Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
13
HOXDITCH
Ever since
Shoreditch
and
Hoxton
became trendy, there's been utter confusion over
the name of the area. The problem is that Shoreditch was one of the boroughs that was
swallowed up into Hackney, during the local government shake-up in 1965. The old borough
of Shoreditch was made up of three main areas: Shoreditch, Hoxton and Haggerston. Strictly
speaking, Shoreditch is south of Old Street, and Hoxton north of it, but you'll still find the
Hoxton Hotel
in Shoreditch and the Shoreditch Electric Light Station (now Circus Space) in
Hoxton. And as for where Old Street fits into all this….
The Old Truman Brewery
Brick Lane •
W
trumanbrewery.com
A red-brick chimney halfway up Brick Lane heralds the
Old Truman Brewery
,
founded back in 1666 and once the largest brewery in the world. It's now a creative
centre for music, fashion, art and IT and forms the focal point of Brick Lane's
current gentrification. In the brewery's
Dray's Lane
, the old stables have been turned
into cafés and shops for independent designers and artists; on Sundays, market stalls
fill the Up Market and Backyard Market buildings.
19 Princelet Street
Occasional open days • Free •
T
020 7247 5352,
W
19princeletstreet.org.uk •
!
Liverpool Street
If you want to dig deeper into the area's past, try and visit on one of the open days at
19 Princelet St
, just off Brick Lane, where there's a permanent exhibition on Spitalfields'
rich history of immigration - get there early, though, as it's always very popular. This
beautifully preserved eighteenth-century silk-weavers' house also houses a wonderfully
evocative former synagogue,
built by Polish Jews in the 1860s and entirely hidden
behind the Georgian facade. The attic was home to the mysterious real-life main
character in Rachel Lichtenstein's
Rodinsky's Room
(see p.463).
Shoreditch
Home to artists, designers and architects,
Shoreditch
, to the north of Spitalfields,
is
now one of the city's most self-consciously artistic enclaves, despite its lack of obvious
aesthetic charm. The centre of the area's transformation shifts with the vicissitudes of
fashion, but
Redchurch Street
, off Shoreditch High Street, has as good a claim as any
street right now. Over in the west, so many web-based companies have started up
around
Old Street
tube that the area's main tra
c interchange has been renamed
“Silicon Roundabout”. Shoreditch is, in fact, also rich in historical literary and artistic
associations. Situated just outside the City, it was here that James Burbage established
the country's
first public theatre
- called simply the Theatre - in 1576 (he later took it
down and reassembled it on Bankside as the Globe). There are a couple of specific
sights - the
Geffrye Museum
of period interiors and
Wesley's Chapel and House
- but
the majority of folk come here for the area's
bars
(see p.391),
clubs
(see p.403) and
art
galleries
,
such as the David Adjaye-designed
RIvington Place
(
W
rivingtonplace.org), the
first publicly funded, newly built art gallery for over forty years.
St Leonard's, Shoreditch
Mon-Fri noon-2pm • Free •
T
020 7739 2063,
W
shoreditchchurch.wordpress.com •
!
Old Street or Liverpool Street
The area's most prominent landmark is
St Leonard's
, the Neoclassical church designed
by George Dance the Elder in 1740 and situated at the junction of Old Street,
Shoreditch High Street and Kingsland Road. It's worth a look inside if you've ever
seen the BBC sit-com
Rev
, which is filmed in the church, and also to admire the
memorial to Elizabeth Benson on the southeast wall, which depicts two skeletons
tearing at the Tree of Life.
