South Side
For Hanbury Place and Hanbury Court see Chapter V.
Dingle Lane and Dingle Lane School (demolished).
Dingle Lane, to the east of No. 30, was one of the ways
from the High Street to the Isle of Dogs until the
southern part was removed by the construction of the
West India Docks. There was some building along it by
the early eighteenth century, (ref. 357) and in the early nineteenth
century Tucker's Court (begun by Thomas Hale) and
Dingle Court were built on its south side. (ref. 358) They
consisted of a double row of 14 back-to-back two-storey
cottages, each with two rooms and a kitchen or scullery. (ref. 359)
In the 1890s the cottages were condemned as insanitary
and Dingle Lane itself — 'a very narrow blind street' — was
described as 'A very low rough place . . . Tenanted by
cockney Irish — no English will live near them'. (ref. 360) The 21
houses in the lane and courts — together with Nos 24, 30,
32 and 34 High Street — were cleared by the LCC as part
of an improvement scheme initiated in 1899. (ref. 361)
A part of the cleared land on the south side of the
lane was used for an LCC elementary school. As a
temporary measure, there were two 'portable' iron school
buildings on the site from 1906 until 1909. (ref. 362) The school
was erected by J. & C. Bowyer of Upper Norwood, on
their tender of £12,948, and opened in 1910, with places
for 740 pupils. (ref. 363) The building was damaged in the
Second World War and was subsequently demolished. (ref. 364)
Nos 68–82 (demolished).
From at least the 1650s until
1729 or later a Green Man tavern had stood on the south
side of the street at or near Dingle Lane. (ref. 365) At an
uncertain date it was moved, with its name, to the western
corner of Dolphin Lane. This weatherboarded tavern at
No. 68 Poplar High Street was rebuilt for Taylor, Walker
by J. R. Johnstone of Gough Street (together with a
dwelling house at No. 66) in 1904 (Plate 4a). (ref. 366)
In 1939 the name was transferred again to a newly
built public house (in 1994 Carry's Free House) erected
for Taylor, Walker at the opposite, eastern, corner of a
realigned Dolphin Lane when the previous site of
No. 68 was taken into the LCC's Dolphin House development. The architect was S. A. S. Yeo (d. 1966) and the
builder Bridge Walker Ltd. (ref. 367)
East of Dolphin Lane as it was in 1900 and extending
to Stoneyard Lane were formerly the buildings shown
on Plate 3c. At that time the single-storey buildings
had been the shops of a greengrocer, a confectioner and
a herbalist, and the gabled building was a public house. (ref. 368)
No good evidence of their date can be adduced beyond
their appearance. Until the 1840s or 1850s all were held
under the manor of Poplar, the copyholders from 1737
being a family called Collet (later Collet Sanderson), who
in that year, in the person of George Collet of the
Minories, glass-seller, bought the land from a linendraper
in Fenchurch Street for £175. (ref. 369) The central part of the
gabled building, later No. 72, was occupied by licensed
victuallers as the Black Horse from about 1744. By 1808
some 13 cottages had been built at the back of the
property in Dolphin Lane. (ref. 370) In that year the victualler
and lessee then in possession was required by the copyholder, John Sanderson, to spend £600 in repairs to the
satisfaction of Sanderson's surveyor, John Walters (1782–
1821), (ref. 371) an 'able architect' who designed a Palladian
auction mart being built at that time in Bartholomew
Lane and was later responsible for St Paul's, Shadwell. (ref. 372)
It seems certain that he did nothing architectural to the
front of the houses here, although he probably united
Nos 72 and 74 in an enlarged Black Horse (ref. 373) the better
to accommodate its customers ('lewd and indecent
persons'). (ref. 374)
This Sanderson was an 'esquire' of Stoke Newington
(formerly a surgeon of Clerkenwell), and he was succeeded by another 'gentleman', Walter Collet Sanderson. (ref. 375) But perhaps the copyholders were becoming,
like the area itself, downwardly mobile, for in 1837 the
Sandersons in possession were a carpenter and a
painter. (ref. 376) In 1841–56 the Sandersons enfranchised their
property from manorial tenure (ref. 377) and in 1847 the eastward
part of the street frontage, later Nos 76–82, occupied by
the single-storey buildings shown on Plate 3c, was
acquired by local builders, Thomas and William Horne,
ultimately as freehold at a cost of £460 (fig. 20). (ref. 378) They
contented themselves with building two 'cottages' tuckedaway down Stoneyard Lane in about 1847–8. (ref. 379) No
other new building followed until the Sandersons were
succeeded by a relation-by-marriage, and No. 70, on the
corner west of the Black Horse, was rebuilt in 1864–5
(the architect probably being Joseph Harris, a local
surveyor). (ref. 380) Beyond this there was evidently no sufficient
impulse to redevelop the street frontage.
In 1902 Nos 72 and 74 were rebuilt as three houses, (ref. 381)
and in 1909 a two-storey warehouse was built at Nos 76–
82 by the freeholder, a mason, road, cartage and general
contractor and wharfinger, G. J. Anderson of Poplar and
Limehouse. The architect was the local man, William
Clarkson (d. 1918), who in the following year designed
Anderson a suburban-type house in East India Dock
Road. (ref. 382) In the High Street Clarkson made no attempt
to disguise the industrial character of his design. (ref. 383)
Figure 20:
Nos. 76–82 (even) Poplar High Street, ground-floor
plans in 1903. Demolished.
Dock Cottages and the East and West India Dock
Company Library and Reading Room, Dolphin
Lane (demolished).
Dock Cottages were built in 1849–50
by the East and West India Dock Company to house
some of its work-force, and were situated at the northern
extremity of the West India Dock estate, on the west side
of Dolphin Lane. They were designed by the company's
Engineer. Henry Martin, and his colleague. John S.
Adams, and were built by the contractors Carden &
Hack, at a total cost of £6,544, or about £93 for each of
the 70 dwellings. (For a fuller discussion of Dock Cottages
see page 21 and for their demolition see page 93.) By
early 1851 a gated access road had been formed leading
from West India Dock Road, and the fields south of the
cottages had been divided into 38 allotment gardens for
the tenants, lettable at 2d a week. (ref. 384)
The dock company built a Library and Reading Room
near the Dock Cottages in 1858–9, having formed a
library for its established work-force in one of the cottages
in 1856–7. The dock company's pious hope was that this
would inspire better habits in those 'whose evenings are
now less profitably spent'. Henry Martin designed the
building as a reading and lecture room for 400, flanked
by the library and a dwelling for an attendant above a
room for evening classes in reading, writing, arithmetic,
mechanical drawing and music. The builders were
Hack & Son and the cost of the building was £1,655, of
which £500 was from outside contributions. (ref. 385)
There were 350 subscribers to the reading and lecture
room, dropping by 1862 to 195, in an established workforce of 784. In 1870 'Something like a Museum' (a
collection of specimens of produce warehoused in the
docks) was formed at what had become known as the
Literary Institution and Library. The building became
the East and West India Dock Company Club and
Institute in 1873, reflecting a change in purpose. The
scarcely used reading room was converted to be a smoking
room, into which games and refreshments were introduced. Wives could now accompany their husbands to
the club. By 1875, a billiard room had been formed and
the sale of beer and tobacco permitted. Demand for the
facility increased and alterations and extensions were
made in 1876 to plans by Augustus Manning, the East and
West India Dock Company's Superintending Engineer. (ref. 386)
In 1882 the building and the Dock Cottages were sold
to the Midland Railway Company, which had compulsorily purchased adjoining land in 1880 for sidings
and a coal depot, cutting the buildings off from the rest
of the dock estate. The Club and Institute closed in 1886.
By 1888 the building had become a copper and brass
foundry for Suffield & Brown, coppersmiths, here until
1905–6. W. H. Sheridan & Son, powder magazine builders, occupied Dolphin Works from c1916 to c1935 when
the area was cleared. (ref. 387)
Workhouse (demolished).
