‘When will you pay me say the bells of Old Bailey, when I grow rich say the bells of Shoreditch’ are lines from the nursery rhyme ‘Oranges and Lemons’. They reflect the fact that the parish of St.Leonard’s, Shoreditch, borders on the City of London and its history is closely interconnected with that of the metropolis. Relationships between the parishioners of St. Leonard’s and the people of London have, however, not always been easy. In 1516 ‘young men of the City’ armed with ‘spades and shovels’ marched out to the fields of Hoxton grubbing up hedges and filling ditches because they resented being deprived of space where they could roam freely and practise archery. Since 1965 Shoreditch has been part of the London Borough of Hackney and it has been said by one wag that you can spit from the poorest borough in the land to the richest!

Liverpool Street Station. Liverpool Street Station was built for the Great Eastern Railway in 1874 , the last of London’s great railway termini. Among the ancient buildings demolished to make way for it was Sir Paul Pindar’s house. Pindar earned his knighthood by lending money to James I but was left penniless when James refused to repay him. The façade of Pindar’s house was re-erected in the Victoria and Albert Museum after the demolition. Despite its magnificent cast iron railway sheds, the station had become very dark and dreary by the 1980s, but that didn’t deter John Betjeman writing to Mary Wilson (poet wife of Harold)

Walking through the lower mall you reach what is called the Octagon, the entrance to the extensive and monumental Broadgate Centre, largely built by Arup Associates and named after the now erased Broad Street Station (a terminus of the North London Railway of the 1850s). Within the Octagon stands a massive steel construction, the Fulcrum by American artist Richard Serra, that defies understanding as to how it could have been brought there in the first place! This leads up steps to the Broadgate Circle, a terraced open space used for concerts in the summer and ice skating in the winter. Until the boundary changes of 1993, the boundary between the City and the London Borough of Hackney bisected the Circle. Most of the Broadgate development fell within Hackney but has now been annexed by the City. Broadgate has been described as ‘a riot of, steel, glass and greenery’ - to that could be added statuary. One marvellous group of life size figures, representing a group of commuters forever walking but never getting anywhere, stands in Finsbury Avenue Square.

Crossing Sun Street you enter the present day borough of Hackney. Crown Place is a wide pedestrianised precinct with restaurants and offices that, like Broadgate as a whole, buzzes with life during the week but is strangely silent at weekends.

In 1862 Philip Webb, a friend and associate of William Morris, built for the philanthropist Colonel Gillum this group of five workshops, described by Bridget Cherry as ‘a remarkably innovative and eclectic design – the shops are placed between buttresses, with a carriage arch at the west end. Above are two-light windows of Queen Ann shape but under Gothic arches’. The scheme incorporates a drinking fountain at the east end under a Gothic canopy.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries the area around Curtain Road and Great Eastern Street was the centre of London’s furniture manufacture and many of its large Victorian buildings, now offices or studios, were originally furniture showrooms. The street derives its name from the curtain wall of the Priory of Holywell which stood, until the dissolution, between Curtain Road and Shoreditch High Street. At the far end of Hewett Street, with the headquarters of the NSPCC on the corner, is a plaque that denotes the site of the Curtain Theatre, the second purpose-built theatre constructed in 1578. However, the first ever theatre was to be found further along Curtain Road (on the corner of Great Eastern Street) where two plaques commemorate it. Known simply as the Theatre it was built by Richard Burbage for the Earl of Leicester’s Company in 1576. Among the actors was one William Shakespeare who had lodgings in Bishopsgate. It seems likely that some of Shakespeare’s earliest plays were first performed there. When the lease on the site expired in 1597, the timber framed building was dismantled and carted across London Bridge to Bankside where it was reborn as The Globe. Actor Sir Ian Mckellen unveiled Hackney brown plaques for the Theatre and the Curtain in March 1994.

Passing through Mills Court and under the arch of W.A.Hudson, manufacturer of brass fittings for the furniture trade, you come to the headquarters of The Prince’s Foundation, established to promote Charles’ commitment to traditional values in architecture and design. He writes ‘I passionately believe that the human spirit has a profound need for a sense of belonging and community’ and decries ‘soulless housing estates, windswept industrial parks and bland shopping malls. I have therefore decided that these various efforts in the fields of architecture and design teaching; urban planning and regeneration, and the recovery of abandoned built heritage, should come together under one roof. By bringing together these separate programmes in a marvellous new home in Shoreditch, I hope to encourage many more to see how truly contemporary is the work of these efforts’.

Not so much a tram shed as an electrical sub-station built in 1905 by Vincent Harris to provide power for the LCC tramways. It is now used for art exhibitions.

