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"title": "Albion Brewery building during the dustmen's strike of 1979",
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"body": "<p>A digitised colour slide from Tower Hamlets Archives collection</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/806129440405291008\">https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/806129440405291008</a></p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
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"title": "29-31A Commercial Road",
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"body": "<p>This site was created by the westwards extension of Commercial Road in 1869-70. It was acquired by Henry Bear, a tobacco manufacturer. His heir, Adam Bear, granted John Furze & Co., brewers, a 90-year lease in 1899 subject to a building agreement. The brewery was taken over by Taylor Walker & Co., and in 1901 the agreement and lease were transferred to Solomon Kirstein, a printer based at 38 Church Lane. By 1902 Kirstein had built three three-storey houses or workrooms with shops adjoining at 29-31a Commercial Road, with Herbert O. Ellis as his architect and M. Calnan & Co. as builders. Kirstein himself took the shop at No. 29, living above with his wife, three children and a servant.</p>\n\n<p>Around 1970 David Abraham began selling knitwear at 34 White Church Lane. In 2015 the David Abraham Partnership put forward a redevelopment scheme for a larger site proposing a seventeen-storey tower designed by Stock Woolstencroft. [^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: District Surveyors Returns: Goad maps: London County Council Minutes, 30 April and 18 June 1901, pp. 518 and 760: London Metropolitan Archives, O/064/034 and 037: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control file 41978: The National Archives, IR58/84809/2606–8: Post Office Directories: Tower Hamlets Planning]</p>\n",
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"title": "Lewis Sheldon, garment manufacturer",
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"body": "<p>My grandfather ran a successful garment factory from the floors on the upper part of this building. Access was from a side door in Greatorex Street as the shop on the ground floor was used by British Gas. I went there as a child often after he died as it continued to be run by my mum’s stepmother for some time.</p>\n",
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"title": "Going to the Union",
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"body": "<p>Bosses from the Jewish Tailors' Union used to meet prospective workers for hire outside the gas company on the corner of Greatorex Street. The workers used to call it 'going to the Union'.</p>\n",
"created": "2017-07-28",
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"title": "The Mulberry Gardens",
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"body": "<p>An approximately four-acre quadrilateral of ground lying west of present-day Plumbers Row and extending south from the Pierrepoint/Baynes Estate to what is now Commercial Road was a mulberry garden, densely planted as if an orchard and laid out with paths in a grid. It might once have extended further east; its origins remain obscure. Mulberries had been introduced to London by the Romans and were commonly used for making medieval ‘murrey’ (sweet pottage) as well as for medicinal purposes, but such a neatly planned grove may have arisen from James I’s attempt to establish native silk production in 1607–9 when around ten thousand saplings were imported and distributed by William Stallenge and François Verton through local officials at six shillings for a hundred plants, less for packets of seeds. Mulberry gardens thus came about across England, mirrors of the King’s own of four acres in the grounds of St James’s (now Buckingham) Palace. The commercial project failed, black mulberries (<em>Morus nigra</em>) having been acquired rather than the white (<em>Morus alba</em>) that silkworms tend to favour, perhaps the result of deceit; the supply chain cannot have been so ignorant. There was a second mulberry garden close by, across Whitechapel Road in Mile End New Town, north of what is now Old Montague Street and east of Greatorex (formerly Great Garden) Street, and land to the east of that south of Old Montague Street appears to have been similarly planted. Spitalfields was already at the beginning of the seventeenth century a centre of silk throwing and weaving.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Whitechapel’s so-designated mulberry garden, like that at the palace, eventually fell to use as a pleasure ground after a period as a market garden held on a lease from about 1679 by Giles Kinchin and his indirect descendants up to around 1750 (see separate contribution). After the garden's failure as a commercial venture in the 1720s it appears that Rowland Stagg adapted the premises to be a pleasure ground. There was a garden house near the north end and recreational use continued up to at least 1760, the arrest then of four young gamblers by Sir John Fielding’s runners indicating anxieties about the presence of vice. An executed pirate refused burial elsewhere was interred in the otherwise disused grounds in 1762.<br>\nThe Mulberry Garden ‘behind Whitechapel Church’ was made new use of for a few weeks in late 1764 as a temporary asylum, a tented camp for around 400 deceived and destitute refugees from the Palatinate and Bohemia who had been abandoned on what they had undertaken as a journey to Nova Scotia. Helped by exhortations to charity and by local people, notably other Germans, in particular Dr Gustav Anton Wachsel, the refugees were able after all to depart and, following a petition to King George III, to settle in South Carolina. The garden remained untenanted until 1772 when John Holloway, a Goodman’s Fields cooper, acquired the property and adjoining lands (about 4.5 acres in all) with a handful of houses from Stepney manor for building.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Joel Gascoyne, Map of Stepney, 1703: John Rocque's map of London, 1746: Richard Horwood's maps of London, 1799 and 1813: Peter Coles, ‘A Brief History of London’s Mulberries’, Spitalfields Life blog, 29 June 2016: Linda Levy Peck, <em>Consuming Splendor: Society and Culture in Seventeenth-Century England</em>, 2005, pp.85–99: Post Office Directories: information kindly supplied by Peter Coles.</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: London Metropolitan Archives, O/009/055: <em>Daily Register of Commerce and Intelligence</em>, 15 Sept 1760: <em>London Evening Post</em>, 6 Sept 1764: <em>Lloyd’s Evening Post</em>, 8 Oct 1764: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, cuttings 022: Robert A. Selig, ‘Emigration, fraud, humanitarianism, and the founding of Londonderry, South Carolina, 1763–1765’, <em>Eighteenth Century Studies</em>, vol.23/1, 1989, pp.1–23.</p>\n",
"created": "2016-08-26",
"last_edited": "2021-04-15"
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"id": 657,
"title": "Salvation Army Shelter, 192-6 Hanbury Street",
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"username": "Clare_F"
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"body": "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/05/23/hanbury.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p>The huge Hanbury Street Shelter, at 192-196 Hanbury Street, opened on 10 March 1889, just after the Ripper murders - recycling the redundant Tower Hamlets Swimming Baths. The Shelter was demolished by 1934, and replaced by the Brady Girls’ Club, later the Brady Arts and Community Centre.</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>What is now part of the Whitechapel Sports Centre site and land to its east and north housed a major distillery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Samuel Davey Liptrap (1742/3–1789) was a starch maker who diversified to become a malt distiller, from 1767 holding premises at 25 Whitechapel Road and a much larger site on the north side of Ducking Pond Row, seven acres of heretofore open ground. Water supply was critical. Wells could be dug here where the canalised watercourse known as the Black Ditch ran and there was a windmill for pumping; the drying-up of the Ducking Pond at the east end of what is now Durward Street may have been a consequence. Liptrap was Master of the Distillers’ Company in 1788. Upon his death a year later he was succeeded by his Whitechapel-born eldest son, John Liptrap (1766–1826), who rapidly distinguished himself not merely as a distiller, but also as a magistrate, philanthropist and a Sheriff of London in 1795, by when he was running the distillery in partnership with his brother Samuel Davey Liptrap junior (1773–1836). John Liptrap’s most egregious claim to fame came in 1796 when he chased Prince George from his Whitechapel house on finding him in bed with his wife.</p>\n\n<p>The distillery grew and prospered, producing around 7,000 gallons a day of malt liquor, or what were called ‘low wines and spirits’. John Liptrap became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1802. A year later his brother was under investigation for having allegedly siphoned off large quantities of fermented wort to evade tax. There were bankruptcy proceedings in 1804, and in 1811 a wider partnership was dissolved. John Liptrap crossed swords with Joseph Merceron, Bethnal Green’s potentate, in 1812 and was forced out of Whitechapel bankrupt.