The frontage between No. 98
and No. 102 was dominated from 1817 until 1960 by the
building erected as a combined workhouse and town hall.
This was only the most visible part of Poplar Workhouse,
which was to develop into a large and sprawling complex
to the rear, emerging onto the High Street again at Nos
84–88 in 1901 (fig. 21). The workhouse attracted attention
not only because of its size, but also for the way in which
its administration was conducted.
Until 1813 responsibility for poor relief in Poplar
rested with the overseers acting under the auspices of
the Meetings of the Inhabitants of the hamlet. In that
year it passed to the Trustees empowered by the local
Improvement Act. In 1836 All Saints', Poplar, was combined with St Leonard's, Bromley, and Bow, to form the
Poplar Poor Law Union, and the Board of Guardians
administered poor relief until 1930, when its functions
were taken over by the LCC.
The hamlet may have been using a cottage in the High
Street as a workhouse in the 1720s. (ref. 388) In 1735 it leased
three houses on the north side of the street for the
purpose, (ref. 389) but when the lease became due for renewal it
was decided to acquire another property. In 1757 the
hamlet paid £280 for three-quarters of an acre of land
on the south side of the High Street. (ref. 390) This formed
the core of the workhouse site thereafter. The existing
buildings were supplemented in 1758 and a further
extension was approved in 1805, when Joseph Smith was
granted the contract on a price of £1,286. (ref. 391)
Not all of the site was required and in 1771 a town
hall was erected on a part of the frontage as a replacement
for the town hall building which had stood in the High
Street further to the east. In 1780 permission was given
for the town hall to be used as a school. (ref. 392) A separate
school building was erected by public subscription on
the westernmost part of the workhouse site in 1806
for the United Charity School of Poplar and St Anne
Limehouse. The schools subsequently separated and the
building was then occupied by the Poplar and Blackwall
National School. (ref. 393)
As the population of the hamlet increased in the early
years of the nineteenth century, so did the numbers of
the poor, and the workhouse buildings, which could
accommodate 120, were found to be inadequate. To ease
the problem, some of the poor were sent to Hoxton, and
a number of children were lodged at Leytonstone. (ref. 394) The
size and poor condition of the workhouse made its
enlargement or rebuilding essential and the Trustees'
administration formed in 1813 made it a priority.
Additional land to the rear was acquired in 1812. (ref. 395) but
the Trustees questioned the suitability of the site and
invited reports from doctors. One opinion was that
the workhouse's position was unhealthy, being 'low and
swampy', although the others declared it to be satisfactory
and, as no alternative could be found at a reasonable
price, it was decided to rebuild on the existing site. (ref. 396) In
1815 a new East Wing was erected and in 1817 the
buildings fronting the street, apart from the school,
were replaced by a building which included further
accommodation for inmates, the Master's living quarters,
and a town hall and offices for the Trustees' use. Both
buildings were designed by James Walker (see page 120)
and built by Messrs Horne & Gates. The builders were
paid £12,423 9s 8d and Walker's fees were £840. (ref. 397) The
proposed West Wing was not built, chiefly because the
Trustees had no legal powers to acquire the site of the
school, and so a range of workrooms was erected instead,
for £240. (ref. 398) This group formed the core of the workhouse
for the next 50 years.
Both the East Wing and the main building were of
four storeys, although the discrepancy in levels between
the front and rear of the latter meant that only three
storeys faced the street (Plate 8a). This building was of
15 bays and had a double pitched roof. The symmetry
of the street frontage was broken by the entrance, which
was originally placed in the fifth bay from the west of
the building. During alterations made in 1871 that
doorway was blocked and a new one was created in the
corresponding position on the eastern side and provided
with an incongruous stone porch. The centre of the front
had a three-bay pediment containing a circular date stone.
String courses between the floors and the projection of
the central five bays relieved the façade somewhat and
there was some variety in the fenestration. A bell turret
was removed in 1870, when it was found to be dilapidated. (ref. 399) The appearance of the East Wing was plainer,
with regular fenestration. (ref. 400)
The Trustees' administration coincided with a period
of relative prosperity in Poplar, and in the late 1820s
there were fewer than 60 inmates in the workhouse, even
in the winter months. (ref. 401) Only a few minor alterations
and additions were made to the buildings between 1817
and 1836, including the erection of an oakum store in
1833 and an extension to the laundry in 1836. (ref. 402)
The creation of the Poplar Poor Law Union in 1836
provoked fierce criticism from the Trustees. They
resented their loss of control over the administration of
the poor rate which they would continue to collect. They
also objected to their riverside parish being merged with
two others with different economic and social characteristics, and to the underlying philosophy of the 1834
Poor Law Amendment Act. That Act was described in
the Trustees' minutes as 'a Measure opposed to the
genuine principles of Christianity inasmuch as it regards
Poverty as a Crime, whereas the divine founder of our
Holy Religion . . . was himself Poor . . . it is a measure
vicious in principle having only Political Economy for its
Basis'. (ref. 403) Their objections were ineffective and the Poplar
Board of Guardians held their first meeting in December
1836. (ref. 404) The parish's administration continued to occupy
the town hall section of the main workhouse building. (ref. 405)
Children receiving indoor relief were kept at the workhouse until 1853, when they were removed to an industrial
school, briefly at Edmonton and St George's-in-the-East,
then from 1854 at the Whitechapel Guardians' school at
Forest Gate, except for a short period in 1862–3 when
they were sent to Sutton. (ref. 406) Separate accommodation for
boys and girls was erected at the workhouse in the early
1840s, providing dayrooms, schoolrooms, workrooms and
dormitories. The two blocks were designed by John
Morris, of East India Dock Road, Surveyor to the Board
of Guardians. (ref. 407) Their cost accounted for much of the
£5,629 spent on enlargements and alterations to the
workhouse premises between 1837 and 1849. (ref. 408) Other
work included the creation of an additional stoneyard on
the land at the rear of the buildings, which was carried
out by 1841. (ref. 409) In 1843 a plot of 1½ acres to the south
was leased from the East and West India Dock Company
and part of it was adapted as a stoneyard, the remainder
being laid out as a garden. (ref. 410)
The early years of the Guardians' administration
included some difficult periods. Provision had to be made
for large numbers of unemployed, particularly in the
winters of 1841 and 1848, when little employment was
available at the docks or the factories. There was a
corresponding increase in the provision of outdoor relief,
linked, in the case of able-bodied men, to work in the
stoneyard. (ref. 411) There were 521 inmates in the workhouse
on 1 January 1848 and 483 on 1 January 1856. (ref. 412) In 1854
the accommodation was assessed at 601 places, 98 of
them in the sick wards and 86 in the children's blocks (ref. 413)
If the Guardians' ability to cope with the numbers
requiring relief had bred a degree of complacency, then
this was shaken by the report made in 1857 by H. B.