Old Street is on the line of a Roman road linking Ermine Street (Kingsland Road) with Watling Street in the west. On the left is a former LCC Fire Station of 1895. ‘A lively twin turreted red brick chateau, six storeys with mansarded centre’ (Cherry). It is now a restaurant known as the Firehouse. Great Eastern Street meets Old Street at this point. The Metropolitan Board of Works laid it out in the 1870s and a granite column stands where the roads meet.

This is reached via some steps in front of a tile mural depicting aspects of the history of Shoreditch. The square itself mostly consists of post-war housing surrounding central gardens. However there is one good survivor of earlier times, No 16, now the headquarters of the London Labour Party, that dates from c.1725 and consists of five bays and three storeys in red brick, a brick cornice above the first floor, stone keystones, and a doorway with fine carving. An early 19th century resident of Charles Square was illustrator and explorer Frederick Catherwood (1799-1854). In 1839 he discovered, hidden by jungle, the lost pyramids of the Mayan civilization of Central America.

Off Route Pitfield Street Library, Askes Hospital, St. John’s Church Hoxton

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On the west side of the square are halls of residence for Westminster University, the Alexander Fleming Halls, built in 1995. On the east is Shaftesbury House for the Hoxton Market Christian Mission founded by Lewis Burtt in 1881 to serve a district which by then had become notoriously run-down. Over the last 10 years, however, considerable change has come to the Hoxton area. Artists and designers have moved into the old furniture workshops and showrooms, café bars and restaurants have proliferated and a new cultural quarter has been established which is beginning to rival Covent Garden.

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Circus Space is on the north of the square is a building that formerly played an innovatory role in the provision of public services. The Shoreditch Vestry (forerunner of the Borough Council) was in 1897 already responding to the modern watchword of recycling. ‘The Shoreditch Vestry Refuse Destructor and Steam Generating Station’, generated 250 kWs of power for the local community and heated the public baths in Pitfield Street. A motto E PULVERE LUX ET VIS (from dust, light and power) is carved in terracotta on the facade. In a new spirit of innovation it now provides a home for the only school of circus skills in the country. The three storey generating hall provides plenty of height for practising the trapeze! Performers were trained here for the Millennial Dome display.

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This square, like Hoxton Market, has been transformed in recent years and is now vibrant with art galleries, café-bars and loft apartments. It was first laid out within twenty years of the Great Fire in 1666 as a smart suburb of the recreated London. Little remains of those early terraces around an elegant garden but a recently restored house, no.32, gives some idea of the quality of the original development. The rest of the square presents an eclectic collection of buildings from the past 200 years. At no.1, currently a café-bar there is a blue plaque commemorating the home of James Parkinson, a local surgeon and polymath. Not only did Parkinson, in 1817, first describe the shaking palsy later named after him, but he also made significant contributions to the understanding of the science of palaeontology (fossils) and campaigned for education for the poor. Next door is the Lux Cinema (now sadly closed), which replaced, in 1997, a derelict timber yard. It is currently awaiting a new role in life. White Cube is the premier gallery of the avant garde in art. Hoxton’s controversial Tracey Emin and Spitalfields’ equally outrageous Gilbert & George have exhibited here. St. Monica’s, the Roman Catholic church at the north end of the square, was designed by Edward Welby Pugin. Edward took over the architectural practice of his more famous father Augustus after the latter died, insane, at the age of forty with the strain of creating the elaborate Gothic decoration for the House of Commons in Westminster.

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From the northwest corner of the square you reach Hoxton Street which is a busy market for much of its length, particularly on Saturdays.

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Architect James Brooks (1825-1901) made a significant contribution to the streetscape of Shoreditch. He built four churches under the Haggerston Church Scheme to bring religion to the burgeoning poor of Shoreditch. Three remain, St. Columba’s, St. Chad’s (see later) and St Michael’s, Mark Street (now the show rooms of the London Architectural Salvage& Supply Company, LASSCO). Brooks also built a house for his own family in Clissold Crescent, Stoke Newington. St. Columba’s was consecrated in 1869 and designed to stand impressively high above the surrounding slums. It is built in red brick (now cleaned after a century of accumulated soot) in a tall and severe early Gothic style, it has a tower with a pyramidal slate roof. ‘An exceedingly picturesque composition’ said Brooks’ contemporary, architect Sir Charles Eastlake.

Across Kingsland Road (the Roman Ermine Street) and towering even over the monumental St. Columba’s Church, is the minaret of one of the largest Islamic buildings in London, the Süleymaniye Mosque opened in 1998 and designed by Hackney /Turkish architect Osman Sahan and Networld Designs. Six storeys in yellow brick with Ottoman detailing, it contains not just a place of worship but offices, a school, conference rooms and accommodation for visitors.

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Beside the mosque stands this pioneering experiment in public healthcare designed by Francis Danby Smith in 1923 in Queen Anne or early Georgian style and is reassuringly domestic in appearance. It was one of Britain’s first ante-natal and infant care out-patient clinics and is a good example of the progressive approach of the Shoreditch Council in the inter-war period.

