History is written by everyone
The Survey of London has embarked on its most experimental and collaborative project in more than a century of publishing: Whitechapel Histories. Words: Dominic Lutyens
In 1983, when the late architectural historian Hermione Hobhouse took over as General Editor of the Survey of London, she gave this leading reference work on the city’s history and its buildings a radical shake-up. Her view was that the Survey (as it’s known for short) had concentrated for too long on wealthy areas – she would make it far more democratic.
During Hobhouse’s tenure, two Survey volumes focused on the east London area Poplar, in the borough of Tower Hamlets, coinciding with its regeneration by the London Docklands Development Corporation. During the 1980s and 1990s, the regeneration saw a huge swathe of 19th and 20th century industrial buildings in Docklands demolished, such that a large part of the area had vanished by the time the volumes were published.
But as Andrew Saint, the current General Editor, wrote in 2010: ‘The experience forced the Survey to broaden itself and describe and illustrate the infrastructure, industrial architecture, public housing and modern buildings with the care hitherto devoted to cosier or more venerable architecture.’ This outcome inadvertently echoed – and expanded – Hobhouse’s own democratic agenda.
Now the Survey – founded in 1894 by Arts and Crafts designer Charles Robert Ashbee and part of The Bartlett since 2013 – is entering an even more democratic phase. Last September, zeroing in once again on Tower Hamlets, it launched an interactive website, Histories of Whitechapel (surveyoflondon.org), which is currently documenting the history of the area’s buildings and sites.
In the grip of change
Whitechapel has a rich history typified by working-class hardship, but also by dissent and socialism. Today it is rapidly evolving. The area is named after a chapel dedicated to St Mary, which became the parish church of Whitechapel in the 14th century. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, destitute people from rural areas thronged there to find work in local industries. Because of its proximity to London’s docks, the district has attracted many immigrants: it was the centre of London’s Jewish community in the 19th and early 20th centuries as well as the location of the Whitechapel murders committed by Jack the Ripper. In the late 20th century, it became home to a large Bangladeshi community, which makes up about 40% of Whitechapel’s current documented population of around 15,000 people.
The area today is culturally alive. A well-known local institution, the Whitechapel Gallery – founded in 1901 to bring art to east Londoners – has an avant-garde pedigree: Picasso’s anti-war painting Guernica was exhibited there during its only visit to Britain, while 1970s shows on artists David Hockney and Gilbert & George hugely raised their profiles. Its exhibitions today – take the recent show Electronic Superhighway (2016–1966) that illustrated the impact of computer and internet technologies on artists from the 1960s to the present day — are typically leftfield. The area also boasts architect David Adjaye’s boldly contemporary, glass-fronted 2005 public library, Whitechapel Idea Store (which was shortlisted for the Stirling Prize). For better or worse, Whitechapel is being gentrified: developer Berkeley Homes is responsible for the area’s partially complete, seven-acre, deluxe project, Goodman’s Fields on Leman Street.
Designed by The Bartlett’s Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) and supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Histories of Whitechapel records the area in an entirely fresh, collaborative, relatively open-ended way: it invites anyone with a desire to impart their first-hand experiences and memories of the neighbourhood’s history to contribute these to the site in visual and verbal form – as written entries, voice recordings, or images. One major asset of Histories of Whitechapel is its ability to reach new audiences.
“The site’s scale of interaction is huge,’ says Peter Guillery, Principal Investigator and an editor of the Survey. “We want to connect with people who might not be familiar with the Survey. In the past, external contributions to the Survey were more ad hoc. Now we can capture the complexities of an area in a much more diverse, dynamic way.”
Positive influence
Over the years, the Survey has been influential in terms of planning. In the early 1970s, for example, a volume on Covent Garden influenced the Government’s decision not to demolish many of its buildings, which had been threatened by a comprehensive redevelopment. So could Histories of Whitechapel have an impact on the area’s evolution? “It’s difficult to know,” says Guillery. “We can’t stem the tide of gentrification but we can have a social impact – allowing not just scholars but people from all nationalities and cultures to produce and consume the histories we’re recording.”
