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"id": 1052,
"title": "Saving the Blitz Damaged Wall",
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"body": "<p>I remember as a young kid, being shown by my dad, that the damage visible on the supports to the railway bridge that diagonally crossed the junction of Mansell Street, with Goodman's Yard at the end of Prescot Street was from World War II. While the bridge itself, which led to Haydon Yard Good's Depot was demolished in the 70s, the bridge support and parts of the spur off the London & Tilbury line into Fenchurch Street remained. I went to Tower Hill Primary School which was situated in Chamber Street and the spur was still used for goods traffic until the mid 60s so we would occasionally see, and more often hear, wagons and locomotives moving along past the school building. </p>\n\n<p>I repeated the story of the bomb damage to my own children, to nieces and nephews and to visitors when we passed this site over the years.</p>\n\n<p>In late 2019, I saw notices suggesting that the developer of the site, Marldon was intending to demolish the spur with the inevitable loss of this remaining evidence of the horrors wrought on the East End of London by Hitler's Blitz starting in 1940. Few examples of that damage remain. I decided we could not lose this important piece of history and I was going to do my best to ensure it remained. Earlier in the year, there had been a posting on the East End Preservation Society Twitter feed noting the damage to the wall and recognising its importance. </p>\n\n<p>I posted that it was now under threat and that received a largely supportive set of comments that it should be saved. I spoke to the developer too, as I had had some previous friendly discussions with them about other matters. The solution they proposed was to resite some of the damaged stonework in a courtyard within the development that would not be either accessible all the time nor obvious to those unaware of the wall. I did not think that was a satisfactory solution so I was advised to try and get the wall listed by Historic England. </p>\n\n<p>I submitted an application, but in due course, they refused on the grounds that although the wall was an imporant relic of the war, it failed to qualify for listing as \"there was no story!\". </p>\n\n<p>For me, the story was that which had been told to me by my dad, and the story I had told of the wall to my family. Despite this, my raising of the matter, and a post that Historic England had turned down a listing seemed to come to the attention of Tower Hamlets Council and TfL. The former had approved the original proposal to demolish but now had been chastened by local opinion. Both the council and TfL seemed to caution that the developer should be sensitive to the importance of the wall - perhaps to its \"story\".</p>\n\n<p>What has happened since then, is that the developer has now re-worked the proposal so that the wall and damaged brickwork is incorporated into the new development, and the wall will have its story told in an accompanying glass panel.</p>\n\n<p>From what I can see, this will add interest to the development on this quite iconic corner. It will preserve the wall and its record of the dreadfulness of war, and other mums and dads will be able to show their children the story and encourage them to build a world where some catastrophic wars never occur again.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>Danny McLaughlin - May 2020</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
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"id": 1059,
"title": "Demolished buildings at 74–84 Leman Street",
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"body": "<p>A pair of large eighteenth-century three-storey houses that became 74 and 78 Leman Street had been linked prior to their conversion to use as Leman's Street's police station. From 1755, the northern house (No. 74) was the base for a brewery run by Thomas Jordan (1727–93) and Leonard Lefebvre, with a brewhouse standing behind. The partnership did not last, but Jordan’s brewery flourished into the 1780s, with other premises at Hooper’s Square, cellars all around Goodman’s Fields, and a number of London pubs including the Brown Bear and the Half Moon and Punch Bowl on Buckle Street, all passed on to Thomas Newnham in 1793. Occupancy of the Leman Street house went for a time to Asher Goldsmid, the second son of Aaron Goldsmid and a diamond merchant, and then until 1812 to George Goldsmid. At auction in 1814, the property was described as a ‘capital town residence … recently put into perfect repair, with a range of excellently well-connected offices, having separate entrance’.[^1] From the 1760s until his death, David Samuda (1733–1804), a merchant trading with Africa and the Caribbean, was resident in No. 78, which acquired a bow window to the rear. His father, Abraham Samuda (1683–1743), was a Portuguese Jewish refugee and physician who migrated from Lisbon to Aldgate sometime before 1723. David Samuda & Co. also held tenancies of buildings in Alie Street and Mansell Street. The Company’s ships carried sugar, rum, mahogany and fustic from Jamaica to London. A son, also David Samuda, was a partner in a Jamaican plantation that owned several hundred enslaved people. In his will, the elder Samuda left bequests to the poor of Bevis Marks Synagogue as well as to Portuguese synagogues in Kingston and Spanish Town, Jamaica.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>By 1815, Nos 74 and 78 were occupied by John Smith and Robert Henderson, both solicitors. From the 1830s, Smith acted as Clerk to the Whitechapel Board of Guardians, moving to No. 80 in 1849 when the police took Nos 74 and 78, the last having briefly housed the Jews’ Orphan Asylum in 1844–6.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>No. 80 was a five-bay mansion, probably dateable to the first years of the eighteenth century. Of three storeys, basements and attics, its façade had decoratively cut centre-bay window heads, plat bands and a cornice below a parapet. Inside there was a twisted baluster staircase and some bolection panelling. John Shores, not to be confused with John Shore on Mansell Street, was an early resident, present by 1733 up to 1749. Samuel Ware (d. 1762), a silkthrower, succeeded. A pedimented Doric doorcase indicated remodelling around 1770, probably carried out for David Samuel, a merchant, alongside similar work at Nos 82 and 84; the two southern bays of No. 80 seem at this time to have been incorporated into the previously smaller house at No. 82. Samuel, of the Pulvermacher family from Krotoszyn, now in Poland, lived at 59 Mansell Street prior to his death in 1798, leaving his Leman Street properties to be inhabited and managed by his sons. Affluent and established Jewish migrants, the Samuels were close friends of the Goldsmids, their Leman Street neighbours. David Samuel was a leading member of the Bevis Marks congregation.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>No. 80 came to be associated with the Whitechapel Board of Guardians through John Smith. From around 1858, it was the address of John Hudson (1821–97), the Board’s Surveyor. Harry Oliver (1815–91), another architect and Whitechapel’s District Surveyor, also worked here having married the daughter of another architect, Francis Wigg (1790–1868). From around 1891 the house accommodated Wigg, Oliver & Hudson, in which a son, John Charles Hudson (b. 1852), was the most active partner. In 1897 the architectural practice rented the whole building, taking ground-floor offices and subletting the rest of the house to Ernest Harris, a cigar merchant, as a private residence that retained a large garden.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>Around 1905, No. 80 took back its two southern bays from what had been No. 82. Subsequent residents were prominent in local politics and Jewish charitable and educational works. They included Isidore Aarons, Honorary Secretary of the East London Association of Jewish Youth, and H. H. Gordon, a Progressive LCC councillor. In 1911 there were two seven-room flats, that of Moses Hyamson, acting Chief Rabbi in 1911–13, and his wife Sarah Hyamson, Honorary Secretary of the Jewish Schools Boot Fund and an LCC schools inspector, and that of Abraham Elias Gordon, a ‘Jewish minister’. By late 1912 the building had been converted to be offices for the Seamen’s National insurance Society.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>The Co-operative Wholesale Society had acquired No. 80 by 1928 when alterations overseen by L. G. Ekins adapted it to house the CWS’s Architects’ Department. Two years later, a visiting Co-operative reporter, standing on the roof of Ekins’s new Drapery Department across Leman Street, said that the architect was at work in his office in ‘a quaint Georgian house’. That house was replaced on the same footprint in 1935, to designs by Ekins. The façade of this double-fronted two-storey building was curiously domestic in scale. Between five-storey neighbours, it was a curiosity that with a pitched roof and metal-framed windows looked like a streamlined Moderne house. Architects moved out and No. 80 became the CWS’s Funeral Furnishing Department; it was demolished in the late 1960s.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>Early eighteenth-century three-bay houses at Nos 82 and 84 rose three storeys with basements and attics. Ward Smith (d. 1742) held No. 82. They were remodelled with No. 80 around 1770, probably by David Samuel, possibly involving Samuel Falk, the <em>Ba’al Shem</em> of London, who lived on Wellclose Square but who in 1770 was paying land tax for No. 82, which became a five-bay house by taking two bays from No. 80. No. 84 had a pedimented Doric doorcase like that at No. 80, as perhaps did No. 82 for overall symmetry in an eleven-bay front. Among the merchants associated with these housesin the eighteenth century were Oxley, Hancock and Co., trading with North America, and Major Rohde, a sugar refiner. From 1800 until the 1840s, No. 82 appears to have been the home of David Samuel’s son and grandson, both Samuel Samuel. The same period at No. 84 saw connections to Charles Richard Dames, of another leading family of sugar refiners, and tenancies on the parts of Solomon Abecasis, the brother-in-law of fellow Gibraltarian-Jew Solomon Aloof, and George Dardier, a British-Guianan merchant who sold two vast coffee estates and 170 enslaved people in Demerara in 1818. Around 1850, many buildings on this part of Leman Street were in the service of the cigar trade, No. 82 in use by Moss Jacobs, cigar importers, and No. 84 by Emanuel Jonas & Bros, cigar manufacturers. Nathan Brand, a clothier, occupied No. 82 around 1870, with abuilding to the rear on East Tenter Street in use as a Jews’ Infant School.[^8] </p>\n\n<p>No. 84 was advertised for sale freehold in 1883 and soon after adapted to be the <strong>Jews’ Temporary Shelter</strong>, which opened in April 1886. This institution had its origins in an informal initiative by a Whitechapel baker, Simon Cohen, who in the early 1880s set up a refuge for unemployed and homeless Jewish men at 19 White Church Lane, originally known as the Home for the Outcast Poor. This was condemned as unsanitary and closed down by the Jewish Board of Guardians in 1885. Nevertheless, the idea of providing a safe haven for newly arrived refugees, mostly from Eastern Europe, received the support of Jewish philanthropists despite fears at the Board of Guardians that such provision might encourage undesirable levels of immigration. After a short time at 12 Great Garden Street, a reorganised refuge was established at 84 Leman Street, following Cohen in adopting the name Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter, to emphasise the short-term nature of the provision; the maximum length of stay was set at two weeks. The hostel accommodated a mix of trans-migrants, people passing through London to other destinations, and immigrants who wished to stay, providing they could find employment within the prescribed fortnight<strong>.</strong> Those who failed to secure work risked being shipped back whence they came. Working closely with government and port authorities, Shelter staff strove to meet every arriving ship carrying Jewish immigrants. At Leman Street, basic food and accommodation was provided alongside travel advice. At first the Shelter’s dormitories were exclusively for Jewish men, most of whom were single and often travelling alone. A small number of Gentile men were also helped and information was shared with the Jewish Association for the Protection of Girls and Women. Guests were not required to pay, so the Shelter depended on donations and subscriptions. At first, the project was principally funded by its founders, Herman Landau, Samuel Montagu, and the Franklin family; it soon also garneredstrong and long-standing support from the Rothschilds.[^9] </p>\n\n<p>The eighteenth-century house had been altered to designs by Lewis Solomon, architect, to provide forty beds in good-sized dormitories, access to East Tenter Street East easing the challenges of circulation. The <em>Builder</em> reported that sanitation and ventilation had been carefully considered, to protect against the spread of infectious diseases and ‘executed to suit the rough usage’.[^10] Nonetheless, by 1900 the Shelter was in need of improvement and a rebuild was decided upon. Before work began, No. 82 fell vacant so the Shelter’s governors elected to release the freehold of No. 84 to the ever-encroaching Co-operative Wholesale Society and to take on No. 82 instead. In fact, the Shelter did not make use of all of No. 82, giving back the front part of the two northern bays to No. 80 (see above). The rest was redeveloped in 1905 as a new four-storey and attic hostel with a three-bay front, extending at fuller width to East Tenter Street to the rear. The architect was Henry David Davis, the surviving partner of Davis and Emanuel, and C. G. Hill was the builder. The CWS had cleared Nos 84 and 86 by 1910, those plots remaining empty until at least 1921.[^11] Immediately upon its reopening in 1906 the Shelter was operating at full capacity, a swell of 10,000 Jewish refugees fleeing persecution during the Russo-Japanese War forced the institution to continue to occupy No. 84 for a short period. The Shelter acted as a headquarters for assessing immigration cases, identifying contagious diseases, finding accommodation in local lodging houses, and organising onward travel to Argentina, South Africa<strong>, </strong>Canada or the USA. This broad-ranging work was intense at times of crisis, and oversubscription meant it was often necessary to find placements for guests outside the Shelter’s walls. However, the Leman Street building remained at the heart of the enterprise. The Shelter was ‘sleepless and restless’ according to Chief Rabbi Hermann Adler, and was widely regarded as ‘a safety valve of the Jewish community’.