London – Tower Hamlets (Borough of) – St. Mary’s Park / Altab Ali Park

This park is of some considerable importance in the history of the Whitechapel area of London, as it’s where St. Mary Matfelon church once stood. This church was created as a chapel at ease in around 1250 and it stood until 1286, with this being a simple structure which was covered in whitewash, hence the name of White Chapel. A more substantial church, St. Mary Matfelon, was built in 1329 and this was extended and expanded numerous times over the next few centuries. As an aside, I like the idea of the Head of Parks having a 24-hour phone number.

Here’s what it looked like around 100 years ago, but unfortunately the church was bombed during the Second World War and knocked down a few years later. A new church had been built in 1877 (partly on top of the earlier churches), but, and this isn’t ideal, it burnt down in 1880. A new one was constructed and that’s the one that was lost during the bombings on 29 December 1940.

An interesting park entrance with that stone. There was an archaeological dig a few years ago and amongst the items found there were some Roman items and evidence of Roman cremations, with this once being the route of the main Roman road from London to Colchester.

The Whitechapel Road side (which is the old Roman road), with what appears in places to be an older wall for the church.

Some of the floor tiles and structure of the church are still in situ. The tiles don’t seem to be as protected as they could perhaps be.

There are very few burials here now (well, there probably are, but they’re unmarked), this is one of the grand box tombs.

Although my interest in this park was initially its history, it would be remiss of me not to mention that it is no longer formally known as St. Mary’s Park, instead being known as Altab Ali Park. Ali was a 25-year old Bangladeshi man who was murdered near here in 1978 in a racist attack, something that was causing problems and fear in London at the time. His death has been seen as a turning point as there was a large demonstration with 7,000 people on a few days later to protest about the racist attacks, with awareness raised of the huge challenges that existed.