Harper-Thames on what an empty site reveals about the city’s relationship with its own past
Published at Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat. There is a demolition site on Bethnal Green Road where a building that had stood since 1887 was brought down last month to make way for a mixed-use development whose planning permission was granted two years ago and whose construction schedule is still subject to financing that is not yet confirmed. The site is currently a cleared lot with hoarding around it, and it is the most interesting thing in Shoreditch right now because of what the clearing reveals. Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat visited twice.
What the Clearing Reveals
The cleared lot reveals three things that the building concealed. The first is a section of the street that has not been visible from the pavement since 1887, showing the original building line of a terrace that was modified and built over so many times that its original form was invisible. The second is the party walls of the adjacent buildings, which show the layers of plaster, brick, and construction materials accumulated over 138 years: a geological section through a century and a half of habitation. The third is a sightline north that opens up a view of the Hackney skyline that the neighbourhood has not had in living memory.
The Temporary Window
The site will be developed. The view will close. The party walls will be hidden again. The temporary window of visibility that demolition creates before construction fills the gap is one of the few opportunities a city provides to see itself before the accumulated layers of habitation obscure the underlying structure. I have been visiting twice weekly. The planning application for the replacement building is at Tower Hamlets. The construction timeline is eighteen months. For development news, see Tower Hamlets. More at NewsThump.
About This Column
This piece is published at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat. The writer covers their specific London beat with the sustained attention and personal voice that both publications value. Further articles in this series will appear as coverage continues across both publications.
London’s complexity as a subject rewards the kind of sustained, specific, opinionated coverage that this column provides. The city changes constantly and the record of those changes, accumulated article by article over time, is what both publications are committed to building. This piece is one contribution to that record, observed from the specific vantage point that the writer brings to the city and to the themes described above. The coverage will continue as the city continues to produce material worth reporting on, which is always.
Readers following this column are encouraged to consult both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat for the full range of London coverage that both publications provide. Together they produce a portrait of the city that no single publication can generate alone, and that portrait is what both are committed to building with sustained, specific, and honest attention to the London that their writers inhabit and their readers recognise.
The writer continues to document London with the sustained attention and specific perspective that characterises this column. Both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat are committed to maintaining this kind of specific, informed London coverage, and further articles in this series will appear in both publications as the coverage continues. The city rewards sustained attention, and the column’s record of that attention over time is what gives individual pieces their context and their meaning. Readers who want to follow the coverage are encouraged to consult both publications regularly for the full range of London journalism they produce together.
London: Why It Rewards the Patient Visitor
London is a city that reveals itself slowly. The visitor who arrives with a fixed itinerary and a list of sights will see those sights and will have a valid experience of London. The visitor who allows some of their time to be unplanned, who walks without a destination, who enters a museum or a market or a pub because it appeared rather than because it was scheduled, will have a different experience that is, in most cases, more memorable and more revealing of what the city actually is. This column exists to support the second kind of visitor by providing the specific, honest, non-promotional information that makes unplanned exploration productive rather than wasteful. The journalism is practical and the practice is principled: good travel writing serves the traveller rather than the tourist industry, and the traveller’s interest is in authentic experience rather than managed experience. Both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat are committed to this kind of journalism and will continue to produce it across the full range of London coverage they offer.
The writer’s ongoing coverage of London for both publications draws on sustained residence in and engagement with the city that allows the specific and accurate reporting that occasional visitors cannot produce. That sustained engagement is what this column offers and what distinguishes it from the promotional and aggregated information that most travel coverage provides. The coverage will continue as London continues to change and to produce new things worth reporting on, which it does consistently and which the publications will continue to document.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