The Survey has sometimes been described as ‘The official history of London’s buildings’, yet this has connotations of didacticism and stuffiness – the very antithesis of the accessible, informal, collaborative approach underpinning Histories of Whitechapel. The word ‘Histories’ in the plural is telling in itself: it accentuates the fact that it’s not produced by a small, remote team of specialists spoonfeeding the public with facts but is a collective, more popular enterprise. It’s not the first time the Survey has had an online presence, however. The series has been available to read on the website british-history.ac.uk since 2005. Yet this simply features online versions of its traditionally blue-bound, discrete books, latterly published by Yale University Press. They come in two types: the ‘parish’ or ‘main’ series, documenting buildings within particular districts or parishes; and the ‘monograph’ series, which focuses on noteworthy individual buildings and sites.
By contrast, for the next two years, Histories of Whitechapel will offer an organic, ever-evolving digital resource for everyone, from historians and academics to the general public. A key feature of the site, built and designed by Dr Duncan Hay under the supervision of Dr Martin Zaltz Austwick – a research associate and senior lecturer at CASA respectively – is its user-friendly, interactive map. The team masterminding the project – who also work with a steering committee comprising historians and have pored over everything from rate books and insurance records to Tower Hamlets’ archives as part of their research – are aware, however, that the internet as an online resource has its limitations. “Some people won’t have access to the site,” admits Dr Zaltz Austwick. “But there are lots of physical events in the area that people can attend to learn about our Whitechapel project.”
A key Survey member is Shahed Saleem, Public Participation Co-ordinator, who is interviewing people from different ethnic backgrounds for the site. Another academic, Dr Nazneen Ahmed, who has been based at UCL’s Department of Geography, is contributing a study about the evolving décor of Bangladeshi restaurants from the 1960s to the present. The site is also brought to life by illustrated colourful street scenes by Judit Ferencz. Helen Jones, Sarah Milne, Dr Aileen Reid and Amy Smith are other Survey staff working on Whitechapel, and Dr Shlomit Flint-Ashery at CASA is also involved.
A collaborative history
The content of Whitechapel Histories is tidily divided into categories – Commerce, Brick Lane and Whitechapel High Street being two linchpins; Education, ranging from primary schools to The School of Nursing and Midwifery; Entertainment, a list that perforce includes the Jack the Ripper Museum on Cable Street; and Immigration, which lists Altab Ali Park, formerly a churchyard destroyed in the Blitz that was renamed to commemorate a Bangladeshi clothing worker murdered in a racist attack in 1978.
“Part of my role has been to understand the Survey’s methodology, then translate that into an interactive website,” explains Dr Hay. “I asked myself: ‘Who do we want to reach? Who will want to read this information? How can I create a structure into which all this fits?’ Digital information needs to be neatly parcelled up.”
The remaining categories are Industry, Markets, Medical, Politics, Poverty, Public Buildings, Public Houses, Restaurants, Transport and Worship. The Poverty, Politics and Public Buildings sections echo the heritage of the Survey itself: Ashbee was drawn as a young graduate to Toynbee Hall in Whitechapel. Founded in 1884, this campaigned against poverty, and still exists today. George Bernard Shaw’s Fabian Society met regularly in the area. Freedom Press, the oldest anarchist publishing house in the English-speaking world, which was founded in 1886, has been based here since the 1940s. And given the Survey’s democratic roots, it’s wholly appropriate that Histories of Whitechapel is its first experiment in creating a radically collaborative record of the area’s architectural and social history.
Timeline
1894
The London Survey Committee is founded.
1910
The Survey of London is published jointly with the London County Council (LCC).
1952
The LCC takes full control of publishing the Survey, passing this on to the Greater London Council in 1965.
1986
Responsibility for the Survey is transferred to the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, which was amalgamated with English Heritage in 1999.
2013
The Survey becomes part of The Bartlett School of Architecture.
Landmark Survey publications
1896: Trinity Hospital, Mile End
(vol. 1, monograph series)
1900: Bromley-by-Bow
(vol. 1, parish series)
1957: Spitalfields (vol. 27)
1973: North Kensington (vol. 37)
1977: The Grosvenor Estate, Mayfair (vol. 39)
1994: Poplar, Blackwall and The Isle of Dogs (vol. 43/44)
2008: Clerkenwell (vol. 46/47)
2012: Woolwich (vol. 48)
2013: Battersea (vol. 49/50)
Infographic
Download ‘Critical Mass’, our Annual Review data breakdown