CHAPTER XVII - The Fossan (Keate and Tonge) Estate
The area dealt with in this chapter was in
the seventeenth century bounded on the
north by Lolesworth field and the Wheler
estate, on the south by Wentworth Street and the
hamlet boundary, on the east by Brick Lane and
on the west by Rose Lane. It was one of the parts
of Spitalfields to be developed in the mid-seventeenth century. The building here was probably
never of much distinction or pretension, and in the
nineteenth century this area became one of the
most notoriously degraded parts of East London.
In 1550 it had formed the easternmost part of
two closes of some eighteen and a half acres belonging to the Manor of Stepney lying between
Brick Lane and ’Hogge’ Lane (ref. 1) (Middlesex
Street). By about 1642 this easternmost part,
containing about six and a half acres, (ref. 2) was held on
lease by William Smyth or Smith of the Middle
Temple, esquire. (ref. 3) The frontages on Rose Lane
and Wentworth Street were then partially but not
completely built up. The northern part of the
area, later occupied by Fashion Street and Flower
and Dean Street, was a tenter ground held by a
’Captain Conisby’, containing ’seventeen long
Tentors’. South of this was a ’Spyning and
twisting place’, and a ’nursery’ and two gardens
which were at about this time ’planted with
Gooseberry Currant and such like Bushes’. (ref. 4)
In December 1653 William Smyth, who had,
with others, acquired possession of the manor in
March 1642/3 (see page 238), conveyed it to
Thomas Fossan, citizen and skinner of London,
and his ’natural brother’, Lewis Fossan, citizen
and goldsmith of London. (ref. 5)
(fn. a) The south-western
portion had already been assigned by Smyth to
Thomas Fossan in 1649 for the residue of a lease
expiring in about 1731, and this had been mortgaged. (ref. 7) The northern and eastern parts of the
ground were laid out in streets under building
leases, mostly for ninety-nine years, granted by
Thomas and Lewis Fossan in the years 1654–6.
The ground was by that time known as Fossan
Square.
On its northern border was built the southern
side of a new street whose name commemorated
the ground landlords and was later corrupted to
Fashion Street. Lessees in the street included
Edward Buckle (or Buckley) and Benjamin
Spencer, both citizens and carpenters of London,
Francis Hubbard of St. Botolph Aldgate, carpenter, and Samuel Twinn of Spitalfields, bricklayer. (ref. 8) In 1658 Hubbard mortgaged two
uncompleted houses to a woodmonger who was
later said to have spent £110 ’towards the finishing
of the two houses in Tiling, Glasing, Plaistering,
Painting, Paving and Carpenter's Work.’ (ref. 9) The
northern side of this street was built by the Wheler
trustees, Nicholas and Cooke, in about 1669. (ref. 10)
In August 1655 the Fossans granted ninetynine-year building leases of two adjacent plots of
ground south of Fossan Street separately to John
Flower and to Gowen Deane, both bricklayers of
Whitechapel. Each covenanted to build within
eight years on the full width of his land, thus
forming Flower and Dean Street. (ref. 11) The following February they came to an agreement that
’neither … shall in building the said street or
houses forestall one the other but shall range
equall one house with the other’. As originally
built this street, like the others in the area, was
rather narrow, with a width of sixteen feet, and
only ten feet at its western end. (ref. 12)
Between February 1655/6 and September
1657 Flower and Deane granted subsidiary
building leases to workmen by whom threestorey houses were built on the street frontages;
some leases required the houses to be ’carried up
upright’ and not to ’jettye out’, and the building
to be completed by 1663. The sub-lessees included Francis Cletherowe of St. Giles Cripplegate, Nicholas Higgins of Spitalfields and Samuel
Twinn of Spitalfields, all bricklayers, Cyrus Dry
of Spitalfields and George Savage of Stepney, both
carpenters, and Richard Green of St. Olave's,
Southward, plasterer. (ref. 13) Both Deane and Cletherowesigned deeds with their ’mark’.
