Constant House | >Re-PHOTO

London Walking Weekend: Most weekends since the 1980s I’ve spent at least one day walking around London, often on my own but more recently mainly with others carrying banners and placards. But Saturday 6th June 2009 was a little different as it was designated as the Walking Weekend of the Story of London Festival, and I went to a couple of free events put on by the Heritage of London Trust and Pevsner Architectural Guides in east London, as well as doing a little on my own.

London Walking Weekend - 2009 — *London 2012 site*

On Saturday morning I took a guided tour of St Mary Magdalene’s Church in East Ham led by Tara Draper-Stumm for the Heritage of London Trust, a charity which does a great deal of work in restoring buildings and sites in danger across the capital.

It was a great guided tour of one of London’s most interesting churches, Grade 1 listed and “claimed to be the oldest parish church still in weekly use in Greater London“, large parts dating from the first half of the 12th century but of course greatly added to, altered and restored over the centuries, most recently in 1965-6.

But I didn’t take any pictures, so nothing to post here from this tour. Back in the 1990s when I was a regular contributor to our National Building Record I often found myself waiting in the library there for my appointment and would pull a box file for an area of London from their shelves – to find it almost entirely full of photographs of old churches, many taken by their vicars back in the day when many were gentlemen of leisure with the money to take up photography. It rather put me off photographing them and on this morning I decided to simply experience the event, listen and look. But there is a fine illustrated tour of the church online.

From there I had some time to spare before the afternoon walk and went to visit the huge building site on Stratford Marsh for the London Olympics, by then sealed off by miles of blue fence. It was something of a rush to take pictures to later make into panoramas as well as some other pictures before getting back on the DLR from Pudding Mill Station to Poplar.

*Footbridge at Poplar Station – a similar panoramic image I took on this footbridge a years earlier was used wrapped around two sides of a 12 inch record, ‘Limehouse Link’* *and less impressively on the CD.*

There I met someone whose name had been familiar for many years but I’d not met, Bridget Cherry, a leading architectural hisotrian whose name appears on the essential works for anyone with an interest in the subject, The Buildings of England, begun by Nikolaus Pevsner in 1951. She worked on many volumes, some with him, as well as becoming General Editor.

*1930s streamlined moderne concrete at Constant House, refurbished and fitted with entrance doors*

These books remain essential guides to anyone with an interest in architecture in England, and I walked most of the ‘perambulations’ in London from them, although my interests were rather wider than the buildings contained in them and my walks also took me to many other places. You can read more about this walk on My London Diary. Here I’ll include just a few of the pictures I took with captions and some brief comments.

*The 1930s pub ‘The Resolute’ , named for HMS Resolute, one of the ships sent in 1850 and 1852 to search for Sir John Franklin, lost in the N W Passage*

*Some gardening going on with residents growing salad crops*

Robin Hood Gardens, designed in the late 1960s by Alison and Peter Smithson and completed in 1972, gained international recognition for its Brutalist architecture and was the highpoint of the walk. Its two long blocks enclosed a large garden area which was suprisingly quiet despite the site being alongside of one of London’s busiest roads. Neglected for years by Tower Hamlets council it was used to house many ‘problem’ tenants but by 2009 had largely recovered and become well regarded by those who lived there.

But the local authority had already decided to demolish it as a part of a ‘regeneration’ scheme. Attempts to list it scandalously failed – despite its international architectural significance – probably to protect the profits of the developers and demolition began in 2017 but was only finally completed in March 2015. Listing of large council estates became largely impossible under New Labour and expensive, highly profitable and environmentally disastrous schemes regeration schemes providing expensive but largely poorer quality buildings with little social housing have since obliterated estates – including some fine architecture – which could have been refurbished to modern standards at a fraction of the cost.

*St Matthias Old Church built 1652-4 but exterior reworked in 19th centry and monument to Captain Samuel Jones*

You can see many more of the buildings on the Poplar trail on My London Diary at Bridget Cherry – Poplar Trail.

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More Poplar 1988 continues my walk Limehouse, Isle of Dogs & Poplar.

Chaplain’s house, East India Company, Poplar High St, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 198888-7p-31-positive_2400 — *Chaplain’s house, East India Company, Poplar High St, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 198888-7p-31*

The Survey of London has a long story about this house at 115 Poplar High Street, now a private residence oddly called Meridian House and built together with 26 new almshouses by the East India Company in 1801-2. They had first set up almshouses in Poplar for disabled and retired employees and their widows and orphans in1626, built partly using money seized from the estate of Hugh Greete after his death in 1619. Greete had been discovered to have been swindling the company while trading Indian diamonds and they seized his assets.

