Shoreditch, including neighbouring Hoxton, has a fascinating history, and contains a magnificent variety of buildings. Many have been turned into workspaces, apartments, arts centres, antiques emporiums, restaurants, markets and museums, including the Museum of the Home (formerly the Geffrye Museum), which occupies eighteenth-century almshouses, and the Old Truman Brewery complex, which today is filled with a vintage market and food stalls. Round the corner, the Victorian Spitalfields Market still thrives, albeit no longer as a fruit and veg market but as a dining and retail shopping area, and in Brick Lane there is the Jamme Masjid Mosque, which started life as a church, became a synagogue and is now a focal point for many Muslims living in the area. Shoreditch is not only home to the very first London council estate – Boundary Estate – but is also a major centre of industry and commerce and many new structures are appearing.In addition to their architectural merits many of the buildings have a story to tell, whether it is a connection with Jack the Ripper or the lives of refugees and immigrants who have always lived in Shoreditch’s streets – Huguenot weavers, Jews escaping persecution in Eastern Europe and, more recently, the Bangladeshi community – as well as East End Londoners. Shoreditch and Hoxton are furthermore associated with entertainment dating back to Elizabethan London’s theatres and filled today with bars, restaurants, cafés, clubs and galleries.Shoreditch and Hoxton in 50 Buildings explores the history of this fascinating area of East London through a selection of its most interesting buildings and structures, showing the changes that have taken place over the years. The book will appeal to all those who live in Shoreditch and Hoxton or who have an interest in the area.
