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Cromlech House & United Standards House
Cromlech House and United Standard House were located at 3-11 Goulston Street and 4-6, and 16-22 Middlesex Street, London. These two buildings have been connected since they were established in the mid-1960s. In 2018, a 'flagship' hotel named Travelodge London City replaced the demolished Cromlech House.

United Standard House is an office building under a considerable planning project approved by Tower Hamlets Council in 2018. However, before the planning project was approved, this site stood empty for many years due to several unidentified Cromlech Property Co. Ltd issues. It is known on the site of Elizabethan Boar's Head Playhouse.

 United Standard House 

It's a 1960s two-storey building comprised of a car park, warehouse, market and workshop building, demolished in 2016.

Travelogue London City, a hotel established in 2018, replacing former Cromlech House.

 Cromlech House 

It's a mid-1960s former office building demolished between 2017 to 2018. This site has been through complex issues with re-planning visions from the inside of the Cromlech Property Co. Ltd since 2007. Eventually, a new cooperative proposal with Unite Students was granted by the local council in 2018.

The Cromlech House was situated on the remains of an ancient theatre; the fact was identified, advised and supervised by Historic England in 2015. After the archaeological excavations by MOLA(Museum of London Archaeology) in 2019, the remains were identified as Boar's Head Playhouse(Theatre), a Shakespearean outdoor theatre.

Demolition
The site is made up of 2 phases. Phase 1 is the 2 storey section running from Goulston St to the tower block with phase 2 being the 8 storey tower block. Before the Downwell Group took the 2 phases demolition contract, it had already been soft stripped and had the majority of the ACM’s(asbestos containing materials) removed by a previous contractor.

To successfully complete the project, the Inner City Environmental carried out the removal of any remaining asbestos containing bitumen and areas of pigeon waste as the building had been derelict for some time. At the beginning of the first phase, the scope of works conducted by Inner City Environment includes asbestos survey, asbestos removal and environmental cleaning.

Phase 1 - United Standards House
The demolition of United Standards House was carried out as phase 1. The works were divided into a few stages:


 * 1) Asbestos Survey: Identifying a large amount of bitumin containing asbestos which is present on the floors of the building, other asbestos containing materials (ACM's). Those identified hazardous waste would be planned out for removal prior to the rest of works. (Cover both United Standards House and Cromlech House)
 * 2) Asbestos Removal: The task was carried out and completed by Inner City Environmental, the sister company of Downwell Demolition. (Cover both United Standards House and Cromlech House)
 * 3) Scaffolding Protection: The scaffolding was used to protect pedestrians on two sides of the building.
 * 4) Mechanical demolition- excavators: The building had a large enough area around it to carry out the demolition using a mix of high reach and standard excavators.
 * 5) Air Quality Control: Dust suppression was used to control dust.

==== What's bitumin containing asbestos? ==== Bitumen coatings (used up to 1992) usually contain  up to 8% chrysotile asbestos. Asbestos floor tiles and coverings are unlikely to release fibre under normal conditions, but asbestos fibres might be released when the material is cut or disturbed. Old bitumen can become brittle and powdery and if it contains asbestos it will be very dangerous when the dust is inhaled. An asbestos survey will reveal if the bitumen contains asbestos.

Where can we find the asbestos-containing bituminous products in a building?

 * Roofing felt
 * Gutter Linings
 * Damp-proof courses

==== Equipment suggested by HSE (Health and Safety Executive) ====


 * 500-gauge polythene sheeting and duct tape
 * Warning tape and notices
 * Sharp knife
 * Scraper
 * Shovel
 * Garden-type sprayer containing wetting agent
 * Bucket of water and rags
 * Asbestos waste bag
 * Clear polythene bag
 * Lockable skip for larger quantities of waste
 * For roof work, interlocking bucket-type rubble chute into the skip

Phase 2 - Cromlech House
The demolition of Cromlech House started after the phase 1 was completed by Downwell Demolition. As with phase 1 the asbestos removal had already been completed, the primary task in phase 2 was the deconstruction of building.

The construction of a new Travelodge was on its way towards completion while the Cromlech House was demolishing. As the close distance between two sites, the ‘Top Down Method’ was used to carry out the demolition. The slab removal was carried out by the appointed groundworks contractor.