One of London’s most delightful small museums, the Geffrye is set within almshouses established by Sir Robert Geffrye for the Ironmongers Company in 1714 and displays room settings of furniture and fittings from the 16th century to the present day. A museum therefore very appropriate for an area that was formerly the centre of furniture manufacture. A modern, award winning, extension opened in 1998 was designed by Branson Coates and houses the 20th century room settings, changing exhibitions, education rooms, shop and a first class café. Also, in the grounds, is a walled herb garden open in the summer and autumn months.

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opened in 1869 is another impressive Church by James Brooks. It is a tall cruciform building, French Gothic in style with a central bell-turret and like St. Columba’s is built in red brick. The vicarage,which stands beside the church, is also built in brick with a prominent circular stair turret

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This is the only secondary school built by the notable Hungarian architect ErnoGoldfinger. Goldfinger was a neighbour of Ian Fleming in Willow Road, Hampstead and is said to have been the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s famous villain (at least his name was). ‘The hallmarks of his style’, writes Robinson, ‘include an adherence to strictly geometric forms and a reliance on exposed concrete finishes’. He derived much inspiration from the great French architect Le Corbusier.

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.Rus in Urbe where children can enjoy sheep, pigs and chickens in the unlikely setting of a former brewery with a granite setted courtyard. The park laid out in the 1980s is on the site of several Victorian streets, a tile manufactory (hence Tuilerie Street) and a gas works formerly supplied with coal via the adjacent Regent’s Canal.

This ‘is the only London church by the quiet, modest and pious architect, Henry Woodyer who lived as a country gentleman in Surrey. St. Augustine’s was designed for advanced ritual’ writes Basil Clarke in his ‘Parish Churches of London’. The church built in 1867 became, in the 1960s, the ‘parish church’ of the Hell’s Angels bikers. I wonder if the modest Woodyer would have approved. It is now a restaurant and gallery called simply 291.

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The old road from Shoreditch to Hackney was in the 19th and early 20th century, like Curtain Road, an important area for furniture manufacture but also for shoe making. Now there are many wholesale shoe and handbag shops with goods from all over the world.

In a graveyard in Hackney Road, close to Ye Olde Axe pub, detached from St. Leonard’s church and now a public open space, lies the tomb of Thomas Fairchild. Fairchild had a plant nursery near the present Shoreditch Park in the early decades of the 18th century. He was the first gardener to properly appreciate the sexual nature of plant reproduction and to use the principle of hybridisation in horticulture. His creation ‘Fairchild’s Mule’ was a cross between a carnation and a sweet william. Many churchmen of the day thought that that sort of experimentation should be left to God, just as many people today are opposed to genetic manipulation.

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This fine church was built by George Dance the elder in the 1730s on the site of an earlier medieval church. During its building it was the site of the first strike in the building industry. Irish farm workers were brought in to replace local workers who refused to work for the low wages on offer. The outcome of that were widespread anti-Irish riots in the area, when a public house kept by an Irishman was sacked and the militia was called out from the Tower to suppress a mob of about 4,000. The church, when eventually completed in 1740, proved to be a very elegant one rivalling the East End churches of Hawksmoor. The slender spire in particular is considered to be unique in design with an elongated stone cupola surmounted by a slim lantern with a square obelisk top (Cherry). The theatrical associations of the church are commemorated by a memorial to actors like Henry VIII’s jester, Will Sommers, and the theatrical entrepreneur and actor, James Burbage who are buried in the church. In 1817 St. Leonard’s became the first church in London to be lit by gaslight.

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1181/2 Shoreditch High Street, which was built in 1735 as a house for the Parish Vestry Clerk, stood in splendid isolation until 2001. It is now propped up by a new building, by Richard Griffiths Associates, to provide rented accommodation for the single homeless..

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Opposite St. Leonard’s stands the pub now called Browns which is a table dance venue and a place of popular resort during the week for tired and emotional stock brokers and merchant bankers.

The east part , closest to Shoreditch High Street , was built for the Shoreditch Vestry in the 1860’s by Caesar A. Long. Cherry says it is ‘exceptionally grand for its date. Italian in a personal, not at all usual idiom. First floor with Corinthian columns, big keystones to the windows’. The west part was built later, completed in 1902, by W.G.Hunt sporting an assymetrical tower and an ionic porch. The reclining figures represent Light and Power the motto of the Shoreditch Council.

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The goodsyard is a conservation cause celebré at present. An important example of early Victorian railway construction, it is threatened by a new railway development , the extension of the East London Line to Dalston. Campaigners including English Heritage believe that the old buildings should be preserved and a ‘park in the sky’ created with the railway running through it.