Brick Lane north of Woodseer Street
Location 3
Old Truman Brewery (7) which has Brick Lane passing right through the complex is seen framed by the prominent crossover bridge. Here there are buildings dating from the 18th to the 20th Century, although brewing first started around 1666. The site was purchased by Joseph Truman in 1679 and expansion began in around 1730.
The Director’s House, by architect John Price, lies to the west on Brick Lane with very fine interiors, built in 1745 as offices and a home for the brewery owners. Behind this there are buildings of many dates including the striking glazed façade by architects Arup Associates dating from the 1970s. On the other side of Brick Lane the buildings are from the early 19th Century and have a simple restrained classical character. These include the boiler house and vat house, as well as a later distinctive red brick chimney. The brewery closed in 1988 and since 1991 has been imaginatively revitalised as an outstanding mixed office, arts, shopping and media enclave.
Hanbury Street, Princelet Street (9), Woodseer Street and other nearby side streets include many very fine historic residential terraces. Some date from the eighteenth century when the area was at its most prosperous, but also include attractive housing from the nineteenth century. There is a fine former synagogue behind the façade at 19 Princelet Street. At the junction of Hanbury Street with Commercial Street stands a distinctive 1930s public house in a neo-Georgian style, where the beer once brewed in the nearby brewery was sold.
Nearby the extensive Bishopsgate Goods Yard (6) was originally built in 1840 by the Eastern Counties Railway to serve the Bishopsgate Goods Station on Commercial Street. The station has now mostly gone and the site will be reused for a mixed use development including a dramatic new park; the new Shoreditch station is the first phase of this. However, the historic Braithwaite Viaduct can be seen from nearby streets and will be incorporated into the new development. On Quaker Street a fragment of the old station can be seen in the form of an old warehouse with arched windows and front–facing gables which give an idea of the style of the original station.
Brick Lane and the streets around are now all protected by Conservation Area status.