Keeling House

Most days when I take my dog for a walk I pass a rather strange building, a few roads over from where I live in Bethnal Green, that has a very interesting shape that I've always liked the look of.

It has central column - presumably the lift shaft - with four 16-storey wings coming off it, that look like they house maisonettes. On street level it has a very fancy entrance, to get inside you cross an ornamental pond. I've never crossed the pond, but it leads to a stark hall with a porter sitting inside.

Despite its obvious upmarket present, it has a whiff of ex-local authority about it.

Anyway, I'd never given it that much thought until I was reading Ed Glinert's fascinating East End Chronicles. In a section called the Dark Ages he talks about how the East End was brutally rebuilt after the second world war. (It was during this time that the area gained most of its council blocks - spurred on by the authority's view of modern living. Up and up as cheap as possible was the general idea, leaving more room for open spaces were people would socialise. Long-term view is definitely not something that was at the forefront of thinking.)

So when I read about a "Bethnal Green tower so severely executed that the tenants were soon pining for the old slums" I was fascinated it turned out to be Keeling House - the building I pass almost daily!

Keeling House was designed by Denys Lasdun (architect of the National Theatre on the South Bank) and his idea was to "wipe out the old streets and everything that went with them". His idea was that social contact would remain the same, as the maisonettes faced each other due to the unique shape of the building.

But it didn't work for the East End.

Tenants, who previously looked out for each other in the street, couldn't do so from their maisonettes 100 feet in the air.

Bethnal Green Council (which later merged to become Tower Hamlets) didn't want to look after the block, which had become home to a deprived mix of extremely anti-social tenants.

In his book Glinert says: "Keeling House descended into anarchy. Burglary became rife and responsible tenants who moved out were replaced by problem families. By 1990 the flats were covered in fungus, there were cracks in the stairwells, and safety nets had been installed to catch chunks of falling masonry."

The block closed in 1992 and in 1993, surprisingly, English Heritage decided to list the building, saving it from demolition and paving the way for Tower Hamlets to sell the block to a private developer....who gave us the ornamental-pond fronted Keeling House we see today.

Ironically enough there is now a big fence with an electric gate keeping the locals out.

Oh - and the reason there are no pics I took is because I lost my camera in Mexico - will post some when I get a new one!