Template:Wp-Bethnal Green-History

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Origins and administration

The term Bethnal Green originally referred to a small common in the Manor and Ancient Parish of Stepney; around which a small settlement developed. By the seventeenth century the area had become a Hamlet, a territorial sub-division of Stepney, with a degree of independence. Continued housebuilding and population growth in the 18th century led to the Hamlet area becoming a fully independent daughter parish in 1743. The parish had a church, a benefice (for its priest) and vestry (for its people) in 1743. In 1855 Bethnal Green was included within the area of the Metropolitan Board of Works to which it nominated one member and the various local government bodies were replaced by a single incorporated vestry which consisted of 48 elected vestrymen.

Under the Metropolis Management Act 1855, any parish that exceeded 2,000 ratepayers was to be divided into wards; as such the incorporated vestry of St Matthew Bethnal Green was divided into four wards (electing vestrymen): No. 1 or East (9), No. 2 or North (9), No. 3 or West (15) and No. 4 or South (15).^[1]

The (civil) parish became a Metropolitan Borough in 1900, which merged with some of the neighbouring areas, to become the new London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in 1965.

Early History

In what would become northern Bethnal Green (known as Cambridge Heath) a tract of common land, which stretched to the east and west, a part of the Manor and Ancient Parish of Stepney. The heath was used as pasture where people grazed their sheep in the 13th century, though 1275 records suggest at least one house stood there. Stepney's Manor House (known as Bishopswood, later Bishop's Hall) was located in Bethnal Green from at least 1207, on a site subsequently occupied by the London Chest Hospital.

A Tudor ballad, the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, tells the story of an ostensibly poor man who gave a surprisingly generous dowry for his daughter's wedding. The tale furnishes the parish of Bethnal Green's coat of arms. According to one version of the legend, found in Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry published in 1765, the beggar was said to be Henry, the son of Simon de Montfort, but Percy himself declared that this version was not genuine. The Blind Beggar public house in Whitechapel is reputed to be the site of his begging.

Growth

The Green and Poor's Land is the area of open land now occupied by Bethnal Green Library, the Young V&A and St John's Church, designed by John Soane. In John Stow's Survey of London (1598) the hamlet was called Blethenal Green. It was one of the hamlets included in the Manor of Stepney and Hackney. Hackney later became separated. In 1678, the owners of houses surrounding the Green purchased the land to save it from being built on and in 1690, the land was conveyed to a trust under which it was to be kept open and rent from it used for the benefit of poor people living in the vicinity. From that date, the trust has administered the land and its minute books are kept in the London Metropolitan Archives. Bethnal House, or Kirby's Castle, was the principal house on the Green. One of its owners was Sir Hugh Platt (1552–1608), author of books on gardening and practical science. Under its next owner it was visited by Samuel Pepys. In 1727 it was leased to Matthew Wright and for almost two centuries it was an asylum. Its two most distinguished inmates were Alexander Cruden, compiler of the Concordance to the Bible, and the poet Christopher Smart. Cruden recorded his experience in The London Citizen Grievously Injured (1739) and Smart's stay there is recorded by his daughter. Records of the asylum are kept in the annual reports of the Commissioner in Lunacy. Even today, the park where the library stands is known locally as "Barmy Park". The original mansion, the White House, was supplemented by other buildings. In 1891, the Trust lost the use of Poor's Land to the London County Council. The asylum reorganised its buildings, demolishing the historic White House and erecting a new block in 1896. This building became the present Bethnal Green Library. A history of Poor's Land and Bethnal House is included in The Green, written by A.J. Robinson and D.H.B. Chesshyre.

Boxing has a long association with Bethnal Green. Daniel Mendoza, who was champion of England from 1792 to 1795 though born in Aldgate, lived in Paradise Row on the western side of Bethnal Green for 30 years. Joe Anderson, 'All England' champion of 1897, was from Bethnal Green.

The north end of the Green is associated with the Natt family. During the 18th century they owned many of its houses. Netteswell House is the residence of the curator of the Bethnal Green Museum. It is almost certainly named after the village of Netteswell, near Harlow, whose rector was the Reverend Anthony Natt. A few of its houses have become University settlements. In Victoria Park Square, on the east side of the Green, No. 18 has a Tudor well in its cellar.

