Besso House Mile End Road in 1891 C. R. Ashbee, architect and founder of the Survey of London, set up the workshops of the Guild of Handicraft in Essex House which formerly stood on this site.

401 Mile End Road has been known by three names since it was built c1985 in on the site of the cinema that was built c1937 on the site of Charles Robert Ashbee's Essex House - first Kentish House, then Besso House and most recently Onyx House. It now houses Eden College. For a some time, the word 'Onyx' was superimposed, by means of an adhesive label, over the word 'Besso' on the plaque but by 2025 this had weathered away.