Living in Bow: area guide to homes, schools and transport
Five miles east of central London, Bow attracts young professionals and families for the easy commute into Canary Wharf and the City, says Keatons estate agent Joe Harvey.
The Georgian houses in Tredegar Square and the smaller Victorian houses in and around Chisenhale Road have long appealed to couples and families who love period detail, while new homes with Help to Buy in Bromley-by-Bow pull young pioneers to an emerging riverside quarter.
Some of these young newcomers will be fascinated to discover that Bow’s radical history includes Indian independence campaigner Mahatma Gandhi; the striking match girls at the Bryant & May factory in Fairfield Road, now converted into flats; the tireless efforts of suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst and the controversial work of psychiatrist RD Laing.
Gandhi left India only once between 1914 and his assassination in 1948, and that was in 1931, when he came to London to attend the Round Table Conference on the future status of his country.
Instead of staying in a central London hotel he opted to stay at Kingsley Hall, a community centre in Powis Road, among the poor of Bromley-by-Bow. Kingsley Hall still operates as a local community centre but in the late Sixties it was where RD Laing practised anti-psychiatry therapy, based on insanity being a sane reaction to a mad world.
The Bryant & May matches factory was a major employer in Bow but the working conditions of its 1,400 female employees were appalling. In July 1888, they came out on strike after one of them was sacked. Following a meeting in Parliament, with the strike in its ninth day, management caved in to many of the match girls’ demands.
Sylvia Pankhurst moved to Bow in 1912 to lead the East End branch of the Women’s Social and Political Union but soon started campaigning against the poverty there. In 1914 she set up the East End Toy Factory and nursery at 45 Norman Road to provide employment for local women. The company continued at this location until 1934.
The property scene
Bow has conservation areas of Georgian terrace houses, flat-fronted two- and three-storey early Victorian terraces and two- and three-storey bow-fronted later Victorian terrace houses, some converted into flats.
Georgian Tredegar Square is the best spot, where a four-bedroom house is for sale priced £1.5 million.
The Driffield Road and Medway conservation areas off Roman Road are almost as popular, and a three-storey, three-bedroom house is on the market for £1.2 million.
The recent relaxation of local planning rules, allowing mansard roof extensions, means more families are staying put.
Bow also has many new-build and “right-to-buy” flats. Popular new builds include Berkeley Homes’ Caspian Wharf beside Limehouse Cut and Barratt’s St Andrews near Bromley-by-Bow station.
There are more than 700 flats in Bow Quarter in Fairfield Road, the Eighties conversion of the Bryant & May matches factory, where one-bedroom flats sell for £325,000 to £375,000.
Architecture fans make their way to award-winning Donnybrook Quarter off Old Ford Road, a 2006 scheme with the feel of a Greek village, by Peter Barber Architects.
Depending on location new flats sell for £600 to £850 per square foot. The lower prices are found in Bromley-by-Bow which buyers see as an area ripe for future rapid price growth.
Period houses sell for about £850 a square foot, down from the peak of £1,000 several years ago.
New-build homes
Bromley-by-Bow has got the development bug. The St Andrew’s hospital scheme brought 964 new homes next to Bromley-by-Bow station.
Many more are in the pipeline on both sides of the A12 Blackwall Tunnel Northern Approach Road, with new shops to serve the 1,700 riverside homes planned by The Guinness Trust and British Land, among others, between the A12 and the River Lea.
Here, Bow River Village in Hancock Road, by Southern Housing Group, housing association, will bring 730 new homes. The second phase of 112 homes is selling off-plan with one-bedroom flats from £370,000; two-bedroom flats at £512,000 and three-bedroom flats at £600,000, ready later this year.
Visit bowrivervillage.co.uk or call 0344 809 9145.
Three Waters by Mount Anvil and Peabody offers 300 flats, including 109 affordable, where the River Lea meets Bow Creek and Limehouse Cut. There are three buildings of eight to 20 storeys with a raised garden and roof terrace.
Studios start at £372,750, with one-bedroom flats at £442,000 and two-bedroom flats at £530,000. Call 020 7776 5755.
Lime Quarter by Linden Homes offers 124 one- and two-bedroom flats, three-bedroom duplexes and six shared-ownership flats at the junction of Devons Road and Violet Road, in a 20-storey tower and a three-storey block.
Phase one is nearing completion and the tower will be ready next spring. One-bedroom flats start at £375,000, two-bedroom flats at £475,000 and the duplexes have a guide price of £800,000. Call 020 3131 8394.
Also by Linden Homes, in Mile End Road, The Clocktower at St Clements in a former hospital has been converted into 38 homes. One-bedroom flats start at £440,000 and two-bedroom flats at £675,000. Call 020 8003 8764.
First-time buyers and shared ownership
Bow River Village has 16 shared-ownership flats starting at £133,000 for 25 per cent of a one-bedroom flat. Call 0300 555 2171. Peabody will have 41 shared-ownership flats at Three Waters. Call 020 7021 4842.
Help to Buy is available at Bow River Village, Three Waters, Lime Quarter and The Clocktower at St Clements (as before).
