Thursday, 31 January 2008
Will the 2012 Olympics-led regeneration of east London be a success? | Society | The Guardian
Will the 2012 Olympics-led regeneration of east London be a success? | Society | The Guardian: "Mawson asked: 'Will today's public sector bodies leave us with another Dagenham on our doorstep for future generations? If so, a historic opportunity will have been missed, and east London will be destined to another 100 years of relative poverty and deprivation.'
He described the current regeneration structures in east London as 'a mess', and called for decision making to be simplified. 'Real opportunities for a deep and sustainable legacy in the Lower Lea Valley [adjacent to the Olympic site] are being sliced away and lost,' he said.
The founder of the Bromley-by-Bow health centre, Mawson is a founding member of Poplar Harca - a locally run housing company that is putting together a £1bn capital development next to the Olympic site - and a founder of Leaside, a regeneration firm based in the East End."
He described the current regeneration structures in east London as 'a mess', and called for decision making to be simplified. 'Real opportunities for a deep and sustainable legacy in the Lower Lea Valley [adjacent to the Olympic site] are being sliced away and lost,' he said.
The founder of the Bromley-by-Bow health centre, Mawson is a founding member of Poplar Harca - a locally run housing company that is putting together a £1bn capital development next to the Olympic site - and a founder of Leaside, a regeneration firm based in the East End."
Wednesday, 30 January 2008
Pierre de Coubertin, founding member of the modern Olympic Games
JOHv5n3g.pdf (application/pdf Object)
Pierre de Coubertin, founding member of the modern Olympic Games organizing committee, visited Toynbee Hall in his study of English educational institutions, finding the mixture of people working together an inspiration.
1887
"Pierre de Coubertin visited London, he stayed at the University Mission, Toynbee Hall.
It was here that Charles Ashbee maintained his Arts Workshop which advocated links between sport and art."
In 1875, Oxford University historian Arnold Toynbee paid the first of what would be many visits to the Barnett’s Whitechapel parish. A British economist socially committed to improving the conditions for England’s working class population, Toynbee was influential in the establishment of several public libraries throughout London’s East Side. Toynbee also maintained a prominence in England’s labor union movement, helping to organize industrial trade unions and cooperatives.
In 1883, Toynbee succumbed to a sudden death at the age of thirty. One year after his death, the Barnetts would name London’s first settlement house Toynbee Hall in honor of their friend and colleague.
Pierre de Coubertin, founding member of the modern Olympic Games organizing committee, visited Toynbee Hall in his study of English educational institutions, finding the mixture of people working together an inspiration.
1887
"Pierre de Coubertin visited London, he stayed at the University Mission, Toynbee Hall.
It was here that Charles Ashbee maintained his Arts Workshop which advocated links between sport and art."
In 1875, Oxford University historian Arnold Toynbee paid the first of what would be many visits to the Barnett’s Whitechapel parish. A British economist socially committed to improving the conditions for England’s working class population, Toynbee was influential in the establishment of several public libraries throughout London’s East Side. Toynbee also maintained a prominence in England’s labor union movement, helping to organize industrial trade unions and cooperatives.
In 1883, Toynbee succumbed to a sudden death at the age of thirty. One year after his death, the Barnetts would name London’s first settlement house Toynbee Hall in honor of their friend and colleague.
Janus: The Papers of Clement Attlee, Earl Attlee
Janus: The Papers of Clement Attlee, Earl Attlee: "1910: Secretary of Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel."
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Monday, 28 January 2008
Newham Recorder - Minister urges ""shop a loan shark
Newham Recorder - Minister urges ""shop a loan shark: "Minister urges ''shop a loan shark
25 January 2008
CONSUMER Affairs Minister Gareth Thomas urged East Londoners to 'shop' loan sharks when speaking at Toynbee Hall, Poplar where he launched a new crack down on the illegal money lenders.
He wants the public to provide the new London Illegal Money Lending Team with tip-offs about where loan sharks are operating so they can be prosecuted."
25 January 2008
CONSUMER Affairs Minister Gareth Thomas urged East Londoners to 'shop' loan sharks when speaking at Toynbee Hall, Poplar where he launched a new crack down on the illegal money lenders.
