Raven Row

56 and 58 Artillery Lane were built around 1690 on land that was previously a weapons practice ground, and in the Middle Ages the site of the monastery of St. Mary Spital, the largest hospital in Europe. In the 1750s the buildings were transformed into luxury shops in the Rococo style by Huguenot silk merchants, Protestant settlers from France. Nonconformist and politically dissenting groups as well as immigrants began settling in Spitalfields, which experienced waves of violent protest, often by journeymen weavers against wage exploitation. In 1827 no. 58 was modernised with a plain Regency front, only a few years before the weaving economy in Spitalfields collapsed and the area became impoverished. In the early twentieth century, 56 and 58 Artillery Lane housed many families who worked in the local 

Raven Row, a non-profit contemporary art centre in Spitalfields, not far from the Market, opened to the public on 28th February 2009. The name - nothing to do with sightings of black birds - comes from its location. Part of the street on which it stands used to be known as Raven Row until 1895, when it was absorbed into Artillery Lane. Sandwiched between two eighteenth century silk merchants' houses, Raven Row is an exhibition centre headed up by Alex Sainsbury and designed by 6a Architects and comprising two contemporary galleries. Flats in the building's upper floors are available for visiting artists and curators invited to take part in the residency programme. Four Corners Books, a non-profit publisher of artists' books and books on art, is also based in the building and occasionally collaborates with the gallery to stage exhibitions and events.

VISITORS INFORMATION 

Travel 

Underground Stations

Liverpool Street Tube (4 minutes)

Aldgate Tube (7 minutes)

Railway Stations

Liverpool Street Railway Station (4 minutes)

Shoreditch High Street Railway Station (9 minutes)

Docklands Light Railway

Tower Gateway (13 minutes)

Bank (14 minutes)  

Car Parks 

Spitalfields Car Park (3 minutes)

Great Eastern Street NCP (9 minutes) 

Address:

Raven Row

56 Artillery Lane 

London E1 7LS