Eastern and Oriental

Eastern and Oriental

Secrets of London’s East End are revealed.
Grungy it may seem, but successive waves of immigrants have ent the East End. London’s Cinderella, a rich and sometimes surprising history. Where else would a church become a synagogue, then be reborn as a mosque?

So many Bangladeshis, like the characters in the current release movie Brick Lane. based on Monica Ali’s bestselling novel, have settled thereabouts that the so-called Banglatown has become London’s curry capital. But those in the know now shun the cliched Bengali curry houses of Brick Lane with their tiresome touts to explore the back streets of Whitechapel in search of more authentic eateries.

From the seventeenth century. Huguenots (French Protestants fleeing persecution) settled in Spitalfields then fanned out across the East End. Within a few decades, these skilled weavers prospered sufficiently to commission fine townhouses and churches. Many remain landmarks today, like the exquisite Christchurch in Spitalfields; and of the half-dozen London churches built to designs by Nicholas Hawksmoor in the early eighteenth century, four still stand in this part of the city.

By the late 19th century, a wave of Ashkenazi Jews began arriving from Central and Eastern Europe, many finding work in the garment trade. With the passing of the years, their places were taken by Bangladeshi immigrants – and the former Huguenot chapel in Brick Lane, which by the turn of the had been consecrated as a synagogue, would become a mosque.

Today, another synagogue still stands in Fieldgate Street, coexisting peacefully beside its next-door neighbour, the huge East London Mosque facing Whitechapel Road.

In one East End primary school, an energetic principal opened our eyes to the challenges of teaching children whose families speak 40 different dialects in the home. Amongst the East End

Bangladeshi community, even standard Bengali is an alien tongue, let alone English, and education often counts for little.

Where do we begin?
The East End is bounded to the south by the curve of the Thames and its fringe of revitalised docklands, extending east from the Tower of London. Once throbbing with commerce, by the 1960s the Docklands had become an empty wasteland, only to be reborn within decades – but that’s a story in its own right.
From Tower Hill, the Docklands Light Railway runs east through Shadwell then past historic Limehouse Basin where the Regents Canal meets the Thames, then drops into the burgeoning Canary Wharf financial district on the Isle of Dogs, formed by a loop in the river.
At Shadwell, explorer Captain James Cook was a regular parishioer at St Paul’s, the ‘Sea Captains’ Church’. whilst the coloutful Cable Street Mural celebrates an historic confrontation with militant Fascist outsiders during the 1930s. My companion and I best remember our excursions to the Cable Street Community Gardens where local residents nurture their cauliflower, hubath, leek and cabbage on allotlents in the shadow of the overead railway.
From the west, strike out on foot from Liverpool Street and the City, or ride the Tube to Aldgate East. As you step out on to Whitechapel High Street, which soon becomes Whitechapel Road, look back to the “Gherkin”, the gleaming blue pointy dome which is officially the Swiss Re building.
Across the road, the Whitechapel Bell Foundry boasts a venerable history – if you can’t stay for a guided tour, you may yet steal a glimpse of the workshop from the outside.
Near Aldgate East, the unassuming Osborn Street quickly feeds into Brick Lane, which meanders up through Spitalfields on its way up to Bethnal Green. Take a stroll and stop in for a quick samosa, a sticky sweet cake and a cup of tea, but for a really good meal, seek out New Tayyabs on Fieldgate Street or the Lahore kebab House on Umberston Street. Be warned, you may have to queue at the door – or instead be amongst the first to spot the next up-and-coming curry house in the back streets of Whitechapel.
Sunday is the best day to stroll through Spitalfields, for now’s the best time to explore one of London’s most intriguing markets.
As you head up Commercial Street, the famous Petticoat Lane lies two blocks to the west, but these days the Sunday street market there is simply shabby.

Old Spitalfields market
The red brick halls of Old Spitalfields Market (which also opens Monday to Friday) house an eclectic mix of mouth-watering gourmet foods, organic or esoteric ingredients, retro and vintage clothing and handmade craft and jewellery, much of it the work of putative geniuses from the art and design college nearby.

We salivated over Parma ham, tubs heaped full of Greek olives, French regional cheeses and a dozen varieties of Turkish delight. Coffee shops and funky pubs rub shoulders in the surrounding streets – and across on the Fouruier Street corner stands Christchurch, an elegant haven of cool marble and calm.

For much of its length Whitechapel Road is lined with stalls selling cheap dothes, house-hold goods. ohone cards and dodgy DVDs to a motley crowd including burqa-shrouded women and bearded men in skull caps, plus off-duty staff from the sprawling Royal London Hospital, opposite the Whitechapel Tube station.

Never intended as a tourist attraction, the modern multi-storey regional library in Whitechapel Road repays inspection by anyone curious (or even cynical) about multiculturalism. The Bomugh of Tower Hamlets terms this complex an ‘Ideas Store’ and in the lobby, a group of migrant-born teenagers, giggling quietly over a magazine, hinted how nowerflfl this exercise in community-building might prove, providing a neutral yet fertile meeting place for enquiring minds from different ethnic communities.

Veering off directly east, Commercial Road becomes a major artery feeding into the Docklands, yet even here a few fine eighteenth-century church spires soar above the semi-trailers and double-deckei buses. To the northeast lies Stratford, where construction of the London 2012 Olympic Games facilties has begun; once more the East End reinvents itself.