[^12] In its architecture and furnishings, the Shelter balanced dignity with economy, not wishing to encourage guests to out-stay their welcome. A broad-span arched window on the ground floor ensured the long men’s dining room was well lit, while the main entrance led past the superintendent’s office to service accommodation arranged around two internal light-wells. Upper floors were simple dormitories and the superintendent’s flat was in the attic. Kitchens, stores and a large luggage room were in the basement. To East Tenter Street, a three-storey block provided women’s dormitories with separate access and a ground-floor day room. The institution became known simply as the Jews’ Temporary Shelter, and a sign bearing the name in English and Hebrew was erected above the first floor. The Shelter’s original clientele of mainly poor immigrants had given way to trans-migrants; staff routinely worked with shipping companies to negotiate onwards travel. Well-known internationally, the Shelter’s model inspired the establishment of similar institutions in the USA, South Africa and Australia, though its policy of discreetly settling immigration disputes with the Home Office inclined the institution to maintain a relatively low profile in London. In 1930, the Shelter moved into itssecond purpose-built hostel at 63 Mansell Street (see p.xx), having given up its lease of No. 82 to the CWS.[^13]</p>\n\n<p>Ekins adapted No. 82 for the CWS’s coal, milk and office departments. It subsequently housed the Maintenance & General Department before the Metropolitan Police acquired it in 1966 for clearance.[^14]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser</em>, 16 Aug 1814, p. 1: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Land Tax Returns (LT); Tower Hamlets Commissioners of Sewers ratebooks (THCS); CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/370/572895: I. S. Hornsey, <em>A History of Beer and Brewing</em>, 2003, p. 440: City of Westminster Archives Centre, 789/193: Post Office Directories (POD)</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: LMA, CLSD/154/4; LMA/4673/D/01/004/002; LT; THCS: POD: <em>The Jewish Encyclopaedia</em>, vol. 11, 1902, p. 4: C. C. Vieira, ‘Observing the Skies of Lisbon: Isaac de Sequeira Samuda, an Estrangeirado in the Royal Society’, <em>Royal Society Journal</em>, vol. 68, 2014, pp. 135–49: The National Archives (TNA), PROB11/1412/83: Eli Faber, <em>Jews, Slaves and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight</em>, 2000, pp. 311–12: www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146635104;<a href=\"http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146660885\">/2146660885</a> </p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser</em>, 15 June 1832, p. 1: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 1 Dec 1849, p. 1: POD</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: TNA, IR58/84830/4799; PROB11/1330/122; PROB11/1427/119; PROB11/874/94; PROB18/106/13: LMA, LT; THCS; LMA/4673/D/01/004/002: <em>Oxford </em>Journal, 29 Sept 1798, p. 4: Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England, <em>An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in London</em>, vol. 5: <em>East London</em>, 1930, p. 99: Cecil Roth, <em>History of the Great Synagogue</em>, 1950, chapter 13: POD</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 26 June 1840, p. 1; 1 Dec 1849, p. 1; 14 Dec 1858, p. 8: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 7 May 1858, p. 324: Electoral Register, St Mary, Whitechapel, 1876: <em>East London Observer (ELO)</em>, 4 Oct 1879, p. 8; 7 July 1900, p. 7: POD: <em>The Builder</em>, 12 Sept 1891, p. 217: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), B/ELL/2/33; L/THL/D/2/30/119: London County Council Minutes (LCC Mins), 8 May 1900, p. 621: Census: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: Ordnance Survey maps (OS): Historic England Archives, BL21964: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/88:<em> Jewish Literary Annual</em>, 1903, p. 6: <em>London Manual</em>, 1907, p. 26: <em>Jewish Year Book</em>, 1907, p. 106: <em>ELO, </em>29 June 1907, p. 7: Census</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/88, 1928: <em>The Wheatsheaf</em>, April 1930, p. 55: TNA, MEPO14/36: LMA, District Surveyors' Returns (DSR); GLC/AR/BR/17/077204: Goad insurance maps</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: LMA, LMA/4673/D/01/004/002; LT; THCS: TNA, PROB11/721/261: <em>The Era</em>, 1 Dec 1844, p. 2: Census: POD: OS: A. Ben-Ur, ‘The Absorption of Outsiders: Gibraltarian and North Africans in London’s Portuguese Jewish Community’, in F. Francesconi, S. Mirvis, B. Smollett (eds), <em>The Sephardic Experience East and West: Essays in Honor of Jane S. Gerber</em>, 2018, p. 269: <em>Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser</em>, 10 April 1818, p. 1: William D. Rubenstein, Michael Jolles and Hilary Rubenstein (eds), <em>Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History</em>, 2011, p. 476</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: LMA, LMA/4184/02/04: <em>Morning Post</em>, 8 Aug 1883: L. Gartner<em>, The Jewish Immigrant in England, 1870–1914</em>, 2001, pp. 49–55: Virginia Cowles, <em>The Rothschilds</em>, 1973, p.1 92</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: <em>The Builder</em>, 17 April 1886, p. 594</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: LMA, LMA/4184/02/04: OS: LCC Mins, 21–22 June 1910, p. 1360: DSR: Sharman Kadish, <em>The Synagogues of Britain and Ireland: an architectural and social history</em>, 2011, pp. 118–19</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: LMA, LMA/4184/02/04; LMA/4184/2/5/1/1; LMA/4184/2/5/1/4: <em>Jewish Chronicle (JC)</em>, 22 June 1906, p.9; 6 July 1906, pp.24–6; 5 March 1937, p.31: DSR</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/88, 1905: LMA, LMA, LMA/4184/02/04; LMA/4184/2/5/1/4: <em>JC</em>, 24 June 1966, pp.12–13: Aubrey Newman, ‘The Poor Jews’ Temporary Shelter: an episode in migration studies’, <em>Jewish Historical Studies</em>, vol. 40, 2005, pp. 141–55 (148–9): Jewish Museum, image 1217.2: LCC Mins, 21–22 June 1910, p. 1360</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/17/45017; GLC/AR/BR/17/077326/02: OS: Goad</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
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"body": "<p>East of the entrance to Yeomans’ Yard, which survives as a service entrance for the office block at 21 Prescot Street, the site of 66–69 Chamber Street was a car park from the 1960s. The present building at what is now Nos 65–66 was erected in 2008 for Chamber Street Developments Ltd, formed by Christopher Ploutarhou, the founder of gpad (general practice architects and designers) which firm designed the building; RFM Construction Ltd were the contractors. The six-storey block is clad in dark-grey brick with bright green and blue balconies that offer close views of the railway line. Under nine flats, ground and first-floor offices did not let so were converted to be fifteen studios for students. </p>\n\n<p>In 2018 Ploutarhou and gpad London Ltd gained permission as Southern Grove Chamber Street Ltd to build on the adjacent site to the east (Nos 71–73), which has been largely vacant since the Second World War. Plans envisage a seven-storey building of offices and thirty-two serviced apartments.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: Ordnance Survey maps: Google Street View: www.architectsdatafile.co.uk/news/practice-profile-gpad-london/</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>The north-west corner of the junction between the present-day Cable St and Backchurch Lane (then called Church Lane) was occupied in 1750 by a copyhold alehouse called the 'Sun and Sword'. According to Lockie (1810), though not in the maps of Rocque and Horwood, Rosemary Lane (the old name for Royal Mint St) extended as far east as this - in fact as far as Wellclose Square - and the deeds for the 'Sun and Sword' indicate that this stretch of it was known in 1750 as Rag Fair. Prior to that date the innkeeper tenants were the Bayles family, who leased it that year, and, then in 1773, to a local greengrocer, the two adjoining timber houses to the west. [^1]</p>\n\n<p>Mark Ballard</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, P/SLC/1/17/33-34</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": null,
"last_edited": "2020-05-07"
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{
"id": 1061,
"title": "Leman Street's east side, early buildings between Alie Street and Hooper Street ",
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"b_name": "Piazza Walk, Goodman's Fields",
"street": "Leman Street",
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"body": "<p>The east side of Leman Street south of Alie Street and north of Hooper Street is fronted by the Goodman’s Fields housing development and student housing of the early twenty-first century, and, further south, former Co-operative Wholesale Society buildings. This simplicity hides a complex history, traces of which have entirely vanished.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>First development, 1680 to 1730</em></p>\n\n<p>From its beginnings in the 1680s this side of Leman Street was humbler than the west side, lacking grand houses presumably because the backs did not enjoy open space comparable to the Tenter Ground. Instead there was Rupert Street, which filled up with sugarhouses and cottages at an early date. Development began in 1682 when John Hooper took two 62½-year building leases on the whole 780ft frontage between Alie Street and what became Hooper Street (originally part of Hooper’s Square). The division between the two parcels was apparently marked by an alley called Johnson’s Passage or Court, later Leman Passage, which continued eastwards to meet a path leading into the Physick Garden. By the time of his death in 1685, Hooper had developed some Leman Street house plots himself, and sublet others on fifty- and fifty-one-year building leases, some to John Bankes, a timber importer. Bankes took frontages of 62ft and 51ft, near either end of Hooper’s Leman Street frontage, and also acted as a contractor for Hooper, who supplied bricks, putting up four four-storey houses on this frontage in 1683–4. These were probably on the southern parcel, close to Hooper’s Square, where another sub-lessee was Robert Hart, a plasterer. There were eventually nine houses on this holding, apparently fairly uniform and of good size. By 1694 there were at least twenty-five houses on the east side of Leman Street as a whole, generally of a middling kind. They stood north and south of a 286ft stretch of undeveloped ground held by Sir Stephen Evance who had acquired Hooper’s property in 1686.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>This part of the street to the south of Johnson’s Court remained open in 1712 when it was offered as a site for a Commissioners’ church. The property passed on Evance’s death that year to his heir-at-law, Sir Caesar Child, but the inheritance was not resolved until 1722. The open Leman Street frontage was seemingly promptly built up thereafter with seventeen houses. With frontages of about 16ft each, these were more substantial than those to either side, and were raised above basements behind areas. By 1725 William Collier (d. 1742), a citizen Joiner, had a long lease of at least three of these newly built houses. He lived in one and held another two by the time of his death. Captain Jonathan Collet (d. 1746), Child’s trustee, renewed the original Hooper head-lease of 1682 in 1744.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>The three holdings on Leman Street’s east side were discernible in eighteenth-century topography through differences in the forms of its forty-seven houses. North of Johnson’s Court around twenty houses had been developed piecemeal, mostly before 1700. They were somewhat more modest and less uniform than the houses further south of later and similar date. A house that wound up after serial renumberings as No. 59, and which survived until the 1930s, was perhaps typical. It was of three storeys, with a flat red-brick façade with plat bands, flush-frame sashes, a steeply pitched roof to an attic with a hipped dormer, and had two rooms to a floor. A Royal Commission investigator described the interior in 1928: ‘the staircase has moulded continuous string, handrail and balusters. The newels are square and have ball finials.’[^3] Another early house of similar scale, No. 29 near the Alie Street corner, survived until about 1978. Though probably refronted in the late eighteenth century, it retained a gabled rear wing. Some houses of the 1680s on this northern stretch may originally have had gabled fronts.[^4] </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Early occupants and industry</em></p>\n\n<p>Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, the east side of Leman Street seems to have been largely residential, with commerce increasingly intermixed. Houses were often associated with or extended into industrial premises to the rear on Rupert Street, less so to the north where there was little back development until the later eighteenth century. Leman Street’s status as a thoroughfare was reflected in the presence of public houses from the earliest days. The White Hart alehouse (eventually No. 43) was present by 1689 up to 1931–2. Further north near the Alie Street corner was the George, present by 1693 and less long-lived. Edward Hill (d. 1737) had a brewery just north of Johnson’s Court by 1732, probably earlier, that was subsequently run by his nephew John Hill (d. 1765), who also had an interest in a sugarhouse where Leman Street met Chamber Street.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>Shop use – oil men, linen drapers, corn chandlers, shoemakers, tea dealers, cabinet makers – was widespread to the north and south, but the larger houses of the 1720s in the middle section tended to remain private, with residents of some status, though not of a level with those on the other side of the street. By 1733 one of these houses pertained to Clifford William Phillips, a magistrate, who in 1736 drew his sword to quell anti-Irish riots in Leman Street, put down with the assistance of soldiers from the Tower. Subsequent rewards for Phillips included a larger house in Mansell Street and a knighthood.[^6] Other residents of note included a trio of affluent Sephardi Jewish widows, Sarah Medina Pereira, Sarah Henriques Samuda and Esther Samuda (<em>c.</em>1699–1776), the widow of Abraham Samuda and mother of David Samuda, whose house was opposite.