[^1]</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2018/03/09/whitechapel-distillery-1.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p><em>Whitechapel Distillery in 1817 (redrawn for the Survey of London by Helen Jones, from London Metropolitan Archives, SC/PM/ST/01/002)</em></p>\n\n<p>The distillery had become a vast undertaking, London’s third largest producer of alcoholic spirits in 1820. A new artesian well to a depth of 106ft had been sunk in 1816 to supply 7640 barrels of water a day. Samuel Davey Liptrap junior had held onto the business in a renewed partnership with Thomas Smith, but in 1821 he was bought out for almost £40,000, leaving Thomas Smith & Co. in control. The Ducking Pond site and wedge of land between Watson’s Buildings (Winthrop Street) and Buck’s Row (Durward Street) was taken on a 99-year lease in 1829. As was general, basic distilling and rectification (generally the addition of juniper for gin) were separated in the 1830s, Thomas Smith & Co. running the distillery, James Scott Smith & Co. a rectifying house. James Scott Smith and George Smith undertook substantial rebuilding in 1845, but the distillery closed in 1861. Its greater northern part was then given up for the south end of the Great Eastern Railway’s Whitechapel Coal Depot, another plot on the north side of Buck’s Row was sold off in 1874 in connection with the making of the East London Line.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Arcives (LMA), Land Tax returns; CLC/B/192/F/001MS11936/400/639857: The National Archives, E133/150/63, pp. 1–5: <em>London Gazette</em>, 1 Aug. 1811: Transport for London Group Archives (TfLGA), LT002051/2230: Julian Woodford, <em>The Boss of Bethnal Green: Joseph Merceron, the Godfather of Regency London</em>, 2016, pp. 148–53</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Samuel Morewood, <em>An Essay on the Inventions and Customs of Both ancients and moderns in the use of Inebriating Liquors</em>, 1824, p. 303: Oxford University Museum of Natural History Online Collections, WS/G/2/0/045: <em>Outline of the Geology of England and Wales</em>, 1822, p. 44: LMA, Tower Hamlets Commissioners of Sewers ratebooks; M/93/138; SC/PM/ST/01/002: TfLGA, LT2009/450; LT002051/2299; /2309: <em>The Builder</em>, 24 May 1862, p. 380: Post Office Directories: Brian Strong, ‘The development of the London distilling industry before 1820’, <em>London’s Industrial Archaeology</em>, vol. 10, 2004, pp. 43–55: Derek Morris, <em>Whitechapel 1600–1800</em>, 2011, p. 52</p>\n",
"created": "2018-01-03",
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"body": "<p>Whitechapel station is actually two stations, one above the other. The original, nowadays the Overground platforms, opened in 1876 when the East London Railway extended its reach from Wapping to Shoreditch. The line between New Cross Gate (as it is now) and Shoreditch was created to provide a cross-river service by using the Thames Tunnel, created by Marc Isambard Brunel and Thomas Cochrane. While an impressive piece of engineering, the world’s first tunnel beneath a navigable river, it had proved a commercial failure since its opening in 1843.</p>\n\n<p>The second station, whose frontage is visible on Whitechapel Road, is the station created in 1884 when the District Railway took a great leap eastwards from its Mansion House terminus in the City. The resultant Whitechapel and Mile End Station thus became its new eastern terminus. It remained a terminus until in 1902 when the Whitechapel and Bow Railway was created, linking the District Railway with the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway at Bromley-by-Bow Station.</p>\n\n<p>The East London Railway was serviced from 1909 by the Metropolitan Railway via a loop of track called St Mary’s curve (after the now disused St Mary’s Station). However the East London Line became a service in its own right in 1913 when the line was electrified. The Metropolitan then ceased to come as far east as Whitechapel until 1936, when it offered a through service to Barking as the Hammersmith and City service.</p>\n\n<p>While Whitechapel has undergone many changes, particularly the present transformation for Crossrail, its structure and its services are reminders of how this busy station has served a growing metropolitan area and connected it to London at large.</p>\n",
"created": "2016-07-31",
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},
{
"id": 367,
"title": "Guest at the Jews' Temporary Shelter (82-84 Leman Street, now demolished)",
"author": {
"id": 137,
"username": "Simon_Walters"
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"body": "<p>Yehuda (later changed to Judah and then to Lewis) Karbatznick was my maternal great-grandfather. Coming to East London from Russia in 1903, Yehuda initially stayed at the Jews’ Shelter in Leman Street. However, he had the address of his wife Leah’s sister Blooma, who was living in Old Montague Street in Whitechapel with her husband and son, so that’s where Lewis settled. It’s not known whether he lived with them or nearby, but Whitechapel became his home.</p>\n\n<p>It took several years of hard work for Lewis to save enough money for one-way tickets for his wife and children. Their passage to England might have been affected by 1905’s Alien Immigration Act, which allowed the UK government to deny entry to people who appeared unable to support themselves, a direct response to fears about the flood of Jewish immigrants. I still have the boat ticket for the 1906 journey taken by my great-grandmother and my three great-aunts. </p>\n\n<p>Follow more of their story on Chicksand Street here: <a href=\"https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/242/detail/\">https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/242/detail/</a></p>\n",
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"title": "Redevelopment of the London Tea Factory, 100 Leman Street and associated Co-operative Wholesale Society property",
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"body": "<p>Expansion of Co-operative Wholesale Society premises had stopped by 1955 when permission was granted for a roof over the tea warehouse yard at 84–100 Leman Street.[^1] In May 1967 production at the London Tea Factory was winding down, following a decision to cease altogether by September that year and to concentrate operations at CWS factories outside London.[^2] When approached by the directors of a company regarding the purchase of 66–69 Prescot Street in 1969, the CWS would agree only on condition that it was sold together with the ‘dilapidated and unused tea warehouse’ at 86–100 Leman Street, and in a complex arrangement which eventually landed the directors in the High Court, two sites were purchased:[^3] the tea factory at 100 Leman Street and Ekins’s Prescot Street tea office extension of 1935. It subsequently transpired that the vendors did not acquire the adjoining premises, meaning, presumably Ekins’s coffee works building at the junction with St Mark’s Street. The freeholds were then sold to insurance brokers, Minet Holdings Ltd, which coincidentally had been based from 1937 at Plantation House in the old centre of the tea trade in Mincing Lane. In October 1970 Minets moved their headquarters into Ekins’s Prescot Street tea office, after the building had been gutted and given new entrance doors, side windows and a canopy bearing the name Minet House.[^4] This was now renumbered 66 Prescot Street, rather than 65–69 (or 66–69) as previously used. Prescot Street was ‘not as well situated as Plantation House, but it was nevertheless just within reasonable walking distance of Lloyds’ – a requirement for Minets as a Lloyds underwriter. The company probably also already had its eye on the much larger site at 84–100 Leman Street in order that the whole operation could be moved out of Plantation House, which the business had outgrown. Land in this part of Whitechapel was presumably much cheaper and more readily available than that in Mincing Lane.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>To provide for expansion, Minets began negotiations in 1971 for additional space in neighbouring buildings.[^6] Meanwhile the former Tea Factory at 100 Leman Street and associated premises at 70 Prescot Street and Tenter Street had been demolished down to basement level during 1970 and the site was in use temporarily as a car park.[^7] The GLC initially refused permission for the Office Development Permit sought by Minet Holdings Ltd in January 1972 on the site of the Tea Factory because it fell within a newly designated Community Development Area, which sought to restrict the number of office developments locally. The decision, which had been supported by Tower Hamlets, was overturned on appeal on the basis that the development would – like Beagle House, which was cited in support of the appeal site – increase employment and contribute to the export drive.[^8] R. Seifert & Partners’ planning application on behalf of Minets in July 1972, for redevelopment with a new office building at 100 Leman Street, was eventually granted and the acquisition of the site was completed in February 1973.[^9] Evidence presented in favour of both parties depicted an area in decline. The three-quarter acre plot of the former tea factory was described as being located in a mixed-use area, which had ‘suffered in recent years from dereliction caused partly by the decline of the docks in the last few years and partly from war damage’. As a result, many sites were undeveloped and the appeal site was itself ‘an island comprising vacant land surrounded by road frontages and modern office development’, including the new police station immediately to its north.