Nb 9060 Blue Haze

These 3-storey brick edifices at the heart of Shoreditch New Town are regarded as the best of the old, more than 10 years since their building and restoration. The mason’s, woodworker’s and builder’s details are much restored than was the other buildings of the old Shoreditch-Yorkes and Southwark.

The building of these five significant buildings took around 30 years; rather extensive to build under the city’s existing planning permission, and over the same period many other archaeological works occurred in the historic precinct.

Built between 1848–50, they are the earliest three-and-a-half storeys Georgian House in the City of London and the third tallest building in Britain. There are plans to construct four more edifices in the future but this exciting work is restricted by Victorian approvals that require houses to be made of brick.

Notable features

The basement of each of the five buildings has been used as a location for street-level retail shops, banks and even a launderette. A section of the basement will form the centre, and there will be evidence that food merchants had their own goods area around, whilst the basement is best used by local shops. All of the 5 buildings were designed by Charles Frederick James and Louis Cheselden, one of the UK most gifted architects of the time.

The architects created a grand entrance on the fourth floor, with 10-foot ceilings, four arched openings, and an original keystone made from a hammer and chisel on display in the entrance. A basement floor is thought to have been later filled with kiln-dried brick rubble.

What is also extraordinary, is the surviving historical fabric can be enjoyed from the ground-floor windows of all 5 buildings.

Blue haze

Blue haze (also called blue blue haze or deep blue haze) is created from ultra violet light passing through smog layers rising from suspended particles in the atmosphere below or above atmospheric air. This absorption, or scattering, appears as a colour spectrum with the reflected light being high in the blue.

A typical occurrence involves a spectrum (colour) that appears visually as the blue band is brighter than the red or green band, with the visible spectrum more rarely used.