A Poplar Story

Event information

Prior to the upheavals of the Second World War, the tightly packed streets of Poplar were home to heroic struggles for job security, healthier homes and a brighter future, exemplified in the larger-than-life character of George Lansbury, Council Leader, Labour MP and Cabinet Minister, whose distinct brand of popular socialism became known as ‘Poplarism’. Its closeness to the docks and the liveliness of its many pubs, also made it a meeting place for artists, writers, jazz musicians and others 'down there on a visit'.

Evidence of those times can still be found in the smaller streets, parks, pubs and street markets still remaining, which, along with a series of bold regeneration initiatives, provide the focus and stopping points of a guided walk led by writer and social historian, Ken Worpole, whose own family came from Poplar.  

The walk concludes at Trinity Buoy Wharf, where they’ll be a short tour of S.S. Robin, which is being refurbished for use as a community art workshop and exhibition space. The supporting pontoon currently houses the “Manifest” exhibition featuring 19th century photographic processes using glass plates, salt prints and plant-derived 'botanicograms' created in workshops with Megan Ringrose. For more information visit https://fitzrovianoir.com/case_studies/manifest/


Ken Worpole is the author of many books on architecture, landscape and social history, the most recent being, “Brightening from the East: Essays on landscape & memory” (2025). According to “The New Statesman”, “Worpole is a literary original, a social and architectural historian whose books combine the Orwellian ideal of common decency with understated erudition.”