The silk-weaving trade spread eastwards from Spitalfields throughout the 18th century. This attracted many Huguenot and Irish weavers to the district. Large estates of small two-storey cottages were developed in the west of the area to house them. A downturn in the trade in 1769 led to the Spitalfield Riots, and on 6 December 1769, two weavers accused of "cutting" were hanged in front of the Salmon and Ball public house.

Bethnal Green Road Market on the road of the same name, founded in the 18th century, grew and grew and became more full with stalls. By 1959 stalls were choking the streets and the council attempted to relocate the market but had no success. In 1986 there had been many shop closures but the stalls were still trading. The street market is now today recognised as a major local shopping area.

Victorian era

In the 19th century, Bethnal Green remained characterised by its market gardens and by weaving. Having been an area of large houses and gardens as late as the 18th century, by about 1860 Bethnal Green was mainly full of tumbledown old buildings with many families living in each house. By the end of the century, Bethnal Green was one of the poorest slums in London. Jack the Ripper operated at the western end of Bethnal Green and in neighbouring Whitechapel. In 1900, the Old Nichol Street rookery was replaced with the Boundary Estate (near the limits of Shoreditch). This was a first in council housing. Brothers Lew Grade and Bernard Delfont were brought up on the estate. In 1909, the larger Bethnal Green Estate was opened with money left by the philanthropist William Richard Sutton which he left for "modern dwellings and houses for occupation by the poor of London and other towns and populous places in England". The Peabody Trust administered the funds to complete much of the estate in 1910.

The Regent's Canal opened in 1820, for horse-drawn canal barges to carry cargo between the London Docklands and the Grand Union Canal. These supplied local coal merchants and gas houses/plants (gasifiers) built along its banks including Bethnal Green.

The London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews built Palestine Place as Cambridge Heath began to be fully developed during the first half of the 19th century. A windmill survived until at least 1836. Most local residents were poor, especially in the streets around the railway line and the Regent's Canal, as well as on Russia Lane.

In 1841, the Anglo-Catholic Nathaniel Woodard, who was to become a highly influential educationalist in the later part of the 19th century, became the curate of the newly created St. Bartholomew's in Bethnal Green. He was a capable pastoral visitor and established a parochial school. In 1843, he got into trouble for preaching a sermon in which he argued that The Book of Common Prayer should have additional material to provide for confession and absolution and in which he criticised the "inefficient and Godless clergy" of the Church of England. After examining the text of the sermon, the Bishop of London condemned it as containing "erroneous and dangerous notions". As a result, the bishop sent Woodard to be a curate in Clapton.

Globe Town was established from 1800 to provide for the expanding population of weavers around Bethnal Green attracted by improving prospects in silk weaving. The population of Bethnal Green trebled between 1801 and 1831, operating 20,000 looms in their own homes. By 1824, with restrictions on importation of French silks relaxed, up to half these looms became idle and prices were driven down. With many importing warehouses already established in the district, the abundance of cheap labour was turned to boot, furniture and clothing manufacture. Globe Town continued its expansion into the 1860s, long after the decline of the silk industry.

Columbia Road Flower Market is on the street of the same name which has kept some Victorian shops, and was established as Columbia Market in 1869 as a covered food market. It closed in 1886, but was later revived as a Sunday flower market.

Bethnal Green Junction, now just Bethnal Green from 1946 (which lends to confusion with the much-later London Underground station) and Cambridge Heath railway station are on the London Overground. Both were opened by the Great Eastern Railway (GER) on the Lea Valley Lines in 1872 as part of a more direct route to Enfield Town. The GER opened further Fast Lines that allow longer-distance trains to bypass these. Bethnal Green was also formerly served by trains on the Great Eastern Main Line (GEML) via ands saw two derailments in the later 20th century, similar to other contemporary comparators of busy, metropolitan junctions.

Mowlem Street School opened in 1887. It was enlarged in 1898 and again in 1902 to accommodate 410 boys and 410 girls. A new single-storey building catering for 280 children was opened in 1971 when it was renamed Mowlem Primary School.

Early 20th century

St Casimir's was founded in 1901, with a church on the corner of Christian Street and Cable Street. Fr. Boleslas Szlamas had his quarters at 197 Whitechapel Road. The present church dates from ten years later, during the rectorate of Fr. Casimir G. Matulaitis. It was opened by Cardinal Bourne on 10 March 1912. The Mass on this occasion was said by Fr. Benedict Williamson, who was the architect of the church.