Farnall, the Poor Law Board's Inspector of Workhouses,
who declared that the accommodation was insufficient
and criticized the workhouse as being 'irregular and
without design as a whole'. The Guardians responded by
requesting John Morris to draw up schemes, based either
upon the addition of new wings to the existing buildings,
or a complete rebuilding. (ref. 414) The possibility of moving
the National School elsewhere was again considered, as
was a plan to build an entirely new workhouse in Bromley,
but both proposals were rejected. (ref. 415) The solution was to
enlarge the existing site by the purchase of the Trustees'
interest for £10,000, and the acquisition of the freehold
of the land held from the dock company, together with
that of an adjoining plot. (ref. 416)
The estimate of nearly £33,000 for a new workhouse
produced a hostile reaction from the Trustees and the
Poplar ratepayers, which culminated in their proposal
that Poplar should be separated from Bromley and Bow
to form its own Poor Law union. When the move to
create a separate union was blocked by the Poor Law
Board, the ratepayers retaliated by supporting the candidates standing for election to the Board of Guardians
who opposed the building of the new workhouse. (ref. 417) Such
hostility to the cost of the proposed new buildings
contributed to the delay in choosing a scheme, despite
prodding from the Poor Law Board and the unsatisfactory
condition of parts of the existing fabric. (ref. 418)
The problem was brought into much sharper focus in
1866 with the collapse of the boom in the local economy,
bringing an increase in the numbers of unemployed and
sick applying for relief. The workhouse was declared to
be full and it became necessary to 'farm out' paupers to
other unions. (ref. 419) No improvement came in the following
year and in 1868 the decision was finally taken to rebuild
the workhouse, although John W. Morris's initial plans
to provide 1,000 places were modified at the request of
the Poor Law Board, reducing the places by 200. (fn. i) ' In fact,
the completed buildings had space for only 768 inmates. (ref. 420)
The building contract was awarded to Hill, Keddell &
Waldram of Kingsland Road, Hoxton, on their tender of
£32,480. They began work in April 1869 and the buildings were completed in January 1872. (ref. 421) During the
rebuilding, Wapping Workhouse was hired from the
Stepney Guardians from 1867 until 1870. (ref. 422)
The building fronting the High Street was retained,
but the remainder of the workhouse was demolished and
18 new blocks were erected (fig. 21). (ref. 423) One feature of
the design was a corridor range running east-west for
almost the whole width of the site, connecting the
principal buildings. There were two large blocks of wards
for men and women (B and C), with children's and
infants' accommodation in separate buildings, lunatics'
wards, probationers' wards, a chapel (in plain Gothic
style with a steeply pitched roof), six workshops, a
mortuary, laundry, and other service buildings. The main
blocks were typical buildings of that kind, but slightly
old-fashioned for their date. They were of four storeys,
of stock bricks, with white Suffolks used over the
windows, and slate roofs. (ref. 424) The designs were 'without
pretence to architectural beauty or ornamentation . . .
the erections being of the ordinary description of plain
brick-work'. (ref. 425)
Justifications for the replacement of the earlier buildings had included their unsatisfactory internal arrangements and a 'want of proper classification for the
inmates'. (ref. 426) These defects were overcome in the new
workhouse, with the wards and yards separated from each
other by walls and gates, so that the various categories of
residents could be kept apart. (ref. 427)
The earlier reservations concerning the suitability of
the site proved to be well-founded, for the contractors
discovered that the nature of the subsoil required deeper
foundations than had been anticipated. One of the Guardians thought this a result of building 'on a swamp'. (ref. 428)
The scale of the extra works provoked a dispute between
the contractors and the Guardians concerning the
additional payments, which was not resolved until 1874. (ref. 429)
The total cost was put at £50,005, considerably more
than the architect's estimate of £35,000 and the contractor's tender of £32,480. (ref. 430)
When the new buildings were being planned, the Poor
Law Board and the Guardians agreed that the workhouse
should be used exclusively for the able-bodied poor, the
sick and infirm being provided for in the new St Andrew's
Hospital at Bromley, and in the infirmary in Upper North
Street. A deputation of the Guardians visited Manchester
and studied the methods used there, and also considered
those adopted in Leicester after 1848. (ref. 431) Thus began the
'Poplar experiment' whereby the workhouse received the
able-bodied poor from other metropolitan unions and
parishes, and was run according to a harsh regime based
upon the conviction that it should provide 'an effective
test of destitution' as a deterrent to the idle poor. (ref. 432) One
local newspaper was pleased to report that the word
'Poplar' was 'striking terror into the hearts of the lazy
army' throughout London, and that the Guardians had
provided 'a sort of industrial paradise' for the habitual
pauper. (ref. 433) There were 120–140 individual 'stalls' in the
stoneyard and each worker had to complete a daily quota
of work. (ref. 434) Discipline was strict, with almost 200 inmates
sent to the refractory wards annually between 1877 and
1880, and some appearing before the magistrates. (ref. 435)
The arrangements made in 1871 were nullified by the
pressure upon accommodation caused by the increasing
numbers of elderly and infirm from Poplar in need of
indoor relief. The problem was anticipated in 1878 and
by early 1882 it had become acute, with 300 inmates
from the Poplar Union in Stepney Workhouse, which
was full, while the 758 residents in Poplar Workhouse
included 180 able-bodied from other unions. It was
therefore decided to terminate the agreements to receive
able-bodied poor from outside Poplar. (ref. 436)
Figure 21:
Poplar Institution (formerly Poplar Workhouse), ground-floor plan in 1929. Demolished
St. Storey.
The legacy of this period was that the internal arrangements, designed for the able-bodied, were not suitable
for the increasing numbers of aged and infirm requiring
accommodation, and the buildings were too small. (ref. 437)
These problems resulted in two decades of almost continuous building activity. Some extra space was found
through a number of minor adaptations carried out in
1883–4, (ref. 438) but they added comparatively few extra places,
and in 1888 it was decided to erect two new four-storey
accommodation blocks (A and D), one for men and one
for women, and extend the dining rooms along both sides
of the chapel corridor. (ref. 439) The architect was Walter A.
Hills (c1834–1917) of Bow Road, formerly Surveyor to
the Poplar District Board of Works, and the builder
William Shurmur of Clapton. The buildings were erected
in 1889–92 at an estimated cost of £33,980. (ref. 440) Some
delays and extra expense were caused by the difficulty of
laying the foundations on the wet and sandy subsoil. The
consulting architect was George Aitchison of Harley
Street (1835–1910), a distinguished figure in the profession who was Professor of Architecture at the Royal
Academy from 1887 to 1905 and the President of the
Royal Institute of British Architects, 1896–9. He recommended the use of deep concrete foundations under
the women's block, but the experiment proved to be a
failure. (ref. 441)
Hills and Shurmur worked together again in 1893–5
on the construction of new workshops, a mortuary, and
single-storey receiving wards, on the east side of Dolphin
Lane. (ref. 442) The new board-room and offices of the Guardians
in Upper North Street freed some space in the 1817
building for conversion into accommodation (see page
202). But the workhouse site was full and could only be
enlarged by small, piecemeal, purchases of land on the
High Street. Some ground at the rear of the Spotted
Dog public house was acquired for a laundry extension
in 1892, and in 1901 a boiler house was built on a part
of the sites of Nos 112–120, behind the frontage on which
the LCC later built the School of Marine Engineering and
Navigation. (ref. 443) Also in 1901, Nos 84–88 and property in
Crawford's Yard to the rear were acquired and the
buildings demolished to make way for a medical officer's
house on the street (No. 88) and female officers' quarters
to the rear. (ref. 444) By 1903 the workhouse had become 'an
enormous building, or, rather, multitude of buildings,
and once inside the iron gates . . . you may wander about
as in a veritable small town'. (ref. 445)
From 1882 the Guardians apparently exercised little
or no direction over the administration of the workhouse,
where conditions deteriorated. Will Crooks later remembered it as being 'almost revolting'; it was dirty and the
inmates were ill-clad, with a poor diet, and there was
little or no discipline. (ref. 446) In 1892 Crooks and George
Lansbury were elected to the Board of Guardians and
within a few years their allies formed the dominant group.
They set about reforming the system, tightening up the
administration, replacing the staff — a new Master was
appointed in 1894 — improving the diet, abolishing the
uniform and putting an end to the 'expensive and useless'
tasks of oakum-picking and stone-breaking. (ref. 447)
In common with other Poor Law Guardians, the
authorities at Poplar had to provide education for poor
children in their care. Boards of Guardians amalgamated
to establish district schools and thereby avoided having
to educate children in the workhouses, and in 1868 Poplar
combined with the Whitechapel and Hackney Unions to
create the Forest Gate School District for that purpose.
