South Shoreditch: Commercial Buildings, 1850 to 1980

Showroom of Thomas Lawes & Co, 65 City Road, c.1911 South Shoreditch lies just north of the City of London, at the centre of a band that has become known in development contexts as the ‘City Fringe’. South Shoreditch has as good a concentration of late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century commercial buildings as survives anywhere in London, a richly varied and visually compelling architectural legacy that arises predominantly from the area having been a major centre of the furniture trade from the mid-nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The Buildings of England called South Shoreditch ‘one of the most consistent and distinctive areas of its kind in London’.

View of surviving warehouses on Tabernacle Street Development pressure on the ‘City Fringe’ is a major public policy issue for Londoners. It is also an important issue for English Heritage as a whole, in particular for its voice in matters of urban strategy. English Heritage has thus recently completed a comprehensive appraisal of South Shoreditch. The first part of a two volume report, charting the historical development of the area, is now available. The first volume concentrates on the furniture and printing trades, which dominated South Shoreditch in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. A gazetteer of the surviving commercial buildings will be the topic of the second volume. This report will be an informative and useful resource for future conservation and development schemes in South Shoreditch.

For more information please contact Joanna Smith, telephone 0207 973 3741, e-mail Joanna.smith@english-heritage.org.uk; or Tara Draper, 0207 973 3782, e-mail tara.draper@english-heritage.org.uk.