Bethnal Green Town Hall was completed in 1910 and the internationally renowned York Hall opened in 1929 with a capacity of 1,200. Later, in 1993, the Town Hall was vacated when the London Borough of Tower Hamlets moved its headquarters, and in 2007 the building was converted to a hotel which opened in 2010.

The warehouse buildings rose from the Regent's Canal without a towpath to interrupt development, giving direct access to the canal. A row of Victorian workshops was built on Wadeson Street in what was a historically Jewish precinct. This became very overcrowded with 572 inhabitants living in 125 houses by the 1930s.

Second World War

The Blitz

During the Second World War, the Luftwaffe began The Blitz on 7 September 1940. Bethnal Green was in "Target Area A" along with the rest of the East End of London.

Bethnal Green Library was bombed on the very first night of the Blitz. This forced the temporary relocation of the library into the unopened Bethnal Green Underground Station in order to provide continuity of lending services. The library was rebuilt and opened a few months later for the public. Oxford House also had a major role, with some local residents fleeing into the house off Bethnal Green Road seeking shelter, this location was more attractive than the stables under the nearby Great Eastern Main Line arches. The Chief Shelter Welfare Officer at the time, Jane Leverson, is reported to have said that "people came to Oxford House not because it was an air raid shelter but because there they found happiness and a true spirit of fellowship".

It is estimated that during this war, 80 tons of bombs fell on the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green, affecting 21,700 houses, destroying 2,233 and making a further 893 uninhabitable. There were a total of 555 people killed and 400 seriously injured. Many unexploded bombs remain in the area, and on 14 May 2007, builders discovered a Second World War 1 m long bomb.

Bethnal Green tube disaster

On 3 March 1943, the air-raid Civil defence siren sounded at 8:17 pm, causing a flow of people down the staircase which had no lights on from the street level into the incomplete Bethnal Green tube station, which had been requisitioned in 1940 by the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green under the supervision of the Regional Commissioners. The panic itself began at 8:27 coinciding with the sound of an anti-aircraft battery (possibly the recently installed Z battery) being fired at nearby Victoria Park. In the wet, dark conditions the crowd was surging forward towards the shelter when a woman tripped on the stairs, causing many others to fall. Within a few seconds 300 people were crushed into the tiny stairwell, resulting in the deaths of 173 people (most of whom were women and children) who were crushed and asphyxiated. Although a report was filed by Eric Linden with the Daily Mail, who witnessed it, the report was never published. Very little information was provided at the time. The results of the official investigation were not released until 1946. It was the largest loss of life in a single incident on the London Underground network.

Rebuilding

Bethnal Green tube station opened on 4 December 1946 on the Central Line and is between Liverpool Street and Mile End on the London Underground, however construction of the Central line's eastern extension into then-Essex was started in the 1930s, and the tunnels were largely complete at the outbreak of the Second World War although rails were not laid.

The book Family and Kinship in East London (1957) shows an improvement in working class life. Husbands in the sample population no longer went out to drink but spent time with the family. As a result, both birth rate and infant death rate fell drastically and local prosperity increased.

Bethnal Green has long been a hotbed of organised crime. Its most famous criminals were the Kray twins, known as Ronald "Ronnie" Kray and Reginald "Reggie" Kray who were identical twin brothers and were active during the 1950s and 1960s with a gang known as The Firm.

In the 1970s, Tower Hamlets Council decided to fence the area that would become Bethnal Green Nature Reserve, and lock it up to protect it from fly tipping. In the late 1990s the local Teesdale and Hollybush Tenants and Residents Association became the site custodians and, with the support of Tower Hamlets Council, took responsibility for St Jude's as it was still called locally.

Contemporary

Millennium

The former Bethnal Green , later the London County Council Bethnal Green Hospital, stood opposite Cambridge Heath railway station. The hospital closed as a public hospital in the 1970s and was a geriatric hospital under the NHS until the 1980s. Much of the site was developed for housing in the 1990s but the hospital entrance and administration block remains as a listed building.

The 26 bus route was introduced in 1992 to replace the withdrawn section of route 6 between Hackney Wick and Aldwych and included a new night counterpart to Chingford from Hackney Wick, the N26.

On 25 September 1993, route 309 started running between Bethnal Green and Poplar. It was intended to start from the London Chest Hospital but this was delayed due to speed hump problems and it therefore started and ended at Three Colts Lane instead. It was finally extended from Bethnal Green Station to Chest Hospital in 1995.