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>As elsewhere in Goodman’s Fields, nautical pursuits were well represented with many residents and landholders (including Evance) owning stakes in shipping. There was the usual smatter of captains, and maritime interests frequently intersected with others land-bound and local. Anthony Whiting (d. 1724), a corn factor who inherited a small house near the north end of the street’s east side from his father, Thomas Whiting (d. 1699), illustrates this at a modest level as an investor in shipping.[^8]</p>\n\n<p>Many resident mariners were involved in industry, especially sugar refining, and sugarhouses towered up on Rupert Street behind Leman Street’s respectable three-storey houses. Captain John Partis (1693–1735) had one of the houses of the early 1720s south of Johnson’s Court, next door to Justice Phillips, and was active in this way at a comparatively grand scale. Born in Newcastle, the son of another mariner, Partis was involved in the triangular trade with the Caribbean, shipping what were probably slaves (seventy ‘servants’ insured for £8 each) from London in 1728 to Antigua where he had a base; his will specified wines there should be shipped home.[^9] </p>\n\n<p>Sugar businesses and their buildings were often held in partnerships or shares, and through complex layers of leases and subleases. William Collier, whose Leman Street house was two doors away from Partis’s, held a sugarhouse behind some of the houses he had built in the early 1720s that he had sublet to Edward Wynn (d. 1726), from whom it passed to Partis, who was Wynn’s brother-in-law. This sugarhouse was relatively small, at 25ft square probably just a one-pan facility, but even so it was six or seven storeys high with a second building of similar size to its rear, probably a mill house and warehouse.[^10] Partis further sublet the sugarhouse to another brother-in-law, William Pringle (d. 1761), and Captain William Lawrence (<em>c.</em>1668–1748, sometimes Lorance or Lawrance), who had the house between Partis’s and Collier’s by 1733, and who was ‘an experienced and able Commander of the Italian and Turkey Trades’.[^11] </p>\n\n<p>Three more similar-sized sugarhouses adjoined along Rupert Street, all with similar complexities of tenure. These evolved through Lawrence to become the locale’s most extensive sugar refining business until the nineteenth century. Lawrence had a house in Lambert Street by 1701, by when he was perhaps already involved in the sugar trade as his address was ‘at ye bake-house’.[^12] He had an interest in another sugarhouse in Wapping, and was insuring one in Rupert Street by 1730. At his death in 1748 Lawrence’s Rupert Street sugar business passed to his son Captain Ambrose Lawrence (1696–1750). Occupation of another Rupert Street sugarhouse and a house on Leman Street went to John Long (1706–66), a refiner. He and a succession of partners, including Christian Tielhen, Joseph Hess, Frederick Sporman and John Otto Drost, ran the business while the family retained an interest through Richard Lawrence (1725–85), a citizen Grocer and probably Ambrose Lawrence’s nephew.[^13] </p>\n\n<p>His son, Richard Lawrence (1758–1802), was active from Camberwell in expanding the business at a time when the sugar trade was under pressure. He built a new sugarhouse behind Leman Street in 1786–7, enlarging premises that had been occupied by Hardwick Constantien (d. 1789) and John Bott (1732–1806). Another partner from the 1780s was Lewis Vulliamy (1749–1823) of the eminent clock-making family. After the younger Lawrence’s death in 1802, Lawrence & Co. and Vulliamy and Bott continued in partnership. By 1814 Lawrence & Co. held a large block between Leman Street and Rupert Street, with twelve of the Leman Street houses of the 1720s and the sugarhouses behind.[^14] The firm continued under Richard Henshaw Lawrence (1786–1849), a director of the Phoenix Fire Office, which had been established by sugar refiners, and Morton William Lawrence (1787–1841), who patented improvements to sugar-refining processes. The freehold of the whole block was sold at auction in 1849.[^15]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Johnson’s Bagnio</em></p>\n\n<p>One of William Collier’s houses of the early 1720s accommodated a business of very different character for more than fifty years from 1724 when Richard Johnson (d. 1769) leased it and established a bagnio, or bath-house. This was the first of several speculative projects in Whitechapel by Johnson, who later styled himself Captain (of the Tower Hamlets Militia).[^16] Bagnios had been established in London since the 1670s, after the model of the Turkish bath, notably around Soho and Covent Garden. Many appear to have been brothels that offered bathing opportunities.[^17] </p>\n\n<p>How precisely Johnson’s bagnio was used is unclear, but an unusual range of medicinal treatments, and bathing, swimming and steaming facilities, suggest that it was not principally a brothel. In its first two decades under Johnson it appears to have followed the model of the Royal Bagnio in Newgate Street. It was open six days a week, with Tuesdays and Fridays reserved for women. When it opened in November 1724 a cold bath was said still to be ‘preparing’. The focus initially was on cupping, the application of heated cups to the skin to withdraw impurities, administered by Johnson himself, ‘cupper to His Royal Highness’, the Prince of Wales. A lady cupper attended to female clients, either at the bagnio or at home.[^18] The cold bath, 20ft in length and ‘continually supplied by a Natural Spring’, was ready by the summer of 1725, followed by a hot ‘pleasure bath’ of similar size the following spring.[^19] In 1727, upon the accession of George II, the establishment became the King’s Bagnio. Johnson celebrated with a grand fireworks party and, his greatest innovation, the opening of a swimming pool that was the first public covered pool of its kind in London. By 1728, swimming lessons, taught by the waiters, were being offered to ‘gentlemen’ in the pleasure bath. That was increased in length to 43ft in 1741–2, with an entrance from Rupert Street through a court of eight small houses held by Johnson, one among his many other property ventures. Advertisements stressed hygiene, health and wholesomeness, the medical benefits of the treatments, and copious supplies of water. This was not mere promotion; the London Hospital made use of the bagnio’s cold bath for thirty years.[^20] </p>\n\n<p>By 1743 Johnson was seeking a new proprietor for the bagnio. He appears to have retained his lease, but within the decade Thomas Barry had taken over both the bagnio and the attached house, only for the establishment to be condemned in 1750 as ‘notorious, wicked & disorderly’.[^21] Barry had renamed the establishment the Turk’s Head Bagnio by 1753, a reference perhaps to bagnios of that name in Chancery Lane and Bow Street, Covent Garden. In the late 1760s the Turk’s Head was under the proprietorship for several years of ‘B. Thornton’, sometimes named as ‘Benjamin’, but more likely Barney Thornton (1738–90), the proprietor from 1767 to 1790 of Haddock’s Bagnio in Covent Garden, which featured in court cases involving explicit accusations of prostitution. Cupping and sweating were still being advertised alongside swimming up to the 1770s, but the bagnio did not survive Barry’s death in 1779, and the house reverted to more conventional use.[^22] </p>\n\n<p>This coincided with acquisitions by Edward Hawkins. In 1775 he took a long lease of the whole block between Leman Street, Rupert Street and Hooper Square south of the Lawrence holding. Then in 1779 he secured the freehold of a significant portion of the Leman estate, including eighteen houses on the east side of Leman Street.[^23]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>London Bet Holim hospital</em></p>\n\n<p>At the corner with Little Alie Street there was a substantial house and yard, held in the 1730s by Isaac Arters (d. 1750), a carpenter, and his son James (d. 1742). After James Arters’ death the property passed to John Hill, the brewer and sugar refiner (see above). </p>\n\n<p>In October 1747, as part of a wider effort to support poor Portuguese Sephardi Jewish refugees, who had increased greatly in number in the 1720s, a committee was formed at Bevis Marks synagogue to consider opening a hospital to provide medical care for those who ‘at present often want the common necessaries of life, such as covering, bedding, lodging, a nurse and proper food for their disorders’, this to be paid for from the community’s charitable funds.[^24] The committee, including Dr Jacob de Castro Sarmento, a physician, and Jacob de Castre, a surgeon, inspected the London Infirmary on Prescot Street and took advice from its steward, Benjamin Gifford. They concluded that a hospital with twenty beds was desirable and produced a scheme for the Jews’ Hospital – Bet Holim.[^25] </p>\n\n<p>By April 1748 more than £780 had been collected, and the Leman Street–Little Alie Street corner premises had been rented from John Hill at £50 a year, the lease later being purchased for £105. Another £100 had been spent on improvements, including a new wash-house, the works being overseen by a surveyor, ‘Sr Cooper’, possibly William Cooper, a bricklayer who had been Master of the Tylers’ and Bricklayers’ Company in 1741–2. Staff had also been appointed, including a dispenser, matron, secretary, apothecary, nurse, watchman, two midwives, cook and housemaid.[^26] </p>\n\n<p>The hospital that opened in 1748 with sixteen beds had a turbulent start, involving accusations of financial impropriety, which de Castro Sarmento had to refute, indecency by the apothecary towards an English girl visitor, and a scurrilous cartoon lampooning the founders. But the hospital settled down to its work and by February 1749 forty-seven patients had been admitted, including pregnant women. This was arguably the first hospital in Britain that from its inception was intended for use as a maternity hospital; a sharp fall in infant mortality among the congregation after its foundation has been noted. The hospital continued without major incident, and with the long-term financial support of wealthy congregants, notably Joseph Jessurun Rodrigues. It sustained an institutional relationship with the London Infirmary’s successor, the London Hospital, into the 1760s. Two adjoining houses in Leman Street, also belonging to Hill, were rented in 1755 to accommodate ‘disabled’ congregants, that is, those unable to work but able to pay for their upkeep. Up to ten such individuals were housed from the early 1770s. As outpatient numbers increased, and costs escalated in 1783 with the arrival of refugees from the siege of Gibraltar, the London Bet Holim hospital struggled to make ends meet. It relaxed its rules to admit non-Sephardim in 1790. With its lease shortly to expire, the hospital moved in 1793 to the east side of the Jewish cemetery in Mile End Road, by this time closed for burials, to new premises with forty beds. Having become more a home for the elderly than a hospital, Bet Holim moved again in 1912 to purpose-built premises at 253 Mile End Road, and again to Wembley in 1977.[^27] </p>\n\n<p>The Leman Street frontage north of Johnson’s Court, including the Jews’ hospital and John Hill’s brewery, was still held on one lease when Edward Hawkins acquired much of the Leman estate in 1779 (see above). The hospital site was redeveloped, probably in 1794 when rental value increased, having come into the ownership of Alexander Raby (1747–1835), an iron founder with mills in Cobham, Surrey, later involved in the development of Llanelli.[^28] </p>\n\n<p>Another Jewish philanthropic institution of a different character was established in 1831 further south, in the middle section of Leman Street’s east side, at what became No. 79, adjoining the houses belonging to the Lawrence & Co. sugarhouses. Here by 1838 the Jews’ Orphan Asylum housed ten boys and ten girls. Samuel Cohen, their schoolmaster, his wife and five children, twenty-four orphans and a servant were recorded as resident in 1841. The Asylum was established by fourteen local men, including Isaac Vallentine (1793–1868), a printer and founder of the original <em>Jewish Chronicle</em>, Henry Myers, and Abraham Green (1793–1852), who raised money from customers as he sold cucumbers in the street. They soon enjoyed the patronage of Queen Adelaide. The Asylum moved in 1844 to the site of No. 78, opposite, and then in 1846 to a purpose-built school on East Tenter Street.[^29]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Nineteenth-century commerce and industry</em></p>\n\n<p>For most of the nineteenth century Leman Street remained entirely domestic in scale, the disposition of the east side’s houses staying untouched up to the late 1870s. Most were in shop use, some including workrooms, as for Woolf Cohen at No. 77, one of the houses of the 1720s south of Johnson’s Court. A master tailor specialising in juvenile clothing, mostly for Samuel Bros, Cohen employed fourteen here in 1888. Through the second half of the nineteenth century other houses in this group hosted a gun-maker, a watchmaker, a chronometer-maker, a coppersmith, and a scale-maker, as well as professionals, a tide surveyor, an estate agent, and an architect, Henry Robinson Fricker. Over time a growing number of tailors and rag-trade manufacturers moved in, and north of Johnson’s Court the shophouses were dominated by clothing. There such as watchmakers and the occasional vestige of gentility – a surgeon – gave way to food and drink retailers. Sayer & Co., fish curers on Rupert Street, had a shop immediately north of Johnson’s Court by 1890.[^30]</p>\n\n<p>As previously, the houses belonging to Rupert Street’s sugar refiners often housed staff. One of the most enduring of the sugar firms was Sutton & Davis, established by Robert Sutton and William Davis (1766–1854). Davis’s father, William (1732–1817), had been a refinery clerk by 1766 when he lived at 45 Wellclose Square, probably working for Carsten Dirs on the other side of the square; he named another of his sons Carsten. The younger William Davis, founder of the Gower’s Walk Free School, and Sutton occupied what had probably been John Long’s Rupert Street sugarhouse on Lawrence property from 1792. Davis’s son, John (1800–1864), joined the firm in 1822 and married the daughter of John Coope, another refiner, in 1826. Sutton departed in 1828, and John Davis was succeeded by his son, John Coope Davis (1832–81).[^31] </p>\n\n<p>Sutton & Davis owned at least three adjacent Leman Street houses south of Johnson’s Court, two of which lodged labourers and other employees (sixty in number in 1851, mostly German). The other house served as the firm’s office and by 1845 as home to Richard Grace (1811–91), its clerk, with his family and two servants. In 1868 the office and Grace moved a few doors to the south, Grace’s employment trajectory no doubt reflecting the local decline of sugar refining; henceforward he was also employed as a registrar of births, marriages and deaths.