Brushfield Street
"The shop and apartment represent a truly remarkable example of Georgian architecture and offer an incredibly rare opportunity to live and work in the heart of Spitalfields Market"
This beautiful Grade II-listed shop is positioned in the heart of Spitalfields Market on Brushfield Street. For the first time in over two decades, it is offered for sale including a three-bedroom apartment directly above, with a private roof terrace at the rear. Thought to have been built in the 1770s, the shop retains the original signage of a Victorian milliner and represents an incredibly rare opportunity to live and work in one of London's most popular historic markets.
Brushfield Street
£2,300,000
History
The shop and flat on Brushfield Street are located inside what used to be Henry VIII's artillery ground, where soldiers once practised archery and musketry during the 16th century. Allusions to this combative past persist in the names of some of the neighbouring streets: Gun Street, Fort Street and Artillery Lane, as well as Tenter Ground, where gunpowder was laid out on sheets to dry.
The lead arrow on the edge of the Brushfield Street façade marked the boundary of the old artillery ground and the land that Henry VIII commandeered after the dissolution of the Priory of St Mary Spital. Contemporary excavation in the area routinely reveals musket and cannon balls.
The shop and accommodation at Brushfield where built in the late 1770s on what used to be called Union Street. From 1889 to 1892 the shop was occupied by its most famous resident, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant called Annie Gold. Her shop sign sits above the door on Brushfield Street to this day, advertising her trade as milliner under the moniker A. Gold.
Since Annie's occupation of the shop, the space and upstairs apartment has been used as a jeweller and diamond cutter, a furrier, a bootmaker and as temporary lodgings. It was a functioning fruit and vegetable warehouse right up until the relocation of the original fruit and vegetable market to Leyton in 1991. The Spitalfields Trust took it over and saved the space from demolition.
The shop and apartment were painstakingly restored by a local designer in the 1990s, overseen by the Spitalfields Trust, before they were taken over by two television journalists who renovated the entire premises, retaining period features and gradually bringing the building back to its former glory, this time as a deli specialising in traditional British produce and fare, under the same name of A. Gold.
The shop developed a loyal cult following among locals and tourists alike and was widely revered as "a village shop in the heart of London". It was the subject of a lengthy feature in 'The Good Old Days' section of Jane Payton's book, Fabulous Food Shops (2006) and was among The Independent's '50 Best Food Shops' in the UK.
A. Gold closed as a deli in recent years and has been rented out very successfully as an art gallery, and latterly as a series of pop-ups on Spitalfields Market.
Interested?