We are a group of East London residents - under the patronage of Dame Judi Dench - supporting a challenge to Tower Hamlets Council over plans to dig up the beloved veteran Bethnal Green Mulberry Tree and partly demolish a listed building in Crest Nicholson’s scheme for redevelopment of the former London Chest Hospital (part of the Victoria Park Conservation Area).

We believe Tower Hamlets acted unlawfully in granting permission to Crest Nicholson and there are five grounds for Judicial Review.

After three years campaigning, we are overjoyed that we have been granted this Judicial Review at the High Court with a full hearing on May 5th & 6th, if we can raise £10,000 to pay our barrister and QC.

Anyone who donates £100 or more will receive either a cutting of WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE'S MULBERRY TREE or a big tub of Mulberry sorbet made by KITTY TRAVERS of LA GROTTA ICES from the fruit of HISTORIC LONDON MULBERRIES picked by THE GENTLE AUTHOR of Spitalfields Life.

Planted in Stratford Upon Avon by the poet in 1610, Shakespeare's Mulberry was cut down in 1770 but DAVID GARRICK rescued a cutting which flourishes to this day. Your cutting comes from this tree. 

Send an email with your preference to [email protected] <wbr>and we will supply your rooted cutting later this year or give you details to collect your Mulberry sorbet from a Central London location.  (Both are available only in limited numbers)

At this stage, we are raising £10,000 to pay for QC Richard Harwood OBE and Andrew Parkinson, barrister to represent us in May at the full hearing of the Judicial Review at the High Court of the council’s decision to issue planning permission which includes digging up the Bethnal Green Mulberry.

We are delighted to announce that on Friday 15th April, the High Court also agreed we could raise - as an additional ground for Judicial Review - the fact that the Conservation Officer concluded in her report that the plans would result in Substantial Harm to the listed buildings but this was not disclosed to the public or the councillors making the decision - on the basis that she had changed her mind by the time of the planning meeting, thus defeating the public and councillors’ right to know.

We understand there is currently a pressing need for genuinely affordable housing in Bethnal Green but we also recognise a responsibility to future generations. Crest Nicholson's proposal has too little affordable housing and we want this improved. Above all, we want the development to be done in a sensitive and humane way, so that it does not damage the historic Mulberry Tree and the built heritage of the hospital building, blighting the Victoria Park Conservation Area.

This is a strong campaign, valiantly led by the East End Preservation Society, that has raised the profile of this beautiful venerable living icon but we have to fight if we want to resist the wanton destruction of our veteran trees and built heritage at the expense of a greedy-profit driven development.






Sign our petition: https://www.change.org/p/crest-nicholson-developers-save-the-bethnal-green-mulberry

Read more on Spitalfields Life: http://spitalfieldslife.com/2018/09/21/the-fate-of-the-bethnal-green-mulberry/

Read more in The Daily Telegraph: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/how-to-grow/ancient-london-mulberry-tree-threatened-block-luxury-flats/