[^32] </p>\n\n<p>Around 1835 Emanuel Goodhart (1772–1853), an established refiner with premises in Limehouse and Ratcliff, acquired what was probably the whole site lying south of Lawrence & Co.’s holding that had been leased by Edward Hawkins in 1775, including the nine southerly late seventeenth-century houses on Leman Street, a pub at the Hooper Square corner, and adjoining premises on Rupert Street which may have included a small sugarhouse. Goodhart built another and by 1875 his successors had combined and enlarged them to be a single eight-storey sugarhouse.[^33] </p>\n\n<p>A partnership formed by 1846 between Charles Emanuel Goodhart (1818–1903) and W. B. Patrick, operating as E. Goodhart, Son & Patricks, Hooper Square, had been dissolved in 1855. C. E. Goodhart continued alone from 1860 and carried out works at the Rupert Street refinery in 1862. He had diverse business interests and compiled a fortune greater even than his father’s, yet gave his address as in two of the old Leman Street houses up to 1868.[^34] </p>\n\n<p>Thereafter, as the trade declined, Goodhart leased the sugarhouse and the Leman Street houses to a succession of occupants including, in 1876, to Quintin Hogg (1845–1903), the senior partner in Hogg, Curtis & Campbell, sugar merchants, who is best known for his philanthropy to education. The sugarhouse was renamed the Bel Air Sugar Refinery, Bel Air being a plantation on the Demerara coast in British Guiana where Hogg’s firm had a factory.[^35] Two years later, however, the site was sold to the Co-operative Wholesale Society (CWS), which adapted the refinery to tea storage and the nine Leman Street houses to other purposes until all was burnt out or demolished in 1885.</p>\n\n<p>Antedating the arrival of the CWS, the first significant breach in the east side of Leman Street’s landscape of small-scale commerce and domesticity came in 1878 with the erection of a pile of five-storey, brick-faced wool warehouses that replaced five Leman Street houses immediately south of Johnson’s Court, an 80ft front, and the Davis and Lawrence & Co. sugarhouses on Rupert Street with a much longer façade. This was built for Michael McSheehan (d. 1888), an agent and developer, by Merritt & Ashby, which partnership was building 1–5 Clerkenwell Road at the same time. It was occupied by Hyatt, Parker & Co., wool warehousemen, whose business was taken over by C. H. Cousens & Co. in 1888. Cousens & Co. remained after the CWS acquired the freehold in 1897 until the northern part of the site was redeveloped by the CWS in 1928. The more southerly warehouses on what had become Goodman Street stood until about 1975.[^36] </p>\n\n<p>To the north, the Alie Street corner property (Nos 21–23) was occupied from 1834 by Joseph Colyer (1796–1867), who lived at No. 29. It was used as coopers’ and back-makers’ premises, probably relying on specialist trade with sugarhouses. The firm continued as Joseph Colyer & Co. until 1894, with shops to the streets. The yard was again redeveloped in 1906 as a four-floor factory, multiply occupied by rag-trade tenants. Adjoining, Nos 25–27 was Woolfray House, a four-storey shop and tenement development of 1893, an early project with a punning name by Nathaniel and Raphael (Ralph) Davis, who were trained as draughtsmen and in their early 20s, working with their father Woolf Davis as financier. Its polychrome-brick frontage had paired windows flanking vestigially Gothic staircase windows, a gabled entrance and a plaque. Clearance came in 1978.[^37] </p>\n\n<p>Behind what became Nos 31–35 there had been a cooperage on Rupert Street, occupied by the Casheer family from the 1720s to the 1820s. It was acquired around 1873 by Mutter & Co., then from about 1893 by Alfred Leftwich & Co., both carmen. The three-storey shophouses and the stables behind were deemed ‘very old’ before the First World War.[^38]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Early twentieth-century rebuildings</em></p>\n\n<p>The CWS gradually took over most of the east side of Leman Street. The twelve remaining houses of the 1720s (Nos 75–97) were acquired piecemeal between 1898 and 1904 and demolished in 1907 for the CWS’s drapery showroom of 1908–10. Cousens & Co.’s wool warehouses up to Johnson’s Court (renamed Leman Passage in 1909) followed in the late 1920s for its extension, as did Nos 53–63 on the other side of Leman Passage for yet further extension in the 1930s. </p>\n\n<p>Thomas Penny (1805–90) had set up as a printer at No. 53 by 1849, working in partnership with his son and J. W. Hull by 1879. Hull took a ninety-nine-year building lease of Nos 53–57 from E. R. Hawkins in 1904 and put up a four-storey workshop block at Nos 53–55 that housed printing works below rag-trade tenants, and a shophouse at No. 57 in a watery Queen Anne style that sported a shaped gable. By 1920 No. 57 was occupied by the Anchor Co-operative Society and the CWS had acquired Nos 53–55 by 1930.[^39]</p>\n\n<p>Adjoining to the north, a more ambitious development was undertaken in 1915–30 by E. Bennett & Son, heating engineers, which was taken over in 1919 by the American Crane Co. to become Crane-Bennett Ltd in the UK. In 1915 Bennett built a three-storey shop and office building to the designs of J. R. Moore-Smith and Durrant at Nos 45–51 with warehouses to the rear replacing Sayer’s Rupert Street fish-curing premises. Moore-Smith and Colbeck, as they had become, made additions and alterations in 1919–20, 1924 and 1929 to generate a frontage that sported giant-order stone pilasters across five bays, with a southern channelled brick bay for an entrance and staircase to upper-storey offices. An additional frontage at Nos 31–35 gave access to a large yard and stables. The client may have been the Hawkins estate, for which Moore-Smith often acted in the 1920s.[^40] </p>\n\n<p>The Crane-Bennett premises bookended Nos 37–43, all rebuilt in 1905. No. 43 was the White Hart, which had its origins in the 1680s. On a site that widened to the rear, it had extended to have a spacious clubroom where a lodge of the Ancient Order of Druids, a social club with similarities to the Freemasons, was founded in 1885, continuing in 1912 under the landlord, Otto Damm (1858–1913). The rebuilding of 1905, which included a bowling alley, was to designs by Joseph Johnson, architect, for the leaseholder, the London and Burton Brewery Co. Ltd. J. V. Kiddle of Elder Street was the builder. A stone-dressed brick façade featured a large semi-circular window under a scrolled pediment. The White Hart closed in 1931–2, the landlord, Jacob Shulman, turning to tailoring.[^41] </p>\n\n<p>Adjoining was a utilitarian brick block at Nos 37–41 with shops below three floors of flats and attic workshops. This was built in 1905 on a ninety-nine-year lease from the Hawkins estate for Harris Woolf, a cigar manufacturer.[^42] </p>\n\n<p>The whole Leman Street frontage from Alie Street to the CWS buildings was acquired by the National Westminster Bank and cleared in 1978 apart from Nos 37–41, which survived till about 1980, and the corner building, No. 21, which clung on till about 1985. [^43]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Four Shillings in the Pound Assessments, 1693–4 (4s£): East Sussex Record Office, SAS/AB/1098: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Land Tax Returns (LT): The National Archives (TNA), C5/79/43; C8/510/32; C8/510/53; C10/519/20; C11/49/29: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: TNA, C11/49/22; PROB11/602/127; PROB11/804/190; PROB11/851/434: Church of England Rrecord Centre, MS2750/65: 4s£: LT: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), P/SLC/1/17/25: <em>Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser</em>, 30 June 1769: Ordnance Survey map (OS), 1873: <em>Harper’s Weekly</em>, 9 Jan 1897, p. 36</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Historic England Archive (HEA), Royal Comission on Historical Monuments investigator’s card</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: LMA, Collage 118797–9</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: 4s£: Ancestry: TNA, ADM106/386/21; PROB11/683/247; PROB11/905/275: LMA, LT; MR/LV/5/26 1730: Bryan Mawer's sugar database</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: oldbaileyonline.com/t17361013-5; t17400416-25; t17420224-57; t17470429-30; t17720429-36: LT: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: LT: Ancestry: William Popper and Isidore Singer (eds), <em>The Jewish Encyclopedia</em>, vol. 11<em>: Samson to Talmid Hakam</em>, 1905, p. 4: TNA, PROB11/858/282</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: Ancestry: LT: TNA, C111/183; PROB11/868/242; PROB11/765/176; PROB11/600/419</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: Mawer: LT: Bernard Drew, <em>The London Assurance: a second chronicle</em>, 1949, p. 42: TNA, PROB11/672/169</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: Mawer: LT: TNA, PROB11/715/429; PROB11/672/169</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: <em>Whitehall Evening Post</em>, 6–8 Oct 1748</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: Ancestry: LT: TNA, PROB11/765/176: LMA, SC/GL/PR/S3/WHI/p7491610</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: TNA, PROB11/672/169: LT: Ancestry: Mawer: Drew, <em>London Assurance</em>, p. 42: Oliver Vere Langford<em>, The History of the Island of Antigua, one of the Leeward Caribbees in the West Indies, from the first settlement in 1635 to the present time</em>, 1894, p. 340: Londonroll.org</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: TNA, PROB11/1183/240; PROB11/1441/177; PROB11/1667/118: LT: Ancestry: <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) sub </em>Vulliamy: LMA, SC/GL/PR/S3/WHI/p7491610: Mawer: <em>London Evening Standard</em>, 9 Aug 1849, p. 1</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: <em>Chronological List of Patentees and Applicants</em>, 1827, p. 849; 1838, p. 1036: <em>Bell’s Weekly Messenger</em>, 20 Jan 1822, p. 8: <em>London Evening Standard</em>, 9 Aug 1849, p. 1: TNA, PROB11/2088/152: <em>The Royal Kalendar and Court and City Register</em>, 1853, pp. 372–3</p>\n\n<p>[^16]: TNA, PROB11/715/429; PROB11/951/259: LT: Michael Scott, ‘Captain Richard Johnson and the Royal Bagnio’, in Derek Morris, <em>Whitechapel 1600–1800</em>, 2011, pp. 83–8</p>\n\n<p>[^17]: <em>Select Trials … from the Old Bailey … from the year 1741 to the present year 1764</em>, 1764, pp. 62–105: E. Beresford Chancellor, <em>The pleasure haunts of London during four centuries</em>, 1925, pp. 181–3: Gordon Williams, <em>A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature</em>, 1994, p. 59</p>\n\n<p>[^18]: <em>Daily Press</em>, 26 Nov 1724</p>\n\n<p>[^19]: <em>Daily Post</em>, 1 July 1725: Scott in Morris, <em>Whitechapel</em>, p. 85</p>\n\n<p>[^20]: Scott in Morris, <em>Whitechapel</em>, pp. 85–6<em>: Daily Journal</em>, 13 April 1728: <em>Daily Advertiser</em>, 8 June 1743<em>: Public Advertiser</em>, 4 June 1753: LT</p>\n\n<p>[^21]: Janice Turner, ‘An Anatomy of a Disorderly neighbourhood: Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair <em>c.</em>1690–1765’, PhD, University of Hertfordshire, 2014, p.276: LT: <em>Daily Post</em>, 12 June 1744: Scott in Morris, <em>Whitechapel</em>, pp. 86–7</p>\n\n<p>[^22]: <em>Public Advertiser</em>, 4 June 1753: Percy Fitzgerald, <em>Principles of Comedy and Dramatic Effect</em>, 1870, p. 331: Turner, ‘Anatomy’, p. 214: <em>ODNB</em>: LT: Ancestry: <em>Daily Advertiser</em>, 26 June 1766: <em>Morning Post</em>, 10 Feb 1778: <em>Morning Post</em>, 9 June 1785: <em>Times</em>, 7 July 1792, p. 3: TNA, PROB11/1195/63: F. H. W. Sheppard (ed.), <em>Survey of London</em>, vol. 36:<em> Covent Garden</em>, 1970, pp. 83–4, 88–9</p>\n\n<p>[^23]: East Sussex Record Office, SAS/AB/1098</p>\n\n<p>[^24]: As quoted by Julia R. Lieberman, ‘Few Wealthy and Many Poor: The London Sephardi Community in the Eighteenth-Century’, in José Vicente Serrão (ed.), <em>LER História 74: Portuguese Jews in Europe and the Caribbean, 17th-18th Centuries</em>, 2019, pp. 41-61: LT: Richard Barnett, ‘Dr Jacob de Castro Sarmento and Sephardim in Medical Practice in 18th-Century London’, <em>Transactions and Miscellanies (Jewish Historical Society of England)</em>, vol.27, 1978–80, pp. 84–114: Julia R. Lieberman, ‘The founding of the London Bet Holim hospital in 1748 and the secularization of <em>sedaca</em> in the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish community in the eighteenth century’, <em>Jewish Historical Studies</em>, vol. 49/1, 2017, pp. 106–43</p>\n\n<p>[^25]: John Chamberlayne, <em>Magnae Britannicae: or the Present State of Great Britain</em>: 1748, p. 196; 1755, p. 182: Mathias Mawson, <em>A Sermon Preached before His Grace Charles Duke of Richmond … and the Governors of the London Hospital … at the Parish-Church of St. Lawrence-Jewry, on Friday, April 6, 1750</em>, 1750, p. 32: Barnett, ‘Sephardim’, p. 91: Lieberman, 2017, pp. 117–8</p>\n\n<p>[^26]: Barnett, ‘Sephardim’ p. 91: Lieberman 2017, p. 130: Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1660–1840, (3rd edn), 1995, p. 270</p>\n\n<p>[^27]: Barnett, ‘Sephardim’, pp. 92–6, 101: Lieberman 2017, pp. 130–4, 139–42: Sharman Kadish, <em>Jewish Heritage in England: An Architectural Guide</em>, 2006, p. 28</p>\n\n<p>[^28]: G. Crocker (ed.), ‘Alexander Raby, Ironmaster’, Surrey Industrial Heritage Group, 2000: Matt Phelps, Sarah Paynter and David Dungworth, ‘Downside Mill, Cobham, Surrey. Analysis of the Metalworking Remains’, English Heritage Research Department Report Series, No. 43, 2011: <a href=\"https://www.llanellich.org.uk/files/395-alexander-raby-ironmaster-coalmaster\">www.llanellich.org.uk/files/395-alexander-raby-ironmaster-coalmaster</a></p>\n\n<p>[^29]: Census: Vivian David Lipman, <em>A Century of Social Service, 1859–1959: The Jewish Board of Guardians</em>, 1959, p. 136: W. D. Rubinstein, M. Jolles and H. L. Rubinstein, <em>The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History</em>, 2011: <em>Report from the Select Committee on Education of the Poorer Classes in England and Wales</em>, 1838, p. 131: Isidore Harris (ed.), <em>Jewish Yearbook, 1907–8</em>, 1907, p. 86: Alex Jacob, ‘No Ordinary Tradesmen: The Green family in 19th-century Whitechapel’<em>, Jewish Historical Studies</em>, vol. 33, 1992–4, pp. 163–73: <em>Morning Post</em>, 7 Sept 1837, p. 3</p>\n\n<p>[^30]: British Library of Political and Economic Sciences, BOOTH/A/19: Post Office Directories (POD)</p>\n\n<p>[^31]: Ancestry: LT: J. Montgomery Seaver, <em>Davis Family Records</em>, 1929, p.8: Mawer: LMA, CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/387/604119: <em>Gentleman’s Magazine</em>, vol. 197, April 1855, p. 427: <em>Star</em>, 5 March 1828, p. 1</p>\n\n<p>[^32]: Census: Ancestry: Mawer</p>\n\n<p>[^33]: LMA, CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/574/1363270; District Surveyors' Returns (DSR): OS: Ancestry: Gordon S. Maxwell, <em>The Fringe of London</em>, 1925, p.202: William Rubinstein, ‘Jewish top wealth-holders in Britain, 1809–1909’, <em>Jewish Historical Studies</em>, vol. 37, 2001, pp.133–161 (139)</p>\n\n<p>[^34]: <em>German Hospital Dalston</em>, 1846, p. 82: <em>Bell’s Weekly Messenger</em>, 2 April 1855, p. 7: <em>East London Observer( ELO)</em>, 18 June 1859, p. 2: <em>Globe</em>, 25 April 1860, p. 4: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 17 Oct 1862, p. 774:<em> Money Market Review</em>, 13 Dec 1862, p. 517: <em>Whitstable Times</em>, 19 Sept 1903, p. 8: Ancestry: POD</p>\n\n<p>[^35]: POD: DSR: <em>Globe</em>, 11 Oct 1860, p. 3: THLHLA, P/GLM/1/5/1: <em>ODNB</em></p>\n\n<p>[^36]: OS: Goad insurance maps: DSR: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS15627/040; CLC/B/017/MS15627/052: <em>The People’s Yearbook</em>, 1926: TNA, IR58/84815/4748; /5185: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/88; L/THL/D/2/30/70: Ancestry: <em>London Daily News</em>, 17 Nov 1880, p. 8: <em>Morning Post</em>, 3 Jan 1888, p. 3: <em>Hampstead and Highgate Express</em>, 2 March 1889, p. 4: HEA, Aerofilms 250682: Philip Temple (ed.), <em>Survey of London</em>: vol. 46,<em> South and East Clerkenwell</em>, 2008, p. 391</p>\n\n<p>[^37]: TNA, IR58/84830/4702-4707: DSR: HEA, Aerofilms EAW021448: THLHLA, P04081–2: Isobel Watson, ‘Rebuilding London: Abraham Davis and his Brothers, 1881–1924, <em>London Journal</em>, vol. 29/1, 2004, p. 66: surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/80/detail/#site</p>\n\n<p>[^38]: TNA, IR58/84830/4729-4735: LT: Ancestry: POD: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/88; L/THL/D/2/30/70: Census</p>\n\n<p>[^39]: TNA, IR58/84830/4736-7; IR58/84839/5665: DSR: Goad 1887: OS: POD: <em>Tower Hamlets Independent and East End Local Advertiser</em>, 16 Jan 1909, p. 8: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/88; L/SMB/C/1/3: Old Bailey Online, t19061022-20: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/17/45017</p>\n\n<p>[^40]: TNA, IR58/84834/5184-5185: DSR: <a href=\"http://www.hevac-heritage.org/electronic_books/best100/photographs/2-ADS-Radiators.pdf\">www.hevac-heritage.org/electronic_books/best100/photographs/2-ADS-Radiators.pdf</a>: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/17/45017: HEA, Aerofilms EPW005770; EPW055309; EAW021448</p>\n\n<p>[^41]: <em>ELO</em>, 30 May 1885, p.2: TNA, IR58/84830/4728: LMA, MR/LV/5/26; MR/LV/6/79; MR/LV/7/49; MR/LV/8/68: Ancestry: POD: DSR: THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/88</p>\n\n<p>[^42]: POD: Ancestry: TNA, IR58/84830/4728: HEA, Aerofilms EAW021448</p>\n\n<p>[^43]: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: Royal Bank of Scotland Archive, aerial photograph, <em>c.</em>1979: Lloyd’s Register of Shipping, appendix, 1976–7, p. 49: <em>Estates Gazette</em>, 1978, p. 105</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2020-05-07",
"last_edited": "2021-05-04"
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{
"id": 1068,
"title": "Great Eastern Goods Depot, East Smithfield (demolished)",
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"body": "<p>The East Smithfield Goods Depot was constructed for the Great Eastern Railway Company by the London and Blackwall Railway Company and opened in 1864 on what had been Glasshouse Yard on the north side of East Smithfield, just outside the parish of Whitechapel, opposite the London Docks. Plans for a branch to the St Katharine Docks had been in play since the 1840s. The purpose was, as William Tite said in 1847, to make connections ‘so that cotton may go out of the London docks & the St Katherines [sic] docks into Liverpool without being transhipped’.[^1] The viaduct for this branch was already then being laid out by Charles B. Kerr under Joseph Locke’s supervision. At this point it was intended that it would be worked by horses on account of a sharply curving route. There were plans that the viaduct should fork at the south end to connect to both the St Katharine and the London Docks. An Act of 1848 authorised these branches and an iron girder bridge over Royal Mint Street. By the early 1850s, a short section of the branch line, or at least its foundations, had been built across Royal Mint Street,but progress then stalled. The project was revived in 1859, but forks to both docks had to be abandoned.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>The route eventually taken by 1864 formed a single curved viaduct, with a second girder bridge across New Martin Street, ending at the single depot on the north side of Upper East Smithfield. The irregularly shaped depot was designed so that wagons could be lowered from the viaduct to street level where there were two short sidings, a roofed-over unloading area and stables. The engine house and wagon hoist were on the west side of Glasshouse Street. The line was extended a little further south in 1865 to the London Docks’ wool warehouses, with an iron- and glass-roofed bridge over Upper East Smithfield. In 1879 the depot was leased to the London and St Katharine Dock Company, which used it for connecting to its Royal Albert Dock, which opened in 1880.[^3] </p>\n\n<p>A vivid picture of activity outside the East Smithfield depot and the dock gates comes from 1916, when the depot was occupied by the Port of London Authority to deal with Victoria and Albert Docks’ traffic: 'If you have time, trace back the waiting queue of vans and lorries eastward along St George Street [the Highway] and up into Wellclose Square; turn westward to the Royal Mint and the Tower Bridge approach, to Royal Mint Street, Mansell Street, the Minories, and Tower Hill, watch the struggling, heaving mass, and with your mind full of what you have just seen in docks and depot you will begin to form some microscopic conception of what is involved in the work of the port.'[^4]<br>\nEven so, the depot was something of a white elephant and it closed in 1924. The London and North Eastern Railway Company soon took a lease and rebuilt the East Smithfield depot in 1927–9 to revive its share of the Danish bacon market. The building was replaced with a more extensive and regularly rectangular three-storey warehouse. The depot was opened by Count Preben Ahlefeldt-Laurvig, the Danish Minister in London, its lower two levels given over to Danish bacon.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>Improvements were made in the 1950s and the East Smithfield Depot limped on until closure in 1966, demolition coming soon after. Most of the viaduct came down around 1976, but its last sections near the main line survived until demolitions for the Docklands Light Railway in the mid 1980s.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Parliamentary Archives (PA), HC/CL/PB/2/14/9, pp. 18–19</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: PA, HC/CL/PB/2/14/9, pp. 12–14, 25–7; HL/PO/PB/3/plan1847/L203; HL/PO/PB/3/plan1860/L24: 11& 12 Vic., cap. xc, pp. 1003–4, 1008: <em>Daily News</em>, 6 May 1851, p. 1: Ordnance Survey source map of <em>c.</em>1851–5 via Old-Maps.co.uk: <em>London Gazette</em>, 22 Nov 1859, pp. 4209–10: <a href=\"http://london1868.com/weller45.htm\">london1868.com/weller45.htm</a>: J. E. Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway: A History of the London and Blackwall System</em>, 1984, p. 93: Alan A. Jackson, <em>London’s Local Railways</em>, 1978, p. 168</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: S. Johnston, ‘Royal Mint Square Site History’, report for Alan Baxter Associates, 1975: Goad insurance plan, 1887: Joseph Broodbank, <em>History of the Port of London</em>, vol. 2, 1921, p. 496: J. E. Connor, <em>Fenchurch Street to Barking</em>, 1998</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: A. Crow, ‘The Port of London: Past, Present, and Future’, <em>Town Planning Review</em>, vol. 7/1, Oct 1916, p. 7</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: The National Archives, RAIL390/621; RAIL390/635; RAIL 390/774; RAIL392/13: <em>Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer</em>, 30 April 1929, p. 9: Johnston, ‘Royal Mint Square’: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, p. 92</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: Connor, <em>Fenchurch Street to Barking</em></p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2020-05-11",
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"id": 1067,
"title": "Four Demolished Goods Depots",
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"b_name": "Railway Viaduct Spur",
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"body": "<p>Goods depots formed clusters in certain locations, especially near dock areas, where competing railway companies tried to secure a share of the trade. One of the most strikingly dense such clusters was on the final stretch of the line running into Fenchurch Street station where there were seven depots within less than a mile. These were as close as possible to the City, within which such facilities would not have been permitted, and five relatively small depots lay within or partly within the parish of Whitechapel, as did the London Tilbury and Southend Railway (LTSR)’s slightly more distant Commercial Road Depot, a behemoth. The situations of these facilities on or adjacent to viaducts would have brought practical benefits in terms of rail to road transfers. Goods facilities suffered greatly during the Second World War and closures soon followed. Of the ancillary structures that survived bombing and subsequent demolition in Whitechapel, only the engine house of the LTSR Commercial Road depot still stands.</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>London and North Western Haydon Square Depot and branch line</em></p>\n\n<p>The Haydon Square goods depot was formed in 1851–3 from an East India Company warehouse between Mansell Street and the Minories as the City depot of the London and North Western Railway Company. It was reached from the London and Blackwall Railway by the contemporary formation of an elevated branch line. Edward Dixon was the London and North Western’s engineer. The depot itself was in a Tower Liberty, now part of the City of London, so is beyond the scope of the present account. The southern portion of the branch line curved through Whitechapel across Chamber Street where a short stretch survived to 2020. It previously continued northwards on an arched viaduct and girder bridges. The Goodman’s Fields Paving Commissioners had requested that the railway be carried entirely on girder bridges instead of arches for the sake of appearance, light and sanitation, but the railway company refused to oblige. Construction involved the clearance of what were deemed ‘pestilential courts and alleys’.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>There was heavy bomb damage on both sides of the viaduct in the Second World War. Haydon Square Goods Depot closed in 1962, by when its traffic had almost ceased. By the end of that decade much of the viaduct was down, its tracks dismantled, and the road bridge over Mansell Street removed.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>The last remaining part of the viaduct of 1851–3 was the heavily stone-quoined corner spur on the north side of Chamber Street east of Mansell Street. Its brick walling still displayed wartime shrapnel damage in 2020 when, permission for the structure’s demolition having been granted, and an application for listing refused, the developer (Marldon) was persuaded to retain the wall. The westernmost arch was occupied as 55 Chamber Street by Barneys Seafood from around the time the branch line closed until September 2019. Prior to this the arch had been used as a lock-up by another shellfish seller, Barney Gritzman, rival to and brother of Solomon Gritzman, who had taken over the famous jellied-eel business of Tubby Isaacs in the 1920s, and who used the arch as a lock-up for his Aldgate shellfish stall. In 1969 Eddie Button bought Barney Gritzman’s stall and began to develop the eel preparation and wholesaling business in the Chamber Street arch. The landlord, Network Rail, sold the site in 2018 and in January 2019 the new owners, Marldon, gave Barneys notice to leave.[^3] Marldon had been the developer of the site adjoining to the north, an apart-hotel called Prescot House at 31–33 Prescot Street, the first phase of a larger project that it is intended in 2020 will extend onto the neighbouring site at 55 Chamber Street. </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Great Northern Goods Depot, Royal Mint Street</em></p>\n\n<p>What came to be known as the Royal Mint Street Depot was opened in 1858 by the London and Blackwall Railway Company on the site of the short-lived Minories Station, which had closed in 1853. The formation of the Goodman’s Yard depot to the north in 1861 (see below) freed it up and it was leased to the Great Northern Railway Company to connect the City and the docks to that company’s lines via junctions at Bow and Maiden Lane.[^4] </p>\n\n<p>The depot was named after Minories Station for a time, later becoming the Mint Street Depot then, from about 1870, the Royal Mint Street Depot. It lay largely outside Whitechapel, directly south of the London and Blackwall viaduct on the north side of Royal Mint Street, where there was an office and three entrances. Cast-iron columns supported a roof of iron and glass over a loading shed; the goods shed lay beneath the viaduct in spaces that had been part of Minories Station.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>Following clearances further east for the widening of Royal Mint Street on its north side, around 1900 Whitechapel District Board of Works proposed removal of the south-east corner of the depot. Then in 1903 the LCC gained powers under the Mansell Street and Tower Bridge northern approach improvement schemes to acquire part of the depot for the construction of the railway bridge over the broad southern extension of Mansell Street, formed by 1907 shaving off the Whitechapel corner of the depot.[^6] </p>\n\n<p>This depot was hit twice in 1940–1 and had to be partly taken down. It closed in 1951 and was subsequently cleared. The site is now partly occupied by the Docklands Light Railway’s Tower Gateway Station.