In 1877 Hackney withdrew and when the District was
abolished in 1897, Poplar was contributing almost all of
the pupils, while still maintaining a number of children
in the workhouse. The Poplar Union then bought the
schools and used them exclusively for Poplar children
until it replaced them in 1907 with a new school at
Shenfield, built at a cost of £162,427. (ref. 448) The Forest Gate
buildings were used as a branch workhouse until they
were sold to the West Ham Union in 1912. (ref. 449) The
Guardians also bought No. 54 East India Dock Road,
designated Langley House, and adapted it as a receiving
home for children, with c100 places. (ref. 450) In 1903 they
established a farm colony for the able-bodied on 110
acres of land at Laindon — which they bought in 1907 —
with assistance from the American industrialist and philanthropist, Joseph Fels. (ref. 451) Despite all their efforts, there
was still insufficient living accommodation for those
requiring indoor relief and the Guardians had to hire
workhouse space from other unions on a temporary
basis. (ref. 452)
In 1892 the Local Government Board fixed the accommodation in the workhouse at 1,315 places. (ref. 453) This was
exceeded within two years, (ref. 454) and for the next 20 years
the numbers of residents scarcely ever fell below the
certified figure, and often exceeded it by 200 or more. (ref. 455)
Changes in the Guardians' policies had altered the composition of the workhouse population and the nature of
the accommodation required. It became the practice not
to take the able-bodied into Poplar Workhouse, but to
admit them directly to the branch workhouses. (ref. 456) Thus,
in October 1910 there were 1,333 residents in Poplar
Workhouse, and a further 2,583 receiving indoor relief
elsewhere, including those in the Metropolitan Asylums
Board's institutions. In the workhouse, there were only
three men and 92 women classified as able-bodied and
in health, the buildings being chiefly occupied by 1,134
residents who were not able-bodied, 58 children and 46
residents who were temporarily disabled. (ref. 457)
This remained the pattern, with the existing accommodation adapted from time to time to suit the requirements of the residents. Because of the growing numbers
of men who were infirm, alterations were made in 1929
to increase the capacity of the men's sick and infirm
wards from 344 to 550 places, but these reduced the
overall accommodation from 1,110 to 1,080. (ref. 458) In 1924
the buildings of the school — which had been closed in
1906 (ref. 459) — were demolished and the site laid out as a
garden. (ref. 460)
The high costs of poor relief in Poplar were occasionally
highlighted in the press, especially when large numbers
were receiving outdoor relief (as in 1903–6, 1908–9 and
in the 1920s), (ref. 461) the implication being that the poor relief
system in Poplar was run along extravagant lines. Beatrice
Webb attended a meeting of the Guardians in 1906
and thought that the allocation of the annual contracts
indicated that there must have been some corruption
among the Board. (ref. 462) In 1922 H. I. Cooper, clerk to the
Bolton Guardians, conducted an inquiry on behalf of the
Minister of Health and concluded that the workhouse,
which had a staff of 162, was overstaffed, and that the
diet was rather too 'liberal'. (ref. 463) In fact, neither of these
observers was an impartial witness. Webb had her own
definite views on poor relief, and attended at a time when
the expense of outdoor relief in Poplar had attracted
unfavourable publicity and been subjected to a public
inquiry, and Cooper was known to favour the strict
application of the principles of the 1834 Poor Law. He
conducted his inquiry without the co-operation of the
Guardians, working only from their papers, and the
Guardians' response to his comment that the institution
was 'regarded more as an almshouse than a workhouse'
was that they were 'very glad indeed' that it should be
so. (ref. 464)
The Guardians' administration came to an end in
March 1930, when the workhouse, designated the Poplar
Institution since 1913, passed to the control of the LCC. (ref. 465)
In the mid-1930s, when the exterior was described as
being 'in a very bad condition', the LCC drew up a plan
to improve the buildings. (ref. 466) However, in 1938 it was
decided that the 3¾-acre site was too constricted for
development, and that the proximity of housing and the
possible loss of part of the land to a road improvement
scheme made it inappropriate to carry out the expensive
proposals. It was thought preferable to demolish some
buildings and use the sites as gardens, reducing both the
amount of accommodation and the running costs. (ref. 467)
In fact, in September 1940 the buildings sustained
extensive bomb damage. There were some casualties
among the inmates, but no fatalities, and they were all
transferred elsewhere. (ref. 468) It was decided not to attempt to
reinstate the buildings, and in 1941 they were assigned
to the LCC's Town Planning Committee's control. (ref. 469)
Nevertheless, it was not until 1960 that the remaining
buildings were demolished, despite the 1817 building
having been listed Grade II as 'an example of an early
nineteenth-century workhouse institution. (ref. 470) Though it
was intended that the area should be laid out as a public
open space, it remained largely derelict. (ref. 471)
Nos 104–116 and Queen (later Bickmore) Street (demolished).
Of the houses shown on Plate 151a, in about
1873 the five obviously ancient buildings at Nos 108–116
were or very recently had been copyhold of the manor
of Stepney. The newer Nos 104 and 106 had been
enfranchised more than a century before.
Nos 104 and 106 were built about 1810 at the same
time as Queen (later Bickmore) Street was laid out as a
cul-de-sac immediately west of No. 104. (ref. 472) The site of
Nos 104 and 106 and Queen Street had probably been
copyhold of the Dethick family in the seventeenth
century, but in 1724 was bought by a carpenter, Owen
Hale, who was one of a dynasty of builders. (ref. 473) His brother
Henry, called 'gentleman', together with a brewer nearby
in the High Street, John Brown, enfranchised the property (and other Hale property on the north side of the
street) in 1757 — a transaction here requiring the outlay
of only 12 guineas. (ref. 474) In about 1807–10 Thomas Hale of
Bush Lane, Cannon Street, builder Henry's grandson
rebuilt the property with the new street down its west
side, at the same time that he was building Hale Street
nearly opposite. Although built on freehold land, Queen
Street compared unfavourably with Hale Street, where
Thomas Hale could grant only short leases. It had a very
cramped plan: only 17ft wide, its two sides, as the LCC
said when deciding to pull it down in 1935, 'mutually
overshadow one another'. (ref. 475) Nos 104 and 106 were demolished in 1935–6.
The house replaced by No. 106 had been, from about
1741, a tavern called the Queen's Head until 1806, when
its occupant and licensee transferred himself, the licence,
and the name from the soon-to-be-demolished premises
to a better site, but on the same landlord's property, at
the new building at No. 95 on the north side of the
street. (ref. 476)
Queen Street's attractions were not increased by the
presence here from 1871 of the parish mortuary and
disinfecting station. The mortuary was built by Hodge &
Robinson of Bisterne Place, Blackwall, to designs by A. &
C. Harston, at a cost of £261. (ref. 477) By the early 1890s it was
thought to be both inadequate and below the standards
required by the LCC. (ref. 478) It was superseded by the new
mortuary erected in Cottage Street in 1910–11 (see page
67). The disinfecting station was built as a response to
the increased incidence of smallpox. It was designed by
Robert Parker, the District Board of Works's Surveyor,
and cost £184, including Fraser's Patent Disinfecting
Apparatus. (ref. 479) Both buildings were subsequently used
for the storage of disinfectants, (ref. 480) but were irreparably
damaged by bombing in the Second World War. (ref. 481)
The old gabled house shown by Emslie at No. 108
was a tavern in 1877 (Plate 151a). In about 1714–24 it
had accommodated the schoolmaster to the hamlet's
charity children, and doubtless therefore the school itself.
By 1726 it had passed, under the name of the Talbot,
into the hands of a licensee and was a tavern until 1940. (ref. 482)
Between 1777 and 1785 its name was changed from the
Talbot to the Spotted Dog. (ref. 483) It was freed from manorial
tenure in 1870 and in 1885 was one of the 16 public
houses owned by the Bow Brewery of Smith, Garrett &
Company, who rebuilt it in 1894. (ref. 484) The builder was S.
Salt of Limehouse: perhaps the architects were those
being employed by Smith, Garrett at No. 110.
The Committee for the Survey of the Memorials
of Greater London, founded in 1894, was particularly
concerned at the destruction of old East London. Ernest
Godman, an assistant in C. R. Ashbee's office and the
first secretary of the Society, prepared drawings of the
Spotted Dog, and notes and a sketch were made shortly
after its demolition in January 1894. These, with Emslie's
view, are the only indications of its appearance available
to the Survey of London, founded by that very Committee, when recording Poplar nearly a hundred years
later (Plate 12a, b).