[^10] The GLC however insisted that the declining commercial and industrial area was already undergoing some positive change, as the private sector extended Central London offices eastwards from the City and local housing associations sought land for housing.[^11] The tea factory site had frontages of 84.2 metres (approximately 276 ft) in Leman Street and 51.1 metres (approximately 168 ft) in Prescot Street, which included the former tea office extension already occupied by Minets.[^12] It also included a two-storey building at 70 Prescot Street, with vehicular access under to a yard at the year, which in 1974 was in use by Minets as a staff canteen.[^13]</p>\n\n<p>In 1978, shortly after permission was granted to Seiferts for the erection of two flagpoles on the roof, 100 Leman Street became the new company headquarters and was renamed Minet House.[^14] Clad in dark red brick with steeply raked upper storeys on its Leman Street front, the building is between seven and nine storeys high with a tenth floor stepped back from the Prescot Street front to house the plant. In scale and materials it echoes Ekins’s 1 Prescot Street opposite and has a cascade of differently angled projecting bays on the Prescot Street elevation. Lister Drew Haines Barrow sought permission for an extension to the seventh-floor dining room and reconstruction of the roof garden in 1991, shortly before the practice was bought by W. S. Atkins, which was granted in 1992.[^15] A new ground-floor entrance, with steps, paviours and planters, was completed in 2000 by MCM Architects in consultation with Nicholas Burwell of Burwell Architects.[^16] No. 100 Leman Street was acquired by Standard Life Investments on behalf of a segregated client in 2014 and remains in use as offices.[^17]</p>\n\n<p>In the 1970s and ’80s Tower Hamlets negotiated with the CWS for redevelopment of several other sites with the aim of keeping the organisation and its employees in the borough.[^18] The CWS undertook to refurbish its old butter store in Fairclough Street for use as industrial workshops as planning gain on three office schemes at 86–94 Chamber Street and 17–19 and 63–65 Prescot Street.[^19] The GLC contested the latter scheme, Ekins’s former coffee works, because it was not in a Preferred Office Location and would in its view have led to an unacceptable increase in office accommodation locally, but this was overruled after an inquiry in 1984.[^20] In 1982 plans were lodged by Architecture + Interior Design Group on behalf of the CWS for the uniting of the basements of the two former Ekins warehouses on Prescot Street (the former coffee works and the tea office, which later became Minet House, 66 Prescot Street), for the purposes of transferring the bank department from the present 1 Prescot Street to the coffee works site.[^21] It is not clear who owned the former coffee works at this date, the CWS or if Minet Properties had acquired them yet, or even if the works were carried out. </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online (THP), PA/55/00828, PA/63/00647.</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Letter from E&SCWS to GLC Architect, 23 May 1967, Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), Building Control File 22355.</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Reports of Tax Cases, Vol. 55, HMSO, 1980, pp. 467–8; Chilcott and others v Commissioners of Inland Revenue(1) (1980–1984) 55 TC 446: High Court of Justice (Chancery Division), 6, 7, 8 and 30 July 1981.</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: <em>The Times</em>, 7 May 1970 p. 30; J. H. Minet & Co. Ltd: Town Planning Appeal, pp.11–12, London School of Economics Archive (LSE), SHORE/19/100: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), SC/PHL/01/396/73/10917, photograph, 1973.</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: J. H. Minet & Co. Ltd: Town Planning Appeal, pp.11–12, LSE Archive, SHORE/19/100.</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>Ibid</em>., p.12.</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: Memorandum to the superintending architect from the Dept Chief Officer of the LFB re 100 Leman Street, 2 June 1970, THLHA, Building Control file 22355; THP, PA/69/04161; Local enquiry, 22 May 1974, into the Appeal by J. H. Minet & Co. Ltd. against the refusal by the GLC of permission to erect an office building on the site of 84–100 Leman Street and 70 Prescot Street, p.1, LSE Archive, SHORE/19/100.</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: ‘Planning Gain’, p. 142.</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: <em>Ibid</em>., pp. 141–2, 336; J. H. Minet & Co. Ltd: Town Planning Appeal, p.12, LSE Archive, SHORE/19/100; THP, PA/72/00844; PA/78/00851; THLHLA, Building control file, 22355, 84–100 Leman Street.</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: Application for Office Development on the Site at the Corner of Prescot Street and Leman Street by J. H. Minet & Co. Ltd., Appeal under Section 37 of the T&CPA 1971, Proof of Evidence of I. M. Collinson, p.2, LSE Archive, SHORE/19/100.</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: Local enquiry, 22 May 1974, into the Appeal by J. H. Minet & Co. Ltd. against the refusal by the GLC of permission to erect an office building on the site of 84–100 Leman Street and 70 Prescot Street, pp.11–12, LSE Archive, SHORE/19/100.</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: <em>Ibid</em>.</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: Proof of Evidence given to Local Enquiry, 22 May 1974 by G. M. Jones for Tower Hamlets Council in support of the GLC, p.1, LSE Archive, SHORE/19/100.</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: THP, PA/72/00844; PA/78/00851; THLHLA, Building control file, 22355, 84–100 Leman Street.</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: THP, WP/91/00157.</p>\n\n<p>[^16]: THP, PA/99/00315; https://burwellarchitects.com/work/100-leman-street.</p>\n\n<p>[^17]: http://europe-re.com/standard-life-investments-acquires-100-leman-street-41-million-uk/46688.</p>\n\n<p>[^18]: ‘Planning Gain’, pp. 485–6.</p>\n\n<p>[^19]: ‘Planning Gain’, pp. 253–4.</p>\n\n<p>[^20]: <em>Ibid.</em>, pp. 252–4.</p>\n\n<p>[^21]: THLHLA, Building control file, 23306, 62–64 Prescot Street.</p>\n",
"created": "2019-03-29",
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},
{
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"title": "View west on Grace's Alley, 1964",
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"body": "<p>A view of 2 Grace's Alley, now part of Wilton's Music Hall, when in use as a rag merchant, a digitised colour slide from the Tower Hamlets Archives collection:</p>\n\n<p><a href=\"https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/768848830129401856\">https://twitter.com/LBTHArchives/status/768848830129401856</a></p>\n",
"created": "2016-12-19",
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},
{
"id": 910,
"title": "61 Royal Mint Street (formerly the City of Carlisle public house).",
"author": {
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"username": "surveyoflondon"
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"street": "Royal Mint Street",
"address": "61 Royal Mint Street (formerly the City of Carlisle public house)",
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"search_str": "61 Royal Mint Street (formerly the City of Carlisle public house)"
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"tags": [
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"body": "<p>A public house on this site was called the Carlisle by 1750 and the City of Carlisle by 1783. Around 1850 it was renamed the Blue Peter, reflecting proximity to the port, and in 1881 the establishment was rebuilt in its present form, Patrick & Son of Westminster Bridge Road being the builders, with John Lacy taking a sub-lease from Truman Hanbury Buxton & Co. The pub reverted to being the City of Carlisle from about 1890 up to its closure around 1990, alternatively known as the Dublin in the 1930s under John Costain. After a spell accommodating a restaurant called Rosemary Lane up to 2013, the premises were adapted to be Simmons cocktail bar, with three flats above. The panel in the shaped gable bore the date 1881, recently altered to 1620 for reasons unknown. The earlier date has no known relevance to this site, though it was when William Abell acquired land across the road.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives, MR/LV/05/026; Land Tax returns; CLC/B/192/F/01/MS11936/319/487200: B/THB/D/055; District Surveyors Returns: Post Office Directories: https://pubshistory.com/LondonPubs/Whitechapel/CityofCarlisle.shtml</p>\n",
"created": "2019-05-01",
"last_edited": "2019-05-01"
},
{
"id": 252,
"title": "Miss Muff's Molly House",
"author": {
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"username": "surveyoflondon"
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"body": "<p>In 1728 Black Lion Yard was the site of the house of one Jonathan Muff, which he ran as a Molly house, a resort for gay men and transvestites (a molly being a term for a gay man). It was raided in that year and some of the clientele charged, as sex between men was then a capital offence.[^1] Some sources give the current Black Lion House at 45 Whitechapel Road as the site of Black Lion Yard but it was further east, running from Whitechapel Road, at a point under the site of the Whitechapel Technology Centre, through the site of Magenta House to a point on Old Montague Street at the east end of Hopetown, the Salvation Army hostel. </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <a href=\"http://eastendwomensmuseum.org/miss-muffs-molly-house-in-whitechapel/\">http://eastendwomensmuseum.org/miss-muffs-molly-house-in-whitechapel/</a></p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2017-01-01",
