Place:Canning Town, Essex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Canning Town is an area of East London in England. It is part of the London Borough of Newham and is situated in the area of the former London docks on the north side of the River Thames. It is the location of Rathbone Market. Despite being a neighbour to many Dockland developments, Canning Town remains among the 5 per cent most deprived areas in the UK with local people suffering from poor health, low education and poverty.

Prior to the establishment of Greater London in 1965, Canning Town was in the County Borough of West Ham and was considered to be part of the county of Essex.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Prior to the 19th century, the district was largely marshland, and accessible only by boat, or a toll bridge. In 1809, an Act of Parliament was passed for the construction of the Barking Road between the East India Docks and Barking. A five-span iron bridge was constructed in 1810 to carry the road across the River Lea at Bow Creek. This bridge was damaged by a collision with a collier in March 1887 and replaced by the London County Council (LCC) in 1896. This bridge was in turn replaced in 1934, at a site to the north and today's concrete flyover begun in smaller form in the 1960s, but successively modified to incorporate new road layouts for the upgraded A13 road and a feeder to the Limehouse Link tunnel, avoiding the Blackwall Tunnel. The abutments of the old iron bridge have now been utilised for the Jubilee footbridge, linking the area to Leamouth, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, on the western bank of the Lea.

The area is thought to be named after the first Viceroy of India, Charles John Canning, who suppressed the Indian Mutiny about the time the district expanded. The population increased rapidly after the North London Line was built from Stratford to North Woolwich, in 1846. This was built to carry coal and goods from the docks; and when the passenger station was first built it was known as Barking Road. Speculative builders constructed houses for the workers attracted by the new chemical industries established in the lower reaches of the River Lea, and for the nearby Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company and Tate & Lyle refinery.

The opening of the Royal Victoria Dock in 1855 accelerated the development of the area^[1] creating employment and a need to house dock workers and their families. New settlements around the dock developed, starting with Hallsville, Canning Town and Woolwich, and later the areas now known as Custom House, Silvertown and West Silvertown. The new settlements lacked water supply and had no sewage system, leading to the spread of cholera and smallpox. The casual nature of employment at the docks meant poverty and squalid living conditions for many residents,^[2] and in 1857 Henry Morley wrote about the area:

The industries around the dock were often unhealthy and dangerous. As trade unions and political activists fought for better living conditions and the dock area became the centre of numerous movements with Will Thorne, James Keir Hardie and other later becoming leading figures in the Labour Party.^[3] Thorne and others worked and gave speeches at Canning Town Public Hall which had been built in 1894 as the population grew in the southern part of the borough.

From the late 19th century, a large African mariner community was established in Canning Town as a result of new shipping links to the Caribbean and West Africa. Prior to the Windrush era, Canning Town had London’s largest black population of any area in London. The area around Crown Street (formerly located just north of the Royal Victoria Dock, but destroyed in the Blitz) was known as Draughtboard Alley due its ethnic mix.

Notable black people from Canning Town include footballers Fred Corbett, who played for Thames Ironworks F.C. and its successor team West Ham United, and Jack Leslie who was called up to play for England, but then dropped without explanation, possibly due to racial prejudice. Another example of the areas long-standing multi-cultural nature is Indian born doctor Chuni Lal Katial, who practiced in Canning Town for several years from around 1929. Katial was an acquantaince of Mahatma Gandhi, and invited him to meet Charlie Chaplin, one of the most famous actors in the world, at his surgery in Beckton Road. Gandhi was staying at Kingsley Hall, in nearby Bromley-by-Bow for the three-month duration of his talks with the UK government on the future of India. Katial, a noted health pioneer later moved to the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury, in north London, where he became Britain’s first south Asian Mayor.

In 1917 50 tons of TNT exploded at the Brunner Mond & Co ammunition work in nearby Silvertown, causing the Silvertown explosion, the largest explosion in London's history and damaging more than 70,000 buildings and killing 73 people.^[3]

In the 1930s the County Borough of West Ham commenced slum clearances.^[2] New houses, clinics, nurseries and a lido were opened. Silvertown ByPass and Britain's first flyover, the Silvertown Way, were built along with other new approach roads to the docks. Canning Town was heavily hit by the bombings in World War II and West Ham Council's plan to rebuild the area focused on a reduction of the population, transferring industry and the building of new housing such as the Keir Hardie Estate, which included schools and welfare services.^[3] In the early hours of 10 September 1940, a bomb hit South Hallsville School where up to 600 local refugees were accommodated. At least 200, mainly children, were killed or injured. Many bodies were never recovered.

The slum clearances and the devastation of World War II, destroying 85% of the housing stock, led to the preponderance of council estates that characterise the area today.^[2] Post-war housing schemes followed the urban planning principles of the garden city movement. As demand for housing grew the first high rise buildings were built in Canning Town in 1961. In 1968 part of Ronan Point, a 22-storey tower block in Newham, collapsed and most of the tall tower blocks built in the area in the early 1960s were eventually demolished or reduced in size.^[3]

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