White Church Lane, Whitechapel
By the Survey of London, on 21 October 2016
White Church Lane is a last redoubt of Whitechapel’s rag trade, still (or until very recently – it’s hard to be up-to-the-minute) sporting shopfronts pertaining to manufacturers and wholesalers: Tip Top Casual Wear, K. K. Hosiery Ltd, Raw Blue Ltd, N.E.W.S. Urban, Mekyle (Bayfield Trading Ltd), Denim World, Alish (wholesale jewellery and accessories), HIP HOP Collections (wholesalers of American street wear), Senior Style Ltd, Abraham Posh Lady London. There is also an efflorescence of street art, work from 2012 facilitated by Global Street Art’s negotiations with property owners.
The road’s origins are as the north end of Church Lane, the only north-south route through the parish, in existence by the seventeenth century to link Well Close to Whitechapel High Street. The northern stretch may not have been much built up until the 1660s and back building suggests density and low status – Church Rents or Maidenhead Court (later Dyer’s Yard), and Hatchet Alley (later Spectacle Alley, now Whitechurch Passage) which had Adam and Eve Court on its south side, and there was Back Yard off the lane’s west side. All this had gone by 1800. Eighteenth-century property holders included Joel Johnson, the carpenter and architect who worked on local churches and the London Hospital. There was a sugar house near the north end and the Fir Tree public house was at the south end of the east side, adjacent to a site taken in the 1840s for John Furze’s St George’s Brewery (subsequently Johnny Walker’s St George’s Bond, now Hult International Business School). The north end of Church Lane’s east side was redeveloped in the early 1850s and the south end was obliterated by extension of the Commercial Road in 1869–70. Redevelopment since has been piecemeal, with a central section of the east side replaced in 2000-2 by the Naylor West flats, designed by Michael Squire and Partners for Ballymore Properties. That block’s artless greyness was a herald of cleansing, and sites at the street’s south end on both sides are now destined to host tower-block flats.
The north end of the street’s east side is anchored by what was St Mary’s Clergy House, now a Japanese restaurant, a building of 1894–5, Herbert O. Ellis, architect, that was an adjunct to the parish church that stood on the site of Altab Ali Park (see blog post of 15 April 2016). Next door, No. 4 of 1852–3 was built to be a sale room for Isaac Bird, auctioneer. Hunto has painted its shutter. A workshop behind an entrance passage at No. 4A was built in 1899–1900 for William Nay, a mirror manufacturer, and converted to be a necktie factory in the 1920s. The front-door shutter has a figure by Tizer. Next door at No. 6 the shutter art is by 2Rise, whose tag has also been prominent on the south side of Whitechurch Passage. Nos 8 and 10 were built in 1852 by Jabez Single of New Road, houses with shops first occupied by Mark Berry, a zinc and tinplate worker, and James Fullerton Barber, a printer. Alterations and extensions to the rear were made for a bedding factory that was later a silk-screen and joiners’ workshop. Dining rooms at No. 12, run by Alfonso Pappalardo in the 1930s, were held from the early 1940s to the early 1950s by Narian Singh for one of the area’s first Asian-run restaurants. At the time Bonn & Co Ltd had a large biscuit warehouse behind Nos 16–32.
A house and shop at No. 34 were the premises of Henry Bear, a tobacco manufacturer here from the 1840s to the 1880s. He acquired the freehold of the buildings on the sites of Nos 34–40 and an empty site at 29–31A Commercial Road and in 1901 a lease was transferred to Solomon Kirstein, a printer based at No. 38. By 1902 Kirstein had built three three-storey houses or workrooms with shops at Nos 29–31A, with Herbert O. Ellis as his architect. Kirstein took the shop at No. 29, living above with his wife, three children and a servant. It was not until 1911 that Kirstein redeveloped his Church Lane frontage as Kirstein Mansions, shops, tenements and upper-storey workrooms, this time with John Hamilton & Son, architects. Around 1970 David Abraham began selling knitwear at No. 34. In 2015 the David Abraham Partnership put forward a redevelopment scheme for the whole site proposing a seventeen-storey tower designed by Stock Woolstencroft.
On White Church Lane’s west side a small bomb-damage replacement building of c.1960 at No. 3 was decorated in 2012. The entrance-door shutter has wings by Probs, and the south return to Whitechurch Passage a head by Hunto and ‘The Lady’, a low-relief ceramic by ChinaGirl Tile.
Further south, first-floor blind arcading in a little-altered stock brick front at No. 17 was built around 1840 for Charles Marshall, a veterinary surgeon who probably dealt largely with horses. The shop is infill of what was an open carriageway into the twentieth century. Stables to the rear were rebuilt for Marshall’s successors. Around 1880 Simon Cohen, a pastry cook based at No. 32 across the road, established a refuge for homeless immigrant Jews in a house at No. 19. Named the Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter, its closure as insanitary in 1885 led to fundraising that permitted the establishment of better premises on Leman Street. Other properties continued to be used as ad hoc refuges or lodging houses. In late 1885 a Shelter employee took five immigrants from Brest-Litovsk to 11 Church Lane, then occupied by Paul Meczyk, a printer, only for them to be turned out on to the street. By 1891, in which year he fell out with the Shelter Committee, Cohen had converted the house at No. 19 to be a ‘Beth Hamedresh’ (Study Circle and Synagogue). He acted as his own builder and carried out further works in 1895–6. But this did not last. In 1898–9 Jacob King redeveloped the site with 9 Manningtree (formerly Colchester) Street; Arthur C. Payne was his architect. On the corner (No. 21) there was a Horse and Groom pub by 1760. The two-storey pub that had been run by Henry Levy was rebuilt for King in 1902 to designs by Ralph J. Miller, architect. It was a Truman, Hanbury & Buxton pub by 1910.