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},
{
"id": 284,
"title": "Wentworths and Woodlands",
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"body": "<p>Although much has been made of the genteel character of suburbs further east, sixteenth and seventeenth century Whitechapel was not without its own collection of gentlemanly citizens and, it seems, their correspondingly grand houses. Resident in the area from c.1570 – 1678 as Whitechapel experienced the beginnings of the mixed urbanisation that was to characterise it for much of the succeeding centuries, three consecutive ‘William Megges’ (or Meggs) invested the profits from their successful mercantile ventures locally. The Megges family involved themselves in personal building projects as well as significant benefactions to the parish. They were most notably active in the development of a large site between Whitechapel High Street and Wentworth Street called the ‘Woodlands’ and in the construction and occupation of a mansion house on this land.[^1] </p>\n\n<p>Earlier held by the monastery of Stratford Langthorne, the Woodlands was an eight-acre plot with its own fraught history, with only part of which the Megges’ were to become implicated. Its extents were defined by present-day Middlesex Street on the west, Wentworth Street to the north, Commercial Street to the east and Whitechapel High Street to the south. After falling briefly into the hands of Bishop Nicholas Ridley, the site was confiscated by Edward VI in 1550 and gifted to the courtly Wentworth family as part of the establishment of their extensive Stepney manor. Under the Wentworths, the Megges came to occupy and transform the centre and south-facing edge of the Woodlands, but their acquisition of this land transpired in a typically piecemeal fashion - a reflection of the difficulties inherent to the continuation of the ancient manorial copyhold system of tenure. In spite of growing pressure to switch to a leasehold pattern of land-holding, it appears that the Wentworths resisted administrative and legal changes in their manorial estate for as long as possible, leading to the ever more complicated fragmentation of leases and confusion over responsibilities for maintenance of the same. Smith noted in his early history of Stepney that this “loose and primitive” system of land tenure was increasingly incompatible with the new economic forces acting in the area and impeded development.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>Led by former Lord Mayor and Mile End resident Sir John Jolles, in 1617 a co-ordinated challenge against the Wentworths’ inflexibility was launched by copyholders from across Stepney manor. The uprising focussed on the lack of security afforded to this group of copyholders as well as the customs and fines imposed on them which, it was claimed, dissuaded longer-term investment in the manor. In an agreement lodged in the Chancery Court, the Wentworths conceded that these copyholders could henceforth continue in and also re-assign their leases at their own discretion in perpetuity, subject to customary renewal periods of up to thirty-one years (and increasingly a formality in all but name). This shift in policy allowed for greater stability. Beginning as leaseholders, it was however in the years preceding this agreement that the Megges’ acquired and consolidated their family estate in Whitechapel, having successfully negotiated the knotty sixteenth-century tenurial landscape to their advantage. Such success may support archivist Mark Ballard’s recent observation that there were ways and means around convoluted manorial customs and that the lords of Stepney were no strangers to corrupt practices.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: D. Morris, <em>Mile End Old Town</em>, edn. 2007, pp.1-2</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: 'Stepney: Manors and Estates', <em>A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 11, Stepney, Bethnal Green</em>, ed. T F T Baker, 1998, pp.19-52; H. Smith, <em>History of East London</em>, 1939, p.51; D. Morris, <em>Whitechapel 1600–1800: a social history of an early modern London inner suburb</em>, 2011, pp.3-5</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Strype, <em>Survey of London</em>, 1720, Book 4, Chap. 5, [online: https://hrionline.ac.uk/strype/strype/TransformServlet?display=normal&page=book4_086]086]; 'Stepney: Manors and Estates', <em>A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 11, Stepney, Bethnal Green</em>, ed. T F T Baker, 1998, p.19-52; M. Ballard, <em>Copyhold in Whitechapel</em>, [Online: https://surveyoflondon.org/blog/2016/copyhold-whitechapel/]</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>Mark Button, managing director of <a href=\"https://www.barneys-seafood.co.uk/\">Barneys Seafood</a>, talked about the business on the shortly before its move from 55 Chamber Street in October 2019 to New Billingsgate at Canary Wharf, pending redevelopment of this site:</p>\n\n<p>'I was born in the East London maternity hospital in 1965… Our family was very much from the East London. … my father used to work as a young lad helping his father with his {building} trade, doing small jobs. At a very young age, 12 or 14, he decided he didn’t want to do that so he started to look around for other work. He was one of 14 children... He worked for many people in Stratford, he worked for Cooke’s pie shop in Stratford, and various other places, he then got a job at the old Billingsgate Market working with eels, being a blocksman with fish, where they would prep fish for West End restaurants.. and he bought a seafood stall in the 1960s which was at Aldgate, which was known as Barney’s, which was the famous relative of [Solomon Gritzman, who had taken over the] Tubby Isaacs [name]. Barney and Tubby were two brothers [Barney and Solomon Gritzman] and we ended up taking over the Barney's business in 1968/69 I believe, and from there we developed the wholesalers and into the early Seventies even when Tubby Isaacs decided he didn’t want to do his own jellied eels any more and asked my father, Eddie Button, to do his eels as well, with the understanding that no one knew, as there was a feud between the two brothers: no one could know it was the same supplier supplying both sides of the road… they’d even spit at each other…. From the 1970s to early 2000s we supplied the stalls at Aldgate and sadly there’s no more traditional jellied eel seafood outlets in the East End, as we know.</p>\n\n<p>'[This] shop at 55 Chamber Street was originally the lockup for the stalls at Aldgate, for the Barneys stall and we’ve recently found some plans for drainage from 1938 [that] showed on the map eel tanks…</p>\n\n<p>'It was about the late Seventies early Eighties …[when] we closed the Barneys stall down as there wasn’t enough trade for two stalls ….up to about five or six years ago [we still had one stall] …. but sadly with the red routes, no parking, double lines, no taxi drivers allowed to stop, changing it all back to a two-way system from one way, the Congestion Charge, all the things which put people off of coming in to certain areas so it slowly killed the trade.</p>\n\n<p>'How did jellied eels start? Many, many years ago eels were fairly cheap, the Thames was full of them, … there was oyster pies, eel pies, … [then it] moved from a way of preserving them to cook them and set them in jelly, I mean an eel sets in its natural jelly if you was just to cook it and let it go cold it does create a jelly but obviously on a commercial basis we have to add gelatine now to give it shelf life… We do send eels all around the UK, to people who’ve moved away from London. We post … a lot on the South coast, Kent coast is still a very good area for jellied eels and even down to Devon and Cornwall.</p>\n\n<p>'[As for making jellied eels now...] the eels arrive in to us daily, live quality, meaning they get flown over this time of the year, in the summer, from Lough Neagh [near Belfast]… then the eels are cleaned, then they’re gutted, as one process, then they’re cut in to mouth-size pieces, then it’s all washed and then the raw material is cooked in boiling water, we add some salt and some spices just to take off any earthiness the wild eels might have, and because of the volumes we’re cooking we have to use a gelatine based product to set the eels in. It’s a boiling liquid that then gets put in to a fridge overnight and the following day they are set as jellied eels. </p>\n\n<p>'[Jellied eels is] still the main part of what we do, as Barneys... it's what we’ve always done... From when I first came here we did 90 per cent jellied eels and 10 per cent other shellfish… now we possibly do 40 per cent jellied eels and 60 per cent other shellfish, but the 40 per cent is still a large per centage of the eels industry for the south of England. We’ve got some very big customers at places like Leigh on Sea and Southend, which are still traditional London venues, for when the sun’s out. We supply wholesalers in Lowestoft, wholesalers down in Folkestone, on the Kent coast, and as I say we send stuff all over the place.