Norton Folgate High Street
The street now called Norton Folgate was
sometimes referred to as Norton Folgate High
Street in the eighteenth century. It has been called Norton Folgate High Street here to distinguish it from the liberty.
Nos. 3, 4, 6 and 7 were rebuilt by James Wood
of Norton Folgate, carpenter, between 1758 and
1761, under sixty-one-year building leases from
James Tillard of Red Lion Square. He also
received in 1760 a similar lease of No. 5, then as
now called the Blue Coat Boy public house, (fn. a) to
run from 1764. This lease, and that of No. 4,
gave Wood liberty to pull down old houses and
build new brick houses to 'range even' with other
houses of James Tillard, each new house to cost
£300. (ref. 191) In 1775 James Wood appears to have
acted on behalf of James Tillard in dealings with
the Norton Folgate Liberty trustees over the
digging of a sewer in Bishopsgate Street. (ref. 192)
<The Blue Coat Boy public house was given a new front and other alterations made in 1888 to designs by the architect W. T. Farthing (see tender in The Builder, 25 August 1888, p.147.)>
Nos. 10 and 11 Norton Folgate High Street
Demolished
Some rebuilding on the east side of the street
was among the first of Isaac Tillard's building
operations. In September 1717 he granted to
William Goswell a sixty-one-year building lease
of a site on the east side of the street measuring
28 feet north to south and 118 feet east to west,
which Goswell assigned as a mortgage in 1725
together with two houses built by him on it. (ref. 193) (fn. b)
The description of the plot and its depth east to
west make it probable that these houses were
built on the site of No. 10 and perhaps part of
No. 9. If so, they did not survive long as No. 10
was apparently first built between 1731 and 1741,
replacing two houses. (ref. 19)
In November 1809 No. 10, together with the
premises at the back, Nos. 4, 6 and 8 Folgate
Street, and the yard on the north side of Spital
Square, were leased by William Tillard to Josh.
Day and John Roberts, lead and glass merchants. (ref. 194) The plan accompanying the registered
memorial of the lease indicates that the lessees
covenanted to build on the Folgate Street and
Spital Square frontages, but does not indicate that
any covenant was entered into regarding No. 10,
which was, however, shown on the plan as having
two bow-windows like those which survived at
No. 11 into the twentieth century. The front
was doubtless rebuilt soon after the granting of
this lease in the form in which it existed in 1909
(Plate 64a).
The three-storeyed front of No. 10, built of
stock brick, was typically early nineteenth century in design. The ground storey was filled with
a shop-front of four unequal bays, with slender
Ionic columns, some with curiously contracted
capitals, supporting a simple entablature. Each
upper storey contained two widely spaced rectangular windows, those of the first floor being set
in shallow recesses, with high segmental-arched
heads rising from plain impost bands. All the
windows had narrow stone sills, flat arches
of gauged brickwork, and plastered reveals,
and the sashes were divided by slender glazing
bars.
In 1780 No. 1 o was occupied by an oilman and
blue-maker. From 1809 until the twentieth
century it was occupied by firms of lead and glass
merchants. (ref. 165)
Nothing is known of the architectural history
of No. 11 (Plate 64a). It had a four-storeyed
front of early eighteenth-century character, with
a charming shop-front of about 1790. This
consisted of two segmental bows, the left wider
than the right, flanking the two-leaf door to the
shop. Each bow had a stallboard grille of columns
and a window divided by slender bars, horizontally
into six panes and vertically into four. Windows
and door were flanked by very attenuated columns,
and the front was finished with a delicately
moulded entablature, conforming to the bows and
having a further bow over the shop entrance
which was surmounted by a large gilt spread
eagle. The upper part of the front was, presumably, of stock brick, with red brick jambs and
segmental arches to the three windows evenly
spaced in each storey. All of these windows had
stone sills, and straight-headed flush frames containing sashes with slender glazing bars. The
second floor was marked by a moulded stringcourse; the third floor by a dentilled cornice,
and the front was finished with a stone-coped
parapet.
In 1909, when it was a chemist's shop, it bore
the legend ’Established 1750’ and was certainly
occupied by a druggist in 1778.
