113, Redchurch Street

Weavers' tenement house, built around 1735 by William Farmer, a local builder. The rear extension was probably added at an early stage, possibly around 1773. The building has undergone alterations in the 19th century and later periods.

The house is constructed of brick with later render to the front elevation and has a pantile roof. It stands three storeys high with a garret, topped by a steep pitched roof with dormer and catslide roof to the rear extension. The original plan comprised one room per floor with the staircase located in the left-hand (west) corner in front of the party-wall chimneystack. The two-storey rear extension likely represents an early rebuilding of a one-storey outshut. A stair has since been inserted on the west side of the rear extension, and a modern partition separates the first-floor front room from the chimneystack and stair. The ground floor has been opened up between front and rear rooms, and the front stair between ground and first floor has been removed.

The exterior shows an altered 19th-century shop front at ground level. The first floor has two segmental windows with a narrow window to the left lighting the stair. The second floor displays an off-centre segmental-headed tripartite 'weavers' window'. Most sashes have been removed. The rear elevation retains a broad workshop window opening on the first floor of the extension and a 6-light workshop window at second floor with timber mullions.

The interior preserves significant 18th-century fabric. Half-height panelling to the first-floor front room dates probably to the 19th century, while a section of full-height 18th-century panelling survives between the front and rear rooms. Plain half-height panelling in the rear room may also date to the 18th century, though this is uncertain. The winding stair from first to second floor appears original, though with some replacement of treads, and features early horse-hair plasterwork to the soffit. An understair doorway survives with an early panel above. The second-floor room has been partitioned but the ceiling beam survives.

The eastern section of Redchurch Street, originally named New Cock Lane as an extension of Cock Lane running eastwards from Shoreditch High Street, had become Church Street by Horwood's map of 1799 and was renamed Redchurch Street in the inter-war period. Number 113 was one of a row of five houses built around 1735 by William Farmer, who had also built houses in Sclater Street and Tyssen Street (now the northern part of Brick Lane). The rear enlargement at a relatively early stage probably involved adding an extra storey to a one-storey outshut. The land-tax valuation increased slightly in 1770–73 when the house was taken over by William Howard, and in 1783 it was assessed for 11 windows, suggesting this work was undertaken around 1773.

The building exemplifies the dwellings built in 18th-century Spitalfields to accommodate silk workers. Silk working was one of London's principal industries in the 18th century, accounting for about 10 per cent of the working-class population. The industry became heavily concentrated in Spitalfields and Shoreditch from the 17th century, spreading into Bethnal Green, fuelled by the arrival of refugee Huguenot silk weavers from France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 outlawed Protestant worship. These weavers produced silks of the highest quality, previously available only from the famous looms of France, and their skills were soon dispersed into the local population. Journeymen weavers, the largest group of silk workers, traditionally worked in their homes, usually with a pair of looms for husband and wife. As families grew, children were set to work at six or seven years of age to quill silk, at nine or ten to pick silk, and at twelve or thirteen put to the loom to weave. While there was variability of status within the craft, weavers were among the lowest paid of skilled workers and suffered considerable poverty. The famous Spitalfields Act of 1773, following a decade of sporadic rioting and discontent primarily about undercutting of wages and importation of French silks, regulated wages and restricted imports, but in the long term proved detrimental, depressing trade. After a minor boom in the early 19th century, the Spitalfields silk industry gradually declined in the face of industrialisation through mechanised looms and the relocation of silk masters out of London to take advantage of cheaper labour. The repeal of the Spitalfields Act in 1826 meant wages dropped by 50 per cent, and Bethnal Green became one of London's poorest districts. Cobden's commercial treaty with France in 1860 dealt the death blow to the industry.

Domestic working was not uncommon in 18th-century London, but was usually accommodated in undifferentiated houses. In Spitalfields, however, a building form particular to the area had emerged by the early 18th century as a response to the burgeoning silk industry: the weavers' tenement house. Erected by speculative builders, these buildings were typically three or four storeys high, sometimes with garrets, and one room deep with a rear outshut. They were intended for multiple occupancy, often accommodating one family per floor, with workshops usually located on the upper floors, although better-off weavers may have inhabited an entire house. A small enclosed stair was frequently located at the front next to the entrance in front of a party-wall chimney stack—a plan form externally identifiable by an additional smaller window lighting the staircase, as evident at Number 113 Redchurch Street, but there were variants on this arrangement. Externally, weavers' tenement houses were identifiable by a long row of windows on the top storey and distinctive broad, segmental-headed windows on the upper floors, front and back, to maximise light. Internally, they were simply finished. While outwardly more substantial and imposing than the lowest-grade dwellings of the poor, these tenements were of a lesser order than the silk masters' terraces in Fournier Street and its environs (the description of these latter as "weavers' houses" is something of a misnomer since the glazed weavers' garrets were added later in the 18th century when the area's social status declined). In the early 19th century, a two-storey cottage variant appeared, notably in the 'Old Nichol' area to the north of Redchurch Street, which had become a notorious slum district by the late 19th century and was swept away for the Boundary Estate.