He wants the public to provide the new London Illegal Money Lending Team with tip-offs about where loan sharks are operating so they can be prosecuted."
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Gareth R Thomas MP
Gareth R Thomas MP
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Consumer Affairs
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
East End 1888 by Fishman, William J - £14.99 - Free UK shipping, buy direct from publisher.
East End 1888 by Fishman, William J - £14.99 - Free UK shipping, buy direct from publisher.: "East End 1888 by Fishman, William J
East End 1888 by Fishman, William J
Title: East End 1888
Author: Fishman, William J
Publisher: Five Leaves Publications
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0 90712385 6 Pages: 343
Price: £14.99
East End 1888 by Fishman, William J by Fishman, William J
East End 1888 by Fishman, William J
East End 1888 is essential reading for anyone interested in social history and the history of London. Professor William Fishman shows what life was like for the labouring poor in the year of Jack the Ripper and the Matchgirls’ strike, when poverty, crime, disease and social unrest were at their height.
The communal life of the street, pubs and clubs softened the brutality of the daily grind, where the sweatshop, the ghetto, the poor tenement — and the threat of the workhouse - were ever present in an age of genuine “Victorian values”.
"In the hands of virtually any other historian this would have been a depressing book. But Bill Fishman has a gift, shared with Richard Cobb, of writing about horrible subjects in such a way as to leave you thinking that there is a God in heaven after all." Norman Stone, Sunday Times
"Fishman ís admirable book not merely enlightens us about a dead past, and excites our indignation on behalf of wrongs long since righted. It shows us a past in which we can all too clearly see the present." Leon Garfield, Times Higher Educational Supplement
"A brilliantly perceptive study... a marvellous, vivid account of the poverty stricken world of the East End, not only scholarly and well documented but also very easy to read" Spectator
William (Bill) Fishman is the chronicler of London’s East End. His other books include The Streets of East London and East End Jewish Radicals 1875–1914, recently re-issued by Five Leaves. The author is the son of an immigrant tailor, avisiting professor at Queen Mary College, University of London and former visiting professor at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin. Now retired, he regularly leads East End walks and lectures in social history. "
East End 1888 by Fishman, William J
Title: East End 1888
Author: Fishman, William J
Publisher: Five Leaves Publications
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0 90712385 6 Pages: 343
Price: £14.99
East End 1888 by Fishman, William J by Fishman, William J
East End 1888 by Fishman, William J
East End 1888 is essential reading for anyone interested in social history and the history of London. Professor William Fishman shows what life was like for the labouring poor in the year of Jack the Ripper and the Matchgirls’ strike, when poverty, crime, disease and social unrest were at their height.
The communal life of the street, pubs and clubs softened the brutality of the daily grind, where the sweatshop, the ghetto, the poor tenement — and the threat of the workhouse - were ever present in an age of genuine “Victorian values”.
"In the hands of virtually any other historian this would have been a depressing book. But Bill Fishman has a gift, shared with Richard Cobb, of writing about horrible subjects in such a way as to leave you thinking that there is a God in heaven after all." Norman Stone, Sunday Times
"Fishman ís admirable book not merely enlightens us about a dead past, and excites our indignation on behalf of wrongs long since righted. It shows us a past in which we can all too clearly see the present." Leon Garfield, Times Higher Educational Supplement
"A brilliantly perceptive study... a marvellous, vivid account of the poverty stricken world of the East End, not only scholarly and well documented but also very easy to read" Spectator
William (Bill) Fishman is the chronicler of London’s East End. His other books include The Streets of East London and East End Jewish Radicals 1875–1914, recently re-issued by Five Leaves. The author is the son of an immigrant tailor, avisiting professor at Queen Mary College, University of London and former visiting professor at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin. Now retired, he regularly leads East End walks and lectures in social history. "
Blue Plaques in the East End of London
East End history, London history, End End of London, Tower Hamlets, Ben Jonson, Dr Barnardo, Shadwell, cockney history, history of east london, brick lane, kray brothers, london ea: "Blue Plaques in the East End of London
Blue Plaques in the East End of London
There is history buried within every East End home, some of it more dramatic than others.
