The Oval Open Space

The Oval Open Space in Shoreditch acts as a silent witness to a nineteenth-century urban vision that was never fully realized. It was originally laid out as the central green for a pair of facing residential crescents, intended to bring a formal, symmetrical elegance to this part of the East End. Today, the houses are gone, replaced by a mixture of light industrial buildings, but the oval shape of the green remains as the last structural trace of that forgotten plan.