A railway depot burned down in 1964. The argument about what to build there has lasted longer than the depot did
The Goodsyard: Sixty Years of Waiting on Shoreditch’s Biggest Empty Site
Stand outside Shoreditch High Street station and look about you. The station itself is a windowless concrete box, raised above the street. Beside it runs a row of black shipping containers selling trainers and tacos. Behind, there are football pitches under netting, a long stretch of blank brick wall and, if you know where to peer, a line of dark Victorian arches half hidden by buddleia. All of this stands on some of the most valuable land in Europe, ten minutes’ walk from the Bank of England.
It is the Bishopsgate Goodsyard, and it has been largely derelict since before most people now living in Shoreditch were born. Its history is a lesson in how long London can take to make up its mind, and in why the wait may matter as much as the result.
A Terminus, Then a Depot
The site began as a passenger station. In 1840 the Eastern Counties Railway opened its London terminus here, and for some decades trains from East Anglia arrived in Shoreditch. When Liverpool Street station opened in the 1870s the passengers moved there, and the old terminus was rebuilt as a huge goods depot on several levels.
For eighty years it was among the busiest freight stations in the country. Fruit, vegetables and fish from the eastern counties arrived by night and were carted off to the markets at Spitalfields and beyond. Hundreds of men worked there, with horses stabled in the arches below. It was a great, smoky machine for feeding London.
The Fire
In December 1964 the depot caught fire. The blaze was one of the largest in London since the war. It destroyed the main building and killed two members of staff. The railway, already moving its freight on to the roads, did not rebuild. The ruins were cleared, and what was left, mostly the brick viaducts and vaults, was abandoned.
So it stayed. For decades the arches were used for car parks, a go-kart track, a market and a swimming pool, and for a time they housed clubs and raves. Above them the weeds grew. A wasteland of several acres sat in the middle of the city while Shoreditch was transformed on every side of it.
The Viaduct Nobody Noticed
In the early 2000s the route was needed for the extension of the East London line, now part of the Overground. Much of what survived of the Goodsyard was demolished to make way, in the face of protest from conservationists. One section was saved. The Braithwaite Viaduct, a run of brick arches dating from the first railway around 1840, was recognised as one of the oldest railway structures of its kind in the world and was listed. Historic England holds the record.
The new station opened in 2010. It was built inside its concrete casing so that towers could one day be put up over and around it without stopping the trains. That casing has now been waiting for its towers for longer than some railway companies lasted.
The Containers
In 2011 a pop-up shopping mall made from stacked shipping containers opened on the edge of the site. It was presented as a temporary use, to enliven the frontage for a few years until the builders arrived. It became a fixture, copied around the country, and a meeting place for a generation of east Londoners who think of it as part of the permanent landscape. A good deal of what is called temporary in Shoreditch tends to last.
The Plan and the Fight
The site is owned by the public railway body and is being promoted for development by a partnership of two large property companies. Their first scheme, a decade or so ago, proposed a cluster of very tall residential towers. It caused an outcry. Local people objected to the height, to the shadow the towers would throw across the Boundary Estate and neighbouring streets, and to the small share of affordable homes.
The land lies across the boundary between Hackney and Tower Hamlets, and both councils opposed that version. The Mayor of London then used his powers to take over the decision. After years of redesign, a lower scheme with fewer homes, a larger share of them affordable, more office space and a public park on top of the old viaduct was put forward, and it was approved by City Hall at the end of 2020. The papers can be found through the Greater London Authority.
Still Waiting
Approval is not construction. Since then the developers have had to contend with higher building costs, dearer borrowing and an office market shaken by the shift to working from home. Detailed designs for the various plots have been coming forward in stages. As I write, a visitor would still find the pitches, the wall and the containers much as they have been for years. I would advise anyone to check the latest position, because on this site something is always about to happen.
Campaigners continue to argue that a publicly owned site of this size, in two boroughs with long housing waiting lists, should deliver far more homes at social rent. The developers reply that the cost of building over live railway lines and around listed structures is enormous and that the scheme provides as much as it can bear. Both are, I suspect, telling the truth.
What the Gap Has Meant
Here is my unfashionable thought. The emptiness of the Goodsyard has been good for Shoreditch. For sixty years there has been a hole in the middle of the neighbourhood where the usual rules did not apply. It gave room for the clubs in the arches, the markets, the five-a-side leagues, the food stalls, the street art along the wall on Sclater Street. Much of what made the area interesting grew in the cracks of a site that nobody could work out how to develop.
When the towers come, they will bring homes, which the city needs, and a park on a viaduct, which sounds delightful. They will also close the gap. A neighbourhood needs a few places where nothing has been decided, and Shoreditch is running short of them.
See It While You Can
In the meantime the site is worth a slow walk. Go along Sclater Street on a Sunday when the market is on. Turn down Braithwaite Street and pass under the old arches, which are dark and dripping and magnificent. Look up at the concrete box and try to picture what was meant to stand on it. Travel details for the station are on the Transport for London site.
London’s planning sagas are meat and drink to humourists, and the London satirical news desk has reported the completion of the Goodsyard several times, always a little early. NewsThump works the same vein. If you read that building has finally begun, the UK satirical news checklist may be useful. For the difference between a joke of that sort and a report like this, see what satirical commentary is, and what it is not. More of my local reporting is on my author page at The London Prat.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/