The Spotted Dog had been of wooden construction,
with two storeys and garret at the front, but with three
storeys at the back, accommodated by the fall of the land
to the south. Godman's drawing of the back elevation
shows a canted bay rising through three storeys, and also
shows that the back, like the front, was weatherboarded.
Inside, in the basement but probably not originally situated there, had been 'some fine molded oak panelling of
the late 16th or early 17th century date with the small
panels and "scraped out" moldings of the period'. In the
ground-floor front bar had been wood panelling 'in the
best style of the early 18th cent. the panels being raised
beyond the stiles with large moldings and a molded dado
rail and cornice'. In 1746 the then owner of No. 108 and
the two houses to its east, a cordwainer who occupied
No. 110 himself, took out a new insurance on the three
houses for £200. (ref. 485) Possibly this followed a renovation,
perhaps when the panelling was put into No. 108 in the
belated style of a city's periphery. Unfortunately, no plan
of No. 108 was given in the Committee's notes but it
was remarked that 'the chimneys were all placed together
in a square in the centre of the house the flues being
large and the odd spaces filled in with cupboards'. (ref. 486)
No. 110 appears to have been of similar date to No.
108. A new shopfront was inserted in 1881 (ref. 487) and then
in 1895 the owners, the brewers Smith, Garrett, had a
new front built, at a tendered price of £777, by the
builder then reconstructing No.108 for them: here the
architects were jointly E. Foulsham of Bromley by Bow
and H. Riches of the City. (ref. 488) Only three years later the
shopfront was again rebuilt. (ref. 489)
Nothing is known of No. 112, which might be of
similar age to Nos 108 and 110, or the interesting midseventeenth-century-style Nos 114 and 116. At No. 116
the ratepayers in 1800 were, in brief succession, Nathaniel
and George Dance — the latter presumably the architect,
during his involvement in dock schemes. (ref. 490)
Poplar Centre for Further Education (Tower Hamlets College),formerly the London County
Council School of Marine Engineering and Navigation, at Nos 112–124.
In 1895 a 'large and influential
committee of local residents' wrote to the Technical
Education Board of the London County Council to ask
that a more permanent centre might be found for the
technical lectures already provided there by the Board. (ref. 491)
Will Crooks and the Poplar Labour League were a force
behind this, (ref. 492) but it was also part of a growing awareness
amongst statesmen, teachers and industrialists of the
need for technical education. Under Sidney Webb the
Technical Education Board prompted the Council in
1901 to acquire a site in the High Street for an institution
to give practical instruction in marine engineering, naval
architecture, navigation and related subjects. (ref. 493)
The building was designed under the superintendence
of the Council's architect, W. E. Riley (1852–1937),
begun in 1902 (ref. 494) and opened in January 1906. Unlike the
Council's technical college then being built at Brixton,
the construction of the building was given to the Council's
Works Department, under the management of G. W.
Humphreys. The slow progress was attributed to the
difficult foundations, which required cast-iron cylinders
filled with concrete to be sunk 18ft to the gravel subsoil. (ref. 495)
The cost of building was about £20,000, plus about
£6,000 for equipment other than machines. (ref. 496) (fn. j) Signs of
fine and careful work, in design and execution, are not
lacking, from the concealed gutters above the eavescornice to the stone-carving of the main doorcase, by
Bertram Pegram (1873–1941). (ref. 498)
The basement contained a boiler-room, engine-house,
workshops and laboratories; the ground floor administrative offices, drawing office, reading room and patternmakers' shop (fig. 22); the first floor had lecture rooms,
classrooms and a 'preparation room'; and the second floor
contained an engineering drawing office, navigation room,
chemical theatre and laboratory, and balance-room. The
flat part of the roof served for taking astronomical observations by ship's instruments. (ref. 499)
The face the building presents to the street is a
designedly piquant mixture of Mannerist classicism in
the skilfully worked Portland-stone masonry of the façade
below cornice level and the modernism of large, unmodelled 'studio-light' windows in the roof (Plate 9c). A
significant part in its design may have been played by
Percy Ginham (1865–1947), (fn. k) Riley's principal assistant
(formerly in Norman Shaw's office), whose initials are on
the main plans dated February 1904. (ref. 501) The caretaker's
flat at the rear on the second and third floors, an early
addition of about 1910, is in a more 'vernacular' domestic
style (a little like that of the LCC Coroner's Court on
the other side of the street): the drawings for this do not
bear Ginham's initials. (ref. 502)
Figure 22:
Former School of Marine Engineering and Navigation,Nos 112–124 (even) Poplar High Street, ground-floor plan.LCC Architect's Department, 1902–6
Some alterations were made in 1927 by the builders
F. & T. Thorne. (ref. 503) In 1929–31 the School was extended
three bays eastward (abolishing the former eastern
doorway) to designs from the LCC Architect's Department in a more conventional, neo-Georgian, style than
the work of 1902–6. This extension also had a flat roof
for students' use. (ref. 504) (A stylistic curiosity is the trussed
timber roof of the Mates' Lecture Room, now Room
D14.) In 1951–5 a further eastward extension was made
at the rear behind the Public Library, partly reinstating
an extension nearly completed in 1939 and destroyed in
1944, to designs by Pite, Son & Fairweather, architects. (ref. 505)
The Library building itself was acquired from the Poplar
Borough Council in 1957 for demolition to enable the
School (then called Poplar Technical College) to be
extended again over its site, as 'it is not practicable to
adapt the [Library] premises at a reasonable cost', (ref. 506) but
in 1994 the former Library building remains in use by
the College.
Within the last decade the college has ceased to be
mainly technological and (reflecting London's loss of a
shipping industry) is no longer concerned with marine
engineering and navigation. A five-storey extension of
the buildings on the west side was opened in 1991,
having cost £14.5 million (ref. 507) (architects John R. Harris
Partnership, consulting engineers Ove Arup & Partners,
contractors Fairclough Building Ltd, engineers and
contractors M. F. Kent Ltd). In 1983 the building of
1902–6, together with the 1929–31 extension, was listed
Grade II.
Former No. 126 and Poplar Terrace (demolished).
This
was the site on which the Poplar Central Library was
built in the 1890s (see below). It consisted of a house
fronting the High Street and the return frontage of Poplar
Terrace, a short cul-de-sac extending south from the
street. This was probably laid out in about 1800–4 as
four small houses separated by a narrow access-path from
their gardens (later run into one) on its other side. (ref. 508)
John Stock bought the property in about 1812. (ref. 509) As
remembered in 1919 by a native born in Poplar Terrace
in 1852, the garden on the east of the path 'was on a
much lower level than the pavement and was reached by
stone steps. It was damp and ill-kept with few flowers
beyond blue iris, marigold and lily-of-the-valley'. The
water was from pumps, the lighting from tallow candles
and, in the 1850s, it was 'a dreadfully insanitary place'.
Nevertheless, it was 'quite a select little enclosure',
entered from the High Street by a wooden gate, (ref. 510) and
the architect E. L. Bracebridge (1812–92) lived there in
1853–5. (ref. 511) By 1881 overcrowding had made it quite
different: there were 56 people in seven households in
the four small houses (the heads of households included
a clerk in the Civil Service, a ship's steward and a general
labourer). (ref. 512) In 1893 members of the Stock family sold
the property to the Library Committee of the parish. (ref. 513)
Poplar Centre for Further Education (Tower
Hamlets College), formerly Poplar Central Library,
at No. 126.
