Victorian terraces in red and yellow brick surround a converted match factory, its gatehouse played a fictional gated estate in the BBC series If...
What Bow looks like
Bow Road passes St Mary and Holy Trinity, whose stone tower stands on a central reservation in the middle of the road, cars passing on both sides of it. A few doors along, the former Poplar Town Hall keeps a stone front with a carved frieze, now used as a business centre. The Docklands Light Rail crosses Fairfield Road on a brick bridge close by, buses running underneath on the road below.
On Fairfield Road, the former Bryant and May match factory runs the length of a block in red brick, two square towers rising ten storeys above a long range of arched windows. The main range dates from 1909 to 1911, and the brick entrance still shows a carved depiction of Noah's Ark. It is Grade II listed, and a Gothic red brick gatehouse at 60 Fairfield Road opens onto the flats the factory has become.
A set of locks connects the tidal creek to the Lee Navigation, with the Limehouse Cut close by and a towpath running alongside the water. A short walk north, the stands on an island where the Lea's tidal channels split, a timber mill under a steeply pitched slate roof.
Inland from the canal, Victorian terraced houses run in red and yellow London stock brick, two and three storeys with sash windows and stone lintels over the doors. Douro Street, off Fairfield Road, keeps a corner cottage called Pelican Cottage with a covered porch and a slate roof. It sits at the same scale as the rows nearby.
Shot in Bow
The BBC anthology series If... filmed inside Bow Quarter, the converted match factory on Fairfield Road. The production used the real estate as the fictional gated community Regent's Court, and its Fairfield Road gatehouse is the entrance.
If..., 2004
The BBC series If... shot scenes inside Bow Quarter, using the converted match factory as the fictional gated community Regent's Court. The gatehouse and lodge cottages at 60 Fairfield Road are the entrance a resident or a visitor would use. Street View
Ancoats' Victorian cotton mills face onto the Rochdale Canal and have been converted into loft apartments behind their original redbrick walls, the same industry to housing conversion as Bow Quarter's match factory. Royal Mill and Murrays' Mills keep their chimneys and canal frontage intact. The Ancoats mills run taller than Bow Quarter's towers and the canal there is narrower, so a tight towpath frame reads closer than a wide one. Manchester's own brick is a duller red than Bow's London stock brick. Try searching converted mill canal now.
Gowanus keeps its own canal lined with industrial warehouses and repair yards, the closest American equivalent to a working East London waterway with the old industry still standing. Red brick loft buildings back directly onto the water the way the warehouses along Bow's canals do. The Gowanus Canal is wider than the Limehouse Cut and crossed by steel lift bridges rather than brick arches, so including a crossing gives it away. Newer glass residential towers now rise behind several blocks and need to stay out of frame. Try searching industrial canal warehouses now.
Anfield in Liverpool, England
Anfield's terraced houses are two storeys of redbrick, put up through Liverpool's Victorian suburban expansion in the 1880s and 1890s. They run at the same scale as Bow's own Victorian streets, with bay windows and short front yards repeating down each block. Liverpool's street grid is longer and straighter than Bow's, and the roof slates run a darker grey. Keep floodlights and stadium signage for Anfield's football ground out of any wide shot. Try searching redbrick terraced streets now.
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