[^7]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Great Eastern Goodman’s Yard General Warehouse</em></p>\n\n<p>To cope with expanding traffic, the London and Blackwall Railway Company opened an additional depot adjoining the railway line at Goodman’s Yard in 1861. The site abutted south on the railway between the Minories and Little Prescot Street (later Mansell Street) in a south-western corner of Whitechapel. This was a huge seven-storey building, used as both the Great Eastern Railway Company’s General Warehouse (the western five divisions) and Gooch & Cousens wool warehouses (the eastern three divisions). A smaller detached building to the north abutting the Haydon Square viaduct was the London and South Western Railway Company’s Goods and Parcels Office by 1894. This site was redeveloped for the London and North Western Railway Company in and after 1901. The location was subject to particularly heavy bombing, all the Goodman’s Yard buildings being damaged beyond repair in the early 1940s. The sites were cleared and use as car parks into the 1970s.[^8]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Midland City Goods Station, Royal Mint Street</em><br>\nThe Midland Railway Company’s City Goods Depot opened on the north side of Royal Mint Street in 1862, having been built and leased by the London and Blackwall Railway Company. It comprised brick-arched vaults across a rectangular site, 160ft by 180ft, under a single lofty storey, 22ft high to the eaves, with an iron and glass roof covering sidings and hydraulically powered turntables, wagon hoists, capstans and cranes. By 1899 the depot also occupied six of the main line’s adjacent arches, five of which were used to hold goods including bottles of whisky in bonded storage; the last held an engine and boiler house.[^9] </p>\n\n<p>Around 1923 a three-level red-brick hydraulic accumulator tower was built against the viaduct at the north-west corner of the site, which had been diminished on this side by the extension of Mansell Street. The depot had, however, been extended eastwards to St Mark’s National School and by 1933, under the London, Midland and Scottish Railway Company, W. Grant & Sons Ltd leased part of the depot for whisky storage and there was also bonded gin storage. Eight of the railway arches were used by the International Bottle Company.[^10] </p>\n\n<p>The Midland Depot escaped major bomb damage but closed in 1949. The site had been largely cleared by the 1960s and was used for carparking up to around 2012. The hydraulic accumulator tower, still bearing the painted inscription ‘London Midland and Scottish Railway, City Goods Station and Bonded Stores’, was demolished in 2015. Royal Mint Gardens has since been built on the site.</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Parliamentary Archives (PA), HL/PO/PB/3/plan1851/L4: The National Archives (TNA), MH13/268, ff. 608–10; RAIL385/49, pp. 47–8: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 26 July 1851, p. 1; 17 Nov 1851, p. 5; 27 Jan 1852, p. 4:<em>Morning Post</em>, 29 Dec 1853, p. 6: Geoffrey Body and Robert L. Eastleigh, <em>The London & Blackwall Railway</em>, <em>c</em>.1964, p. 16</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Ordnance Survey maps (OS), 1957–59 and 1969: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), SC/PHL/01/392/77/35/390/C15: J. E. Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway: A History of the London and Blackwall System</em>, 1984, p. 92</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <a href=\"https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/survey-of-london/tag/barneys-seafood/\">blogs.ucl.ac.uk/survey-of-london/tag/barneys-seafood/</a>: Tower Hamlets planning applications online: Spitalfields Life, 21 Feb 2020: https://surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/1310/detail/#story</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Charles H. Grinling, <em>The History of the Great Northern Railway, 1845–1895</em>, 1898, pp. 201, 203, 296: Body and Eastleigh, <em>Railway</em>, p. 17</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: TNA, RAIL1189/1299: London School of Economics/British Library of Political and Economic Sciences (LSE/BLPES), Booth Archive, Poverty Map Sheet 5 East, 1888–9: Goad insurance plan, 1887: J. E. Connor, <em>London’s Disused Railway Stations: the East End</em>, 2018, p. 47; Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, p. 47</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: TNA, RAIL783/221: London County Council (LCC), <em>Annual Report of the Proceedings of the LCC</em>, 1903, p. 130: LMA, COL/TSD/PL/01: LSE/BLPES, Booth/B/351, 7 March 1898, p. 7</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, p. 86: Connor, <em>London’s Disused Railway Stations</em>, p. 47</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: OS: Goad insurance plan, 1887: LCC Minutes, 23 July 1901, p.1052: LMA, District Surveyors' Returns (DSR)</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: TNA, RAIL385/49: Goad insurance plan, 1887: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS14943/004, 5 May 1874, p. 118; CLC/B/017/MS14943/013, 19 March 1891, pp. 23–4; CLC/B/017/MS14942/007, 30 April 1891, pp. 145, 151; CLC/B/017/MS14943/017, 10 Aug 1899, p. 71: ‘GLIAS Notes and News’, 1979, <a href=\"http://www.glias.org.uk/news/065news.html\">www.glias.org.uk/news/065news.html</a></p>\n\n<p>[^10]: LSE/BLPES, Booth/B/351, 7 March 1898, p. 7: TNA, RAIL385/49; RAIL1189/1264: LMA, COL/TSD/PL/01; CLC/B/017/MS14944/034, 7 Dec 1933, pp. 452–3; SC/PHL/01/397/77/35/390B/18: Tim Smkith, 'The Midland Railway's City Goods Depot', GLIAS Newsletter, No. 158, 1995, www.glias.org.uk/news/158news.html#E: <a href=\"http://www.urban75.org/blog/accumulator-tower-hydraulics-and-bonded-stores-royal-mint-st-e1/\">www.urban75.org/blog/accumulator-tower-hydraulics-and-bonded-stores-royal-mint-st-e1/</a>: Museum of London Archaeology, ‘Royal Mint Street, London E1, London Borough of Tower Hamlets. An Archaeological Assessment’, 1994</p>\n",
"created": "2020-05-11",
"last_edited": "2021-05-10"
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{
"id": 1058,
"title": "The Oliver Conquest, formerly the Garrick Tavern and Theatre, 70 Leman Street",
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"body": "<p>This was the main part of the site of the house of Samuel Hawkins senior (d. 1771), the builder responsible for much development in Goodman’s Fields in the first half of the eighteenth century, combined with a neighbouring property to the north (No. 68) in the 1750s to make an even more substantial dwelling. It was to start with a broad three-storey mansion to which a kitchen adjoined, as also a warehouse and counting house (possibly at No. 68), with a coach-house and stables to the rear. Hawkins’s leasehold interest passed via his widow, Ann, to his son Samuel Hawkins junior (d. 1805), a silk throwster. After his death, the property was put up for sale.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>It reappears in 1831 as the Garrick Tavern, evidently a conversion, carried out with the consruction to the rear of the Garrick Theatre which opened on 27 December 1830. The name arose from proximity to the defunct Goodman’s Fields Theatre on Alie Street, where David Garrick first performed in London. The tavern’s first licensees were John Norris, formerly of the Lambeth Street police office, and Edward Higley, a partnership rapidly dissolved. The theatre replaced a building on East Tenter Street that had perhaps been used by John Hubbard, a Russia merchant, in connection with cotton-factory interests. A single wide passage within the south side of the former house, possibly replacing a carriageway, led all classes of theatre-goers in from Leman Street.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>The theatre claimed a capacity of 1,600 to 2,000 in a pit, a gallery, and one tier of uncomfortable boxes. On its opening it was deemed ‘a commodious little theatre’ the entertainments of which combined ‘the attractions of noise, number, and variety, so acceptable to visitors more numerous than select.’[^3] It had been built as a speculation by Benjamin Oliver ‘Conquest’ and Francis Wyman, who was soon replaced by William Gomersall. Conquest, who also ran the tavern from 1833, was a comedian-actor of moderate fame whose wife, Clarissa Ann, was a well-known dancer. In 1837, in their living quarters above the tavern, she gave birth to their son, George Conquest, who was to be described as ‘the most theatrical person in the theatrical profession’.[^4] Gomersall, also an actor, frequently played Napoleon on stage. Indeed, it was after a performance of <em>The Battle of Waterloo</em>involving faux-cannon in November 1846 that the Garrick Theatre burnt down.[^5]</p>\n\n<p>Rebuilding for Laurence Levy (d. 1873) began in 1852 and the theatre reopened in 1854; reconstruction of the tavern appears to have followed on in 1854–6. The architect was Joseph Lavender, whose scheme, accommodating just 480, was comparatively fire-resistant through masonry construction – a brick proscenium wall carried across the whole building, the stage being situated to the rear or west. The balcony, gallery and four private boxes were carried on iron columns. The principal entrance remained on Leman Street, on the tavern’s south side, but a stage door and balcony entrance opened onto East Tenter Street.[^6] One reviewer received the new venue as ‘a snug, compact theatre, pleasantly fitted up, warm, well-lighted, and exceedingly comfortable’. Even so, the wide stage, also 34ft deep, rendered the theatre ‘available for horsemanship’.[^7] Despite the popular appeal of its pantomimes and variety shows, the Garrick Theatre struggled and in 1861 was put up for auction with the tavern in a ‘dangerous state’. In 1868, newly decorated and up for sale again, it was said to hold 1,700 persons, with potential to pack in 3,000, and to be ‘used as a Circus’.[^8] In the early 1870s, the Garrick, ‘the last of the London Gaffs proper’, was held to be in decline – its entertainments and audience were disdained, its building sunk into ‘ruin and dull shabbiness’.[^9] The actor J. B. Howe became the sole lessee and manager in 1873, undertaking redecoration to attract a more refined clientele and intending to rename the theatre The Albert, a plan thwarted by the Lord Chamberlain. A brief spell as J. B. Howe’s ‘Theatre’ followed, but Howe was bankrupt by 1875. Under May Bulmer the theatre re-opened in 1879 after a further overhaul, including the insertion of stalls, aiming to entertain audiences with the ‘higher interests of dramatic art’ through operettas and ballets. Bulmer was unsuccessful as was her successor, John Baum. The pretensions of these owners were undermined in press reports that highlighted more melodramatic and popular shows. George Sims later recalled that ‘there were two or three big burly fellows in uniform who kept order by hitting the disturbers of the peace on the head with a cane’.[^10] In 1882 more building work was deemed necessary with adaptations for Messrs Wests and Peggs made to designs by James Edmeston, but the theatre struggled with another period of closure thereafter. A final revision of the interior was made in 1884 to meet the Metropolitan Board of Work’s newly stringent requirements. The last production appears to have been <em>Pink Dominoes</em>, performed by Charles Wyndham’s company. The Garrick had been a local theatre throughout, sympathetic to Jewish interests from its earliest years, producing a new play <em>The Triumph of the Jewish Queen</em> in 1835, and putting on Yiddish dramas performed by Russian actors in the 1880s.[^11]</p>\n\n<p>The Garrick Theatre was demolished in 1890 to permit the enlargement of Leman Street’s police station (see below). The tavern was internally reconstructed by George Lusk in 1890–1 with a first-floor concert room, bagatelle room and saloon, the establishment being restyled as the Garrick Hall of Varieties. The wide ground-floor passage to the south that had led to the theatre was reconfigured with a staircase for access to the small first-floor music hall, which had a capacity of seventy. The upper storey was residential. The Leman Street elevation accommodated no fewer than five entrances to private bars around the main central servery, a bar parlour to the north and a further snug to the rear.[^12] Around 1901, the tavern was managed by Eugene Wherley, a German-born local councillor, and commended for its well-appointed and spacious luncheon room, presumably the former concert room. Further reconstruction was undertaken in 1918 by Truman, Hanbury and Buxton, lessees since 1896. By the end of the twentieth century, the Garrick Tavern had been re-named Mr Pickwick’s; it became the Oliver Conquest in 2010. A wide barrel-vault in the south-west corner of the cellar appears to survive from the first Garrick Theatre of 1830.[^13]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: The National Archives (TNA), PROB11/973/29: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), CLC/B/192/F/001/MS11936/385/598922; /317/484073; Land Tax Returns (LT); Tower Hamlets Commissioners of Sewers ratebooks (THCS): Post Office Directories (POD): <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 3 Feb 1807, p. 4</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>The Times</em>, 21 July 1831, p. 6; 13 April 1832, p. 3: <em>London Gazette</em>, 30 Aug 1831: <em>Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser</em>, 28 June 1832, p. 4: surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/94/detail/: LMA, THCS; CLC/B/227–109: Stuart Thompstone, ‘British Merchant Houses in Russia before 1914’ in Linda Edmondson and Peter Waldron (eds), <em>Economy and Society in Russia and the Soviet Union, 1860–1930</em>, 1992, pp. 107–30 (123–4)</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>The Times</em>, 3 Jan 1831, p. 3</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: <em>The Era</em>, 25 March 1893, p. 7; 15 April 1893, p. 11: <em>Oxford Dictionary of Natioanl Biography sub </em>George Conquest: <em>The Times</em>, 13 April 1832, p. 3: <em>Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper</em>, 29 Oct 1893, p. 7: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/52/026</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: A. E. Wilson, <em>East End Entertainment</em>, 1954, p. 107: <em>Morning Post</em>, 5 Nov 1846, p. 6: <em>Globe</em>, 4 Nov 1846, p. 3: LMA, District Surveyors' Returns (DSR): <em>Morning Post</em>, 5 Nov 1846, p. 6</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>The Builder</em>, 1 July 1854, p. 352: R. Ward, <em>Wealth and Notoriety: the extraordinary families of William Levy and Charles Lewis of London, </em>2013, pp. 59–60: LMA, DSR; GLC/AR/BR/52/026</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: <em>Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper</em>, 31 Dec 1854, p. 3: Wilson, <em>Entertainment</em>, p. 110</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: <em>The Era</em>, 2 Feb 1868, p. 16: <em>East London Observer (ELO)</em>, 23 Nov 1861, p.3: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 9 Aug 1861, p. 626: Wilson, <em>Entertainment</em>, p. 110</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: <em>The Builder</em>, 13 Sep 1873, pp. 720–1</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: G. R. Sims, <em>My Life</em>, 1917, p. 52: <em>The Times</em>, 27 March 1880, p. 4; 25 March 1856, p .8: <em>The Builder</em>, 26 April 1879, p. 467</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: DSR: <em>Graphic, </em>17 May 1879, p. 9: Wilson, <em>Entertainment</em>, pp. 104, 111: <em>The Builder</em>, 23 Sep 1882, p. 415: <em>The Times</em>, 27 March 1880: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/52/026</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: <em>Building News</em>, 4 April 1890, p. 476: <em>The Era</em>, 23 July 1892, p. 15: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, P/MIS/123/2; P/MIS/123/1: LMA, B/THB/D/102; GLC/AR/BR/52/026; DSR</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: <em>ELO</em>, 1 Dec 1900, p. 3; 21 Dec 1901, p. 5: DSR: TNA, IR 58/84830/4797: www.stgitehistory.org.uk/lemanstreetdirectory1921.html: surveyoflondon.org/map/feature/94/detail/</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2020-05-07",