This tall and substantial but not particularly
memorable building was erected in 1893–4, the only
notable thing about it being that the centre of the front
elevation was designed for a different site. The intention
of the vestry in 1891, when a poll of the parish produced
an overwhelming vote for adopting the Public Library
Acts, (ref. 514) was to build a library on the south side of East
India Dock Road, first on the site of the minister's house
of Trinity chapel (now the site of Pope John House) and
then on a site next to the Wesleyan chapel. (ref. 515) It was for
the latter site that a limited competition was held in
1892. The successful candidate was a well-established
local man, John Clarkson (1838–1918), the district surveyor, of the firm of J. & S. F. Clarkson of Poplar High
Street and Great Ormond Street. His plan was adapted
to a markedly T-shaped site with a narrow front to the
road. The Building News liked his plan but thought
his elevation 'rather commonplace'. (ref. 516) By April 1893,
however, the site had been changed to the present one,
bought for £2,000. (ref. 517) This was a small property with a
frontage of about 97ft to the High Street comprising a
house, then No. 126 Poplar High Street (run for many
years as a school by tenants of the freeholders), (ref. 518) and
the northern part of Poplar Terrace (see above). Clarkson
remained the architect. Apart from a little paring down,
he did not significantly alter his narrow elevation for use
on a wider frontage, merely adding lower wings to east
and west. The centre of the front towers over the
utilitarian parts behind (Plate 8b). Periodicals noticed the
avoidance of top-lighting in the public areas in favour of
side- or clerestory-lighting, although this in fact included
windows in the lower slopes of the pitched roofs, in the
manner of the picture galleries at South Kensington of
30 years earlier. They also remarked that the small staff
was so positioned that 'complete command is had of all
the rooms' (fig. 23). (ref. 519) In the front portion the second
floor was given over to the Librarian's flat, the big oeilde-boeuf windows on the east side lighting the bathroom
and a staircase. (ref. 520) The builders were McCormick & Sons
of Islington. (ref. 521) The cost of the building, which was
opened in October 1894, (ref. 522) was £7,006, plus £934 for
furniture (and £2,317 for books). (ref. 523) Alterations or
additions were made in 1921 and 1925 and open access
for readers to the bookshelves was introduced in 1926. (ref. 524)
The building was severely damaged in the Second World
War, (ref. 525) and in 1957 was taken over by the present Tower
Hamlets College (see above).
Figure 23:
Former Poplar Central Library, No. 126 Poplar High
Street, ground-floor plan. John Clarkson, architect, 1893–4
Nos 128–154 and Simpson's Road (all but No. 130–2
demolished).
The only building now directly abutting on
Poplar High Street here is the Roman Catholic Settlement
of the Holy Child at No. 130(–132) (Plate 11d). This
demure block was built, primarily as a youth club, in
1955–6, to designs by Adrian Gilbert Scott (1882–1963)
in a style consonant with that of his clergy house for the
church of SS Mary and Joseph in Upper North Street
(see page 239). The pre-stressed concrete floors were
designed by Concrete Limited of Leeds. (ref. 526) The longitudinal shape of the building indicates that it occupies
two of the deep sites on this side of the High Street.
The side fenestration reveals the arrangement by which
the rear part has a two-storey club-room rising from
basement level, thus accommodating the steep fall of the
site that has always characterized this side of the street.
The Settlement, which took its present name in 1913,
derives from a settlement at Tower Hill founded in 1893,
which moved to Poplar in 1918, and Nos 130–132 in
1920. (ref. 527)
Discounting possible pre-seventeenth-century building, the frontage between Poplar Terrace and the east
side of Simpson's Road was the last considerable part of
the High Street to be completely developed. This was in
the 1850s, when it was the freehold property of the Stock
family.
Nos 128–136 were built between 1857 and 1861 — at
least three of the houses by Adin Sheffield, a builder of
Bromley. (ref. 528) On the 1867–70 Ordnance Survey map they
seem to be unique in the High Street in having some
sort of small garden, or perhaps only an 'area', in front
of them: an exception was No. 134, the one house of the
five then in a shopkeeper's tenure. The other occupants
(in 1868) were a rate-collector (with a particularly spacious garden), a solicitor, a relieving officer sharing a
house with the district surveyor, and an architect at No.
136, E. L. Bracebridge, who was probably responsible
for the design of all these houses for Mrs Stock. However,
in respect of No. 136 at least, his assistant Thomas
Wayland Fletcher (see page 63) claimed the actual designing. (ref. 529) By 1892 Bracebridge was the only surviving 'professional' man in these houses. Between the wars they
were often in use for 'public' or charitable purposes. (ref. 530)
Nos 138–154 had probably been part of the scattered
property held of the manor of Stepney both north and
south of the High Street and bought in 1690 by the
London goldsmith Abraham Chambers from the executors of Sir William Portman, whose family had held it
since 1652 or earlier. In 1773 the lease and in 1775 the
enfranchised freehold passed to William Currie, esquire,
the owner-occupier of the big house opposite at the site
that became Nos 119–123; (ref. 531) and, as the owner-occupiers
of that house continued to own this south-side property,
it may have been partly considerations of 'amenity' that
kept it undeveloped. In 1797 John Stock acquired both
properties from the Curries, (ref. 532) but no development took
place until the Stocks gave up the big house and rebuilt
that site in the 1850s.
In 1852 Edward Stock sold off the frontage at what
became Nos 138–152 as five freehold plots. (ref. 533) The purchasers were all local men — a chemist (for the site of
No. 140 and, probably, No. 138), a stationer (No. 142),
a victualler (No. 144), an auctioneer (No. 146) and a
surgeon (Nos 148–152 and Simpson's Road behind them),
although only the auctioneer John Carter lived here. (ref. 534)
He was a party with Stock to the sale of sites, and is
likely to have been the actual 'entrepreneur'.
The houses were built in 1855–62, possibly by the
bricklayer George Fairweather of Poplar, who witnessed
most of the deeds of sale. Again Bracebridge was probably
the responsible architect, with T. W. Fletcher claiming,
as at No. 136, the actual designing of No. 146, for
Carter. (ref. 535)
All, except No. 146, contained shops or, at No. 144, a
'Commercial Hotel and Coffee House', (ref. 536) which had
deteriorated by 1881 to a working-men's lodging house
filled with 25 inmates. (ref. 537)
At the 40ft-wide site of Nos 148–152 the local surgeon,
Thomas Gray, who had property interests north of the
High Street and elsewhere in Poplar, leased the whole
for 90 years in 1855, took a ground rent of £30 per
annum, and indirectly created a slum. His lessee was a
'blind-maker and builder', David Caldow Simpson of
Commercial Road East. (ref. 538) In 1855–6 Simpson built three
narrow houses over shops at Nos 148–152, (ref. 539) but instead
of allowing them the deep gardens of their neighbours
laid out a north-south row of houses behind them called
Simpson's Road. The fact that the houses were called
Frederick's Cottages suggests that Simpson was associated in this enterprise with another local builder, Frederick William Simpson.
The approach to Simpson's Road from the High Street,
east of No. 152, was only 10ft wide, which led the district
surveyor to bring a case against D. C. Simpson under
the powers given to the Metropolitan Buildings Office.
The case collapsed because No. 152 had not then been
built, and by the time it was the Metropolitan Buildings
Office had itself disappeared. (ref. 540) Simpson's original idea
was to build ten tiny houses measuring 12ft by 10ft. This
he changed to six L-shaped houses, (ref. 541) although they were
occupied as seven or eight. In 1881 there were 65 people
living in them, the heads of households including two
charwomen, two labourers and a sweep. (ref. 542) The houses,
islanded in an alleyway, were less hemmed in than some
slums off the High Street, but by 1889 were condemned
to closure by the Poplar Board of Works as unfit for
human habitation — chiefly, it seems, because of damp
and the thoroughly bad condition of the buildings. They
were closed in 1891–2, but not demolished. (ref. 543) In 1951 a
Mr J. G. Simpson sold the freehold of Nos 1–6 Simpson's
Road to the London County Council for £400. (ref. 544)
Eastward, the Stocks owned a house of respectable
width standing back from the street at No. 154, where a
Mrs Stock lived in 1852. (ref. 545) The family no longer used
the house after Simpson's Road was built next door
and the architect Henry Stock (c1824–1909), Edward's
nephew, of the firm of Snooke & Stock, built a singlestorey shop on part of its frontage in 1867. (ref. 546)
Nos 190 and 192 (demolished).