Deane himself lived in a house on the east side
of Rose Lane where ’Dean's widow sold Bricks
(ref. 6) and Morter … after the Death of Gowen
Dean’, (ref. 14) and which after rebuilding was inhabited
by Peter Prelleur, (ref. 15) the Christ Church organist.
These two streets had been built on the site of
the tenter ground. On the eastern part of the
ground lying south of this the Fossans laid out at
about the same time or shortly afterwards George
(now Lolesworth) Street, to connect Flower and
Dean Street with Wentworth Street, (ref. 16) and Thrall
(now the eastern part of Thrawl) Street, to connect George Street with Brick Lane. Thrall
Street was built by Henry Thrall or Thrale, (ref. 17)
citizen and girdler, the northern side at least being
built by November 1658. (ref. 18)
The houses built at this time were evidently
not well constructed. In 1657 a ’search’ by the
Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company showed that in
Flower and Dean Street Nicholas Higgins, who
lived in the street, had used ’badd Mortar being
made of Garden Mould’ and another bricklayer,
Jacob Sewell, had also used bad mortar ’made of
Earth’. The company found another practice to
condemn: ’Att Samuel Twinn's worke forreyners
Imployed’. (ref. 19) In 1704 a house built by Twinn in
an alley between Fashion Street and Flower and
Dean Street was said to be decayed, ruinous and
uninhabited. (ref. 20)
(fn. b) By the mid-eighteenth century
fairly extensive rebuilding was becoming necessary.
Some or all of the houses in Thrall Street were
of timber, three of which were standing in 1736. (ref. 21)
After the Fossans had granted their leases it
appeared (ref. 22) that William Smyth, before his sale of
the property to them, had assigned to Edward
Ayscough a lease of the northern (tenter ground)
part of the property, which was to expire in about
1731. (ref. 23) In February 1656/7 this came into the
possession of the Rev. Robert Payne of Barkford,
Bedfordshire. (ref. 24) In June 1658 the Fossans surrendered their interest in this site to Payne, (ref. 25) who
in November made confirmatory leases to the
builders and others who had taken leases from the
Fossans. (ref. 18)
The history of the ownership of this northern
and eastern part of the area in the next twenty
years or so is not quite clear, owing to the destruction of title-deeds by fire. (ref. 26) It was held by the
Keate family from the late seventeenth century
until modern times, a George Keate having
acquired the freehold about 1676. (ref. 27) He had purchased the leasehold interest of Payne's property
from Payne's son in 1661. (ref. 28)
In the meantime the south-western part of the
Fossan estate, south of the present western end of
Thrawl Street and west of George (now Lolesworth) Street, had been held as security for mortgages raised by the Fossans. When it was acquired
by them the street-frontages were probably largely
built up, and only partial rebuilding seems to have
been undertaken. John Jenney, a draper, built or
rebuilt some seven houses in Rose Lane and
Wentworth Street in the years 1661–3 (ref. 29) and
probably sub-let another house to Gowen Deane
for rebuilding in 1663. (ref. 30) One of the subsidiary
leases made by Jenney specified,that the tenant
should not allow the house to be inhabited by any
’who shalbe or become burthensome or chargeable
to the parish or parishioners of Stepney’. (ref. 31)
By 1677 Ogilby and Morgan show the ground
at the back of this part of Wentworth Street subdivided and built upon. In the early eighteenth
century two throwsters’ shops stood here, one on a
site occupied by a similar building in 1677. (ref. 32) The
spinning ground and gardens running east to
west behind Wentworth Street in the 1650's
were thus ’parcelled out and divided’ into small
plots. (ref. 33)
In February 1695/6 Henry Fossan and his
mortgagees conveyed the freehold and leasehold
of this part of the ground to James Billinghurst, a
silk-thrower. (ref. 34) In November 1718 Billinghurst's
nephew James, of Kelvedon Hatch, Essex,