</p>\n\n<p>'[Retail has grown in this shop at 55 Chamber Street]. When I first came here, we’d walk in in the morning and we’d have six or seven staff here, then, and we used to close the door behind us, because there was so much work going on in the factory, my father didn’t encourage anyone off the street to come in, because we was mainly jellied eel manufacturers, we’d cook crab, we’d cook lobster, we’d boil winkles, we’d cook whelks, and we were so busy no one had time to go and serve anybody.</p>\n\n<p>'It’s only possibly been in the last 10 12 years since my father hasn’t been around that we can’t sit there looking at each other when you’re not doing as much work, so you open the doors, you put some freezer display cabinets in, people can come in and see what you do, and we still have people walking in now and saying “I didn’t know you were here and I only live round the corner,”… last seven years, eight years, but most people go past when we’re closed… because we open the doors about 4.30 am and we’re here most days till about 1.30 in the afternoon which is roughly when we’re winding down and finishing work. But we’ve had to develop with the times go with the people around you, if we just sat there and closed the doors… it’s about 30 per cent of the business I think now, people that walk in off the street. And with things like credit cards they can just come in and buy stuff and take it home, we supply cool bags and cool blocks and we’ve got a good little following, whether it’s people visiting for the day, students staying here, people sailing their boats into St Katherine’s Dock… we get everyone coming here. And you don’t know who they are till you start talking and …y’know they’ve been sailing for six months and they come back here every year or so, and they come and find us again. And it’s retired people from America, all walks of life, you know, whether they’re scraping together a few pennies to buy something or they’re multimillionaires who just love a bit of jellied eels and seafood.</p>\n\n<p>'[S]adly we’re having to move from this area in the next few months, so we’re going to be heading towards the [New] Billingsgate area, back out towards Barking, where the new fish market is proposed to be... 36 years ago [Billingsgate Market] moved from Lower Thames Street, on the river, to Canary Wharf, which was the great move of the time, and it moved from a cobbled street to a place with readymade car parks and readymade cold stores, and it was hi tech at the time. It’s not hi tech today, when you look at other European markets, but once again the land values of Canary Wharf have outstripped the usage of a fish market which only trades from 3am until 9am even though there’s ancillary people there working and office people there working but the land value is deemed to be... too great an asset to the Corporation of London, who own the site, and the London markets, whether it’s the Smithfield meat aarket, the Billingsgate fish market, [Spitalfields,] the fruit and veg which is at Leyton, the plans are to amalgamate all three markets at the site in Barking as we’re speaking now there’s consultation papers out, it’s not been published, passed by Parliament yet, but, allegedly that could happen at any moment. </p>\n\n<p>'... well the we’ve been surrounded by development over the last six or seven years, very close to us, and developers have been building on the back of our railway arch, and when Network Rail, our landlord with 50-plus years of us being tenants, paying our rents, on time, never missed, sold the site on to, I believe, it was an American finance company for several billions of pounds... we were in negotiation with our rent and the next thing we know, six months later we got a letter saying our new landlord is the developer behind us... We didn’t know anything about it, no explanation, you just get a letter saying we’re no longer your landlord, but the developer who is behind you is, so the first we did was spoke to them and they said “Well, we are developers and you’ve got about nine months here, from now”. </p>\n\n<p>'That was back in January 2019, so... my plan, y’know... I could have panicked, shut up the shop and said “That’s it, had enough, going to do something else.” But because I came here at the age of 18 and apart from the 3am alarm going off most mornings - it used to be seven mornings a week, it’s now only six - I’m fortunate my son’s now in the business, he’s 21, so maybe I only come down five mornings a week, and he covers the time I’m not here. I decided, and he wants to carry on doing it, he enjoys it, in some sad way as we all do, once it’s in the blood I think it’s there. He remembers his grandad talking about it as much as I do and... we’ve enjoyed the trappings from the hard work, and... we’re looking at a few options at the moment, even moving back to Billingsgate for the last four to five years of their time there, at Canary Wharf, and then with the prospect of moving to Barking, with the new market, and seeing what that brings with a multicultural type market that bring.</p>\n\n<p>'It’s been changing in many ways over the past few years, but there’s till a call for traditional shellfish, which is what we do. The jellied eel side of the business is declining but with trends changing and different types of people moving back in to the area, people are willing to try these things again. What becomes a fad can go out of fashion, but it can also come back in to fashion, and even if it’s a bigger market, trying a smaller quantity of, for example, jellied eels, we’ve got more people to try them and it could still keep the sales at a reasonable level... Sadly old East Enders aren’t lasting as long as … y’know all the generations we’ve served have sadly moving on to different places.</p>\n\n<p>'[As for this site...] the particular company who’s developed behind us they’re into apartment hotels, so they’re large hotel rooms with kitchens and lounge-type areas which they rent out on a daily or weekly basis, trying to get a lot of business customers involved, so they have people there, staff or people travelling in from outside of London so you can rent an apartment which has its own kitchen facilities as cheap as a hotel room in London , which is quite nice if you want the freedom, you don’t want to go out for a meal when you could just cook yourself something in a room, they’ve built 57 (!) apartment hotels behind us over the last three years and the site we’re on they’re planning to do the same thing.</p>\n\n<p>'...the lockup we’ve got next door, which is 56 Chamber Street, because it’s a live rail structure, they couldn’t buy the freehold to this but allegedly they’ve got it on a 200-year lease, and they can’t change the structure of the arch but as I say as there’s a live feed on it which goes across the main Fenchurch Street line. But it’s got a yard area [where] they can build ... going up higher than the railway and I’ve seen plans of a nice glass cubed building... That’ll be office space I’m sure. And allegedly the Chinese embassy is moving round the corner to Royal Mint Street, where the old royal mint [is], and that will bring more and more people in to the area, which is already a busy area, most of the time... At weekends we've got more Europeans moving in, Leman Street has got a lot of Chinese and Asian students coming in from the Far East. It creates a different dynamic in the area, there’s the bars and restaurants, there are City people during the week and a lot of students at weekends, but they also like fresh fish and live produce, so we’ve got busier on our local trade over the last two to three years. ...Sadly we’ll be moving away and I’m sure there is scope to do something in this area for more of a retail or a consumable type seafood place, but that’s another plan we’ve got to look forward to.</p>\n\n<p>'We have to officially move out of here at the end of September [2019], which is quite soon now as we’re almost at the end of June, and we still haven’t got an official address to go to, though there are a few things in the pipeline, but by the end of September we’ll be out of here, another chapter in the Barney lifestyle moving on...'</p>\n\n<p>Barneys opened their new outlet in New Billingsgate Market in October 2019.</p>\n\n<p>Mark Button was talking to Aileen Reid of the Survey of London, 26 June 2019.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2020-11-08",
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"title": "The north side of Fieldgate Street around 1900",
