Altab Ali Park

Altab Ali Park is a small park on Adler Street, White Church Lane and Whitechapel Road, London E1.[1] Formerly known as St Mary's Park, it is the site of the old 14th-century white church, St Mary Matfelon, from which the area of Whitechapel gets its name.[2] St Mary's was heavily bombed during The Blitz in 1940,[3] all that remains of the old church is the floor plan and a few graves. Included among those buried on the site are Richard Parker, Richard Brandon, Sir John Cass,[4] and "Sir" Jeffrey Dunstan, "Mayor of Garratt".

Entrance to the park

Replica of the Shaheed Minar monument

Gravestones

The park was renamed Altab Ali Park in 1998[5] in memory of Altab Ali, a 25-year-old British Bangladeshi clothing worker, who was murdered on 4 May 1978 in Adler Street by three teenage boys as he walked home from work.[6] Ali's murder was one of the many racist attacks that came to characterise the East End at that time.[7] At the entrance to the park is an arch created by David Petersen, developed as a memorial to Altab Ali and other victims of racist attacks. The arch incorporates a complex Bengali-style pattern, meant to show the merging of different cultures in East London.[8][9][10]

Along the path down the centre of the park are letters spelling out "The shade of my tree is offered to those who come and go fleetingly", a fragment of a poem by Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore.

The Shaheed Minar, which commemorates the Bengali Language Movement, stands in the southwest corner of Altab Ali Park. The monument is a smaller replica of the one in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and symbolises a mother and her martyred sons.[11]

The nearest London Underground station is Aldgate East on the District and Hammersmith & City lines.