gentleman, agreed to sell this part to Daniel Tonge
of Took's Court, Holborn, (ref. 35) who later lived at
Richmond and had leasehold interests in Piccadilly. (ref. 36) He levied a fine against Billinghurst in the
spring of 1719. The final conveyance to him
seems, however, not to have been made until
1732. (ref. 37)
Tonge Estate
Daniel Tonge's acquisition of an interest in
this south-western part of the ground was followed
by a dispute with George Keate of the Inner
Temple, esquire, about its northern boundary, to
which Billinghurst was also a party. The relationship of the mid-seventeenth-century gardens
and spinning-ground to later buildings had
apparently become obscure and the deposition of
’Mr. Landeryer … an antient Witness’ was
needed to clarify it, while in the interpretation of
title-deeds further difficulty arose ’which the
antient tenants names occacioned at the tryall for
want of Memorandums what tenants succeeded
them’. Tonge appears to have been successful, at
a cost of some £700 in legal and other expenses. (ref. 38)
In 1721 Tonge and Billinghurst agreed with
William and James Dun of St. Mary Overy's,
Southwark, bricklayers, for the building of three
new houses in Wentworth Street and the grant to
them of a lease on the completion of the work. (ref. 39)
The Duns failed to perform the work (ref. 40) and in
March 1723 the lease was granted to John Haws
of St. Martin in the Fields, carpenter. (ref. 41) Samuel
Hawkins took a building lease from Tonge of a
small plot at the back of Rose Lane in 1732. (ref. 42)
Apart from this there seems to have been little
rebuilding by Tonge. That he did not value the
property very highly is indicated in a copy of a
letter from him to a Deputy-Lieutenant of the
Tower Hamlets in 1737 about his liability to
contribute to the Trained Bands. Of four houses
in Rose Lane, one ’has stood untenanted some
years past’, one ’is unlett (only three poor Lodgers
in it)’, one yielded £2 5s. yearly and was £4. in
arrears, and the fourth had as yet yielded no rent
’and the late lodgers ran away without paying their
rents, and before that, that house had stood empty,
six or seven years’. (ref. 43) In 1781 a deed described a
house in Rose Lane as ’now and for a long time
past let out to and inhabited from time to time by
sundry poor tenants as or for or in the nature of
Lodgings’. The standard of maintenance was
evidently not high as by the 1840's one of the Rose
Lane houses ’fell down for want of reparation’. (ref. 44)
On the death of Tonge's daughter Elizabeth in
1779 (ref. 45) the estate was conveyed by her executrix to
Elizabeth Bannerman, (ref. 46) who in 1800 granted a
lease for the rebuilding of the western corner of
Lolesworth Street and Wentworth Street to
William Towse of White Cross Street, St. Luke's,
yeoman, as a sugar warehouse and factory. (ref. 47) In
1810 she leased a considerable part of the estate for
sixty-one years to John Storey, a surveyor of
Fournier Street. (ref. 48) There seems to have been
little redevelopment until the later nineteenth
century, and the lease of a house and ground on
the west side of Lolesworth Street in 1870 by
G. L. Story to a Wentworth Street builder and its
assignment in 1877 to a lodging-house keeper
indicates the character of the estate at this time. (ref. 49)
(fn. c)
Keate Estate
The George Keate who acquired the freehold of
the northern and eastern parts of the Fossan estate
about 1676 was described in 1661 as a merchant
of St. Bartholomew's Exchange, London. (ref. 28) In
his will of 1680 he mentioned his apprenticeship
in Tiverton, and his property in Cornwall, Kent
and Cambridgeshire. He made his ’friend’ Sir
Jonathan Keate of Hoo, Hertfordshire, baronet,
one of his executors. (ref. 50) The property had descended by 1717 to his great-grandson, another
George Keate, (ref. 27) by whom the estate was further
built up.
This development was probably a contributory
cause of the dispute over the boundary of the
Tonge and Keate properties mentioned earlier.