Chris Gollon gained a major commission from the Church of England for fourteen Stations of the Cross paintings for the St John church. Gollon was a controversial choice, since he is not a practising Christian. In order to carry out the commission, and for consultation on theological matters, he collaborated with Fr Alan Green, Rector of the church.

In 2005, Bethnal Green had become a hub of the East London art scene, centred around Vyner Street.

During the 21 July 2005 London bombings, a number 26 bus was targeted by Muktar Said Ibrahim, who attempted to explode a device while the bus was on Hackney Road from Waterloo, near the corner of Columbia Road. The bomb caused a small explosion but did not detonate as intended, and there were no deaths or significant damage.

Regeneration

Between 2005 and 2008, the EEL (East End Life) established the Vyner Street Festival with the local Victory Pub as a family festival with local bands, artists and market traders, this has a different theme every year, with the Red Arrows performing flyover in 2008. By 2012, however, many artists had moved out due to the effects of the Great Recession as well as the 2012 Olympics.^[2] A documentary film was released in the same year titled Vyner Street: this was a short observational piece about two different worlds living inconspicuously and side by side in the same place.

As part of "TUBE" Art Installation in November 2013, sound artist Kim Zip created an installation commemorating the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster. The work was backed by the Whitechapel Gallery and promoted as part of the organisation's "First Thursdays" initiative for popular art. "TUBE" exhibited over a period of four weeks in the belfry of Sir John Soane's St John on Bethnal Green Church. The Lady Dinah's Cat Emporium was the first cat café in London, which was opened in 2013.

In 2015, three children Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana appeared in the press, referred to as the Bethnal Green trio. All three had attended the Bethnal Green Academy before leaving home to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

In April 2016, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets approved and designated the Spitalfields Neighbourhood Planning Forum to monitor and enhance local planning policies, this included apart of Brick Lane Market into the forum. Bethnal Green has also been part of the Night Tube service since 2016.

A plaque was placed at the entrance to the tube station in the 1970s and commemorates it as the site of the worst civilian disaster of the Second World War; and a larger memorial, "Stairway to Heaven", stands in nearby Bethnal Green Gardens. This memorial was unveiled in December 2017 at a ceremony attended by Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Bethnal Green and Bow MP Rushanara Ali.

Gentrification

Bethnal Green hosted London's first catfest in the Oval Space in 2018, with guests having the chance to take photos with cats as well as sample street food and meet shelter kittens. In the same year, 2018, Cambridge Heath station was chosen for a trial with a pay-by-face system that may end the need for station barriers, due to its low passenger volumes and having no gates. Early in 2018 Frank Wang, who had sold coffee to commuters from his van at the northern exit of Bethnal Green underground station lost his business when the electricity supply from the station was cut off as a result of the nearby site of a disused public lavatory behind his stall being converted into a beach bar called Chiringuito. Tower Hamlets Mayor John Biggs, one of Frank's long-standing customers came out in support along with the local community, the Chinese community and commuters who protested.

Formerly part of the estate of Truman's Brewery, now a free house, The Hare was cited as the epitome of a ‘good, honest pub’ by the Evening Standard and was listed as one of the 50 best pubs in London in 2019. During the May bank holiday, the redeveloped railway arches off Cambridge Heath Road into an eating and drinking quarter opened. Tower Hamlets Council had turned down plans for the Cambridge Heath Road development because of concerns over its affordable housing mix and design quality. The Better Streets for Tower Hamlets had turned the car park spot in Bethnal Green Road into a mini park for a day to draw people's attention to the need for more healthier public spaces.

A mural of David Attenborough had appeared on a side of a tropical fish store on St Matthew's Row. Sainsbury's in the same year opened what it claims was the country's first meat-free butchers, in the form of a traditional style butchers which was open for three days from Friday 21 June to mark World Meat Free Week, where it offered customers an array of cuts and joints derived from plant-based alternatives, such as mushroom, jackfruit and pea protein. Bethnal Green is also since 2019 Sustrans new London headquarters. During the move from Farringdon, they used electric cargo bikes rather than hiring a haulage lorry. During the 2019 redecorating of the Carpenters Arms on Cheshire Street, an old safe was found in the cellar when a wall was torn down. It is thought it was boarded up before the immediately previous owners has acquired the pub.