Click
here to see part one of the walking map, and part
two, and part
three
Next week [June 5] sees the start of the summer festival in Spitalfields, a
two-week long feast of music, food and celebration of different races and
cultures in the east end, London's most cosmospolitan area. So this is your
chance to combine a concert at Christ Church or Old Spitalfields market with
a summer walk through east London, taking in the curry houses and market of
Brick Lane, the markets in Columbia Road, Broadway and Ridley Road and the
parks at Haggerston and London Fields before finishing at the overgrown
Victorian Abney Park cemetary in Stoke Newington.
Walking is the best way to peel apart the rich layers of the east end's
history and architecture, its reminders of successions of immigrants through
a Hebrew inscription or a mosque in a row of Victorian terraced houses, and
its rapidly gentrifying streets.
Highlights
Christ Church, Spitalfields and Old Spitalfields Market
Brick Lane
Columbia Road
Haggerston Park
Broadway Market
London Fields
Ridley Road Market
Stoke Newington Church Street
Abney Park Cemetary
Type of walk: linear
Distance: 4.5 miles approx
Time taken: two hours (excluding market browsing)
Weekends are the best time to do this walk if you want to see these markets
along the route in action. Broadway Market operates on Saturdays and Brick
Lane and Columbia Road on Sundays.
Start: Liverpool Street Station (train, and central, circle,
metrpolitan and Hammersmith & City line tube). Take the Bishopsgate exit
at Liverpool Street station and turn left in Bishopsgate to cross at the
pedestrian lights. Continue straight ahead to Middlesex Street, following
signs to Sandy's Row and Artillery Passage. The road narrows to an
intriguing passage of old shop fronts, and a short diversion takes you to
the Sandy's Row synagogue, one of only a handful left in what used to be an
area full of Jews. The building on the left as the passage widens used to be
a night shelter for poor men and women run by the Sisters of Mercy and is
now being converted into student halls of residents for the London School of
Economics
Turn left into Crispin Street and cross Brushfield Street to Old Spitalfields
Market. Once a fruit and vegetable market, the site has recently been the
focus of decades of heated planning battles between conservationists and
expansionist City firms hunting for valuable land. But part of the market
and the old building has survived, with the market selling books, jewellery,
crafts and clothes and stalls in the food court serving everything from
Indonesian to Indian.
Leave the market by the Commercial Street exit and cross the crossing to
Fournier Street. On the corner is Christ Church, Spitalfields, designed by
Nicholas Hawsmoor in 1720. It was restored in 2004 at a cost of £10 million
and is a central concert venue for the Spitalfields festival.
Walk up Fournier Street, turn left into Wilkes Street and right into Princelet
Street. The streets are lined with tall narrow brick houses built for
Huguenot weavers, with large attic windows at the top of each house to give
maximum daylight for weaving. Years of being threatened with demolition left
many of the houses derelict but now they are being smartened up by new
affluent owners. Spitalfields has been home to successive waves of
immigrants including Jews fleeing Russian pogroms at the end of the
nineteenth century and the area still carries many reminders of the Jewish
East End, including No 19 Princelet Street which has a disused synagogue
built onto the back. The house and synagogue are occasionally open to the
public.
Continue ahead to Brick Lane. The large square building on the corner dates
from 1743 and was originally a Hugenot church, before becoming the
Spitalfields Great Synagogue. Now it is the Brick Lane Jamme Masjid, a
mosque serving the area's large Muslim population. Brick Lane is a curry
lover's delight, lined with restaurants, sweet shops, grocery stores and
Islamic bookstores and has become a trendy place to live and work. If hunger
strikes, stop for a beigel in the Brick Lane Beigel Bake or coffee at one of
the area's burgeoning choice of cafes.
Keep straight on across Bethnal Green Road up Brick Lane, then turn left down
Rhoda Street and cross Swanfield Street into Arnold Circus. This distinctive
circle of red brick Arts and Crafts style houses with bandstand in the
middle is the Boundary Estate, built by the London County Council, a
forerunner of the present Greater London Authority, as model housing at the
beginning of the twentieth century. Follow the circle round to the right,
then turn up Hocker Street, right into to Virginia Road and continue to
Columbia Road. This street of workmen's terraces comes alive on Sunday for
the Columbia Road flower market and is crowded with Londoners wanting cheap,
fresh plants and flowers for their gardens. The restored terraces and
shopfronts lining the road house pottery, tile and craft shops.
With the small Ion Square gardens on your right, follow the cycle sign to
Hackney and cross Hackney Road to Haggerston Park, the first of a string of
green spaces along the route. All are well used by the residents of Hackney,
one of London's poorest and most built up boroughs. Walk straight across the
park to an opening into Audrey Street and left into Goldsmiths Row.
This leads across the Regent's Canal to Broadway Market. A few years ago this
was just another run-down London shopping street but it has gentrified
dramatically with an independent bookshop, galleries, delis and outdoor
cafes springing up to serve the expanding middle-classes of London Fields.
The Saturday market is heaving with young families and three-wheeled buggies
salivating over fresh bread, homemade cakes, cheeses, olives, fruit and
vegetables or sitting over the Saturday papers at an outside café table. The
market is full of tempting picnic treats if you want to stock up here to eat
in London Fields. Alternatively, there's a good choice of cafes and
restaurants. The bad news is that locals are in the middle of a long fight
against developers who want to demolish some of the Victorian shops to build
flats.
Cross Westgate Street to London Fields, another well-used park full of
families and children playing football, and head straight across the park to
the tennis courts and the exit to Richmond Road, cross at the crossing and
continue down Navarino Road, whose well-tended Victorian houses are home to
many of the families thronging Broadway Market. Continue straight across
Graham Road to Dalston Lane where you turn left. Ahead of you is Ridley Road
market, full of stalls selling exotic Afro-Caribbean fish, fruit and
vegetables, cheap clothes and household goods, crowded with shoppers
speaking a babel of different languages. A sharp contrast to Broadway Market.
At Kingsland Road, cross at the pedestrian lights and turn right past Dalston
Station, then take the first left, Bradbury Road. Continue straight across
at the junction to St Jude Street, turn right at King Henry's Walk and
follow the road round to Mildmay Road. This leads to Newington Green, a
green space recently restored by Islington Council. Turn right and follow
the green round to Newington Green Unitarian Church. An unbtrusive brown
plaque on the side of the church records that it is the oldest non
conformist place of worship still in use in London. Take the path to the
left of the church, Church Walk, which leads past pretty Victorian terraces
and a primary school to Albion Grove. Turn right into Albion Road and right
again into Stoke Newington Church Street
This is the epicentre of Stoke Newington, now decidedly middle class with a
New Age tinge. This is a good place to stop for a drink or meal in one of
the many bars or restaurants and browse through second hand bookshops.
The entrance to Abney Park Cemetary is on the left, just before the fire
station. Its overgrown graves marked with elaborate headstones and crumbling
statues of sorrowing angles mark the final resting place of, among others,
William and Catherine Booth, founders of the Salvation Army, marked with a
large stone tablet near the Church Street entrance. Bear right here and
follow the path round to the right until you reach the cemetary's main path.
The gates lead to Stamford Hill and the end of the walk.