Between 1720 and 1726/7 George Keate
granted building leases to John Bayley of Stepney,
carpenter, and Samuel Hawkins of Whitechapel,
carpenter, (fn. d) on the ’antient Garden’ known as
Wood's or Mason's Garden (ref. 14) and shown as open
space on Ogilby and Morgan's map of 1677. On
this were built Upper Keate Street (the present
western part of Thrawl Street) and Lower Keate
Street running south from Flower and Dean
Street to cross Upper Keate Street, and no longer
existing: these were together called Little George
Street on Rocque's map. (ref. 52) The part of Upper
Keate Street which extended west of Lower
Keate Street, and which was later known as Keate
Court, was apparently first known as Hawkins’
Court, and in 1724 was intended to be extended
to Rose Lane, (ref. 53) to form the third cross-street on
the estate. This was never done, presumably because Daniel Tonge was able to establish his right
to the Rose Lane frontage. The houses in these
streets were evidently very simple, probably
paired, with mirrored plans and a central grouping
of chimney-flues to give corner fireplaces in both
the front and back rooms. (ref. 54) The construction was
again probably not of the best quality, in 1854 the
fronts of five of the houses were ruinous and were
ordered to be demolished. (ref. 55)
Rocque's map indicates the existence of small
garden-plots behind the streets in this area in the
1740's. It also shows an open space called ’Broad
Place’ in the centre of Flower and Dean Street.
It is not known whether this was formed by the
dilapidation of the houses shown on Ogilby and
Morgan's map of 1677 or by deliberate clearance
for redevelopment. In 1749 waste ground, on or
near this site, was leased to William Smith, a dyer,
who was to build a dyehouse and messuage. An
endorsement on the lease records that ’Smith the
Son became a Beggar, there was no Building on
the Ground but a Dye House, which was a
neglected Ruin, many years no Rent could be got
& the bare Ground was given up’. (ref. 56) A house and
cooperage were probably built on the site in the
years 1785–7. (ref. 57)
On George Keate's death the property was
inherited by his widow Rachel who remarried, (ref. 56)
but by the early 1750's was again vested in a
George Keate, by whom much of the seventeenth-century building on the estate was gradually reconstructed during the second half of the century.
George Keate was a man of some note, a friend of
Voltaire, and a poet, antiquary and artist. His
daughter Georgiana, and her children by John
Henderson, who inherited the estate, were also
artists or scholars of some distinction. (ref. 58) In 1787
George Keate published The Distressed Poet, a
serio-comic Poem, occasioned by a dispute with an
architect employed by him, but this does not refer
to his Spital fields estate, which seems to have been
rebuilt without any very deliberate policy of
development or improvement.
George Keate granted building leases from
1752 to about 1773 and again from about 1792 to
1797, the year of his death, first as of the Inner
Temple and later as of St. George's Bloomsbury.
Numerous Spital fields builders were lessees in this
piecemeal rebuilding. (fn. e) In the 1770'sand 1780's
he granted repairing leases in the streets built in
the 1720's. (ref. 59)
Despite this rebuilding the estate was said to
contain many houses ’very old, and in a bad State
of Repair’ in 1805 when the trustees under the
will of Keate's widow obtained authority to grant
building and repairing leases or to sell the estate.
At that time the yearly rental from some 250
houses amounted to about £700. (ref. 60)
In the years 1807–30 three building leases were
granted by Keate's daughter, Georgiana Henderson, and trustees for rebuildings in Lolesworth
Street, Thrawl Street, Wentworth Street and
Fashion Street, to William Dongworth of Com
mercial Road, bricklayer, Barney Henley of
Thrawl Street, gentleman, and Charles Jennery of
Bethnal Green, builder. In these leases the use
of old material in the back parts of the houses was
sometimes allowed, but there were prohibitions on
the use of ’American Pine timber’ (ref. 61) In the
second half of the century leases with repairing
clauses continued to be granted by the Henderson
family but no rebuilding seems to have been undertaken, and the property continued to deteriorate.
