To Whitechapel
To the Whitechapel Gallery, in order to celebrate my mum’s birthday.
The birthday girl had expressed a wish to explore the Whitechapel area, one that she wasn’t too familiar with, so I picked the minds of a few friends and London experts. Mum and I had already agreed that Jack the Ripper was off the menu, so I was thinking of basing the walk around some places that I already knew (Christ Church, Brick Lane, Spitalfields Market, the Royal London Hospital) and some that I didn’t (Dennis Severs House, the Roman Wall at Aldgate).
I was halfway to constructing my own route when I found a ready-made option at Visit East London. I toyed with their Spitalfields map, but then spotted the ‘Exploring the Vanishing Jewish East End’ walk, which fitted the bill perfectly. I had already seen the ‘Whitechapel Boys’ exhibition at the Whitechapel Galley at one of its re-opening events, but here was a chance to try and put the lives of these Jewish artists in some kind of context and see if we could build a picture in our minds of the East End that they would have grown up in.
The day was a good one. A great walk in some lovely weather, some fine eating at the Gallery’s new restaurant and a new perspective on an area of London which I thought I new inside out.
Some pictures and video follow. Apologies for the awful camerawork and editing on the video, still getting to grips with the Flip.
to whitechapel from Alex Dawson on Vimeo.
So what did I learn?
Where to find the last Jewish bakery in East London is.
What happened at the siege of Sidney Street.
That those lovely red-brick buildings I used go past every day on my walk to and from the flat in Senrab Street were built as part of the Rothschilds ‘4% scheme’.