These houses were
inspected for the Royal Commission on the Historical
Monuments of England in 1928, when they were said to
have been built early in the eighteenth century. (ref. 547) The
ratebooks give this some support, suggesting they were
two of the five houses held of the manor of Stepney to
which one Edward Flowers was admitted in 1707, when
they were said to have been lately erected (in place of
three tenements or cottages). (ref. 548) Before 1688 the site had
been one of those held under the manor by the
Dethicks. (ref. 549) Flowers occupied one of the five houses: in
1714 the occupants of three of the others were called
'Captain' in the ratebooks, and indeed Nos 190 and 192
would not have looked out of place on the quayside of a
small Essex port.
The Commissioners' Investigator noted that at No.
192 the front had 'an old doorway with heavy beaded
frames and shaped brackets supporting a triangular
moulded hood', and that the back of the two houses had
twin gables and was of brick with storey-bands like the
front.
Nos 190 and 192 were demolished by Poplar Borough
Council for part of the site of Holmsdale House in 1937.
Nos 194–198 (demolished).
The Investigator for the Royal
Commission in 1928 thought the houses east and west of
Nos 190 and 192 had been built 'in modern times'. At
Nos 194–198 this would have been in 1822, by a provision
merchant in the High Street, Francis Robinson, under a
61-year lease from the prominent local man, James
Mountague (see page 184). (ref. 550) The fenestration of No. 194
as shown in a photograph taken in 1928 suggests that the
building may have retained something of an earlier house
that was a pair to No. 192 (Plate 4b). (ref. 551) No. 196, visible
in the same photograph, looks wholly of 1822. By the
1850s it was in the occupation of an ironmonger, with a
long line of smithies and foundries in the back garden. (ref. 552)
No. 198 was by 1824 occupied as a 'depot for Asiatic
seamen'. (ref. 553) The houses were demolished in 1937.
Nos 204 and 206 (demolished).
These houses, built in
1817, were of two storeys, with their brick fronts decorated with raised panels over the first-floor windows, so
characteristic of the lowlier East End house. (ref. 554)
The Resolute public house at No. 210 and Harrow
Lane (partly demolished).
Harrow Lane, shown on the
1573 map, was one of the old-established ways south
from the High Street. (ref. 555) It was called Chapel Lane in the
seventeenth century (ref. 556) (it led to the ancient chapelbuilding in the marsh), and later King's Road on Horwood's map of 1813 and Greenwood's of 1824–6. Its
present name doubtless derives from the Harrow tavern
situated on its western corner with the High Street in
1722 (ref. 557) and perhaps in 1706. (ref. 558) (In 1690, however, the
name was attached to a tenement in Robin Hood Lane.) (ref. 559)
It had become the Resolute public house by 1858 (ref. 560) and
the present building was erected in 1937 (architect,
S. A. S. Yeo) for Messrs Taylor, Walker. (ref. 561)
Harrow Lane was reduced to a cul-de-sac by the
construction of the West India Dock, when the dock
company built constables' houses at the bottom of the
truncated lane (see below). In 1818, the tenant of stables
at the back of the Harrow tavern was licensed by the
manor of Poplar, in a characteristically unaspiring spirit,
to 'convert' his miscellaneous buildings there into three
dwelling houses, and to lease them to the publican at the
Harrow for 18 years. (ref. 562) The resulting cottages, crouched
below the steeply sloping roadway, can be seen on the
right of Plate 10e.
The houses southward were built in 1855 by a Stepney
plumber, J. T. Derby, under an 80-year building lease
from the brewers Taylor, Walker, then the owners of the
Harrow. He called the nine houses Derby Terrace. They
were of tolerable size and the lessors were careful to
prohibit any 'hazardous, noisy, noisome, or offensive
trade'. But with a 'furnace chimney shaft' and an ironmonger's foundries behind them it was only realistic for
Derby to let them monthly, and in 1861 each housed two
or three families engaged in various sorts of manual
labour, averaging 12 or 13 occupants to a house. (ref. 563) In
1888 the yard behind became a carman's depot. (ref. 564) In
1899 Derby sold the houses to a shoemaker and a
capmaker of Wapping (who used them as security for a
loan of £2,100). (ref. 565)
Southward again, the West India Dock Military Guard
House had been built in 1807–8 on the east side of the
lane. It was designed by Thomas Morris and built by
John Howkins & Company. (ref. 566) In 1813 the guard moved
and the building became a house for the Dock Company's
chief constable (see page 325). In that year six houses in
three semi-detached pairs were built immediately to the
north for police constables of the Company, by James
Russell, bricklayer, to plans prepared by William Pillgrem
with help from John Rennie. Each house had two rooms
on each of two floors, with a wash-house at the end of
the garden. The group was extended in 1814 with six
more constables' houses. (ref. 567) The northernmost of the 1813
houses was demolished in 1840 to make way for the
London and Blackwall Railway. Formation of a rail link
between this line and a West India Dock siding in 1859
necessitated demolition of the pair of houses north of the
chief constable's house, which had become known as
Harrow House. The chief constable moved out in 1867
as, not surprisingly, he thought that the house, now
encircled by railway, was unfit for a family. It had been
demolished by 1871. The remaining cottages, acquired
by the North London Railway Company, were demolished soon after 1875. (ref. 568) Most of the remaining houses
in Harrow Lane were demolished in 1937.
No. 212.
This building was erected in 1876–7 for the
North London Railway Company to serve as its 'Goods
Managers' Office'. The contractor was Evan Lewis, at a
price of £2,844 compared with the £3,420 estimated
by the Company's engineer Thomas Matthews, who
supervised the work. (ref. 569) Previously, a smaller building on
the site had been occupied since about 1856 in connection
with the railway as offices of a coal merchants' depot or
yard. The first Poplar station of the North London
Railway, built by George Myers in 1851 and extended in
1863, had been adjacent, until it was supplanted by the
station in East India Dock Road opened in 1866. (ref. 570)
In 1936 the former offices were acquired by the Dockland Settlements and fitted up as the sixth of their clubs.
The facilities included a canteen, chapel, and billiards
and darts room. (ref. 571)
Nos 246–254.
Although Nos 246–254 are the only buildings of much apparent age surviving in the High Street
(apart from the former vicarage of St Matthias) little can
be said about these houses, now united and converted
into flats. They are, in any event, probably not as old as
they look. Nos 246–248, now in appearance a five-bay
building of three storeys and a garret storey, set back
behind a single-storey extension on the street front, was
probably at first a single house built or rebuilt about
1844–5. It was probably also then that No. 250 was
built. (ref. 572) The four-bay building, formerly two houses, at
Nos 252 and 254 is also difficult to date. The two-bay
eastern half, No. 254, may be basically of about 1812,
but No. 252 was 'built' or 'rebuilt' in 1878 at a tendered
price of £1,397 by J. H. Johnson of Commercial Road,
to designs by the locally connected architects, A. & C.
Harston of Leadenhall Street. (ref. 573) The work at No. 252
was evidently by the firm and family of Henry Wickes,
which had owned and occupied No. 254 since 1851
and thenceforward occupied No. 252 as well. (ref. 574) Henry
Wickes & Son (whose plate was still on the door in
1988) were prominent local tradesmen, combining two
traditional Poplar activities as 'shipping butchers', provisioning outgoing ships.
In 1984–5 Nos 246–254 were divided into flats called
Wickes House by the architects Stephen George &
Partners of Leicester. A round-ended staircase at No.
252 was retained above ground level. (ref. 575) The altered backs
of Nos 252 and 254, which were probably never uniform,
retain vestiges of old residential Poplar in their first-floor
iron balconies, canopied at No. 252, overlooking a garden
which still contains a fig tree and a eucalyptus.
The South Poplar Health Centre and Will Crooks
Child Health Clinic at Nos 260–268.
