London - East London Travel Guides | London | Sub Regions | London - East London

The East End has long been forced to make the best of a bad lot. North and east of the wealth in the City of London, there’s little room here for complacency about cheery cockneys weathering the worst of it with their colourful rhyming slang and robust attitude to a fair deal. That said, the small area round Shoreditch, Spitalfields, Whitechapel and Brick Lane has changed considerably in recent years, colonized by artists in the late 1980s and 90s and now attracting a large number of partygoers and clubbers heading for the most vibrant nightlife in the city outside Soho. The boom in late-night clubs, bars and restaurants here has made the area one of the most frenzied after-work destinations in town later in the week. In Docklands, where once the masts of tall ships dominated the skyline, the massive obelisk of Canary Wharf now towers over gleaming office blocks and swish apartments, winking across lots of landlocked riverwater. Even so, the peculiar history of the place makes it an intriguing destination and the views from Island Gardens are compensation enough for the architectural eyesores.

Sights

Hoxton Hall, 130 Hoxton St, T 020-7739 5431. M Old St.

Hoxton Square was the epicentre of Shoreditch’s rebirth as the most happening place in the East End. The square itself is a gloomy little spot but then that just adds to its offbeat appeal. By contrast Hoxton Market next door has had a thorough makeover, smartened up with fine restaurants, and not to be confused with Hoxton Street Market further up the road on Saturdays, one of the most welcoming and laid-back of all London’s local street markets. Halfway down it is Hoxton Hall, the last surviving Victorian music hall, with a fashionable programming policy.

Northbound, Shoreditch High Street becomes the Kingsland Road, following the course of the Roman road, Ermine Street, dead straight all the way north through Stoke Newington out to Cambridgeshire.

Kingsland Rd, T 020-7739 9893; recorded information T 020-7739 8543; http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk. Tue-Sat 1000- 1700, Sun 1200-1700. Free. M Old St or Shoreditch.

The fine 18th-century almshouses of the Ironmongers’ Company have housed the Geffrye Museum since 1913. A beautifully laid out history of furniture and interior design is told here, a series of period rooms along the front of the old building decorated as they might have been at various times between 1600, through the late Victorian age to the present day, and much of the furniture is original.

At the back of the building, plots have been divided up into a series of period ‘garden rooms’, including a lovely walled herb garden, open in the summer only.

M Liverpool St or Shoreditch.

Southbound Shoreditch High Street heads into the City via Bishopsgate. Off to the left just before Liverpool Street Station stands the green cast-iron and brick spectacle of the old Spitalfields Market. The wholesale fruit ‘n’ veg market here was closed down in 1992, and since then the future of the building has been the subject of local concern. Half of it is being replaced by a new development, while the Victorian eastern part will be preserved. Catch it while you can, at its best during the Farmers’ and Crafts Market on Sundays. Behind Spitalfields Market, on Commercial Street, rears the huge Hawksmoor creation of Christ Church Spitalfields. The full restoration of the interior of this striking local landmark should be completed in late 2004. Every year the Spitalfields Festival of Music takes place here in June and during the two weeks before Christmas.

M Aldgate East or Shoreditch.

Beyond the church the mid 18th-century streets like Fournier and Princelet running towards the aptly named Brick Lane are some of the most atmospheric and evocative in London. Still gaslit at night, the old brick terraces adapted for weavers have not yet been over- restored, while a few have been converted into galleries and shops. Most are still private homes in various states of genteel dilapidation or refined refurbishment. Brick Lane is the main artery of ‘Bangla Town’, famous for its Bengali and Bangladeshi curry houses and warehouses, and also for the extraordinary market held at its top end every Sunday morning. The curry houses still draw people in during the week and the old Truman Brewery building has been successfully converted into the fashionable Vibe Bar as well as a cutting-edge performance and contemporary art space.

18 Folgate St, T 020-7247 4013, http://www.dennissevershouse.co.uk. ‘The Experience’ on first and third Sun of month 1400-1700 (£8) and the Mon after 1200-1400 (£5), and ‘Silent Night’ by candlelight every Mon evening (£12) or by appointment. M Liverpool St.

The desire to slip back into the past was taken to an artistic extreme by the late Dennis Severs, who ran an eccentric ‘living museum’ nearby at his home in Folgate Street. His life’s work, a painstaking recreation of period décor from the mid-18th century to early 20th can now be explored in ‘The Experience’, where visitors are encouraged to reassess their attitudes to their own thoughts and feelings about past, present and future in the mysterious light of Dennis Severs’ obsessive attention to detail. Certainly one of the oddest visitor attractions in London, the current caretakers discourage anyone not prepared to enter into the spirit of their friend’s vision.

T 020-8983 5200, recorded information T 020-8980 2415, http://www.vam.ac.uk. 1000-1745 Mon-Thu, Sat, Sun. Free. M Bethnal Green.

Next door to the tube station, Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood is a delightful offshoot of the V&A, housing an extensive, superior and priceless collection of antique dolls’ houses, old puppets, model trains and just about anything else that has been manufactured in the last few centuries to keep nippers amused.

T 020-7522 7888; recorded information T 020-7522 7878. 1100-1800 Tue, Wed, Fri-Sun; 1100-2100 Thu. Free. M Aldgate East.

Next door to Aldgate East tube station is the old Whitechapel Library, 77 Whitechapel High Street, E1, and also, at No 80-82, the Whitechapel Art Gallery, one of London’s most innovative and exciting public spaces for contemporary art, opened in 1901. Its art nouveau façade belies the radical edge to many of its shows.

Museum in Docklands, Warehouse No 1, West India Quay, Hertsmere Rd, recorded information T 0870 444 3856, switchboard T 0870-444 3857, http://www.museumindocklands.org.uk. Daily 1000-1800. £5, concessions £3, under-16s free. Island History Trust, 197 East Ferry Rd, E14, T 020-7987 6041. Tue, Wed 1330-1630. Free. M Canary Wharf.

The Docklands are a pristine and ultimately bland extension of the teeming money-driven office life of the City of London. Arriving on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) at Canary Wharf, or emerging from Norman Foster’s fairly awe-inspiring new station for the Jubilee line, it’s impossible to miss the Canary Wharf Tower, 1 Canada Square, E14, the beacon at the heart of Docklands. A little to the north, the new Museum in Docklands hopes to entice more visitors into the area. It takes the themes of River, Port and People to tell the story of the area from salty seafarers via desolation to corporate hospitality. The full history of Docklands is covered in some depth at this outpost of the Museum of London, going some way towards recapturing some of the area’s exciting past with Sailor Town, a recreation of a local 19th-century street. Nearer the tip of the Isle of Dogs, the Island History Trust holds at least 5000 photos depicting the Isle of Dogs in the 20th century. Along with the new museum, a visit here is a must if you want to appreciate fully the changes, good and bad, that the area has undergone in recent times.

At the tip of the Isle of Dogs, Island Gardens park is an ideal place to admire the glorious view of maritime Greenwich and the Cutty Sark. Look over your shoulder, and you’re back in the 21st century with a bang, Canary Wharf still oddly close though more than a mile away.

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