Bethnal Green to Shoreditch

This is the route I was going to cover two weeks ago, but abandoned the walk as it was too hot. Today was about 15 degrees cooler and decidedly autumnal, so much better for tramping the streets of London.

Only just south of my wimp out point last time is this corner building, Morrain House. In the way that bizarre occurrences happen, I had also spotted this clock from the train window the following week, giving me the impetus to pick up again from where I had left off.

The building is on the junction of Cambridge Heath Road and Three Colts Lane. I have no further information on it, other than it looks like it is currently unoccupied.

It is therefore no great surprise that the time seems to be permanently 12.29.

Just around the corner is another clock which I have seen over many years from the train window, but it has always looked out of bounds. However, there has been recent regeneration activity which meant it was worth checking out on the ground.

The building is the old Allen & Hanburys Ltd pharmaceutical factory / offices, with the name still emblazoned in big letters. The building dates from 1874. The company was taken over by Glaxo (now GSK) in 1958, but the trading name was kept until recently (as witnessed by my asthma inhalers).

The site is now known as the Pill Box, and is protected by nasty security-coded gates. So the pictures of the clock are taken from a distance unfortunately

But at least the clock has been restored - in all the years viewing from the train it had seemed to be in a semi-derelict condition.

We are now on Bethnal Green Road, with this mixed-use building and its single hand clock.

On the opposite side of the road is W. English & Son, funeral directors.

Sometimes in clock hunting you just have to follow your nose, trust your gut instinct or just walk around and see what turns up. The next building was a result of a sign pointing along a side road to St Peters. Ah, a church, which means a possibility of a clock I thought. Well I didn't find the church, but I did find the Queen Adelaide's Dispensary on Pollard Row.

And looking up at the tower, I thought that is odd stonework. Looks a bit like an old coin.

When in reality it is a carved stone clock face (or rather three of them), sadly without hands.

The Queen Adelaide's Dispensary was founded by the vicar of St James-the-Less in 1849, although the current building dates from 1866. As are most buildings these days, it has now been converted into flats.

 

Queen Adelaide (that's a bust of her below) was born in 1792 and died in 1849 (hence I assume why the institution was named after her), and was the Queen Consort of William IV.

Opposite is what I assume is meant to be a Banksy, somewhat worse for wear and covered by a sheet of Perspex. It is not a patch on the elegance of the carved clock faces. I would love to know what the hands were like as I am sure this was a truly special clock in its day.

 

On the corner of the building is a foundation stone, with that Hanbury name again.

Whilst I followed my nose to discover the Queen Adelaide's Dispensary, I made the decision not to follow the sign to St Matthews's church. Which was a mistake as subsequent research shows that it has a clock. Yet another visit required sometime.

 

Bethnal Green Road has a lot of pubs, many still open, others with their original frontages complete with signs but now used for other purposes, and I suspect a few others that are now less obvious. A good road for anyone interested in pub architecture and social history.

 

Anyway, this is a blog about clocks, so westwards towards Shoreditch until we reach Peach Properties.

 

Bethnal Green Road eventually ends at Great Eastern Street, where this building is currently under wraps.

Will a clock be revealed when the scaffolding comes down?

Southwards takes you into Commercial Street, and The Exchange building. Built in 1900 - 1910, it was originally a telephone exchange, hence the name.

And finally, we reach this building on Bishopsgate, by the side of Liverpool Street station.

An East London Walk

One of the (many) great things about London is that a walk of any reasonable distance will yield sightings of at least one or two clocks.

Today's stroll is from Highbury and Islington station to Liverpool Street, via the Kingsland Road (which forms part of the A10 between the Monument and Kings Lynn). Our journey starts on numerically superior A1199, aka St Paul's Road, where the following building can be found at the junction with Essex Road.

This you would rightly surmise as being St Paul's church. Or indeed wrongly surmise as the passage of time has seen this edifice morph into becoming the St Paul's Steiner school.

The church, now a Grade II* listed building, was designed by Charles Barry and completed in 1828. It subsequently became redundant in 1980, and remained unused for many years before being taken over by the Steiner School project.

Incidentally, before the building of the church, the road was known as Hopping Lane.

Ok, we are now heading south towards the metropolitan centre on the Kingsland Road. More specifically, 520 - 522 Kingsland Road, the home of William Gee Ltd. the company, established in 1906, is described on its website as the "leading stockist and distributor of textile trimmings and haberdashery products in the UK". I have always loved the word haberdashery, so any company in the trade which has a clock outside their premises gets my vote.

Just a shame the clock is not working (a phrase I unfortunately have to use all too often in this blog).

 

Moving south, this industrial building is set just off the main road.

The clock is now in a poor state, but its substantial nature suggests that this was home to an important company. Does anybody know anything about this building?

A few doors down at the junction with Englefield Road we come across a very interesting clock.

This KTS The Corner, aka T J O'Kane Builders. Its three-faced clock has various bits of building kit instead of numerals, with a different set on each face. This is certainly something different.

Strolling every southwards along Kingsland Road, a church clock down a side road catches my eye.

Closer inspection reveals a completely different world to the busy and commercial Kingsland Road, this world being De Beauvoir Town which was built as a model village in the 1840s (that is model as in blueprint or exemplar rather than a scaled down version of real life - it would have been rather scary if I had suddenly become a giant). Incidentally I have just finished reading a book called "Dreamstreets - A journey through Britain's village utopias" by Jacqueline Yallop, which covers these model villages, but not De Beauvoir Town.

The church is the wonderfully titled St Peter De Beauvoir Town, completed in 1841.

Southwards, ever southwards, as the Kingsland Road continues to throw up all sorts of delightful surprises. One of its gems is undoubtedly the Geffrye Museum, which "explores the home from 1600 to the present day". Entry to this oasis of tranquillity is free. So pay a visit now (but please leave a donation).

The Geffrye also has an excellent café which provided much needed refreshment on my walk. Coffee and chocolate cake in a cool, quiet café, the sun shining, a gentle breeze playing softly round the tables, reading the newspaper, the murmur of other people's conversations - ah, paradise in Hoxton.

Refreshed, it is time to march on. The next find is St Leonard's church, at the point where Kingslands Road become Shoreditch High Street.

St Leonards was opened in August 1740. it has a 192 feet tall steeple, and was the first London church to be lit by gaslight (in 1817). It is also one of the members of the Oranges and Lemons gang - "When I grow rich, say the bells of Shoreditch".

It is also unusual in that it has a clock over its main entrance (as shown above), and also one on its tower (partially obscured by the trees).

And a different style of clock face on its southern aspect:

It's 12 o'clock and coming up for lunchtime, but on Shoreditch High Street it is Time for Tea.

Although actually no time at all, when you have a clock with no hands.

Time for Tea is "a five story event space and location hire on Shoreditch High Street which specialises in period production between 1939 - 1959" (which is surely supper time!).

Its neighbour is the Ace Hotel at 100 Shoreditch High Street - for no good reason I seem to be compelled to type Shoreditch High Street.

We are now getting near the end of our journey. But another interesting clock on a building I know nothing about.

And then a quick glance to the left reveals a distance view of Hawksmoor's Christ Church.

Another glance to the left along Middlesex Street gives us the Astral House clock.

And then we are finally at out destination, Liverpool Street station.

Ah, but wait. just to the south we can also see the clock on St Botolph.

But now let's finish our walk, and catch the train at Liverpool Street.