The houses and flats of Tower Hamlets have had more than their share of famous occupants, and an interesting tour can be had by tracing a path round blue plaque buildings.
The familiar plaques on the front of buildings, listing famous occupants and the time they lived there, have been a part of London life for more than 130 years, and are as much a part of London as black cabs or red buses.
Of course the omissions excite as much debate as the inclusions.
Why does Tower Hamlets have no plaque to Stalin, who lived in Poplar in the early 1900s as a political refugee, for example? Why no mention of Stepney and Limehouse MP Clement Attlee or Stepney’s own Bud Flanagan?
The plaques that do pepper the East End offer a cross-section of philanthropists, adventurers and artists, but there could probably be a hundred more. Using our selection, and plotting a route with the aid of your A to Z, you could happily fill an afternoon touring the blue plaque sites of Tower Hamlets.
58 Solent House, Ben Jonson Road, bears a 1953 plaque to Dr Thomas Barnardo, who began his work for children on a building on this site in 1866.
Move down to King Edward Memorial Park, in Shadwell, and you’ll see a 1922 plaque to four East End adventurers – Sir Hugh Willoughby, Stephen Borough, William Borough and Sir Martin Frobisher – and other navigators who, in the latter half of the 16th century, set sail from this reach of the Thames near Ratcliff Cross to explore the Northern Seas.
Captain James Cook is marked by a 1970 plaque at 88 Mile End Road. Before setting off for Australia, the circumnavigator and explorer, lived in a house on this site.
A different kind of maritime first was marked by a 1954 plaque erected in Westferry Road. The Great Eastern, launched in 1858, the largest steamship of the century, was built here by IK Brunel.
At 29 Turner Street, E1, a 1961 plaque remembers Charles Bradlaugh, the advocate of free thought who lived here from 1870 to 1877.
A 1988 plaque at the London Hospital marks the work of Edith Cavell. The pioneer of modern nursing in Belguim, and heroine of the Great War, trained and worked here from 1896 to 1901.
Mahatma Gandhi is probably one of the less likely inhabitants of Bow, but a 1954 plaque at Kingsley Hall, Powis Road, records that the philosopher and teacher, stayed here in 1931.
Meanwhile, a less famed philanthropist, Mary Hughes (1860-1941), friend of all in need is remembered at 71 Vallance Road, E2, with a 1961 plaque.
Dr Jimmy Mallon, warden of Toynbee Hall and champion of social reform, is remembered in a 1984 plaque at Toynbee Hall in Commercial Street. And Israel Zangwill, writer and philanthropist (1864-1926), is remembered at 288 Old Ford Road with a 1965 plaque.
Painter Mark Gertler (1891-1939) is commemorated with a 1975 plaque at 32 Elder Street, E1. And his contemporary, Isaac Rosenberg, is marked at Whitechapel Library with a 1987 plaque noting that the poet and painter lived in the East End and studied here.
John Richard Green (1837-1883), historian of the English people, lived at St Philip’s Vicarage, Newark Street, E1 – the plaque was unveiled in 1910.
The Rev St John Groser (1890-1966), the priest and social reformer, lived at the Royal Foundation of St Katherine, 2 Butcher Row, E14 and is remembered with a 1990 plaque.
Another notable East End cleric, Lincoln Stanhope Wain-wright (1847-1929), is remembered at Clergy House in Wapping Lane. The 1961 plaque records that the vicar of St Peter’s, London Docks, lived here.
A 1929 plaque at 10 Leyden Street, E1, records Strype Street, which derives its name from the house of John Strype, silk merchant, which was situated there.
And one blue plaque the East End would rather not possess hangs on the railway bridge at Grove Road in Bow. The 1988 plate reads that London’s first flying bomb fell here, on June 13, 1944."
Blue Plaques in the East End of London
There is history buried within every East End home, some of it more dramatic than others.
The houses and flats of Tower Hamlets have had more than their share of famous occupants, and an interesting tour can be had by tracing a path round blue plaque buildings.
