This next blog isn't strictly a residential one but it's interesting none the less, well I think so anyway. As a regular visitor to the Brick Lane area for site visit purposes, what I call 'the proper East End' and Jack the Ripper's old stomping ground, I came across this; the new Minaret outside the Brick Lane Mosque. The controversial structure actually gained consent back in January 2006 but has only now just been built. The idea gained prominence in the media around the mayoral election time last year as Ken Livingstone promised to help raise funds for it to gain the Muslim vote.
Other locals are not so fond of it however. Here are the reasons: The Brick Lane mosque is grade 2 listed and in a conservation area, the new Minaret as seen in the picture is quite large and obtrusive. Also intriguingly the mosque today as it stands lies comparable to when it was first built as a
This building then has often been remarked as representing the history of successive communities of immigrants into London; from this point of view it may be called one of the most remarkable and evocative buildings in the area and one of London's architectural and historic treasures. As new influxes of people have come in to the area and taken over the building for their own religious purpose, they have given the building very slight changes. Now the argument persists that "what happens when another religion moves in to and dominates the local landscape?" It would be a lot harder to knock down a minaret instead of applying a lick of paint which is what has happened in the past.
Continuing the theme, Tower Hamlets also look set to approve two structures which represent veil head scarves worn by Muslim women at the entrances to
Going back to the Mosque, can you think of a building that better shows the influx of different social and religious groups through time to a particular place like the Brick Lane Mosque does? I can't.

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