Brick Lane & the Old Truman Brewery
Why is it significant?
You are on Brick Lane, and the first thing to look for is a street sign: the name is written twice, in English and, underneath, in the curling Bengali script.
Key Facts
| Place | Brick Lane & the Old Truman Brewery |
|---|---|
| Address | 91 Brick Lane, London E1 6QL, United Kingdom |
| Geo Coordinates | 51.52140, -0.07220 |
| Part of Walk | Four Waves of Newcomers: Whitechapel, Spitalfields & Brick Lane in London's East End |
| Generated | Generated |
You are on Brick Lane, and the first thing to look for is a street sign: the name is written twice, in English and, underneath, in the curling Bengali script. Above the rooftops rises the tall brick chimney of the old Truman brewery, and all around you are its yards and warehouses, now filled with studios, market stalls and cafes.
The lane is about four centuries older than its curry houses. In Tudor times it was a track through fields where clay was dug and baked into bricks and tiles for the growing city, and that is how it got its name. Brewing came in the seventeenth century. Truman's Black Eagle Brewery grew until, by the 1870s, it was one of the biggest breweries in the world, and its great dray horses clattered up and down this street with barrels of porter. It finally closed in 1989.
The Bangladeshi story of Brick Lane begins at sea. Men from Sylhet, in the north-east of today's Bangladesh, worked as lascars, sailors and stokers on British ships, and a few of them settled in the East End long before the Second World War. After the war more came, to work in the garment workshops that Jewish tailors were leaving behind as their families moved to the suburbs. By the 1970s wives and children had followed, and a lane that had once sold bagels and kosher meat started to sell spices, saris and sweets.
It was not a gentle arrival. In the 1970s the far-right National Front sold its newspapers at the top of Brick Lane on Sunday mornings, and young Bengalis were attacked on these streets. Local people, Bengali and white, Jewish and Christian, began turning up on Sundays to take that corner back, and in the end they did. Today the council ward around you is officially called Spitalfields and Banglatown, and the lamp posts are painted in the green and red of the Bangladeshi flag.
On Sundays this end of the lane still turns into a market, with vintage clothes and street food from half the world, and bagel bakeries that hardly ever seem to close. Now walk back south down Brick Lane for a minute and turn right into Princelet Street, and stop in front of a shabby, beautiful old house at number 19.