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"body": "<p>From about 1896 there were synagogues on Fieldgate Street’s north side, behind Nos 33–35, adjoining and seemingly adapting part of Harris Grodzinski’s kosher bakery at No. 31, which had been established in 1888 and was to endure and gain renown. The synagogue, sometimes known as the Chevra Kehal Chasidim, meaning it served members from a variety of Chasidic sects, was rebuilt in 1900 as the Brodyer Synagogue, after members from Brody, Austria (now Ukraine). Despite this renewal, the <em>shul </em>was refused admission to the Federation of Synagogues; Lewis Solomon found it the most dangerous building he had ever surveyed. Even so, it clung on until at least 1928. There was also what must have been a tiny synagogue at 9 Fieldgate Street in 1901. These buildings were obliterated in the Blitz.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Around 1900 many of the street’s two-storey houses were replaced with taller tenements, principally for Jewish occupants, and largely by various combinations of the Davis brothers, the Jewish family of developers who rebuilt so much of Whitechapel. ‘Davis’s Terrace’ (40–72 Settles Street) of 1890, just south of Fieldgate Street was an early speculation by Israel and Hyman Davis, who later traded as Davis Brothers. The old Black Horse and Windmill pub was displaced by redevelopment for a row of tenements of two- and three-room dwellings, put up by Maurice Davis in 1896–7 as 13–25 Fieldgate Street. Rather differently, 37–39 Fieldgate Street was rebuilt in 1911 as a four-storey neo-Georgian block of shops and dwellings, designed by William Stewart, architect. This too fell to bombing. The west end of the street’s north side survived the war, but was cleared around 1970 for road widening at the corner.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>Immediately west of Orange Row, on the site of the south part of Hodge’s sugar refinery, where the Maryam Centre now stands, two blocks of artizans’ dwellings were built in 1890 by the Great Eastern Railway Company. Known as Great Eastern Buildings, these comprised forty-eight flats in stolid and warehouse-like four-storey structures. They were demolished in 1972–3 and the GLC immediately thereafter allocated the site to use for a temporary building to house the relocated East London Mosque.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>Across Orange Row to the east, on the south part of the Brunning House site at 43–53 Fieldgate Street, a row developed by Edward G. Tagg in 1885–8 included the True Friends Beer House at its east end. Around 1915, not long after it found itself adjacent to Tower House, this became a temperance restaurant.</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, 20 Oct. 1899, p. 28; 16 March 1900, p. 27; 31 Jan. 1902, p. 25; 4 June 1926, p. 22: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), W/PRI/3/49: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), District Surveyor's Returns (DSR): Goad insurance maps, 1890–1953: Post Office Directories (POD): Geoffrey Alderman, <em>The Federation of Synagogues</em>, 1887–1987, 1987 pp. 12–13</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: DSR: Goad maps, 1890 and 1899: The National Archives (TNA), IR58/84790/735–66: POD: THLHLA, Building Control file 40647: Ordnance Survey maps: Isobel Watson, ‘Rebuilding London: Abraham Davis and his Brothers, 1881–1924’, <em>The London Journal</em>, vol. 29/1, 2004, pp. 62–84</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: LMA, Collage 118584–92: THLHLA, Building Control file 40631</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Royal London Hospital Archives, RLHLH/S/1/4; RLHLH/D/3/6; RLHLH/D/3/24, p. 16: DSR: TNA, IR58/84790/775–9</p>\n",
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"id": 486,
"title": "Kate Marion Hall and The Whitechapel Museum",
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"body": "<p>In 1895, Kate Marion Hall, (1861-1919), was appointed Curator of the Whitechapel Museum making her the first woman in the country to hold such a professional position. Kate was a protégée of the social reformer and philanthropist, Henrietta Barnett, whose work in the East End attracted a number of young middle-class women to the area as volunteers. Kate had started work in the East End in 1891 when she began teaching nature studies at the Natural History Society at Toynbee Hall.</p>\n\n<p>One of the ways Henrietta and her husband, Canon Barnett, sought to improve the impoverished lives of working people in 1890s Whitechapel was through education. To achieve this they established The Whitechapel Library which gave free access to books, the Whitechapel Art Gallery with its free access to art exhibitions and Toynbee Hall which provided a wide range of educational courses also free of charge.</p>\n\n<p>When the Whitechapel Library was opened in 1891, a room was set aside on the second floor to serve as the Whitechapel Museum with Kate's mentor, the botanist and geologist, Alfred Vaughan Jennings as its first curator. The museum housed the \"menagerie of natural history specimens\" collected by the Reverend Dan Greatorex (1829-1901), also known as the Sailor's Chaplain. Greatorex was a social reformer renowned for his work with the poor in the East End, which included \"a maternity benefit fund, numerous schools and nurseries and a Children's Temperance Society.\"[^1] </p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2017/11/15/the-graphic-1900.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p>'Practical lessons in elementary science in Whitechapel: An exhibition of living bees', from <em>The Graphic</em>, 10 Nov 1900</p>\n\n<p>Although part of his collection came from gifts given to him by British and foreign sailors grateful for his help, many other artefacts were collected by Greatorex on his own travels around the world, which included voyages to the Middle East, Canada, the South Pacific and South America. These included exotic specimens of sea creatures as well as spears, axes and clubs belonging to\"cannibals and headhunters.\"[^2]</p>\n\n<p>When Kate succeeded Jennings as curator, she regarded the most important aspect of her work at the museum to be the organisation of nature study lectures and demonstrations for school children living in one of the most polluted and deprived areas of the country. Kate was innovative in her teaching methods, providing local school teachers with a carefully planned syllabus with which to introduce the children to the basics of nature studies prior to their visit to the museum. She also arranged displays of flora and fauna which were changed weekly and which the children were invited to handle. In this way, nature study, which had only recently been added to the curriculum of elementary school education, was seen as the study of living things. </p>\n\n<p>Museum opening hours were extended to 10 pm, so that working men and women could visit the museum their children had told them so much about. The museum attracted huge numbers of visitors. Henrietta Barnett later recalled:</p>\n\n<p>\"Many people came to that little museum, no less than 104,406 in two years, the majority of whom were shown by Miss Hall wonders such as the observatory beehive, the wasps nest etc..\"[^3]</p>\n\n<p>The museum's success attracted gifts of Egyptian artefacts from F.D. Mocatta and rare specimens given to the Duke and Duchess of York ( later King George V and Queen Mary) on their royal tour of New Zealand in 1901. In 1903, the museum became the Stepney Borough Museum, the first municipal museum to be funded by local rates. Kate was well known throughout the wider male-dominated museum fraternity who held her in high esteem. She retired from the museum in 1909. </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Laura Mittchison, <em>Dan Greatorex and his scattered collection</em>, 16th May 2011, thelondonnobodynows.tumblr.com</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Ibid.</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Henrietta Barnett, <em>Canon Barnett, His Life and Work</em>, (John Murray, London, 1918) Volume 2, Page 8.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>For further information about Kate Hall's life and work see :</p>\n\n<p>Leanne Newman, 'Kate Hall \"A Fellow of the Linnean Society and creator of a beautiful and famous municipal garden\"'<em>,</em> <em>The London Gardener</em>, London Parks and Garden Trust, Volume 21, 2017, pp.11-25.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
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"body": "<p>Regarding the Whitechapel area in 1598, John Stow described a steep upward curve of building just outside London’s city walls to the east. He noted that over the past forty years a few scattered tenements stretching out from Aldgate had transformed into streets “fully replenished with buildings” but also “pestered with diverse alleys”. Stow reported that Houndsditch and Whitechapel possessed “fair hedgerows of elm trees”, numerous garden houses, tenter yards, bowling alleys and small cottages. Considering several large new-built houses in Stepney, he recited the rhyme: “Kirkebyes Castlee, and Fishers Follie, Spinilas pleasure, and Megses glorie”. The final item on this list likely reflected the house of the first William Megges, built in the Woodlands at the end of the sixteenth century and named the ‘Harte’s Horne’.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>As one of many newly wealthy City men who saw potential in the open fields of the semi-rural east, William Megges c.1527 – 99 in fact began his apprenticeship in the trade of drapery in Flanders under Thomas Hough in 1541 and obtained his freedom from the Drapers’ Company of London in 1548. Thereafter he set up his household and practised his trade in London. He took on eleven apprentices between 1551 and 1581 and rose to become Warden of the Company three times between 1572 and 1583. Clearly becoming more engaged in transnational mercantile activity in this period, his name consistently appeared in the port books of London in relation to the importation of wainscots, hops, oil and soap ashes from the Low Countries in the late 1560s. In 1570, he gave notice to his Company that he was concerned no longer with the retail of drapery and instead was solely focussed on the mercantile trade. He also obtained membership of the Merchant Adventurers. His son (William Megges II, born c.1557) was made free of the Adventurers by patrimony in 1578. In a reflection of his success and social ambition, Megges I was granted a coat of arms in 1579.