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This year, it has been a pleasure to welcome so many readers to Spitalfields in person and enjoy a ramble around the streets in your company.

Although it was never my intention to do walking tours, it has proved an unexpected delight. For years, readers had been coming to visit the locations of my stories and often, when I eavesdropped on tour guides in Spitalfields, I recognised whole sentences lifted from writing. And this was an entirely satisfactory state of affairs, until someone pointed out to me that I had the opportunity to create a better alternative to the exploitative serial killer tours that blight our neighbourhood. Thus The Gentle Author’s Tour of Spitalfields was born.

It was never my intention to get involved in politics either, yet I have found that when you write about things you love then you have no choice but to defend them if they come under threat.

As a consequence of our campaign to Save the Bethnal Green Mulberry and the Judicial Review that confirmed the legal protection for the five hundred year old tree last year, I am pleased to confirm that Crest Nicholson – developer of the former London Chest Hospital – have abandoned their plans and sold the site to Clarion Housing Group which has publicly announced commitments to ‘retaining the mulberry tree in its current location’ and ‘providing more genuinely affordable homes that meet local need.’ This is a result and we shall hold them to it.

Cuttings from Shakespeare’s Mulberry are owed to many campaign supporters. Unfortunately, the cuttings failed in 2021 and this year the owners decided to give the tree a rest from pruning in order to overcome an infection that has afflicted many mulberries recently. We hope to take new cuttings next spring and deliver them to our patient supporters in the autumn of 2023.

We were proud when Grayson Perry’s End of Covid Bell debuted at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition this year, made in support of our ongoing campaign to Save The Whitechapel Bell Foundry. Meanwhile, the developers’ option to buy the land at the rear of the foundry – where they planned to build their tower – has lapsed, which means that the boutique hotel scheme is now dead. Over the coming year, I will be reporting on progress of The London Bell Foundry, which has been set up with the ambition of acquiring and reopening the foundry as a fully working foundry.

Thanks in no small part to the letters written by you – the readers of Spitalfields Life – the City of London Planning Committee rejected proposals to convert the historic Custom House on the Thames bank into a boutique hotel. Despite the approval of Historic England, this plan was also rejected at a Public Inquiry, opening the door to the building and quayside being opened for public access and cultural use in the manner of Somerset House.

Closest to home has been the battle to Save Brick Lane from the proposed Truman Brewery Shopping Mall. Despite seven and a half thousand objections, two councillors out of a committee of just three members voted the decision through in questionable circumstances. One who approved it claimed that they ‘could not disappoint the developer.’ The subsequent local elections in which the Mayor of Tower Hamlets, who supported the development, was voted out of power along with the councillors who voted for it revealed the strength of public opinion.

We now await the verdict of the Judicial Review on whether the granting of permission for the Truman Brewery Shopping Mall was lawful. The new Mayor has pledged to develop a community-led master plan for the entire brewery site, which makes the verdict of the High Court a potential watershed for the future of Spitalfields, deciding whether community or corporate interests will prevail.

Thus, with these thoughts in mind, ends the thirteenth year in the pages of Spitalfields Life.

I am your loyal servant

The Gentle Author

Spitalfields, 26th August 2022

The Gentle Author’s cat, Schrodinger

You may like to read my earlier Annual Reports

First Annual Report 2010

Second Annual Report 2011

Third Annual Report 2012

Fourth Annual Report 2013

Fifth Annual Report 2014

Sixth Annual Report 2015

Seventh Annual Report 2016

Eight Annual Report 2017

Ninth Annual Report 2018

Tenth Annual Report 2019

Eleventh Annual Report 2020

Twelfth Annual Report 2021