Getting to grips with Tower Hamlets (the borough that begins immediately east of the City of London) can be confusing.
Looking at the statistics will tell you that this is one of the poorest boroughs, not only in London but in the country as a whole (it has the highest level of child poverty in the UK according to official figures).
Yet Tower Hamlets is also home to the prosperous business district of Canary Wharf and many lavish apartment developments along the north bank of the Thames. Wealthy bankers live and have their homes just strides away those in cramped flats and struggling to meets ends meet. If ever you wanted a picture of inequality, this is it.
But for me Tower Hamlets is a story change and transformation.
Over the last 500 years the area has undergone considerable development, with the East End (which is mostly contained within the borough of Tower Hamlets) and its docks having initially emerged as an overspill to the burgeoning City.
And today Tower Hamlets, following successive waves of immigrations, is one of the most diverse parts of the country.
Gentrification has for several decades followed a familiar pattern. It starts when “artists move into an area with cheap housing and studio space, then developers follow – and longstanding communities are forced out,” the Guardian reported. “Little thought is given to the people who have lived there for […]
For the Daily Mail in 1901 Dorset Street was “the Worst Street” in London.” The notorious stretch in Spitalfields was somewhere that “boasts a murder on average once a month, of a murder in every house, and one house at least, a murder in every room,” it wrote. […]
When the social researcher Henry Mayhew reported on Spitalfields in 1849, the living conditions that he discovered in some people’s homes was shocking. In one weavers’ house in the East London neighbourhood he found “spread a bed, on which lay four…. boys, two with their heads in one […]
Where does the City of London end and the rest of the capital begin? The quick answer can of course be determined by tracing the boundary on maps – or in certain places painted bollards. But for Londoners and visitors alike these official demarcations are meaningless for most […]
When in 2009 Vogue Italia hailed Dalston the trendiest neighbourhood in London and the Guardian named it the “coolest” place to live in the whole of Britain, not everyone was convinced. The area had been become pretty run down and, in many people’s minds, little had been done […]
From the British Museum to the Royal Academy, London’s great institutions have this year been playing their part in remembering the Russian Revolution of 1917. I’ve found these exhibitions charting the cultural and historical aspects of how people rose up against the Tsarist regime exactly a century ago […]
Whatever day of the week you visit Canary Wharf, it seems to be busy. On weekdays, the 100,000 office workers that commute here make good use of the shopping mall, where they can pick up a sandwich at lunch and perhaps also a last minute birthday present for […]
“Don’t run away with the idea that the Festival of Britain is going to be solemn,” wrote the newspaper editor Gerald Barry in early 1951. “Not a bit of it. It will afford us all the opportunity, as occasion allows, for some harmless jollification. After more than a […]
With rubbish strewn on the roadside, lorries thundering by to waste incinerator plants, distribution centres and oil storage depots, this is hardly the most picturesque part of London. Exploring on a Saturday morning, there are not many souls about as I weave my way around this desolate area […]
Little changes immediately for contemporary visitors as they head east from the City towards Shoreditch and Whitechapel. High property prices carry across what was originally the jurisdiction’s outer wall – and there are swanky bars to match the upmarket clientele. Gone are the days when to leave the […]
Past In The Present 