Altab Ali Park, Whitechapel High Street, former site of St Mary's Church

it was the medieval custom of white-washing the exteriors of important buildings like this one that created the white chapel which gave its name to the district

thanks much for the photos & info...was researching St. Mary's Whitechapel Episcopal Church, founded 1669, at 5940 White Chapel Road, Lancaster, Virginia, 22503, USA which is named for this church. Website & photos at http://www.stmaryswhitechapel.org/ or Google it. Now I know why it was called whitechapel!

you are most welcome! Glad you liked the photos. I took them while doing the Jack the Ripper walk by myself. So do you live in Virginia?

INdeed so, click here for photos of excavations on the later churches. Amongst the people buried here are Richard Brandon (? - June 20, 1649), the reputed executioner of King Charles I. The church register records that he lived in Rosemary Lane (modern Royal Mint Street). (The executioners identity was kept secret. AND in 1797 the body of the sailor Richard Parker, hanged for his leading role in the Nore mutiny, was given a Christian burial here after his wife exhumed it from the unconsecrated burial ground to which it was originally consigned. Crowds gathered to see the body before it was buried. The last church was bombed during WW2 and the local council cleared it to make a small park. It was renamed Altab Ali Park to commemorate a young resident murdered by racists in nearby Adler Street in the 1970s. In the photo the letters you can see are from "The shade of my tree is offered to those who come and go fleetingly"; a fragment of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore. I don't know whether they will survive the landscaping of the park currently underway. I've put two films together, one of Altab Ali and events around hs death, the other of Anne Frank click here to see on a weblog about the landscape of loss (tragically days before what has been reported as a "Christian-right" terrorist killed 90+ Norwegian Young Labour members motivated by some perverted "Islamophobia")

Many thanks for your very interesting comment and for the like, DSankey

Greetings fron herts

paul