Thought I'd spare you the cobwebs this week and move from old barns to Elder Street in Spitalfields.
Remember the simple stone stair from last weekend?
Well this is upstairs in the same house, gazing through the admittedly grubby glass at more deliciously unspoiled and expertly restored houses under the guardianship of the Spitalfields Trust.
This tiny area of just a few streets, surrounded and overshadowed by monstrous, bullying glass behemoth office blocks is a haven of peace and sanity. Tim and his valiant handful have spent decades fighting off the massed lawyers of international corporations desperate to tear these buildings down and replace them with execrable shrines to crapitalist greed.
This is the kind of shit I'm talking about and it makes my blood boil.
The gas lamp marks the doorway of Denis Severs' House on Folgate Street in Spitalfields, from the back room of which the Spitalfields Trust fight their long rearguard battle against the likes of Broadgate Tower (the monstrous carbuncle towering over the street).
The corporate developers have recently won the battle to destroy the historic railway arches outside Liverpool Street Station, evicting the communities that live and work there. If you look right from where I took this photo you can still see the sky … Not for much longer.
Spitalfields, together with Brick Lane to the east and Whitechapel to the south-east fight on, though it looks like an American company wants to demolish the historic Whitechapel Bell Foundry (where Big Ben and the Liberty Bell were cast) and replace it with a monstrous glass turd of hotel and offices.
Leave our history alone, you worthless shit-stains.
4 comments:
Hey, London, do you like the money that comes from tourism? What do you think we come there for, to see American stuff? Um, no. If we want to see corporate crap it's a lot cheaper to just hang out here.
Spot on, Petrea. The Tories only care about their corporate kickbacks, however, and a in really deep with the construction industry and relaxing planning laws to allow this kind of crap to happen.
What we need is the Almighty Tourist Dollar; what we get is millions of square feet of empty and unlettable office space at ludicrous City of London rents. Grr … Argh.
I agree with Petrea -- the last thing I want to see in London are monstrous hotels and office buildings (especially glass turd ones made by American companies). I was in the Spitalfields area for a brief weekend back in 2012 and very much enjoyed seeing the old buildings. I went to a store I'd read about called Labour and Wait just for the gorgeous green tiles on the outside of the building. They had some cool stuff inside too. I went to the Old Spitalfields Market and was amused when one of the vendors said she liked my accent. Ha ha. Looking at Google maps I see a place called Museum of the Home just north of that area. Is that worth a visit?
I certainly is, Katie. And Spitalfields Market is great fun. A massive street food carnival in the square outside and just about everything you would ever wish for inside - from antiques through tattoos to vinyl and retro chic … and great food.
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