Whitechapel Road is a major arterial road in the East End of London. It connects Whitechapel High Street to the west with Mile End Road to the east and forms part of the A11 road. It is a main shopping street in the Whitechapel area of Tower Hamlets and has a street market. The name derives from a small chapel of ease dedicated to St Mary.
The well-known Whitechapel Bell Foundry is based in buildings on Whitechapel Road that date from 1670. They were formerly used as a coaching inn known as The Artichoke. The buildings replaced smaller premises on the north side of the road.
Davenant Foundation School, now in Loughton, was previously located on Whitechapel Road, built on the Lower Burial Ground. The building remains on the north side, and is Grade II listed.
Continuing eastwards, Whitechapel tube station is on the north side of the road. Behind the tube station is the former site of Blackwall Buildings notable philanthropic housing built in 1890 and demolished in 1969. Opposite to the south is the Royal London Hospital. St Mary's tube station used to be on Whitechapel Road, but closed in 1938. It was used as an air raid shelter in World War II, but was destroyed by bombing in 1940.
The Eastern District Post Office is housed in a large 1960s block on the south side of the road; this was the eastern terminus for the former London Post Office Railway, which has been mothballed since 2003.
The Blind Beggar, a pub made notorious by Ronnie Kray when he fatally shot George Cornell on 9 March 1966 there, is located at 337 Whitechapel Road. This is near Mile End Gate - where the road becomes Mile End Road; and was the site of the former toll gate.
Whitechapel Road is the equal cheapest property location on the British version of the Monopoly game board. Both it and the Old Kent Road are priced at £60.
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Famous quotes containing the words whitechapel and/or road:
“If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don’t care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)
“I wonder how far down the road he’s got.
He’s watching from the woods as like as not.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)