"last_edited": "2020-08-22"
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"id": 1070,
"title": "The Pump House, 19–20 Hooper Street ",
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"body": "<p>The London Tilbury and Southend Railway Company’s Hooper Street hydraulic pumping station is the only substantial railway goods-handling building to survive in Whitechapel. It was built in 1886–7, presumably under the supervision of Arthur Lewis Stride, the railway company's general manager and engineer, probably working with Augustus Manning, the East and West India Dock Company's engineer, to power the hoists, capstans and cranes at the Commercial Road Goods Depot. Hydraulic machinery was supplied by Sir W. G. Armstrong, Mitchell & Co. The building has the same elevational treatment as that of the demolished warehouse, of red brick, with stone imposts to arch-headed windows and striking blue-black engineering-brick dressings. The main part of the building, which has a steel-framed roof, housed four Lancashire boilers with an engine room above for two 150hp pumping engines. It was built on the footprint of a German Lutheran chapel of 1819, the congregation of which moved to Goulston Street; its passing resemblance to an eighteenth-century church has been noted. The three-stage square tower at the west end, where the church porch had stood, housed two weight-loaded hydraulic accumulators. A chimney rose 125 feet from the south-west corner where its base survives.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>The pump house was listed in 1973 and passed into the ownership of the Greater London Council. Wine-bar and other conversion schemes of 1984 and 1986 came to nothing.[^2] The building appears to have remained semi-derelict until it was converted to office use in 2002–4. This project by City North Group as developers was led by Michael Sherley-Dale, working with Peter Thompson, Easton Masonry, TFA Interiors and Crittall for replacement windows. City North sold the property to Grainger Trust Plc in 2005, which sold it on in 2006. First tenants were stockbrokers. In 2019 the Pump House was occupied by Stockwool architects.[^3]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), MBW/2649/34/09, 1885: Ordnance Survey map, 1873: Goad insurance plan, 1887: Tim Smith, 'Commercial Road Goods Depot', <em>London's Industrial Archaeology</em>, 1980: Peter Kay, <em>London’s Railway Heritage</em>, vol. 1: <em>East</em>, 2012, p. 22: <a href=\"https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101065140-hydraulic-pumping-station-whitechapel-ward\">britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101065140-hydraulic-pumping-station-whitechapel-ward</a></p>\n\n<p>[^2]: LMA, ACC/3499/EH/07/01/356–7: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), Building Control (BC) files 22123 and 22132</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: THLHLA, BC file 26860: Tower Hamlets planning applications online</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>The Commercial Road Goods Depot was a huge railway complex. Sited to the north of the London and Blackwall Railway, it was built in 1884–7 by the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway Company (LTSR) as a receiving and forwarding depot for merchandise dealt with at the East and West India Dock Company’s Tilbury Docks, which opened in 1886. The premises comprised ground-level vaults with viaduct-level sidings, shunting yard and a branch line, and a goods station below a colossal warehouse that was demolished in 1975. The site on the west side of Gower’s Walk, twice redeveloped since, is largely occupied by Berkeley Homes’s Goodmans Fields development. The heft of the warehouse is most evident in aerial views.[^1] The goods depot was conceived in 1881 by the East and West India Dock Company, which approached the London Tilbury and Southend Railway Company (LTSR) with a view to creating a direct link between its then projected Tilbury Docks and central London. This was an intensely competitive period in the Port of London and the joint-venture scheme was a necessary response to the opening of the Royal Albert Dock by the London and St Katharine Dock Company in 1880. With ships of ever-increasing size, the older closed-in up-river docks could not compete with large rail-connected docks further downstream. The depot was thus designed in part to supersede the London and St Katharine Dock Company’s up-river facilities to the south of Whitechapel. But competition led to crisis and soon after the depot’s completion the dock companies went into joint operation in 1888, an arrangement that led to the formation of the Port of London Authority (PLA) in 1909.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>An Act of 1882 enabled construction of the depot and its connecting branch railway, despite objections from Whitechapel District Board of Works, which were met in a further Act of 1884. The legislation included provision for the creation of Hooper Street between Hooper Square and Gower’s Walk, and the extension of Pinchin Street in a northward curve to follow the line of the spur to the new depot. The Act also stipulated that the abutments of the bridges over Back Church Lane and Hooper Street were to be faced with white glazed bricks and be of ‘a reasonably ornamental character and design’.[^3]</p>\n\n<p>In 1884 the LTSR extended its land grab to include the German Church in Hooper Square, which was to be replaced by an hydraulic pumping station. The Mill Yard Seventh Day Baptist chapel and its minister’s house, three cottages and picturesque burial ground were other casualties. Disused burial grounds had to be dealt with, coffins removed to the City of London Cemetery, and 253 ‘old and dilapidated houses’ had been demolished by 1885. By 1887 the depot had displaced 2,579 people, without provisions for rehousing. The rule that no buildings should be erected on disused burial grounds was evaded because the sidings, station and warehouse were raised on vaults to the level of the London and Blackwall Railway.[^4]</p>\n\n<p>The LTSR general manager and engineer, Arthur Lewis Stride, and the East and West India Dock Company’s engineer, Augustus Manning, oversaw plans for the depot and warehouse. A first scheme of 1882 was rejected by insurers at the London Wharf and Warehouse Committee because the distances between fire-resistant walls in the warehouse were too great. The original five sub-divisions (known as risks) were reduced in size to form eight, which layout was approved in 1883. J. Mowlem & Co., favourites with the Dock Company, were employed as the main contractor and construction proceeded in 1884–5. The lower-level depot opened on 17 April 1886, to coincide with the grand opening of the Tilbury Docks. In the interim, the dock company had rented Hyatt & Parker’s Hooper Street wool warehouse, which the LTSR had acquired in 1883, to store tea and other produce. By February 1886 the warehouse was set to go ahead. Its hydraulic machinery was ordered from Sir W. G. Armstrong, Mitchell & Co., and contracts were placed for structural steel, 20,000 tons from Arrol Brothers in Glasgow. This may have been the largest amount of steel in any roofed building up to the time of its completion – the contemporary Forth Bridge used 50,000 tons.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>The warehouse opened in August 1887 and the LTSR leased it to the dock company for ninety-nine years at a rent equal to six per cent of the construction costs; in return, the LTSR guaranteed to carry a minimum of 200,000 tons annually between Tilbury Docks and the depot. This proved overambitious and, despite joint operation with the London and St Katharine Dock Company from 1888, the East and West India Dock Company went into receivership. According to Stride in 1903, the LTSR had spent ‘rather over a million’ on the depot and a further £1,067,000 on the houses that were cleared for the larger site, overall more than six acres – ‘the amount of business that it dealt with in no way justified its lavish proportions’.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>The site lay to the south of the west end of the Commercial Road, near the junction with Goodman’s Stile, the point of its main road entrance. It was bounded east and west by Gower’s Walk and Lambeth Street and south by the newly formed Hooper Street, over which the LTSR lines ran on a bridge, south to sidings or south-east where they joined the London and Blackwall line. The spur to the depot began outside Whitechapel on a brick viaduct that curved across Back Church Lane and Hooper Street on plate-girder bridges north into the goods yard where the locomotives stopped while the trucks were shunted to the ends of the lines beneath the warehousing. The extensive array of freely communicating vaults beneath the station and sidings was divided by Hooper Street. The vaults ran east–west with interconnecting round-arched openings through which tracks and platforms continued. Segmental arches facing Lambeth Street and Gower’s Walk were enclosed with brick, leaving triple apertures that were meshed in below panelled parapets. There were wagon hoists in the south-west corner of the yard and, an early addition, to the north-east, alongside Gower’s Walk. A vehicular ramp led up to the first-floor level goods station from Commercial Road; this was the main distribution level, where railway lines ran into the building between three loading platforms.[^7]</p>\n\n<p>The four-storey brick warehouse was constructed with riveted steel-plate girders, steel joists, Evans & Swains solid wood joist ‘slow-burn’ flooring, and hollow-cylindrical cast-iron columns.[^8] Despite being set back from the road and partially hemmed in by the Gunmakers’ Company’s premises, the building, the design of which can be attributed to Manning, was architecturally impressive. Its eighteen-bay front had its more closely spaced central six bays, including outer loophole bays, under a pediment in which the date 1887 flanked the LTSR emblem in a roundel. Somewhat narrower, the south elevation repeated this bay rhythm with an unadorned central pediment. There were iron-framed windows with opening panels. Perhaps most imposing of all was the 570ft length of the warehouse, which was spanned by nineteen three-window pitched-roof bays.</p>\n\n<p>The top floor housed north-lit showrooms, with tea-bulking machines at the south end. The otherwise slate-covered roofs were also glazed above three open atria, big light wells lined by staircases and stone landings, and straddled by huge long-span steel girders. Each cellular floor was divided into thirteen compartments by internal brick walls, and there were about four acres of floor space. Lifts were later installed in the light wells.[^9] </p>\n\n<p>By 1892 the LTSR used the low-level vaults to store cheese, potatoes and grain, along with ‘case goods’ such as pianos, paper, glass and German toys. In 1896 the Wharf and Warehouse Committee’s Surveyor noted that all was ‘intermixed, no rational organisation evident’. Finding later in the year that piassava, a palm fibre, and whisky were now also held on site, he imposed a separation of the more dangerous materials at the north end of the depot. Browne & Eagle took multiple short lets on thirteen vaults for wool storage.[^10] </p>\n\n<p>The warehouse was lit by gas until 1905 when electric lamps were introduced. A two-storey office range was built in 1908, wrapped around the Lambeth Street and Goodman’s Stile corner. Another office building was added in 1923 when the LTSR became part of the London Midland and Scottish Railway Company (LMS).[^11] </p>\n\n<p>In 1906 the warehouse looked after a valuable collection of animals given by the Maharaja of Nepal to the Prince of Wales, who donated them to the Zoological Society of London in Regent’s Park. The creatures arrived at Tilbury ‘with two native keepers from the gardens of Calcutta’ and were held overnight at the depot before transfer. They included a rhinoceros, a baby elephant, a ‘fine tigress’, two leopards, two Himalayan bears, several varieties of deer, sheep and goat, and ‘some of the wild dogs that figure in Kipling’s “Jungle Stories”’.[^12] Two years later a cargo of Australian animals passed through the depot on the way to the Zoo.[^13] </p>\n\n<p>The enormous quantities of Indian and Ceylon tea blended and packed at the warehouse for the British military in the First World War appeared in patriotic press reports. By the 1920s, the lower levels served as an LTSR (then LMS) general stores and goods depot. The warehouse was bonded and used by the PLA and tenants as vast tea stores containing 78,000 chests.[^14] This business was interrupted by the Second World War.</p>\n\n<p><strong>Tilbury Shelter.</strong> In April 1940, the LMS agreed to the use of the Commercial Road Goods Depot as an air-raid shelter, provided Stepney Borough Council scheduled sufficient wardens to work under the company’s police, and that notices prohibiting smoking were put up in English and Yiddish. Initially the plan, probably a temporary measure, was to create two adjoining shelters, one for LMS personnel and a second ‘PLA Shelter’, above, for 1,400 members of the public. There were fears that ‘people caught in the streets would rush for this shelter as they did during the last war’.[^15] In preparation, the PLA’s engineers, Rendel, Palmer & Tritton, oversaw the bricking up of lower windows. However, when Stepney Council proposed using both the PLA and LMS sections as an official public air-raid shelter, the lower LMS section was refused approval by the Ministry of Home Security because it would involve ‘dangerously large concentrations of people in one shelter and because the Railway Company insisted that the roadway through the LMS sections be kept open for traffic’.