The Lansbury Estate is a large, historic council housing estate in Poplar and Bromley-by-Bow in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is named after George Lansbury, a Poplar councillor and Labour Party MP.
The Lansbury Estate is a large, historic council housing estate in Poplar and Bromley-by-Bow in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is named after George Lansbury, a Poplar councillor and Labour Party MP.
Lansbury Estate is one of the largest such estates in London. It occupies an area bounded by the East India Dock Road to the south, the Docklands Light Railway to the east and the Limehouse Cut canal to the north-west.
Layout of the estate, built on a site badly damaged by bombing during the Second World War, began in 1949 to a design by London County Council planners led by Arthur Ling and Percy Johnson-Marshall. [1] Construction of the estate started shortly before 1951 as the Live Architecture Exhibition for the Festival of Britain, with Frederick Gibberd's Chrisp Street Market area and the Trinity Independent Chapel. The construction of the housing and other land-uses extended westwards, with the final phase, at Pigott Street, finished in 1982, near Bartlett Park.
The philosophy of the design was that new development should comprise neighbourhoods, and that within the neighbourhood should be all that a community required – flats, houses, churches, schools, an old people's home, a pedestrianised shopping area and covered market. There should be pubs and open spaces, linked by footways. Traditional materials were used in the construction, such as London stock bricks and Welsh slate to counter the modern architecture. [2]
The architecture critic Lewis Mumford wrote of the Lansbury Estate (1953) "Its design has been based not solely on abstract aesthetic principles, or on the economics of commercial construction, or on the techniques of mass production, but on the social constitution of the community itself, with its diversity of human interests and human needs. Thus the architects and planners have avoided not only the clichés of ´high rise´ building but the dreary prisonlike order that results from forgetting the very purpose of housing and the necessities of neighbourhood living." [3]
English Heritage has recognised the significance of the estate by listing some of the buildings including the SS Mary and Joseph Roman Catholic Church designed by Adrian Gilbert Scott; however, it noted that the estate has suffered considerable neglect, and also some well-meaning but ill-advised modernisation of the facilities within the associated market.[ citation needed ]
John Betjeman thought highly of the estate, along with the nearby St John's Estate on the Isle of Dogs. [4]
The Lansbury Estate was owned by the GLC and later by Tower Hamlets Council. After a stock transfer in 1998, the property was transferred to Poplar HARCA. [5]
Langdon Park DLR station and All Saints DLR station serve the estate. Bromley-by-Bow tube station and Bow Road tube station are the nearest London Underground stations to the area. Limehouse station is the nearest National Rail station.
London Buses Routes 309 serve the centre of the area. With 15, 115, D6, D7, D8, 277, 135, D3 all serving the edge of the estate.
Poplar is a district in East London, England, now part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Five miles (8 km) east of Charing Cross, it is part of the East End.
The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is a borough of London, England. Situated on the north bank of the River Thames and immediately east of the City of London, the borough spans much of the traditional East End of London and includes much of the regenerated London Docklands area. The 2019 mid-year population for the borough is estimated at 324,745.
Bromley, commonly known as Bromley-by-Bow, is a district in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London, located on the western banks of the River Lea, in the Lower Lea Valley in East London.
Poplar was a local government district in the metropolitan area of London, England. It was formed as a district of the Metropolis in 1855 and became a metropolitan borough in the County of London in 1900. It comprised Poplar, Millwall, Bromley-by-Bow and Bow as well as Old Ford, Fish Island and Cubitt Town.
Chrisp Street Market is the central marketplace and town centre of Poplar and is located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It was the first purpose-built pedestrian shopping area in the United Kingdom, rebuilt as part of the 1951 Festival of Britain and is directly connected onto the high street, East India Dock Road.
Balfron Tower is a 26-storey residential building in Poplar, Tower Hamlets, East London. Built in a Brutalist style, it forms part of the Brownfield Estate, an area of social housing between Chrisp Street Market and the A12 northern approach to the Blackwall Tunnel. It was designed by Ernő Goldfinger in 1963 for the London County Council, built 1965–67 by the GLC, and has been a listed building since 1996. Balfron Tower is stylistically similar to Goldfinger's later Trellick Tower in London.
Pigott Street is a road in Poplar, Tower Hamlets, London. The blocks of flats on it form part of the last phase of the building of the Lansbury Estate, and border the southern end of Burdett Road on the west.
Bow is an area of east London, England, within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, 4.6 miles (7.4 km) east of Charing Cross.
Bethnal Green and Bow is a constituency in Greater London, represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2010 by Rushanara Ali of the Labour Party.
Bartlett Park is a public open space in Poplar in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in London on Upper North Street. It is located to the south of the Limehouse Cut waterway and the Lansbury Estate to the south and east of the park. The whole landscape is 4.95 hectares.
Poplar and Canning Town was a borough constituency represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elected one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election.
Poplar and Limehouse is a constituency created in 2010 and represented in the House of Commons of the UK Parliament since 2019 by Apsana Begum of the Labour Party. From its creation until 2019, it was represented by Jim Fitzpatrick, also of Labour.
Bow was a railway station in Bow, east London, that was opened in 1850 by the East & West India Docks and Birmingham Junction Railway, which was later renamed the North London Railway (NLR). The station was situated between Old Ford and South Bromley, and was located on the north side of Bow Road, close to the second Bow Road station which was open from 1892 to 1949. A covered footway connected the two stations between 1892 and 1917.
Bow and Poplar was a parliamentary constituency in London which returned one Member of Parliament (MP) to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
Bow and Bromley was a constituency in the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Located in the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar in London, it was created by the Redistribution of Seats Act for the 1885 general election and returned one Member of Parliament (MP) until it was abolished for the 1950 general election.
St John's Estate is a housing scheme in Cubitt Town, on the Isle of Dogs in London. Centred on the triangle formed by Manchester Road, East Ferry Road and Glengall Grove, it was developed by Poplar Borough Council after the Second World War. It is served by Crossharbour DLR station to which it is adjacent.
Bow Common was an area of common land, that lay on Bow Common Lane in what is now the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Despite the name, the common lay just inside Mile End's parish boundary with Bromley by Bow, and not in the parish of Bow which was further to the north.
Coventry Cross Estate is a social housing estate in Bromley by Bow area of London.
Roman Road is a road in East London, England, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets entirely on the B119 on the B roads network, and lies on the old Roman road in the Roman Empire called the Pye Road running from the capital of the Iceni at Venta Icenorum to Londinium and today hosts a street market. Beginning in Old Ford at its eastern end, it passes into Bethnal Green to its western end.
Aberfeldy Village is an urban village in Poplar, London, England, which is in the process of being redeveloped in a joint venture between Poplar HARCA and Willmott Dixon. It was known as the Aberfeldy Estate, a housing estate but has expanded. It is sometimes referred to as Aberfeldy New Village in planning documents.
