East End Gardens

12 Jun

Anyone aquainted with the Spitalfields area in London’s East End will be familiar with the terraces of tall houses built during the early 1700s. Many were originally lived in by French Huguenots fleeing persecution in France. They brought with them their silk weaving trade and the tall houses with their light filled loft spaces made a good location for the weaving workshops. The silk weaving trade crashed during the C19th, mainly due to cheap imports, and the area became home to Jews from East Europe and Russia. In turn they built workshops in the gardens along with a number of small synagogues for their various communities (a few of these still remain today). Gradually the area, once affluent, became poorer and the homes turned into slums. WW2 and the bombing of the East End contributed to Spitalfields’ sense of desolation and during the 1960s, 70s and 80s the poverty in the area was captured by photographers such as Don McCullin and Moyra Peralta. The historic importance of Spitalfields had been recognised in the 1970s and conservation status was later granted to a number of streets. From the 1980s improvements were slowly being made, the buildings were being listed and today the houses present a wonderful blend of old architecture with modern interiors.

Yesterday a number of houses in the area close to Christ Church Spitalfields, itself a magnificent example of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s architecture and only just saved from demolition itself in the 70s, opened their courtyard gardens as part of the National Garden Scheme (www.ngs.org.uk). Money raised from entrance fees and donations goes to various health charities including Marie Curie and Macmillan Cancer Support. The day provided a rare chance to peek behind the scenes of the front facades of these amazing houses and see how their small gardens have been transformed from workshops (one was once a blacksmith’s) to small, and surprisingly quiet, horticultural havens.