Fishel K. Abrahamson converted a house at No. 29 to be a synagogue in 1895–6, and nineteenth-century houses at Nos 35–37 were part rebuilt and perhaps refronted in 1915. The four-storey corner warehouse that was 27 Commercial Road had been built in 1872–3 and more warehousing went up to its west in 1876–8 at No. 27A which accommodated Hyam Goldstein’s cap factory, then Aaram Bagel’s boot factory, Burstein Isaac & Co.’s cigarette factory, and tea packing. Nos 29–33 Church Lane and 27A Commercial Road were redeveloped in 1936–7, with George Coles as architect for M. Freedman, a gown manufacturer. Coles is best known as a cinema architect, and there was a faint echo of his Art Deco skills in the façade fenestration of the factory and showroom block. Shutter painting of 2012 here was by Malarky, Chase and Billy. A scheme for redevelopment of Nos 29–37 and 27–27A Commercial Road was prepared in 2012, approved in 2014 and refined in 2016 prior to clearance of the whole site, now complete. Plans initiated by Reef Estates Aldgate Ltd propose a 270-bedroom hotel in a 21-storey tower to be operated by Motel One, a German firm. The architects are Stock Woolstencroft.
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4 Responses to “White Church Lane, Whitechapel”
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Paul Kleiman wrote on 22 March 2021:
In the early decades of the twentieth century, Church Lane (became White Church Lane in the 1930s) was a street of mainly Jewish trades people, many from Romania, and a number of them related.
My grandfather, Harry Kleiman, was a woollen merchant at No 28.
His father-in-law Hyman Isaac Yaffe ran a grocers/chandlers at No. 23.
Hyman’s brother-in-law ran a wholesale hosiery business at nos 18-20.The Schama at No 4 is the father of the eminent historian Simon Schama.
This list is from the London Street Directory of 1921
Church Lane, Whitechapel E1
East Side
2 The Clergy House
2 Whitechapel Monktonian Boys Club
4 Schama Isaac, who line draper
4A Nay & Weston, looking glass manufacturers
6 Feldman Moses & Co, passenger agents
8 Kinsler M & Sons, curtain manufacturers
10 Cohen & Nathan, tailors
12 Pappalardo Alfonso, confectioner
14A Lewis Samuel & Co, wholesale provision merchants
14 Weisberg Solomon, underclothing manufacturer
16 Spegelstein Marks, cigarette box maker
18 & 20 Winer Abraham & Co, wholesale hosiers
22 Sheradsky Marks, who furrier
24 Makover Hezekiah Goodman, woollen draper
26 Segal Mrs Annie Ray, silk merchant
28 Kleiman Harry, woollen merchant
30 Layton & Co, tobacconists
32 Sieratzki Gustav, sewing silk manufacturer
34 Brown S A & Co, warehousemen
36 Rinsler Isador, who hosier
38 Capinsky J & Sons, who hosiers
38A Allen Mrs Ida, millinerWest Side
1 Laibovitch Solomon, furrier
3 Moscovitz & Godlewitz, hosiers
… here is Spectacle Alley …
11 Lewis Harry, wholesale clothier
13 Goldberg S & Sons, blouse manufacturers
15 Kravis Simon, woollen merchant
19 Frendenheim Elias, draper
21 Horse and Groom pub, Cohen Davis
23 Yaffe Hyman Isaac, chandlers shop
25 Sunshine Joseph, milliner
27 Muendo Barnett, cigarette paper maker
29 Lyon Henry, blouse manufacturer
31 Davis Alfred, watch & clock dealer
33 Goldstein Abraham, tailor
35 Sheinberg Miss Sarah, dining rooms
37 Dintenfass Alex, warehouseman -
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James Cohen wrote on 3 August 2022:
My Dads Dad (Henry Born (1909) Dad (Frederick?/ Israel? Cohen?, lived at no. 35 Church Lane around 1909 and earlier. I would love to find out more information about names and anything relating to the location and dates. I’m just starting to research my family history and This side of the family story is very interesting yet somehow hard to find and verify actual information. Thankyou.
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Amber wrote on 1 January 2023:
There was a factory right opposite the white chapel tube station I crossed the main road went down a passage to get to this manufacture of salmon sadly it closed down could someone throw a light on the name of this passage
Early 50s.. From Chicksand House,.cut through Black Lion Yard (past Evans Dairy, where there was a cow!) to Whitechapel – thence to Pappalardos in Whitechurch Lane, where their daughter, Olive, and I would make our way to CFS in Spita