The old almshouse was demolished in 1802 replaced by the new buildings. After the Crown took direct control of India in 1858 the government took over these buildings as Poplar Marine Hospital, selling all except the chaplain’s house, burial ground and chapel to Poplar District Board of Works in 1866. They demolished the almshouses to become Poplar Recreation Ground.

The chapel became the Church of St Matthias with the Chaplains house as its vicarage – and it was further enlarged in the following years. When St Matthias was closed in 1976 the house was sold to become a private residence.

Former District Board of Works Offices, Poplar High St, Woodstock Terrace, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7p-32-positive_2400 — *Former District Board of Works Offices, Poplar High St, Woodstock Terrace, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7p-32*

This Grade II listed building from 1869-70 for the Poplar District Board of Works was the result of a competition for designs which attracted 43 entries and considerable controversy when the prize went to Walter Augustus Hills (c1834–1917) and Thomas Wayland Fletcher (1833–1901) of Bow, both former assistant surveyors to the board. One architectual magazine at the time described it as ‘terribly ugly’. They were obliged to cooperate with the second place pair of Arthur and Christopher Harston over a final design. Once constructed the building was found to have various problems, not least that in the boardroom ‘reverberation was so excessive as to make the speaker almost incomprehensible’.

Various alterations were made and in 1900 the building became the town hall of the new Metropolitan Borough of Poplar, who extended it and then replaced it in 1038 by a new town hall in Bow. It continued in various uses by the council and in 1987 became the Borough of Tower Hamlets’s Directorate of Housing.

Poplar High St, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7p-34-positive_2400 — *Poplar High St, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7p-34*

This small paved area is just off the High St between Norwood House and Holmsdale House and the block in the centre of the picture is Constant House on Harrow Lane, built by Poplar Council in 1936-7designed by the Borough Engineer and Surveyor, Rees J Williams. Both Holmsdale and Constant House were rehabilitated in 1986-7, with more work in recent years. Norwood House was added in the late 1960s and this paved area looks as if it may date from then.

Holmsdale House, Poplar High St, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7p-36-positive_2400 — *Holmsdale House, Poplar High St, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7p-36*

A similar style block to Constant House, also built for Poplar Council in 1937-8, designed by Rees J Williams.

The Resolute, pub, Harrow Lane, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7p-21-positive_2400 — *The Resolute, pub, Harrow Lane, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7p-21*

Built in 1937 on the corner of Poplar High St and Harrow Lane, to replace an earlier pub the Resolute survived until closed and demolished in 2011. The pub on this site was The Harrow from 1797 (or earlier) until renamed the Resolute Tavern around 1881.

The best-known ship of this name was fitted out for arctic service at nearby Blackwall Yard in 1850 and made several trips to the Arctic searching for the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin who had been searching for a North West Passage. Finally the Resolute got stuck in ice and was abandoned in May 1854, the crew escaping across the ice to a relief fleet.

The ship was found drifting by an American whaler over a thousand miles from where she was abandoned in September 1855 in perfect order and was sailed back to New London, Connecticut, arriving on Christmas Eve. Eventually she was bought by the US Congress, refitted and sailed back to be presented to Queen Victoria and rejoining the navy. The Resolute was retired from the Navy in 1879, possibly at the time the pub was renamed. Some of her timbers were then used to create a substantial desk presented by Queen Victoria to US President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. Moved out for some years it has been back in use by most presidents in the Oval Office since being replaced there by Jimmy Carter.

East End Snooker and Social Club, East India Dock Rd, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7q-01-positive_2400 — *East End Snooker and Social Club, East India Dock Rd, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7q-01*

This club was at 253 East India Dock Road and has since been converted into Poplar Central Mosque.

Blackwall Tunnel Approach, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7q-65-positive_2400 — *Blackwall Tunnel Approach, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7q-65*

The crunched rear end of D814 VRG presumably had its match on the front end of A506 DMX, but at least it appeared that there were no casualites in the collision at the north end of the Blackwall Tunnel, viewed by me from Poplar High St. A sign a little down the road says ‘Welcome to Tower Hamlets‘ though I think most of the tunnel is in the borough. At left is the unmistakable profile of Erno Goldfinger’s Balfron Tower, built in 1965-6 for the GLC and recently stolen from its residents by Poplar HARCA housing association and sold as luxury housing.

Follett St Seamen's Mission, Follett St, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7q-66-positive_2400 — *Follett St Seamen’s Mission, Follett St, Poplar, Tower Hamlets, 1988 88-7q-66*

Just on the edge of the elaborate interchange between the East India Dock Road and the Blackwall Tunnel Approach is this small Seamen’s Mission, built in 1898 a Christ Church House and a part of the St Frideswide’s Mission House Conservation Area, but this building only locally listed. The mission here was set up by members of Christ Church College Oxford who in 1881 decided to support missions in the East End. Now converted into six flats.

My 1988 walk in Poplar will continue in a later post.