Sketchcrawling around Spitalfields

Christ Church Spitalfields, London

I met up with Urban Sketchers Pete Scully, Sue Pownall, Dave Black, Olha Pryymak and Evelyn Rowland – and many more – at Pete's sketchcrawl around Whitechapel and Spitalfields this week, some of them fresh from the USk symposium in Barcelona. London is still reeling from having a summer on its hands – a novel concept and the first in living memory for many – meaning that the conditions were in stark contrast to the sketchcrawl last winter at Tate Modern when temperatures were sub-zero and huskies were compulsory. 

Commercial Street, London

Pete's route took in a variety of places related to Jack the Ripper, the serial killer in 1880s London, ending up at the Ten Bells pub in on Commercial Street, where we compared drawings and supped restorative liquids, next to Hawksmoor's fantastic Christ Church Spitalfields. It's a part of town that is culturally rich, creative, graffiti-adorned, historic, poor and beautiful. It isn't perfect, but it's exactly what makes London such a great place. The East End has a lifetime of drawing in it – and that's why it was a great place for Pete to arrange a sketchcrawl.

Building in the City

On the bike, and down to the City. At the Royal Bank of Scotland’s headquarters, close by Hawksmoor’s Christ Church in Spitalfields, you can sense the squirming inside as they try to justify giving themselves the usual bonuses for – for what exactly? For doing so badly that it is now effectively nationally owned. Its former chiefs, and those of the equally unsuccessful HBOS, have just been quizzed by the Commons Treasury Committee. I don't get the idea they have lost too much sleep about things.


The new buildings still go up, too. The Pinnacle (barely above the ground but promising 63 floors), Heron Tower (36 floors), St Botolph’s (a piddling dozen or so floors)... all add up to more than enough office space for the city. Another site close to Spitalfields (and near the cheerfully named Frying Pan Alley), currently up to 25 floors and rising, is for student accommodation. This is more like it, surely? Who is rushing to get office space in the City at the moment?