The familiar plaques on the front of buildings, listing famous occupants and the time they lived there, have been a part of London life for more than 130 years, and are as much a part of London as black cabs or red buses.
Of course the omissions excite as much debate as the inclusions.
Why does Tower Hamlets have no plaque to Stalin, who lived in Poplar in the early 1900s as a political refugee, for example? Why no mention of Stepney and Limehouse MP Clement Attlee or Stepney’s own Bud Flanagan?
The plaques that do pepper the East End offer a cross-section of philanthropists, adventurers and artists, but there could probably be a hundred more. Using our selection, and plotting a route with the aid of your A to Z, you could happily fill an afternoon touring the blue plaque sites of Tower Hamlets.
58 Solent House, Ben Jonson Road, bears a 1953 plaque to Dr Thomas Barnardo, who began his work for children on a building on this site in 1866.
Move down to King Edward Memorial Park, in Shadwell, and you’ll see a 1922 plaque to four East End adventurers – Sir Hugh Willoughby, Stephen Borough, William Borough and Sir Martin Frobisher – and other navigators who, in the latter half of the 16th century, set sail from this reach of the Thames near Ratcliff Cross to explore the Northern Seas.
Captain James Cook is marked by a 1970 plaque at 88 Mile End Road. Before setting off for Australia, the circumnavigator and explorer, lived in a house on this site.
A different kind of maritime first was marked by a 1954 plaque erected in Westferry Road. The Great Eastern, launched in 1858, the largest steamship of the century, was built here by IK Brunel.
At 29 Turner Street, E1, a 1961 plaque remembers Charles Bradlaugh, the advocate of free thought who lived here from 1870 to 1877.
A 1988 plaque at the London Hospital marks the work of Edith Cavell. The pioneer of modern nursing in Belguim, and heroine of the Great War, trained and worked here from 1896 to 1901.
Mahatma Gandhi is probably one of the less likely inhabitants of Bow, but a 1954 plaque at Kingsley Hall, Powis Road, records that the philosopher and teacher, stayed here in 1931.
Meanwhile, a less famed philanthropist, Mary Hughes (1860-1941), friend of all in need is remembered at 71 Vallance Road, E2, with a 1961 plaque.
Dr Jimmy Mallon, warden of Toynbee Hall and champion of social reform, is remembered in a 1984 plaque at Toynbee Hall in Commercial Street. And Israel Zangwill, writer and philanthropist (1864-1926), is remembered at 288 Old Ford Road with a 1965 plaque.
Painter Mark Gertler (1891-1939) is commemorated with a 1975 plaque at 32 Elder Street, E1. And his contemporary, Isaac Rosenberg, is marked at Whitechapel Library with a 1987 plaque noting that the poet and painter lived in the East End and studied here.
John Richard Green (1837-1883), historian of the English people, lived at St Philip’s Vicarage, Newark Street, E1 – the plaque was unveiled in 1910.
The Rev St John Groser (1890-1966), the priest and social reformer, lived at the Royal Foundation of St Katherine, 2 Butcher Row, E14 and is remembered with a 1990 plaque.
Another notable East End cleric, Lincoln Stanhope Wain-wright (1847-1929), is remembered at Clergy House in Wapping Lane. The 1961 plaque records that the vicar of St Peter’s, London Docks, lived here.
A 1929 plaque at 10 Leyden Street, E1, records Strype Street, which derives its name from the house of John Strype, silk merchant, which was situated there.
And one blue plaque the East End would rather not possess hangs on the railway bridge at Grove Road in Bow. The 1988 plate reads that London’s first flying bomb fell here, on June 13, 1944."
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Toynbee Studios, Aldgate, London E1 | Review | The Observer
Toynbee Studios, Aldgate, London E1 | Review | The Observer: "Architecture
Collectively, it's still a crafty idea
Architecture
Collectively, it's still a crafty idea
Founded by social reformer Henrietta Barnett, the latest take on Toynbee Hall mixes high ideals and pragmatism
Stephen Bayley
Sunday February 25, 2007
The Observer
Toynbee Studios, Aldgate, London E1
There used to be a hotel in Milan next door to La Scala. In the lucky bedrooms, you could enjoy rehearsals through the walls. You can now get a similar effect in Commercial Street, London E1. I enjoyed a little basso buffo, or perhaps it was a tragic B flat lament, from Die Entfuhrung, only muffled by new Crittall W20 hot-dipped galvanised transom windows with low E coating and inert Argon gas in the double-glazing cavity.