Artisans’ Dwellings, Flower and Dean
Street Area
In the nineteenth century this area became the
centre of the common lodging house district of
Spitalfields. Here, for a very few pence, the very
poorest of the East End population found nightly
accommodation in crowded dormitories. (ref. 62) In
1838 the rector of Christ Church, giving evidence
before a Select Committee, stated that ’many of
the houses in the streets have actually communications with each other, 12 or 13 houses have communications one with another in one street, in
particular Wentworth-Street, there are whole
lines of lodgings, and there is a vista, which you
can scarcely perceive, forming a sort of boarding
partition, in which persons of all sexes are sleeping
together, through a range of two or three houses,
and sometimes more’. (ref. 63) That these lodging
houses made a profit for their owners seems incredible in view of the tenants’ poverty but Mayhew tells how it was done. A proprietor of six
houses in Thrawl Street, who had ’a country
house in Hampstead’, installed in each house a
’deputy’ on whom he called every week to collect
his dues. As a check on the ’deputy’ he employed a
’poor fellow … to go and lodge in … his houses,
and report the number present. Sometimes the
person so sent meets with the laconic repulse—
“Full;” and woe to the deputy if his return do not
evince this fulness’. (ref. 64) The houses were easily
established with little capital, infected furniture
sometimes being purchased second-hand from
hospitals. (ref. 64) The life of the lodgers centred in the
communal kitchen, where they prepared their
food. Despite decrepit buildings, unscrupulous
proprietors and indescribable dirt, the inhabitants
of common lodging houses seem to have valued the
freedom and conviviality of their way of life, and
the model lodging house for men which was
opened in Mile End New Town in 1849 failed to
attract many of them (see page 274).
By 1880 the area had sunk to such a state that
it was described as ’one of the most crime-infected
districts in the whole metropolis. There are
Flower and Dean and Keate-street, and innumerable other neighbouring narrow ways, and courts,
and alleys that afford standing room for a terribly
wicked lot of common lodging-houses.’ (ref. 65) Another
writer stated that ’Those who knew the locality
well said that if I examined the courts which ran
out of [Flower and Dean Street] and the houses in
its alleys and lanes, I should then be able to assure
myself I had seen the very worst that London is
capable of producing…’ (ref. 66)
In 1877 the Metropolitan Board of Works had
prepared a scheme for the clearance and rebuilding
of the Flower and Dean Street area and the
Goulston Street (Whitechapel) area under the
powers granted them by the Artisans’ and
Labourers’ Dwellings Improvement Act of
1875. (ref. 67) In that year it was estimated that the
registered common lodging houses of the Flower
and Dean Street area contained in all 123 rooms,
with accommodation for 757 occupants. (ref. 68) A
portion of the Keate estate bounded by Flower and
Dean Street, Lolesworth Street, the back of the
property in Commercial Street, and the back of
the property on the south side of Thrawl Street,
was purchased by the Board in 1879 from the
Henderson family. (ref. 69) Further property to the
south of this was purchased in 1880 (ref. 70) and in
1883. (ref. 71) The scheme also included the widening
of parts of Flower and Dean Street, Lolesworth
Street, Thrawl Street and Wentworth Street. (ref. 72)
The Metropolitan Board of Works did not undertake the erection of the new dwellings, but sold
the cleared land to two organizations which had
been formed to carry out this kind of work. In
1886 the part of the site to the south of Thrawl
Street was conveyed to the East End Dwellings
Company, (ref. 73) and that to the north, between
Thrawl Street and Flower and Dean Street, to
the Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Company. (ref. 74)
The East End Dwellings Company had been
formed by a group of parish workers of St. Jude's
Church, Whitechapel, their particular purpose
being to erect blocks of dwellings, to be let by the
room, so that the poorest class of labourers could
be accommodated. (ref. 75) Under their agreement with
the Board in 1886 they undertook to provide a
building of brick or stone to house at least 380
mechanics, labourers and other persons of the working class in accordance with the designs already approved by the Board. (ref. 73) The architects were Messrs.
