Lansbury, Tower Hamlets

A large municipally-​​built estate in the part of north Poplar once known as Poplar New Town

The Lansbury estate’s curious clocktower-​​cum-​​watchtower

Wartime bombing destroyed or damaged nearly a quarter of the buildings in this area, which was one of the first be redeveloped by the London County Council after hostilities ended. In 1951 the barely finished Lansbury estate became the ‘Live Archi­tecture Exhibition’ of the Festival of Britain. Critics were generally under­whelmed by the project, with one or two notable exceptions. Writing in The New Yorker in 1953, Lewis Mumford remarked, “I shall be surprised if Lansbury is not one of the best bits of housing and urban planning anywhere.”

Several more schemes filled out the area over the next three decades, including the large blocks of Lansbury West. Inevitably, much of the Lansbury estate had become run-​​down when Tower Hamlets trans­ferred the estate to housing association ownership and a regen­eration priogramme began.

St Saviour’s church dates from 1864, but was very badly damaged by fire in 2007. The church is encircled by the Arcadian scheme of self-​​built houses, of the late 1980s. Named after a former vicar of St Saviour’s, the 15-​​acre Bartlett Park is Lansbury’s largest open space.

Chrisp Street has a daily market that meets a wide variety of local needs and offers a special emphasis on exotic fruit on Fridays and Saturdays. Opened in 2004, Chrisp Street Idea Store is a mix of library services, learning spaces, IT and a café housed in a glass building on the corner of East India Dock Road.

The estate is named after George Lansbury (1859–1940), a borough councillor and a local hero for his ‘Poplarist’ campaign demanding that London’s richer boroughs should subsidise the poorer ones. He subsequently became Labour MP for Bromley and Bow and led the Labour opposition from 1931 to 1935.

Poplar-​​born actress Angela Lansbury is George Lansbury’s granddaughter.

Postal district: E14
Population: 14,859 (East India and Lansbury ward, 2011 census – a 30 per cent increase on 2001)
Further reading: John Shepherd, George Lansbury: At the Heart of Old Labour, Oxford University Press, 2004 – recent biography of the Poplarist campaigner
Website: Poplar Housing and Regen­eration Community Association