Article continues
I was in the newly refurbished Toynbee Studios, latest evolution of the charmingly muddled, architecturally undistinguished but culturally fascinating Toynbee Settlement. This remote colony of High Victorian virtue was established in the Jewish and Irish ghettos of Whitechapel, east London in 1884. A 'university settlement', the idea was that pioneers from the educated middle classes should penetrate the badlands and, by example, provide inspiration for exotic Ashkenazim and bibulous Paddies.
Founders Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, do-gooders of Homeric aspect and ambition, named their project after historian and philanthropist Arnold Toynbee who gave the world the expression 'industrial revolution'. It was this revolution's social fallout that the Barnetts aimed to improve through arts-based sympathetic magic. Their Toynbee Hall was designed by the obscure Elijah Hoole in vicarage-gothic style. Here, craftsman Charles Robert Ashbee, son of erotomaniac Henry Spencer Ashbee, soon created his Guild of Handicraft which, more or less directly, led to the founding of the neighbouring Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Other Toynbee Settlers included RH Tawney, Clement Attlee, Giuglielmo Marconi, Lenin and William Beveridge. The WEA was founded here in 1903. The Citizens' Advice Bureau and Child Poverty Action Group emerged from Toynbee inspirations in 1949 and 1965, respectively. It is a Valhalla of Labour aristocracy, but all goes to show that resonantly mediocre architecture need be no impediment to social progress.
The new studios have been quietly inserted by Levitt Bernstein into a 1938 building designed by Ramsay MacDonald's son, Alister, who made a living out of cinemas (then, let us not forget, cutting-edge new media). To Nikolaus Pevsner, they were 'resolutely modernist', but this did not prevent crypto-fascist architect Reginald Blomfield, author of the scurrilous Modernismus (1934), from being a Toynbee supporter at the time.
The original idea of a collective with mixed resources has been maintained by Artsadmin, the clients for this £6m refurbishment, although 1938's 'darkrooms' have matured into 'digital media units' and the rooftop sports area has now become a generously glazed dance studio. A 280-seat theatre has been lightly titivated. On the first floor remains a decommissioned juvenile court, London's first, its cruise-liner panelling mocking, now as then, the troubled state of proletarian youth. There is a new staircase, subterranean creative hutches, a reworked foyer, obligatory caff and those handsome new windows.
If you think art is about defiance, theft and rebellion, not matched funding or local authority initiatives, there is a temptation to see Toynbee Studios as a template, designed not for real needs, but to tick administrative boxes. But, no. It is more subtle. Considerably more subtle than the Bilbao Guggenheim, for example. Almost nothing is visible from the street. Marvellously, the furniture has been bought off eBay: chapel chairs at a fiver each. Artsadmin bravely told me it wanted as little design as possible.
Are the Toynbee Studios a revival or a survival? What would Henrietta Barnett think? Soon after she built Toynbee Hall, she planned Hampstead Garden Suburb in its meeting room. The flash money of the City has still not reached gritty Commercial Street. At least Toynbee Studios stay true to old principles of urban improvisation... while the Barnetts' ghosts are in the suburbs.
"
Collectively, it's still a crafty idea
Architecture
Collectively, it's still a crafty idea
Founded by social reformer Henrietta Barnett, the latest take on Toynbee Hall mixes high ideals and pragmatism
Stephen Bayley
Sunday February 25, 2007
The Observer
Toynbee Studios, Aldgate, London E1
There used to be a hotel in Milan next door to La Scala. In the lucky bedrooms, you could enjoy rehearsals through the walls. You can now get a similar effect in Commercial Street, London E1. I enjoyed a little basso buffo, or perhaps it was a tragic B flat lament, from Die Entfuhrung, only muffled by new Crittall W20 hot-dipped galvanised transom windows with low E coating and inert Argon gas in the double-glazing cavity.
