An Impromptu Relic For Mono Monday

This week's Mono Monday, hosted by laurie54, has impromptu as the theme.

I cycled past these ruins on the way to a meeting this afternoon but a couple of hours later the light was better so I stopped for a quick iPhone photo. This is their story.

Remains of a late medieval and Tudor moated mansion, known from the 17th century as Worcester House, are located on Crossrail's Stepney Green shafts work site in London's East End. Its rich merchant and aristocratic owners had a fine country residence with easy access to the city and to the River Thames and so to overseas trade. 

In the early 17th century it was among properties owned by the 1st Marquis of Worcester, a supporter of Charles II, which were confiscated by Cromwell's Parliament. By the late 17th century the estate had passed into the hands of radical Nonconformists associated with the Stepney Meeting and a meeting house was built there. 

Worcester House was converted to a Baptist college in the early 19th century and the photo shows the ruins of a Congregationalist church constructed in 1841 replacing the earlier meeting house. 

Other parts of the estate were developed as small factories and new housing for 19th-century dock workers in an area which later suffered severe bomb damage in World War II. Vivid accounts by local people of life before, during and after the war, up to the founding of what is now Stepney City Farm, bring this vibrant piece of East End history up to date.