 * 1) Pigeon Guano Removal: Areas of pigeon waste had to be removed from several building floors due to the long period of dereliction. The task was carried out and completed by Inner City Environmental under semi-controlled conditions.
 * 2) Scaffolding Protection: Scaffolding along 2 sides of Cromlech House was completed by Inner City Scaffolding. This included protection fans along the southern elevation to protect pedestrians who were closely walking by.
 * 3) Structural Survey & Assessment: Structural engineers were consulted during the planning phase of the demolition. This was to ensure that the construction of the building was as what we expected and that the chosen demolition method was suitable for the construction of the building.
 * 4) Mechanical demolition- excavators: Two high reach machines worked in a southerly direction toward the tower block before finally reducing the tower block to the ground. Demolition started on the northern end of Cromlech House using a high reach demolition excavator to munch through the substantial concrete beams and columns. Standard height excavators were used to process the concrete materials and removing the steel reinforcing bar. All of the concrete and masonry arsings produced during the demolition are to be removed from site and sent to a processing facility to be crushed into recycled aggregate. The 2100 m2 building was mechanically demolished down to the ground floor slab.
 * 5) Air Quality Control: Large amounts of water were used to suppress the dust so that it did not cause a nuisance to the market traders of other members of the public.

Building encapsulation for top-down demolition
With many local authorities redeveloping large housing estates, it involves the demolition of high-rise tower blocks. These blocks are often very close to each other, and therefore space around them is often restricted.

The usual method of demolition is ‘top down’ which involves demolishing the building floor by floor. Inner City will provide full building encapsulation covered in monarflex or debris netting. Debris fans and anti-climb measures are incorporated.

Protection screens and temporary propping
The Inner City Scaffolding provides propping for temporary support of sections of buildings and structures until building work can take place.

A full range of demolition scaffolding includes:


 * Building encapsulation
 * Protection screens


 * Pedestrian gantries and walkways
 * Debris and protection fans
 * Heavy duty loading bays
 * Staircases

 Documentary 


 * During the demolition of the building a film crew were on site documenting the works for a new demolition documentary called ‘The Demolition Man’ The film crew were interested in observing technical inner city demolition projects and all of the dangers that come with completing a project so close to neighbouring buildings and members of the public.


 * The Demolition Man- Episode 11: An asbestos ridden 1960s building in the crowded City of London is to be demolished to make way for a new hotel.

Site History
 Boar's Head Playhouse 

A late-Elizabethan playhouse, the Boar’s Head, stood just east of the south end of Petticoat Lane. On that account the early history of the immediate area has been exhaustively investigated. First incursions behind Petticoat Lane to the east here were probably associated with houses on Whitechapel High Street. Thereafter, the most notable and substantial development was of an extensive yard behind the Boar’s Head Inn which lay on the site of the future 141–144 Whitechapel High Street, near the corner. This had probably taken place by the 1530s, when John Transfeild, a gunner in the service of Henry VIII, appears to have acquired a connection to the property. While in Ireland in 1557, Transfeild gave permission for the staging of a ‘Lewde Play called a Sackfull of Newes’ in the inn yard of the Boar’s Head, This brought the unwanted attention of the Lord Mayor, who briefly imprisoned the players. Transfeild died in 1561 and his widow Jane (née Grove), married Edmund Poley, who had the copyhold of the Woodlands estate of which, or part of which, Transfeild appears to have been a leaseholder. In 1594 Jane Poley, again widowed, granted a lease of the Boar’s Head inn that ordained the building of a public playhouse. By this time there were already several houses on the west side of the inn yard, in one of which she took up residence; she died in 1601.

The lease of the inn was to Oliver Woodliffe, a haberdasher and financial speculator, for twenty-one years from March 1595. It required Woodliffe to spend £100 within seven years building a tiring house (dressing rooms) and stage. The decision to proceed, despite threatening noises from the Lord Mayor, may have been encouraged by the demise of the Burbages’ Theatre in Shoreditch in 1597. Before work started, the Whitechapel High Street frontage covered what would become Nos 141 to 144, a range of two-storey buildings including, from the west (Nos 142–144) a hall, parlour and kitchen below three chambers. Beyond was the inn’s entrance with a room over, and then the end of a building (No. 141) that stretched northwards to face the yard’s east side. This had a drinking room, three parlours, a cellar and three stables below seven chambers with access from a gallery. Remains of what is believed to be this building were discovered during archaeological investigation in 2018. A lateral barn enclosed the yard’s north side, the west side had an ‘ostry’ (probably the inn’s public stable) adjoining other stables reserved to Poley and Woodliffe. There was also a garden that had likely once pertained to one of the High Street houses.

Woodliffe sublet the inn and part of the yard to one Richard Samwell who built narrow galleries north and south, while Woodliffe built one on the west side and a simple rectangular stage, 40ft by 25ft, in the middle of the yard. The existing eastern gallery leading from the back of the inn formed the fourth side. This arrangement separated the inn and the theatrical enterprise, and meant that neither man was entirely liable for the legally questionable structure. No sooner had it been built than Woodliffe took up with a theatrical entrepreneur, Robert Browne, leader of the Earl of Derby’s men, and a more substantial playhouse was built in 1599, the year the Globe opened at Bankside. Constructed by a carpenter, John Mago, at a cost of around £520, this had seven-foot-deep galleries and a tiring house on the west side adjoining a new stage with a tiled roof. The galleries provided only about a third of the accommodation. Overall, the Boar’s Head was similar in size to the Fortune, the contemporary playhouse on the edge of the City to the north- west.