Rental homes
Bow renters tend to be young professionals, families, sharers and students at Queen Mary University of London, which has a large campus in Mile End Road.
Staying power
Keatons estate agent Joe Harvey says families are staying longer in Bow as regulations have changed and they can now build mansard loft extensions.
Postcode
E3 is the Bow postcode; it extends to include Fish Island, the area directly to the west of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
Best roads
Tredegar Square, with its Georgian houses.
Up and coming
Right-to-buy flats on estates of social housing no longer carry the stigma they once did, says Joe Harvey. He recently sold a three-bedroom maisonette in Exmoor House in Gernon Road, south of Roman Road, for close to the asking price of £450,000.
Travel
Canary Wharf and the City are an easy bike ride away and there are three Tube stations — Bromley-by-Bow, Bow Road and Mile End — plus Bow Church and Devons Road stations on the DLR.
All the Tube stations are on the Hammersmith & City and District lines and Mile End is also on the Central line. Bow Church and Devons Road have direct Canary Wharf trains.
All stations are in Zone 2 and an annual travelcard to Zone 1 costs £1,404.
Council
Tower Hamlets council is Labour controlled. Band D council tax for 2019/2020 is £1,340.18.
Lifestyle
Shops and restaurants
Bow’s main shopping street is along Roman Road, where the famous market has been running for 150 years. It stretches for a quarter of a mile, with women’s fashion, food and homewares.
The street has bakers Greggs and Percy Ingle; a Post Office; Poundland; Iceland; Boots; Superdrug; a credit union; a small Tesco; Costa and independent coffee shop Muxima, which acts as a sort of community centre for local artists and musicians.
Roman Road also has Vinarius wine merchant and wine bar. Further west along the street there is a greater concentration of independent shops with Zee & Co for menswear; Jakss for children’s designer clothes; Denningtons is a long-standing flower shop; Snap for gifts; and coffee shops Mae + Harvey, Hiland; Loafing and Zealand; two Italian wine bars, Bacaro 387 and Symposium, sit next door to each other. There are a couple of vintage clothing stores.
Favourite gastropubs are the Morgan Arms in Morgan Street; The Lord Tredegar in Lichfield Road; The Crown, opposite the gates to Victoria Park in Grove Road; and the Coborn Arms in Coborn Road.
East London Liquor Company at Bow Wharf off Grove Road is a distillery producing whisky, gin, rum and vodka and there’s a cocktail bar and a restaurant. The Greedy Cow at the other end of Grove Road serves burgers and steaks that are available with exotic meats such as camel and kangaroo.
Open space
Victoria Park, on the other side of the Hertford Union Canal, is one of London’s most historic parks and its oldest public park. It wins Green Flag and Green Heritage awards and has a café, boating and fishing lakes, rose garden, bowling green, tennis court, children’s water play feature and playground and a bandstand.
Mile End Park is a linear park which runs alongside Regent’s Canal from Victoria Park in the north to Limehouse Basin in the south, with a green pedestrian bridge over Mile End Road.
Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park is a woodland cemetery and one of the magnificent seven cemeteries built by the Victorians. The friends’ group run over 170 events a year.
Grove Hall Park off Fairfield Road is tucked away in the grounds of a former asylum.
Leisure and the arts
For modern art, the Chisenhale Gallery is in Chisenhale Road and the Nunnery Gallery is at Bow Arts in Bow Road. The Ragged School Museum is an immersive museum in what was a Victorian school for the poor in Copperfield Road.
The local council swimming pool is at Mile End Leisure Centre in Burdett Road.
Schools
Primary
With one exception, all Bow’s state primary schools are rated “good” or better by Ofsted. The two most popular are Chisenhale in Chisenhale Road and Olga Primary School in Lanfranc Road.
Rated “outstanding” are Old Ford Primary in Wright’s Road and St Agnes RC in Rainhill Way.
St Paul’s Way Trust School (co-ed, ages four to 18) in St Paul’s Way is a state all-through school which gets the “outstanding” rating from the schools watchdog.
Comprehensive
The “outstanding” state comprehensive is Morpeth (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Portman Place in Bethnal Green.
The other local comprehensive schools, all judged “good”, are: Central Foundation Girls’ (ages 11 to 18) in Bow Road; Stepney Green Maths, Computing and Science College (boys, ages 11 to 18) in Ben Jonson Road; Bow School (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) in Twelvetrees Crescent and East London Science School (co-ed, ages 11 to 18) a free school in The Clock Mill in Three Mill Lane.
Higher education
East London Arts and Music (co-ed, ages 16 to 18) in Maltings Close is a free school sixth form, rated “outstanding”. The Mulberry UTC (co-ed, ages 14 to 18) in Parnell Road is a new state University Technical College which has not yet been inspected by Ofsted.
Private
Mazahirul Uloom London (boys, ages 11 to16) in Mile End Road is a private Muslim school.
The two private City of London schools are nearby: the boys’ school (ages 10 to 18) in Queen Victoria Street and the girls’ school (ages seven to 18) in St Giles Terrace, Barbican.