Davis and Emanuel of 2 Finsbury Circus, (ref. 76) and
the block of dwellings known as Lolesworth Buildings was presumably completed between 1886 and
1887. (ref. 73) The Four Per Cent Industrial Dwellings
Company (now The Industrial Dwellings Society
Limited) was founded in 1885 by Lord Rothschild to provide dwellings for Jewish artisans and
labourers of this and other poor districts. (ref. 77) In
1886 they agreed with the Board to build a block
of dwellings under similar terms to those laid
down for the East End Dwellings Company. (ref. 74)
Plans for the buildings, which are known as the
Charlotte de Rothschild Dwellings, were approved
in the same year, (ref. 74) from the designs of N. S.
Joseph of 45 Finsbury Pavement. (ref. 78)
The Board of Works did not acquire any further land in the Flower and Dean Street area,
thereby granting a temporary reprieve to the
common lodging houses which remained. These
places were subject to inspection and licensing
under an Act of 1851, (ref. 79) but this measure could
do nothing to improve the class of person whom
they sheltered. When the ’Whitechapel murders’
of Jack the Ripper startled London in the latter
half of 1888, the condition of these common
lodging houses was forcibly brought to the attention of the public. Three of the victims and a
number of others concerned in the case were
residents of Thrawl Street, Fashion Street or
Flower and Dean Street. (ref. 80)
The ’Whitechapel murders’ undoubtedly gave
a further impetus towards the rebuilding of the
Flower and Dean Street area. In 1891 the Four
Per Cent Industrial Dwellings Company purchased a site comprising nearly the whole of
the north side of Flower and Dean Street from the
Henderson family, (ref. 81) and in 1892 opened the
Nathaniel Dwellings, built from the designs of
Messrs. Joseph and Smithem of 45 Finsbury
Pavement. (ref. 82) The East End Dwellings Company
also acquired a further site on the north side of
Wentworth Street in 1889, (ref. 83) and erected a block
of dwellings called Stafford Buildings from the
designs of Messrs. Davis and Emanuel. (ref. 76)
A site between Flower and Dean Street and Thrawl Street, and bounded on the west by
Lolesworth Street, was purchased in 1897 by
Abraham Davis and Wolff Davis from the Henderson family. (ref. 84) A block of dwellings known as
Godfrey, Josephine, Winifred, Helena, Ruth and
Irene Houses were built between 1895 and
1897, (ref. 85) presumably from the designs of Abraham
Davis, who was a builder, and who later designed
the Fashion Street Arcade. (ref. 86)
A block of dwellings called Keate, Spencer and
Henderson Houses was built on the east side of
Lolesworth Street on a site leased in 1908 by
Messrs. Dolley and Altman, architects and surveyors of 70 Bishopsgate Street. (ref. 87) It is probable
that they were responsible for the design of the
building.
The blocks of dwellings in Flower and Dean,
Lolesworth, and Thrawl Streets, built over a
period of some twenty years, show in their
elevations a steady advance from grim utility
towards a more comfortable domestic style. The
Charlotte de Rothschild Dwellings (1886–7) are
two parallel blocks, each six storeys high above a
semi-basement. The fronts are bleak cliffs of
yellow brick, gashed at intervals by the tall vertical
openings that give light and air to the staircases.
Two courses of red brick are used to give the
effect of impost-bands between the windows,
which have segmental arches of red brick with
flower-ornamented keyblocks of terra-cotta.
Otherwise, decoration is restricted to the iron
railings of the staircase landings, and the crested
gutter of cast iron that forms a finish to the fronts.
Lolesworth Buildings (1886–7)is an L-shaped
block, five storeys high. The fronts are also of
yellow brick, with occasional courses of red brick
which is also used for the cornices and string
courses. The severity of these fronts is relieved by
the pedestal course below the second-storey
windows, and the principal and secondary cornices
defining the top, or attic storey. In addition, the
flat wall-face is broken by pilasters, and by the
chimney-stack features which terminate with
stepped gables. Red brick pilasters, and a cornice
of brick and terra-cotta, decorate the yellow brick
front of Stafford Buildings (1890), a block with
four storeys of dwellings above shops.