Blossom Terrace
The cross-street at the northern end of Blossom
and Elder Streets, called Porter Street on Rocque's
map of 1746 and Blossom Terrace in the nineteenth century, was situated in the parish of
Shoreditch, outside the Liberty of Norton Folgate
and outside the present limits of the Borough of
Stepney. It is included here because it was constructed as part of the Tillard building developments in Norton Folgate in the 1720's and contained the almshouses of the liberty. It was swept
away by the construction of the northern end of
Commercial Street and its site is also traversed by
the railway approaching Liverpool Street Station.
In 1729 a site on its northern side was said to be
in Porter's Field, (ref. 195) the name given by Rocque to
the part of Elder Street north of Fleur-de-lis
Street. Porter's Field apparently lay north of
Porter's Close shown on Ogilby and Morgan's
map of 1677.
The street was constructed without access west
to Shoreditch High Street or east to Wheler
Street. Its seclusion perhaps made it suitable for
the two adjoining almshouses which occupied the
whole of its northern side, those of the Liberty of
Norton Folgate on the west and those of the
Weavers' Company on the east, erected in 1728–1729.
A site occupying the entire south side of the
street, together with a frontage of about eighty-three feet on Blossom Street and a frontage of
about sixty-five feet on Elder Street, was leased
for sixty-one years by William Tillard to William
Goswell in August 1734, presumably the period
at which this side was built up. (ref. 196)
The Norton Folgate Almshouses
Demolished
The site of these almshouses was conveyed on
12 July 1728 by William Tillard to fourteen
inhabitants of Norton Folgate, in trust to build
within two years one or more messuages as almshouses for the poor of the liberty. It measured
108 feet on the south side, of which 73 feet
fronted south on Blossom Terrace and the northern end of Blossom Street, and 35 feet, at the
western end of the site, abutted south on buildings
on the western side of Blossom Street and north on
Blossom Court. (ref. 197)
A drawing made by T. H. Shepherd (Plate
48a) before the demolition in 1852 shows a
simple building of red brick with a tiled roof
containing a garret storey. The range contained three pairs of houses, having mirrored
plans and sharing chimney-stacks, the western
pair having only a back entry reached by a
passage through the building, the others fronting on to Blossom Terrace. Each house had
one segmental-headed window in the ground
storey, and two straight-headed windows in the
upper storey, all, originally, fitted with casements,
as were the hip-roofted dormers lighting the
garrets. The doorways were protected by straight
hoods resting on console-trusses. Between the
upper-storey windows of the middle pair was a tall
oblong tablet, with a shaped apron and a cornice,
bearing within an oval wreath an inscription
which recorded that the almshouses had been built
in 1728 for the poor of Norton Folgate. (ref. 198) In
1847 they were said to consist of six houses of
three storeys, each storey containing one room. (ref. 199)
In 1861 they were described as having contained
eighteen rooms for poor men and women. (ref. 200)
The almshouses were built by William Goswell. In July 1732 the trustees ordered that no
more money should be paid him ’on account of
Building the Alms Houses … he haveing received
already five Hundred and Ten pounds 15s.
without ye Consent of all ye Trustees’. (ref. 201)
The Charity Commissioners in 1896 identified the Norton Folgate almshouses with the
charities of Mary and Paul Wilkinson. These
were annuities charged on the Brick House and
Candle House in the precinct of St. Mary Spital,
granted in 1582, for the benefit of, among others,
the inhabitants of Norton Folgate. The Commissioners in 1829 had noted a tradition that the
almshouses had been acquired in exchange with
Sir Isaac Tillard for the Brick House and Candle
House. (ref. 202) Sir Isaac is known to have acquired the
Brick House and probably also acquired the
Candle House in 1719, when part of the purchase
money, amounting to £182 11s. 10d., was
agreed to be held in trust to make a charitable
purchase for the use of the liberty. In January
1728/9 this money was paid over to the inhabitants of the liberty and was doubtless used to
defray part of the cost of erecting the almshouses. (ref. 202) It is not known that there was subsequently any endowment of the almshouses. The
almshouses erected in 1861 were apparently unendowed.
In 1851 it was recited that ’for want of inrolling’
the 1728 conveyance, the legal estate had become
vested in William Tillard's heir, and a second
conveyance had to be made in December 1746. (ref. 203)
Subsequently the appointment of trustees appears
to have lapsed and the management of the almshouses was in the hands of the overseers of the
poor until it passed to the trustees appointed by the
Local Act of 1810. (ref. 204)
The extension of Commercial Street from
Spitalfields Church to Shoreditch High Street cut
across Blossom Terrace and the Act of 1846
authorizing the extension (ref. 205) empowered the Commissioners of Works to purchase the almshouses,
together with those of the Weavers' Company.
