Soho House & Household

We are partnering Soho House Group to design their latest Hotel venture and Cowshed Spa come Deli addition to Shoreditch House, part of the expanding Soho House portfolio of private members clubs, hotels and restaurants. The new scheme will be housed in a disused pub, empty since the 80’s, that sits adjacent to the Tea Building in Shoreditch, where Shoreditch House is located.

We’ll be creating 26 rooms that feel like they should ‘have always been there’. The Cowshed spa and deli situated on the ground floor aims to be a buzzy, local sociable destination featuring treatment rooms, men’s grooming, beauty and ‘hang-out’ deli accessible to everyone not just members.

The concept we’re developing will capture the energy of the local area, creating signature elements that add character and playfully hark back to the past whilst setting the scene for a unique and unforgettable escape within the city.

We’ll be collaborating with known artists living locally to enhance the one-off Shoreditch experience, capturing comfort of a very personal nature.

So that’s a bit about the project, but back to the pub…very little is known about the pub…so we got our research hats on and unearthed all sorts of gems…

The pub was built in 1879 at a time when Bethnal Green was little more than a cesspit of dirt, disease and crime, housing the poorest of the poor, often in dire slums.

Initially we were informed that the premises were originally named The White Swan. It was however, known as The Swan Tavern. The Swan Tavern was situated near the infamous Friars Mount Slum, housing 6000 people in appalling conditions.

Arthur Morrison’s acclaimed Victorian book, A Child of the Jago, based on life in the nearby slums, portrays the slums (or Jago as it was commonly known) as one of the roughest and the poorest neighbourhoods in the East End towards the end of the 19th century. In his book he asserts that The Old Nichol had been “for one hundred years, the blackest pit in London”

Ironically, A Child of the Jago is now a men’s fashion boutique on Great Eastern Street in Shoreditch, owned by Joe Corre, co-founder of Agent Provocateur and son of enfant terrible Malcolm McLaren and Dame Vivienne Westwood, the mom and pop of the punk movement.

So it seems that the typical patron, during the Swan Tavern’s golden era, would have been the tailors, costermongers, shoe makers, dustmen, sawyers, carpenters, and silk weavers who were traders in the area at the time, along with the unfortunate slum dwellers.

Quite unexpectedly, in reply to an ad we posted, seeking information on the pub, we heard from Jane Stopps. Jane is daughter of Sybil Stopps, wife of the last recorded licensee, Albert Edward Stopps. Sybill is alive and well at 95. Albert took on the license after returning from the war. The couple had two daughters, Jane and Anita, but moved out of Bethnal Green due to the harsh living conditions and the area’s bad reputation. During their time living in the Swan the rooms upstairs acted as a B&B to passers by and were let out to “whoever would pay for them.”

Finding out about the history of the area has added a richness to the project that we didn’t expect. Fast forward to 2009 and Shoreditch/Bethnal Green is a very different place indeed.

The project is set to launch in December 2009

For more info contact Keith Fowler, Creative Director – 020 7739 6537