Photos from a walk around the East End

A week or so ago I went on one last photo shooting mission to visit locations for my new book, Angels of Postmans Park. It is all about Victorian heroes who died saving or attempting to save others, often complete strangers.

The last month I have been visiting all the places that are hardest to get to for me personally and in the end I was left with the nitty gritty I had been either avoiding or couldn’t easily work out how to do them in manageable chunks.

So in the end I decided to have another madcap day and visit them all, providing I could find them as I don’t have a smartphone and so rely only on my sense of direction, memory and a little of what Jedi Knights might call The Force.

One of the reasons I left these to the end wasn’t just that they are hard and time-consuming to get to but some of them aren’t in the best of areas and also them being in the East End of London, are more likely to have been completely decimated in WW2 and subsequently rebuilt, often twice.

I visited entire districts I’d never set foot in before, got stuck in a Magnificent Seven cemetery as only happens to me and generally got into mischief as is my want.

The photo above is in Bethnal Green, 20 minutes or so walk from the station I had arrived on, it being not the first stop off on the day. Finding this place was made more difficult initially as the actual old street doesn’t exist in any way shape or form having been obliterated in The Blitz and then redeveloped into what was then a futuristic and more open way of living though in many places have turned into places of notoriety.

The place where my Victorian heroine died was just near where the motorbike is. Some places I spend a period of time taking photos or exploring. This was not one of them.

In a totally different part of London, Hackney perhaps is this wonderfully restored old pub sign. I have a soft spot for the legendary Truman Hanbury Bucton & Co brewery as this was in the heart of Whitechapel, home of all things Jack the Ripper and one of his unfortunate victims was murdered on her back doorstep in Hanbury Street. (A very related but largely unknown story of two of the sad residents of Hanbury Street is also worth reading Elizabeth and John Sodeaux – Two unintended victims of Jack The Ripper)

There is so much street art in parts of the East End. I must admit though I wasn’t lost, I was wondering how best to get where I wanted to be here having been walking about 4 hours totally in neighbourhoods that I’d never been to before visiting locations.

There was a huge fight argument going on round here, I could hear it from streets away but thankfully they were focussed on each other not on weirdos wandering around who had no business in their turf.

A few minutes further along was this colourful wall near a canal. Lots of the street art in the East End is officially sanctioned. Some stay forever and others are temporary as I guess these wonderful Halloween inspired figures are.

It really like visiting places like this, such a mixture of neighbourhoods, people and buildings. This gives you an idea of some areas are like. Grungy, perhaps a little derelict but also repurposed until one day money arrives to restore the buildings or to clear them away as happens all too often.

I had made it through the sometimes hairy streets of Black Horse Road, Stoke Newington, Hackney and Hackney Wick, Homerton and other places to reach the Olympic Park. Weirdly, the place I felt most at home at on the walk, including the huge shopping centre I would later visit would be when I was in the cemetery with a few hundred thousand dead people.

If Street Art is your thing then check out my old post The Leake Street Graffiti tunnel and Whitechapel Street Art