Gladstone Monument

Location: Tower Hamlets, London

Client: Leaside Regeneration Ltd
Date: 2006

This project is for a new public space and road crossing at the Gladstone Monument situated outside St. Mary’s Bow Church on the Bow Road. Minor adjustments to the road layout release space that allows a shift in use back towards pedestrians and the creation of a space that addresses the different scales of use. Safety for pedestrians is improved whilst also responding with imagination to the significance of the monument, a ‘touchstone’ for labour and feminist history. 

The proposals include relocating the Gladstone Monument to a more prominent and uncluttered position, raising the end of the island, and reconfiguring the pedestrian crossing to provide a more direct route. A new community and church facility is proposed within the disused underground toilets with a glazed pavement roof that reveals and lights the gallery space below during the day and lights the new public space at night.