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>It was during these years of growing personal prosperity that Megges entered the Whitechapel property market. In July 1566 he sold three houses on the south side of the High Street “near unto the church” to a fellow citizen, Thomas Wilson. Taxations suggest his occupancy before he requested to be taxed as a resident of the City parish of St-Dunstan-in-the-East in 1567. Megges returned to Whitechapel in 1577, acquiring copyhold tenure of a parcel of land that came to be known as the ‘great garden’, located at the centre of the Woodlands, from the Pooley (or Poley) family, the copyholders under the Wentworths. However Megges did not immediately seek to occupy this site. Rather, like his predecessor, the gardener John Myllian, the merchant allowed the cultivation and development of the marshy land by a string of sub-tenants. The unchecked construction of sheds and tenements by these numerous individuals led to complaints from the Pooleys that over-building on the land had precipitated a decline in its condition. The Pooleys held Megges accountable for what they regarded to be many “decayed” buildings. The dispute, recorded in Chancery, fell in favour of Megges, who argued his willingness to complete remedial work was hindered only by his inability to gain access, barred from entry by his sub-tenants and their sub-tenants below them. He won the right to give over his responsibility for these properties to the sub-tenants themselves, but the nuisance caused by this episode doubtless had its effect.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>On renewing his lease in 1593, Megges elected to aggregate the smaller plots held by an array of sub-tenants to form a large garden for his own use. Around this time he also acquired a claim to two adjacent pieces of ground to the south and south-east. A patchwork of acquisitions and related building activity in the 1590s seems to have coincided roughly with Megges’ term as Master of the Drapers’ Company in 1590, an increasingly burdensome and expensive office at the time. He turned his attention to the creation of a mansion house and garden appropriate for his elevated position. By 1595 he had completed the building of the ‘Harte’s Horne’ and let part of it to a fellow guildsman, Richard Blounte. The scale of the new mansion house was indicated by its high rental value. Blounte rented the newly erected “great messuage or tenement” for £30 a year. In addition, Blounte paid £5 more to Megges for the six-roomed gatehouse constructed over an entry “in such sort as the same messuage and other premises were lately severed, repaired and builded by the said William”. Megges also built another smaller annexed house on recently purchased land to the east. This was profitably sub-let in 1599 to Kilbert Kirkby for £8 p.a. Further substantiating his occupation of the Woodlands, in 1596 Megges purchased the freehold for the plot of land on which the main part of the Harte’s Horne was built from other merchants. The freehold of the land under the gatehouse, which faced directly onto Whitechapel High Street on the site now nos 133 – 137), was separately purchased from Leonard Summersett sometime before 1598.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>According to Ogilby and Morgan’s map of 1676, the Harte’s Horne followed an old-fashioned courtyard plan. Principal rooms, probably in the inner range, were wainscoted and furnished with hearths, arranged alongside numerous secondary service spaces around a paved quad hidden from the high street behind the tall gatehouse and entry. Of especial note, the wainscoted great parlour was embellished with “nine painted stories”; panelling and painting in all costing £23 8s in 1595. A small closet chamber contained important household documents, whilst a larder, buttery and a cellar were lined with wooden shelves and settles. The great chamber situated above a ground floor hall was furnished with green saye (fine woollen cloth) curtains and valances, a white Irish rug, a Cyprus press, a great Dansk chest and a high status “great looking glass”. Likely located looking out northwards towards the gardens, there was a fashionable gallery where the family’s pictures of William Megges I and Queen Elizabeth were likely displayed. Two large projecting bay windows to the rear also took advantage of this pleasant situation and are discernible on the 1676 plan.[^5]</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2017/03/02/megges.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p><em>'Woodlands' marked on Ogilby and Morgan map of 1676. No. 1 relates to the Harte's Horne. No. 2 is indicative of the great garden.</em></p>\n\n<p>Beyond the house to the north, a stable divided a smaller garden directly adjacent to the main house from the brick walled great garden nestled centrally on the Woodlands site. Within the walled garden, perimeter walks were unusually “set on either side with sycamore trees” and the north-eastern corner was occupied by a bowling alley, orchard and wainscoted banqueting house. A narrow strip of land, named the “long walk”, was lined with elms and extended right up to Wentworth Street. So taken was Megges with his newly created walled garden and its pleasures, that he included a special clause in Blounte’s 1595 lease to ensure continued access for himself, his wife and their friends, regardless of the extent of his occupation of the main house that was apparently variable, Megges having also purchased lands in Essex and beyond. Privileged associates were allowed to “walk and take their recreations therein, and to bowl in the bowling alley” as well as enjoy half of the garden’s “all manner of fruit coming, growing and yearly increasing upon the fruit trees standing and growing and to be growing”. Megges still however kept one eye on business, and appears to have allowed, if not encouraged, the noxious manufacturing of soap on his land by a handful of remaining sub-tenants. Soap-houses on the Woodlands site were referred to directly by Megges in his will and “rooms, vaults, pans, boilers, profits, commodities, enrolments and implements for soap-boiling” in the tenure or occupation of Thomas Bromefiled and George Hubberstie were excluded from a later lease of his lands. This was far from unusual for the area. A wave of local cottage industries using progressively more sophisticated processing techniques (e.g. glass-works) were taken up and expanded in the eastern suburbs during these decades.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>William Megges the elder, ‘Draper of Whitechapel’, died in 1599 a well-regarded gentleman. From the early 1540s until his death, he had bound himself to the Drapers’ Company socially and professionally and made generous bequests of plate and leases to the Company in his will. On condition of attendance at his funeral, mourning parishioners, friends and Drapers drank ale in the courtyard and rooms of the Harte’s Horne before processing to St Mary Matfelon in a show of honour and respect. Megges’ widow, Elizabeth Keathe (m. 1594), his third wife, was granted occupation of the Harte’s Horne. In the main, his eldest son, William Megges the younger, inherited most of the rest of his property, including the manor of Cockermouth, other plots in Wakering and Barking and leasehold tenements in Fetter Lane.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Stow, <em>Survey of London</em>, ed. Kingsford, Vol. I, p.127; Ibid. p.166</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: A. H. Johnson, <em>A History of the Worshipful Company of Drapers</em>, 1914-1922, Vol. II, p.179; P. Boyd, <em>Roll of the Drapers’ Company of London</em>, unpublished notes, 1934; <em>The Port and Trade of Early Elizabethan London: Documents</em>, ed. B. Dietz, 1972; H. Dethick and W. Ryley, <em>The Visitation of Middlesex, began in the year 1663</em>, 1820, p.39</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: LMA, ACC/0903/146/A; TNA, E 115/268/136; H. Berry, <em>The Boar’s Head Playhouse</em>, 1986, p.15; TNA, C 3/227/19</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: TNA, PROB 11/93/133; A. H. Johnson, <em>A History of the Worshipful Company of Drapers</em>, 1914-1922, Vol. II, p.472; THLALA, P/SLC/1/17/45; THLHLA, P/SLC/1/17/11; P. Boyd, <em>Roll of the Drapers’ Company of London</em>, unpublished notes, 1934</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: TNA, PROB 11/93/133; THLHLA, P/SLC/1/17/45</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: TNA, PROB 11/93/133; THLHLA, P/SLC/1/17/45; TNA, C 14/256/34; P. Earle, <em>The Making of English Middle Class</em>, pp.25-27; A. Mukherjee, <em>Penury into Plenty: Dearth and the Making of Knowledge in Early Modern England</em>, 2014, pp.118-119; D. L. Munby, Industry and Planning in Stepney, 1951, pp.19-19</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: TNA, PROB 11/93/133; 'Wills: 41-45 Elizabeth I (1598-1603)', <em>Calendar of Wills Proved and Enrolled in the Court of Husting, London: Part 2, 1358-1688</em>, ed. R R Sharpe, 1890, pp.725-730; P. Boyd, <em>Roll of the Drapers’ Company of London</em>, unpublished notes, 1934</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>William Megges the younger (c.1557 – 1621) took possession of the Harte’s Horne on his mother’s death in the first decade of the seventeenth century. By this time the younger Megges had been widowed twice. He married for a third and final time in 1599 to Judith Cambell (c.1579 –1662), daughter of Sir Thomas Cambell, Lord Mayor of London. Like his father, Megges the younger was an active member of the Drapers Company, citizen of London and adventurous merchant. Between 1601 and 1611 he served as Company Warden three times, successfully trained at least four apprentices and remained an Assistant until his death. Notably however, he avoided serving as Master of the Company. Neither did he concern himself with civic governance, aside from a few stints on specialised advisory committees. Rather, Megges focussed his energies on trading companies. He was an early investor in the East India Company contributing £240 to become an ‘adventurer’ in this new commercial endeavour alongside other prominent London merchants. He was also apparently determined to build on his father’s legacy in Whitechapel. As a result, Megges the younger consolidated his claim to the family’s lands through the purchase of additional moieties and an extension to the freehold of another parcel of land to the south of the great garden and adjacent to his dwelling house, securing long-term tenure of 1000 years from Sir Thomas Bodley in 1610.