The long range of Nathaniel Dwellings (1891)
rises four storeys above a semi-basement and has a
mansard attic. The front is built of light red
brick, coursed with black brick, and the window
arches have terra-cotta keystones. By using
windows singly and in pairs, the latter in shallow
bays of two or four storeys, monotony is avoided,
but the general effect is extremely fussy. The
dominant features are the attenuated arch-headed
openings fronting the staircases.
Helena, Godfrey, Josephine, Winifred, Irene,
and Ruth Houses (1895–7), are five-storeyed
blocks with a mansard attic. The fronts, of debased Classical design, are built of light red brick,
dressed with black brick, terra-cotta and stone.
The staircase openings are framed by pilasters and
the three-light windows are set in slightly projecting bays.
Yellow brick coursed with red was used again
in the fronts of Keate and Spencer Houses (1908).
These paired buildings contain five storeys, two
being partly in the steeply sloping roof, and the
front of each house is dominated by a wide
straight-headed gable feature. In the centre of
this are four superimposed arches opening to the
staircase landings, and on each side is a tall
narrow arch, rising through the five storeys. Henderson House belongs to this group, but its front
is without interest.
The planning of the blocks varied considerably,
the original arrangement of Lolesworth Buildings
being the simplest. There, almost all of the rooms
were entered directly from short passages opening
off the external galleries. This plan was, presumably, adopted to allow for a flexible system of
letting.
Fashion Street Arcade
In 1905 Abraham Davis, of 19–20 Aldgate,
builder, took a lease of a site comprising most of the
south side of Fashion Street from the Henderson
family. (ref. 88) He had intended to build two covered
arcades with cross-passages, to provide 250 small
lock-up shops, a reading-room and bathrooms,
which he hoped would attract the street-traders
from nearby Wentworth Street. (ref. 89) The completed building (Plate 49d), which was called the
Fashion Street Arcade, comprised only 63 shops,
with two entrances in Fashion Street and one in
Brick Lane. (ref. 88) The scheme proved a failure, and
by 1909 Davis had been ejected for non-payment
of rent, the site and building reverting to the
ground landlords. (ref. 89) In the same year a part of
the arcade was reconstructed as a factory, (ref. 89) and the
whole of the building is now occupied as commercial premises.
The long and low front, which might have
strayed from the amusement quarter of a seedy
seaside town, is a ’Moorish’ design in pale red
brick, dressed with moulded red brick and terracotta, and lavishly ornamented with cement. The
arcade was entered through the large twin arches,
now bricked up, in the pavilions, of which there
are five placed at intervals in the long series of
narrow bays, each containing a shop-front within
a flattened horseshoe arch. In the storey above
the shop-fronts is a range of narrow horseshoe
arches, four to each bay, the middle pair framing
windows. Below and above this arcade are
ornamental bands, and the front is finished with a
moulded brick cornice, broken by the slightly
higher faces of the pavilions. These have pyramidal
roofs of pantiles with iron-bracketed eaves.
Yoakley's Almshouses, Hope Court,
Wentworth Street
Demolished
In 1662 Michael Yoakley of the precinct of
St. Katherine's by the Tower, mariner, received
the conveyance of property on the north side of
Wentworth Street, on the western corner of
Lolesworth Street. His will, proved in 1708,
stated that he had recently built three houses on
this property, in ’Hope Court’, and appropriated
them as almshouses for aged poor women.
Yoakley had also established almshouses at
Drapers Farm, near Margate, Kent. He left the
rents of six houses between the Court and George
(Lolesworth) Street for the maintenance of the
charity, which was managed by Quaker trustees.
In 1789 the inmates were removed from Hope
Court to almshouses at Mile End. In 1835 further premises were erected at Stoke Newington. (ref. 90)
It is not known when the Hope Court houses
were demolished.