Article continues
I was in the newly refurbished Toynbee Studios, latest evolution of the charmingly muddled, architecturally undistinguished but culturally fascinating Toynbee Settlement. This remote colony of High Victorian virtue was established in the Jewish and Irish ghettos of Whitechapel, east London in 1884. A 'university settlement', the idea was that pioneers from the educated middle classes should penetrate the badlands and, by example, provide inspiration for exotic Ashkenazim and bibulous Paddies.
Founders Samuel and Henrietta Barnett, do-gooders of Homeric aspect and ambition, named their project after historian and philanthropist Arnold Toynbee who gave the world the expression 'industrial revolution'. It was this revolution's social fallout that the Barnetts aimed to improve through arts-based sympathetic magic. Their Toynbee Hall was designed by the obscure Elijah Hoole in vicarage-gothic style. Here, craftsman Charles Robert Ashbee, son of erotomaniac Henry Spencer Ashbee, soon created his Guild of Handicraft which, more or less directly, led to the founding of the neighbouring Whitechapel Art Gallery.
Other Toynbee Settlers included RH Tawney, Clement Attlee, Giuglielmo Marconi, Lenin and William Beveridge. The WEA was founded here in 1903. The Citizens' Advice Bureau and Child Poverty Action Group emerged from Toynbee inspirations in 1949 and 1965, respectively. It is a Valhalla of Labour aristocracy, but all goes to show that resonantly mediocre architecture need be no impediment to social progress.
The new studios have been quietly inserted by Levitt Bernstein into a 1938 building designed by Ramsay MacDonald's son, Alister, who made a living out of cinemas (then, let us not forget, cutting-edge new media). To Nikolaus Pevsner, they were 'resolutely modernist', but this did not prevent crypto-fascist architect Reginald Blomfield, author of the scurrilous Modernismus (1934), from being a Toynbee supporter at the time.
The original idea of a collective with mixed resources has been maintained by Artsadmin, the clients for this £6m refurbishment, although 1938's 'darkrooms' have matured into 'digital media units' and the rooftop sports area has now become a generously glazed dance studio. A 280-seat theatre has been lightly titivated. On the first floor remains a decommissioned juvenile court, London's first, its cruise-liner panelling mocking, now as then, the troubled state of proletarian youth. There is a new staircase, subterranean creative hutches, a reworked foyer, obligatory caff and those handsome new windows.
If you think art is about defiance, theft and rebellion, not matched funding or local authority initiatives, there is a temptation to see Toynbee Studios as a template, designed not for real needs, but to tick administrative boxes. But, no. It is more subtle. Considerably more subtle than the Bilbao Guggenheim, for example. Almost nothing is visible from the street. Marvellously, the furniture has been bought off eBay: chapel chairs at a fiver each. Artsadmin bravely told me it wanted as little design as possible.
Are the Toynbee Studios a revival or a survival? What would Henrietta Barnett think? Soon after she built Toynbee Hall, she planned Hampstead Garden Suburb in its meeting room. The flash money of the City has still not reached gritty Commercial Street. At least Toynbee Studios stay true to old principles of urban improvisation... while the Barnetts' ghosts are in the suburbs.
"
Monday, 14 January 2008
Arthur Szyk
Aldgate East Station
From Wentworth Street, turn right into
Gunthorpe Street and along
to Whitechapel High Street.
As you go under the arch
look left above the shop
Albert’s and you will
see an emblem containing
the Star of David. This is
the emblem of the now
defunct Jewish Daily News.
The emblem is by Arthur
Szyk in the Arts and Crafts
Style.
From Wentworth Street, turn right into
Gunthorpe Street and along
to Whitechapel High Street.
As you go under the arch
look left above the shop
Albert’s and you will
see an emblem containing
the Star of David. This is
the emblem of the now
defunct Jewish Daily News.
The emblem is by Arthur
Szyk in the Arts and Crafts
Style.
Friday, 11 January 2008
Wednesday, 9 January 2008
Monday, 7 January 2008
Friday, 4 January 2008
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