouse-type room, furnished with odd chairs or shabby-comfy sofas throughout the space: for an intense meeting or just a quiet period of peace. With a bar in one corner for refreshments.

Many of the shops have a small door off to one side of the building leading to apartments above, usually no higher than two floors. These sometimes have masks attached to the wall: many highly and individually coloured; others left simple. 'Protest masks', we were told by a French lady walking with her interpreter. She heard us wondering about them, and through her interpreter offered the case that she believed they started out like Anti-Sarkozy sentiments, protesting nuclear power proliferation by wearing gas masks, and have now become a symbol of protest against many social wrongs. This one wore plants. Maybe the message today is Grow Organic. It may even change tomorrow.

Each of these doors up to apartments were uniquely decorated. We took dozens of photos of them, but these are just a few. The doors match the characters walking the streets, who are as unusual as the shops, and the apartment fronts, ranging from the highly colourful, to the eccentric. We were noticeably the outliers in the street: the oddities. The street signs are in two languages. There is street art everywhere. And sometimes stickers imitate street art.

While street art mimicking life. Here is the face of Charlie Burns, the King of Bacon street, now gone. Charlie's daughter still runs the second hand furniture and paper goods store that Charlie started in an old garage-like building. She told us Charlie was born further up the street in a building long gone and rarely left the area. He made a bare living selling papers that he and his brothers collected and took to the Limehouse Paper Mill for processing. And running boxing championships to keep young East Enders on the straight and narrow, and off the mean streets. For 97 years Charlie barely moved from this area. What little money he made he gave away Helping other people have a go. A true East Ender of the old school. Charlie once owned most of the buildings along his street. Because no one else wanted them. And they were there. Never worth much in Charlie's time.

Now, it is different. Some of the new, fresh, young startups of the new school who have found affordable space here over the last five to ten years are complaining: they are being pushed out. It is all becoming too expensive. Had Charlie lived a wee bit longer he might have seen the fruits of his labour. But, such is life.