This health
centre was built in 1978–9 for the City and East London
Area Health Authority to designs by Derek Stow &
Partners, architects. The partners in charge were Derek
Stow and Alfred Whight, and the job architect was Eric
Mallinder in succession to Pamela Whitmore. The main
contractor was John Greenwood Ltd and the structural
engineers Ove Arup & Partners. (ref. 576)
The essential element in the design arises from the
health authority's requirement that the building should
be relocatable. To permit this while giving the building
many of the characteristics of a permanent structure, the
architects designed a system in which rigidly constructed
'modules' of uniform dimensions were joined in a manner
allowing reassembly elsewhere.
In 1975 the architects had been invited to design
hospital units that could be transported in numbers for
assembly in Saudi Arabia, and in the same year a design
for the City and East London Area Health Authority
here in Poplar was begun under the auspices of the
Department of Health and Social Security as, in part, a
prototype for extensive use in the Middle East. The
specialized constructional techniques required more
limited tendering than the Treasury would permit and
then in 1977 the Saudi Arabian project fell through. The
architects thereupon received a commission from the
Health Authority for the Poplar health centre as a single
project, and a modified design was prepared. Tenders
were received in 1978 and work began in June of that
year, being finished in October 1979.
Each of the 16 modules of the single-storey building
measures 3.3m by 6.6m and they are grouped round a
central roofed space 6.6m square (Plate 11c; fig. 24).
Each module is framed in small, hollow, rectangularsection steel. The flat timber-framed roof is covered with
bituminous felt. Those walls of the modules that form
the external walls of the building are clad in enamelled
steel panels joined by neoprene gaskets. The windows
are paired panels of frameless glass armoured 'to withstand the rigours of the local environment'. The internal
walls are of board on timber studding.
The plan gave separate entrances for the public and
staff to a U-shaped internal corridor serving both the
perimeter rooms and a central top-lit reception area. The
'box' shape is not modified to the sharp fall of the site
southward, and underneath access at the rear is thus
given to service points.
Externally the building reflects the popularity at the
time of a 'modernism' of strong colours and chunky
forms rather than the 'white' or 'transparent' look of the
older Modern Movement. The external cladding is in an
orange-red, tied visually to the building by the wrapround strips of black neoprene. This linear patterning is
only partly expressive of the structural divisions within.
The effect is of a well-made washable box resting rather
lightly on the ground, or, as a commentator wrote in
1981, 'a trailer, parked but ready to leave at any moment'.
The simple geometry of the paved and gravelled forecourt
sets this off effectively.
Figure 24:
South Poplar Health Centre, Nos 260–268 (even)Poplar High Street, plan. Derek Stow & Partners, architects,1978–9
The cost was £241,090, or some £478 per sq.m of
floor area, said in Building in 1981 to be almost twice the
average for health centres. About a quarter of this was
occasioned by preparatory work on the derelict site. The
relatively high initial costs were also caused by the
duplication which construction in self-sufficient units
required — of internal walls and 'service' facilities, for
example. The Centre also lost the economies of massproduction which the design system would have facilitated in a more extensive project.
The building attracted reviews in the architectural
press. They noticed that the room-uses were not then
quite as intended by the Health Authority. This
occasioned the comment that the design system did not
give flexibility in use, as the partitions between rooms,
being also the walls of rigid transportable units, were not
themselves easily adjustable. But the double walls between
the modules and the neoprene buffering between the
cladding panels did provide effective sound insulation,
and there was good dispersal of mechanical service-points
because each module was self-contained in that respect.
Later alteration has consisted only in the removal of a
partition, further changes to create varied room sizes
being inhibited also by the absence of suitable windowmullions in the continuous glazing against which new
partitions might have to abut. It was also remarked
when the building was new that temporary or moveable
buildings have a tendency to stay put.
No. 270, The Rising Sun public house (demolished).
From 1731 until 1737 the hamlet owned 'six rooms' on
this site for accommodation for the poor. They were
superseded by the workhouse at or near No. 209 on the
north side of the street. (ref. 577) In 1758 the hamlet sold the
site, and about 1765 a tavern was built here, named the
Rising Sun and run by the Richard Newcombe who had
previously had a tavern of that name opposite at No. 241
(which then became the Sun and Sawyers). There were
alterations or additions in 1855 and 1874 and a skittle
alley was added in 1881. (ref. 578)
Nos 296–304 (demolished).
The pair of weatherboarded
houses at Nos 296–298, slightly set back behind shops and
having flat-topped rudimentary gable-ends, are shown on
Plate 3a. In 1847 a builder of Finsbury, W. Smart, altered
both houses and put in new shopfronts, the effect being
to bring them up to the same, much enhanced, rateable
value. (ref. 579) It seems likely that the similarity of the two
weatherboarded fronts dates from then (or later). In 1914
Poplar Borough Council made a closing order on No.
300, and its demolition was ordered in 1915. (ref. 580)
The two old houses under a tiled roof parallel to the
street shown in 1877 on the left of Plate 3a at Nos 302–
304 had been two houses since at least 1817, (ref. 581) but were
said in 1777 to be then 'one tenement or cottage' converted from three tenements on the site, probably in
1705–6. (ref. 582) Nos 298–304 were replaced by an electricity
sub-station built for Poplar Borough Council in 1917. (ref. 583)
Nos 324–336 (demolished).
The Captain Man of War
public house was established at No. 324 in 1811, (ref. 584) but
the building shown on Plate 7b was erected by the
brewers Trumans, on a set-back frontage, in 1846. (ref. 585) The
public house continued here until about 1906. (ref. 586) The
shopfront was put in by builders, Morris & Son of Tulse
Hill, in 1908. The building was demolished about 1963. (ref. 587)
When No. 324 was being set back, the Trustees for
the parish undertook to widen the street eastward to the
corner of Brunswick Street (now Blackwall Way). The
houses involved (the later Nos 326–336 Poplar High
Street) were copyhold of the manor of Stepney, in the
mixed ownership of Richard Collins of Cottage Street,
joiner, (Nos 326 and 330) and Frances Major, wife of a
physician in the Whitechapel Road (Nos 328 and 332–
336). Each held the property under trustees — Collins as
life tenant by the will of his uncle William Collins (of
Collins Place), and Mrs Major by her marriage settlement.
This probably did not expedite the parish's dealings with
them. (ref. 588)
In May 1846 the Highway Committee of the parish
opened negotiations with the representatives of Collins
and Mrs Major for the rebuilding of their houses. These
were, with the possible exception of Nos 334 and 336,
'very old and dilapidated', and partly timber-built. (ref. 589) The
negotiations were difficult, and eventually the parish had
to go to a Middlesex jury to settle the valuation. The
jury valued Mrs Major's houses at £2,080 and Collins
received £650. (ref. 590) The purchases were completed in November 1848 and February 1849. (ref. 591)
The houses were not completely rebuilt, the timber
party walls being retained, by permission of the Metropolitan Buildings Office, (ref. 592) and new fronts applied in
1849 by a local builder, George Blackburn, at a cost of
£474 for Nos 326–334. (ref. 593) No. 336 was altered and refaced
(in cement) by J. Lawrence, builder, for £155, in 1850
(after difficulties with the tenant, who wanted, and got,
a shopfront of plate-glass and mahogany). (ref. 594) New drains
were laid by the parish from Nos 326–332 in 1849 — not
separately from each house, however, but via a single
drain under No. 330. (ref. 595)
In 1850 the parish Trustees offered to sell the renovated
houses to the former owners for a total of £2,700. (ref. 596) The
pricing of the offer was curious, presumably reflecting
differences in the amount of renovation in relation to the
diminished house-sites. Collins was asked for £900 for
sites bought from him for £650, but Mrs Major only
£1,800 for sites bought from her for £2,080. Both refused.
Later in the year the Trustees sold the six houses at
auction for only £2,365. (ref. 597) One of the three purchasers,
a butcher, was the previous occupant of No. 334, and
continued there. (ref. 598) Another butcher, King Wiskin, from
Millwall, bought Nos 326–332. (ref. 599)