A crafty buy: Elizabeth line triggers building boom in the East End's newest hipster hotspot, with arty flats from £450k

New flats from £450,000 are heading to Whitechapel, where the Elizabeth line is triggering a building boom. 
David Spittles30 April 2018

Whitechapel occupies a special place in London's history as a staging post for successive waves of newcomers — from Huguenot silk weavers in the 17th and 18th centuries to Jewish and Bangladeshi settlers in the 19th and 20th.

The latest group to arrive is hipsters, most seeking affordable homes in a part of town where "the property market" is still a fairly new phrase.

When modern Docklands was born in the Eighties, banks leapfrogged from the Square Mile to Canary Wharf, leaving this patch of the old East End to its own devices.

Parts of Whitechapel remain run down, rough and poor — curiously, it has some of the best and worst housing in the country — but the district is vibrant, cosmopolitan and arty.

Living in Whitechapel: everything you need to know

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Whitechapel Gallery, which helped launch the careers of renowned British artists David Hockney and Gilbert & George, is one of the area's institutions, and will soon be joined by Fotografiska, London's largest photograph gallery.

Already Whitechapel is becoming an extension of the Shoreditch digital cluster. Wickhams, the historic former department store, has been converted into a hub for tech and media start-ups, while a new Crossrail station opening later this year has triggered a building boom.

There remains an energetic local art scene but the fragile ecosystem of small business owners, artists and creatives, especially around Brick Lane, is endangered by speculative property developers and wealthier home buyers.

The Silk District, a development of 450 homes celebrating the area's craftworking roots, seeks to weave itself into the neighbourhood's gritty urban fabric.

Rag trade premises survive here, close to the site of the famous Siege of Sidney Street, a gun battle between police and Latvian revolutionaries in 1911.

Two towers rising to 25 floors spring up from a cluster of low-rise buildings and landscaped courtyards and gardens.

All apartments have outside space, and residents can make use of an on-site gym, workspaces, 24-hour concierge, cinema screening room and café. Prices start at £445,000. Call Mount Anvil on 020 7776 1800.

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