The almshouses were surveyed in 1847 by John
Wallen of Spital Square for the trustees of the
liberty, (ref. 199) but the sale was not made until
22 December 1851, when the almshouses and the
cooperage and warehouses behind them, previously held on lease from the almshouse trustees,
were sold to the Commissioners of Works for
£2,400. (ref. 203) In 1858 the almshouse trustees
bought from the Commissioners the site in
Puma Court on which new almshouses were
built (see page 198).
The Norton Folgate Workhouse
Demolished
This was in existence in February 1743/4
when a committee met there to order its better
regulation. (ref. 206) In 1798 Ellis said that the workhouse was situated at the almshouses. (ref. 207) It
probably occupied the premises immediately north
of the almshouses, within the site owned by the
almshouse trustees. In 1810 the trustees under
the Local Act of that year for, among other things,
the better relief and maintenance of the poor,
were required to visit the workhouse once a week.
The preamble stated that the poor of the liberty
were ’very numerous’. (ref. 208) By 1813 the premises
at the back of the almshouses were described as
’the late workhouse’ when the trustees under the
Act of 1810 decided that the sum needed ’to fit
it for the reception of the poor of the Liberty’
was greater than the Act empowered them to
raise, and that it should be leased. (ref. 209) These
premises were subsequently occupied as warehouses.
The poor were probably henceforward boardedout. In 1820 it was resolved that they should all
be removed to one house and were sent to ’Mr.
Sutton's at Islington’. In January 1837 the
trustees received notice from the Poor Law Commissioners that the liberty was to form part of the
Whitechapel Union. In February the trustees
decided to exhibit the requisite notices ’despite the
judgment of the Court of King's Bench that the
Commissioners under the Poor Law Act cannot
take from a Board existing under a Local Act the
power of administering relief’. In March they
decided to comply with a request from the Whitechapel Board of Guardians ’that the female
Paupers be removed to Whitechapel Workhouse,
the Males to Christ Church Workhouse and the
Children to College House’. (ref. 210)
The Weavers' Company Almhouses
Demolished
These were built on the east side of the Norton
Folgate almshouses in 1729. The site, with a
frontage of 108 feet on to Blossom Terrace, was
conveyed on 16–17 February 1728/9 by William
Tillard to the Weavers' Company for £100. (ref. 195)
The deed recited that Nicholas Garrett of Wandsworth, gentleman, deceased, had, by his will of
July 1725, left £1,000 to the Company, in trust
to build six almshouses for members of the Company, subject to the life interest of his wife, who
was since dead.
The site occupied all that part of the north side
of Blossom Terrace not occupied by the Norton
Folgate almshouses. Unlike those, the Weavers'
almshouses were built back from the street behind
a yard. In March 1728/9 William Goswell and
William Tayler, or Taylor, were chosen to carry
out the work, the latter doubtless being the carpenter who was active on the Wood-Michell
estate in Spitalfields. They undertook to do the
work for £420, £250 being paid to them ’when
their work was Tyled in’. (ref. 211) In September the
almshouses were ordered to be insured against
fire, and in October Goswell and Taylor were paid
the sum due to them, having executed their contract. In December they were paid an additional
£31 12s. 3d. for extra work. In the same month
the Company resolved that ’the New River
Water be laid in from the street to the inside of the
wall as near as may be to the Gate into the Court
Yard of the Almshouses’. The Company made a
pavement five feet wide in the street in front of the
almshouse wall, of ’small pebbles or Raggs’, protected from the roadway by posts. Trees were
planted within the front wall. (ref. 212)
In 1732 they were described as ’6 very handsome Almshouses, each House containing two
Rooms’, situated in ’Porters-fields’, and were said
to have been both built and endowed by Nicholas
Garrett. (ref. 213)
A drawing by T. H. Shepherd, dated 1843
(Plate 48b), shows a range of six almshouses, built
of red brick with a tiled roof, the front facing
south over a walled garden. Although the building was generally similar to the Norton Folgate
almshouses, there were no garret windows in the
roof and the houses were not planned in pairs.
The three in the eastern half had their doors on
the left of the ground-floor windows, and this
arrangement was reversed in the western three.
On 2 December 1851 they were conveyed by
the Weavers' Company to the Commissioners of
Works for £2,400, to form part of the line of
Commercial Street. (ref. 214)