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>The family maintained a close association with the parish of St Mary Matfelon in the decades that followed. Regarded as one of the “most sufficient” parishioners and inhabitants of Whitechapel, Megges was appointed a vestry-man in 1615. After his death, his eldest daughter Judith married the minister of the church, John Johnson, a puritan who later aligned himself with the Laudian cause and lodged at the Harte’s Horne in the 1650s before being reinstated as rector. Although Megges’ first son Thomas died in the 1620s, his second, the inevitable William Megges III (1616 - 1678), was regarded a “gentleman of quality” and served as a parish vestry-man like his father. His third son, James, became a Doctor of Divinity and was ejected from his Surrey parish for Royalist (and possibly Laudian) sympathies in the 1640s. William Megges the younger was buried in the church of St Mary Matfelon. His wife Judith lived on until 1662, aged eighty-three. Soon after, the couple’s two surviving sons, William and James, erected a funerary monument honouring their parents’ patronage of the church. Made of black and white marble with Corinthian columns and a pediment, the tablet was mounted on the chancel wall and adorned with the family crests.[^2]</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2017/02/24/stone_1.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p><em>Memorial to William Megges the younger in St Mary Matfelon, Whitechapel. Watercolour by Robert Blemmell Schnebbelie, 1818. (LMA, Collage 22631)</em></p>\n\n<p>The Harte’s Horne consequently passed to William Megges III. In 1666, the main house had fifteen hearths, marking it as the largest dwelling house in Whitechapel. Seemingly conceived at the outset as a collection of houses with rental potential, subsidiary accommodation continued to be occupied by a series of respectable tenants. For example, in the 1660s the secondary annex claiming ten hearths was designated to Thomas Giles, ‘Mariner of Whitechapel’, and another of six hearths to William Paggett, a Baker. In the years immediately after the Great Fire of 1666, the value of land around London rose to unusually high levels. Much urban housing for the mercantile and professional middling-classes was lost amid the destruction and perhaps Megges saw in this moment an opportunity to further sub-divide his property to capitalise on the demand. His will of 1678 certainly made it clear that the Harte’s Horne had been divided into “several houses” occupied by nine separate tenants, and was additionally linked to three adjoining tenements as well as “one long warehouse and two vaults”. Megges was also connected to lands in Westminster, profitably farming fifty tenements from the 1640s.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>As an early backer of the East India Company ventures, Megges the younger passed onto his son stock valued at £600, as well as a further £1600 invested in later adventures, although executors of his will were instructed to pay off any outstanding debts from this sum<strong>. </strong>Megges III proved to be generous with this inherited fortune. Unmarried and with no direct descendants, he supported the construction of almshouses for twelve elderly parishioners. Situated on Whitechapel Road and opened in 1658, he also gifted pension sums to provide for living costs. The final Megges of Whitechapel was also regarded “the principal benefactor” of the rebuilding of St Mary Matfelon in 1672-3. Fittingly, on his death in 1678, William Megges III was buried alongside his parents in the parish church. His own funerary monument, funded by his nephew and inheritor, (Sir) William Goulston, matched that of his parents in form and appearance. These twin black stones marked the effective end of over a century of the Megges family in Whitechapel.[^4]</p>\n\n<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/2017/02/24/stone_2.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p><em>Memorial to William Megges III in St Mary Matfelon, Whitechapel. Watercolour by Robert Blemmell Schnebbelie, 1818. (LMA, Collage 22632)</em></p>\n\n<p>[^1]: TNA, PROB 11/138/59; 'Dagenham: Introduction and manors', <em>A History of the County of Essex: Volume 5</em>, ed. W R Powell, 1966, pp.267-281; H. Dethick and W. Ryley, <em>The Visitation of Middlesex, began in the year 1663</em>, 1820, p.39; P. Boyd, <em>Roll of the Drapers’ Company of London</em>, unpublished notes, 1934; '1582 London Subsidy Roll: Broad Street Ward', <em>Two Tudor Subsidy Rolls for the City of London, 1541 and 1582</em>, ed. R G Lang, 1993, pp.169-176; A. H. Johnson, <em>A History of the Worshipful Company of Drapers</em>, 1914-1922, Vol. IV, p.417; Ibid, p.450; Ibid, p.21, fn.3; ‘East Indies: April 1601’, <em>Calendar of State Papers Colonial, East Indies, China and Japan, Volume 2, 1513-1616</em>. ed. W N Sainsbury, 1864, pp.123-126; THLHLA, L/SMW/D/6/1</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: TNA, E135/23/78; 'Middlesex Sessions Rolls: 1662', <em>Middlesex County Records: Volume 3, 1625-67</em>, ed. J C Jeaffreson, 1888, pp.318-331; A. R. Bax, ‘The Plundered Ministers of Surrey’, <em>Surrey Archaeological Collection</em>, Vol 9, 1858, pp.290-295; LMA, Collage 22631</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: H. Smith, <em>History of East London</em>, 1939, p.58; D. Morris, <em>Whitechapel 1600–1800: a social history of an early modern London inner suburb</em>, 2011, p. 4; TNA, PROB 11/356/609; TNA, PROB 11/440/434; D. Keene, P. Earle, C. Spence and J. Barnes, 'Middlesex, St Mary Whitechapel, Street Side', <em>Four Shillings in the Pound Aid 1693/4: the City of London, the City of Westminster, Middlesex</em>, 1992, <em>[Online:</em> <a href=\"http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/london-4s-pound/1693-4/middlesex-street-side-19\">http://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/london-4s-pound/1693-4/middlesex-street-side-19</a>]; ‘Cases brought before the committee: January 1646’, <em>Calendar, Committee For the Advance of Money: Part 2, 1645-50</em>, ed. M A Everett Green, London, 1888, pp.667-678</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: TNA, PROB 11/138/59; R. Wilkinson, <em>Londina Illustrata</em>, 1825, p.92; TNA, PROB 11/356/609; 'Stepney', <em>An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in London, Volume 5, East London</em>, 1930, pp.69-101; LMA, Collage 22632</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>In the early nineteenth century this site was an open yard, for coaches and with stables, south of which there was a brewery (the White Horse Brewery by the 1860s) behind cottages and a beer-shop, all seemingly held by Rayden Gower, William Bayford and then Samuel Bartram, a coachmaker as well as a brewer. New buildings in 1848 provided coach-building and painting workshops. There were further adaptations before redevelopment in 1899–1900 for S. Schneiders & Son, garment makers, for whom Robert W. Hobden was the architect, and Seth Grist Ltd the builders. Their substantial four-storey factory building, with its striking red- and white-brick façade with terracotta trim, had by 1904 been taken by H. Lotery & Co., wholesale clothiers, Schneiders’ short occupancy perhaps an upshot of the fire of 1901 that destroyed their main factory further east. Ellis & Goldstein Ltd, also clothiers, had the premises by 1940. After extensive bomb-damage reconstruction behind the façade, Mornessa Ltd sold the site to the Greater London Council in 1966. Numerous clothing-trade tenants continued here through the later decades of the twentieth century. Conversion and refurbishment to provide eight offices below fourteen flats in ‘The Denim Factory’ came in 2006–8 for HBC Investments, designs by Alan Camp Architects being followed by others from McGregor Associates, architects.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: District Surveyors Returns: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 23 Jan. 1863, p.101: London County Council Minutes, 9 Oct. 1900, p.1211: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Building Control files 13774–7: Post Office Directories: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n",
"created": "2017-08-07",
"last_edited": "2017-12-19"
}
]
}