The Earl of Derby’s men played at the Boar’s Head in the winter season when it was permitted, but most of the drama was taking place in the courts, where Woodliffe, Browne and Samwell were embroiled with an investor, Francis Langley, who had hoped to exploit the ambiguous title to the inn and theatre. Difficulties were compounded by a Privy Council order in 1600 forbidding acting in inns, and matters further complicated when Browne went on tour, subletting to the Earl of Worcester’s Men. Langley died, then in 1603 Woodliffe and Browne, who had returned with his players, suing and countersuing one another, were both carried off by the plague.5 The Boar’s Head continued as a playhouse. Browne’s widow, Susan (née Shawe), who held the lease, married Thomas Greene (d. 1612), a member of the Queen’s Men, and in 1607, even after the Queen’s Men had departed for the Red Bull in Clerkenwell, ‘comon Stage Plaies … are daylie showed and exercised and doe occasion the great Assembleis of all sortes of people’.6 Once again a widow, Susan Greene, who may have retained at least part ownership, married James Baskervile in 1613. Further information is elusive up to 1616 when the lease reverted to Jane Poley’s son, Sir John Poley. Following a loosening of manorial constraints on copyholders, Poley was able to agree in 1618 to enfranchise most of the Boar’s Head property.

The tiring house and stage were probably pulled down in 1621 when Poley sold the land on which they stood as sites for small houses. The purchaser was William Browne, who already held the house on the site of 145 Whitechapel High Street, immediately west of the Boar’s Head Inn. The eastern galleried range survived into the eighteenth century. The Boar’s Head name, like those of many other former inns, endured long after inn use ceased.

 Excavation of Shakespearean-era ‘theatre pub’ 

 by MOLA team, 25.09.2019  We have begun excavations of The Boar’s Head Playhouse in Whitechapel, London, in advance of construction of new student housing by Unite Students - the UK’s largest student accommodation provider. The location of the 16th century playhouse is known from historical records and it is referenced in one of the earliest accounts of theatre in London, but it is hoped that excavation of the site will better understanding of this often-overlooked theatrical site. Before the 16th century inn was converted into a playhouse in 1598, historical accounts reveal that plays were being performed in its open-air spaces. One such account describes an incident on the 5 September 1557, 10 years before the Red Lion Playhouse, 20 years before The Curtain and The Theatre and 30 years before The Rose were established, where the Lord Mayor is ordered to send his officers to forestall a scheduled performance at the site of a 'lewd' play entitled 'A Sack Full of News'.

When the owner of the Boar’s Head, Oliver Woodliffe, converts the inn, he adds a series of tiered galleries, a stage and a central yard around it. A year later the site is upgraded again, with extra galleries and a roof over the stage. The 360º theatre allowed audiences to view performances from all angles with the playhouse hosting a number of popular acting troupes, including the Lord Derby’s Men and the Lord Worcester’s Men, later the Queen’s Men, led by the famous actor and playwright Thomas Greene. Amongst the plays performed were raucous comedies including, No-body and Some-body, with the character No-body ‘attyred in a pair of breeches which were made to come up to his neck, with his armes out of his pockets’ and a chronicle of the life and reign of Elizabeth I If You Know Not Me, You Know No Bodie.

We are hoping to discover artefacts that relate to the playhouse, the performers and theatregoers that frequented the site, and are exploring areas of the playhouse’s structure, including the galleries on the eastern side of the stage. Once exposed and studied, the remains will be preserved in-situ within the footprint of the development. The new student accommodation at the site will celebrate and continue the extraordinary theatrical heritage of the site, by featuring a community performance space as part of the student accommodation building. The finished property will provide homes for approximately 915 students when it opens in 2021.

 Clay pipe kiln 

 by David 

During archaeological excavations of the "Boar's Head Playhouse" (an Elizabethan theatre, most of which is preserved and protected) I was a "relief supervisor" on this site, popping in on occasions that the archaeologist in charge (Heather Knight) had to attend to other duties. So it was that I ended up supervising people digging up this 18th-century clay pipe kiln. It dates to the period after the theatre had closed and when the area was becoming a warren of small enterprises. In over thirty years digging, I haven't seen so complete a clay pipe kiln.

‘They're mostly small backyard affairs and pipe makers would buy in china clay, and then sell on pipes, as small family businesses.’ David said.

External links section
Middlesex Street 18th century tobacco pipe kiln

Category:Building demolition