[^16] </p>\n\n<p>The LMS Chief Engineer, R. C. Cox, noted that should the building be hit by a large bomb there was ‘a rather large calamity factor’, but that this was a necessary risk in the absence of other shelters in the area. In early September 1940, when the night raids of the Blitz began, the London Civil Division Region Officer told the Stepney Air Raid Precautions (ARP) Controller that ‘we must face facts as they are: this is not a public shelter but large numbers of people are using it as such and we cannot keep them out in present circumstances’.[^17] The LMS Goods Manager then agreed that about two-fifths of the low-level depot, the northern parts, could be used as a shelter under Stepney’s auspices with police protection, especially at Hooper Street, to keep out crowds. </p>\n\n<p>The public, however, took possession of both the official (PLA) and unofficial (LMS) parts, thereby creating London’s largest air-raid shelter, which quickly became known as the Tilbury Shelter. Stepney was told that it must accept the situation and install sanitation. Works undertaken through Rendel, Palmer & Tritton were held up by labour shortages and were not complete in the official shelter until at least December. They eventually included bunks, lights, WCs, canteen facilities and medical supervision. When a head count was first taken in October 1940, some 8,000 people were found across both sections of the shelter. It was reported that on most nights the shelter held 14,000, thronging on a rainy night to form a ‘grim haven of 16,000’.[^18] There might have been exaggeration, but even so, in December official sources counted 4,244 people sheltering in the unofficial (LMS) lower-depot section, which remained ‘bare of amenities except hessian screened chemical closets’.[^19] </p>\n\n<p>This unofficial shelter was managed internally by the Communist Tilbury Shelter Committee, the leading organisers of which in its early years appear to have been its Secretary, a Mr Neidle, and Miss M. Ackerman, the Honorary Secretary, who gave her address as 153f Back Church Lane. To the PLA Police, which held jurisdiction at the Tilbury Shelter, the mass of people in the unofficial section in particular presented the threat of unrest whipped up by political agitators. The social research organisation, Mass Observation, sent observers to report on life in the shelter, ‘to make a complete study of the sociology of the largest underground concentration of humans yet known’.[^20] It noted that the efforts of the PLA Police to prevent the sale of the <em>Daily Worker</em>were usually outwitted by the occupants, ‘by no means all of whom are Communist sympathisers’, on freedom-of-speech grounds.[^21] </p>\n\n<p>Bunks were installed in 120 triple tiers in the PLA or warehouse section of the Tilbury Shelter in late October 1940. Within a month the vaults of the unofficial LMS or goods depot section had also been ‘fully bunked’.[^22] Nina Hibben, a Mass Observation worker, recorded that ‘The first time I went there, I had to come out, I felt sick. You just couldn’t see anything you could smell the fug, the overwhelming stench … there were thousands and thousands of people lying head to toe, all along the bays and with no facilities … the place was a hell hole, it was an outrage that people had to live in these conditions’.[^23] Despite such accounts, it seems that a kind of order prevailed as necessary routines were established. Life in the cavernous interiors of the Tilbury Shelter was depicted by Henry Moore, as an official war artist, by Edward Ardizzone and Feliks Topolski, as Civil Defence artists, and by Rose Henriques, a local resident and philanthropist.[^24] </p>\n\n<p>Both sections of the Tilbury Shelter were ticketed and monitored by the police, the official part accessed from Commercial Road and the unofficial part, now cut off by a brick wall, from Hooper Street. Closure of the unauthorised part of the warehouse, if tickets for other shelters were provided, was pursued and resisted in early 1941. Colin Penn, an architect with Communist sympathies, appears to have been to the fore among five architects from the Association of Architects, Surveyors and Technical Assistants who compared the Tilbury Shelter with alternative accommodation. On finding that the majority was less safe than the unofficial LMS section, the architects refused to recommend dispersal and occupants broke down the dividing wall. The police prevented a subsequent meeting, at which the architects were due to speak, called in protest against the eviction of the remaining occupants, which now numbered between 1,200 and 4,200 depending on the severity of raids. Public resistance to evictions and closure of the unofficial shelter continued. By May 1941, however, after the last major attacks of the Blitz, the unofficial sections were ‘not of course used at all now’ and were soon taken over as an official shelter in readiness for further bombing.[^25] </p>\n\n<p>There were still rumblings of discontent during 1942 and 1943, when low numbers of occupants were recorded. Eleanor Roosevelt visited the Tilbury Shelter with King George VI in October 1942. Other interventions were made by Rear-Admiral the Rev. A. R. W. Woods, Chaplain of the Red Ensign Club, Dock Street. In November 1944, a deputation from the Hindustani Markaz (Indian Centre), 14 White Church Lane, was received by the Ministry for Home Security, the Stepney ARP Controller and the High Commissioner for India. It complained of offensive behaviour, that officials had on numerous occasions insulted members of the local Indian community in the shelter or prevented their entry on racist grounds.[^26] </p>\n\n<p>Meanwhile the warehouse had itself been bombed. In early November 1940 a direct hit destroyed practically all of the roof and much of the top floor. This caused the PLA to wind up use of the building as a tea warehouse. A concrete flat roof was formed on northern parts of the warehouse around 1942.[^27] The south pediment survived until around 1949. The south part of the warehouse was also given a flat roof in the early 1970s. </p>\n\n<p><strong>Later use and clearance. </strong>At some point after the tea was removed in 1940 at least part of the warehouse above the shelters was taken over by the Ministry of Supply and the US Army, which formed a large canteen at the north end. By 1946 the US Army had left, the Ministry of Supply was storing ‘portable house’ or Prefab parts, and the PLA had returned with tea. The vaults and ground floor once again became an LMS goods depot.[^28]</p>\n\n<p>The Commercial Road depot became ‘non-operational’ on 3 July 1967; it was thus the last of the Whitechapel railway goods depots to shut. While the building’s future was debated, the PLA and British Railways retained some tenants, including J. Lyons & Co. Ltd, Buck & Hickman, and J. Walker & Co. Ltd. The site was implicated in unexecuted road schemes that included a tunnel with an approach road ‘plumb through the middle of the former depot’.[^29] In 1971 the depot was part of a GLC Special Study Area and, by 1973, of a Comprehensive Development Area encompassing all the land south of Goodman’s Stile and Commercial Road, between Leman Street and Back Church Lane, thus also including a good deal of the Co-operative Wholesale Society’s estate, which had been acquired by Standard Securities Ltd, part of the Norwich Union Insurance Company, before it was sold on to the National Westminster Bank which obtained an Office Development Permit for the whole site by 1975 and planning permission for a computer centre soon after.[^30] </p>\n\n<p>Demolition of the warehouse began in October 1975, leaving the sidings running south on arches from the Hooper Street bridge to the main line as a contractors’ working area. A circular brick gatepost in Goodman’s Stile survived a while and the skew bridge over Back Church Lane was gone by 1979. The sidings and Hooper Street bridge were taken down around 1986 to make way for Hooper Square.[^31] </p>\n\n<p>A trace of the depot survives in a brick structure with a run of fifteen arches at the bottom of Back Church Lane on its west side. This was built with the widening of the main line in 1892–3 at the end of the vaults under the depot’s sidings. It still stands facing Conant Mews because it carries the ends of the girders to the surviving railway line.[^32]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Historic England Archives (HEA), EAW022337</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Tim Smith, ‘Commercial Road goods depot’, <em>London’s Industrial Archaeology</em>, vol. 2, 1980, pp. 1–12; re-typed with annotations, Jan 2000, <a href=\"http://www.glias.org.uk/journals/2-a.html\">www.glias.org.uk/journals/2-a.html</a>:<em> Minutes of Evidence taken before the Joint Select Committee on the Port of London Bill</em>, 9 July 1903, pp. 369–70: J. E. Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway: A History of the London and Blackwall System</em>, 1984, p. 66: Peter Kay, ‘Commercial Road Depot’, <em>The London Railway Record</em>, no. 96, July 2018, pp. 82–98</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: 45 & 46 Vic., cap. 143, pp. 15–16, 19, 21: 47 & 48 Vic. cap. 135, p. 4: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), L/WBW/11/10: Smith, ‘Depot’: Kay, ‘Depot’</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: THLHLA, L/WBW/11/10: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), MBW/2649/34/09: The National Archives (TNA), HO45/9476/1081F; see also <a href=\"https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1885-04-14/debates/111d2e8d-57c6-4b67-9bf2-539066ff50d7/LondonTilburyAndSouthendRailwayBill(ByOrder)\">hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/1885-04-14/debates/111d2e8d-57c6-4b67-9bf2-539066ff50d7/LondonTilburyAndSouthendRailwayBill(ByOrder)</a>: <em>Globe</em>, 15 Nov 1884, p. 6:<em> Report of the Medical Officer of Health for Whitechapel</em>, 1884, p. 6; 1886, p. 5; 1899, p. 19</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: LMA, MBW/2649/34/09: TNA, RAIL437/22, 3 Feb 1886, 13 Feb 1888; RAIL437/19, 11 March 1886; RAIL437/25, as cited in HEA, London historians’ file TH45: Smith, ‘Depot’: Kay, ‘Depot’: Jonathan Clarke,<em>Early Structural Steel in London Buildings: A discreet revolution</em>, 2014, pp. 299–300</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: TNA, RAIL437/19, 23 March 1887; RAIL437/22, 3 Feb 1886; IR58/84815/3252,3287: <em>Minutes of Evidence</em>, 1903, p. 370: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, pp. 67–8: Smith, ‘Depot’: <a href=\"http://www.pla.co.uk/Port-Trade/History-of-the-Port-of-London-pre-1908\">www.pla.co.uk/Port-Trade/History-of-the-Port-of-London-pre-1908</a></p>\n\n<p>[^7]: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS14944/025, 9 March 1928; SC/PHL/02/0921/74/2974; District Surveyors' Returns (DSR): Ordnance Survey maps (OS) 1894, 1913: TNA, AN169/933: THLHLA, Building Control (BC) file 22123: Goad insurance plan, 1887</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: <em>East London Observer</em>, 18 July 1885, p. 3; 10 Oct 1885, p. 7: THLHLA, BC file 20995: Smith, ‘Depot’ Smith, ‘Commercial Road Goods Depot’: photograph by Paul Calvocoressi, 26 Oct 1973</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: TNA, AN169/933, p. 4: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS14944/001 p. 101; CLC/B/017/MS14944/043, pp. 354–5</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: TNA, RAIL437/19, 27 Jan 1886: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS14943/013, 21 Jan 1892, pp. 117–8, 21 July 1892, p. 194; /014, 12 July 1894, p. 176; /015; 13 Feb 1896, p. 172; 10 Dec 1896, p. 246, /016, 21 Jan 1897, p. 9; CLC/B/017/MS14942/008, 8 Oct 1896, p. 256: Smith, ‘Depot’</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: TNA, RAIL437/19, 1 Dec 1886 and 9 March 1887: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS14943/020, 22 June 1905; CLC/B/017/MS14944/005, 13 Oct 1910, p. 316: THLHLA, L/THL/D/D/2/30/70: DSR</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: <em>London Evening Standard</em>, 11 June 1906, p. 8</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: <em>Morning Post</em>, 10 June 1908, p. 9</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: A. Crow, ‘The Port of London: Past, Present, and Future’, <em>Town Planning Review</em>, vol. 7/1, Oct 1916, pp. 9–10; THLHLA, BC file 20995:<em> Pall Mall Gazette</em>, 26 June 1916, p. 8: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS14944/024, 4 Aug 1927</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: TNA, HO207/860</p>\n\n<p>[^16]: Ibid</p>\n\n<p>[^17]: Ibid</p>\n\n<p>[^18]: <em>Illustrated</em>, 5 Oct 1940, p. 14: <em>Daily Herald</em>, 2 Oct 1940, p. 3; 7 Oct 1940, p. 3: Juliet Gardiner, <em>Wartime: Britain 1939–1945</em>, 2004, pp. 320–1: Constantine Fitzgibbon, <em>The Winter of the Bombs</em>, 1957, pp. 149–51</p>\n\n<p>[^19]: TNA, HO207/860</p>\n\n<p>[^20]: University of Sussex Special Collections, Mass Observation Archive, 486, <em>Sixth Weekly Report for Home Intelligence</em>, Nov 1940: TNA, HO207/860</p>\n\n<p>[^21]: University of Sussex Special Collections, Mass Observation Archive, 431, <em>Survey of Voluntary and Official Bodies during Bombing of the East End (RF/NM)</em>, Sept 1940</p>\n\n<p>[^22]: TNA, HO207/860: <a href=\"https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/moore-shelter-scene-bunks-and-sleepers-n05711\">www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/moore-shelter-scene-bunks-and-sleepers-n05711</a></p>\n\n<p>[^23]: As quoted in Gavin Weightman and Steve Humphries with Joanna Mack and John Taylor, <em>The Making of Modern London</em>, 1983 (edn 2007), p. 260: Tom Harrisson, <em>Living Through the Blitz</em>, 1976, pp. 116–27: Smith,‘Depot’</p>\n\n<p>[^24]: Henry Moore, Tate Gallery, N05708: Edward Ardizzone, Imperial War Museum, ART LD 1091: Rose Henriques, Museum of London, 47.37/3</p>\n\n<p>[^25]: TNA, HO207/860</p>\n\n<p>[^26]: TNA, HO207/860: THLHLA, Photographs, 347.1</p>\n\n<p>[^27]: TNA, HO207/860; AN169/933, p. 4: Smith, ‘Depot’</p>\n\n<p>[^28]: LMA, CLC/B/017/MS14944/043, pp. 354–5; CLC/B/017/MS14944/0532, Feb 1956, pp. 39–41: Goad insurance plan, 1960</p>\n\n<p>[^29]: TNA, AN169/933</p>\n\n<p>[^30]: TNA, AN169/933–4; /937</p>\n\n<p>[^31]: THLHLA, BC file 22123: Smith, ‘Depot’</p>\n\n<p>[^32]: Peter Kay, <em>London’s Railway Heritage</em>, vol. 1: <em>East</em>, 2012, p. 18</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
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"title": "Mill Yard Chapel",
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"body": "<p>Mill Yard, which survives as a dogleg alley linking Cable Street and Leman Street under railway viaducts, was present by the mid seventeenth century as a route from Rosemary Lane to the south-east corner of the open ground that was Goodman’s Fields. Mill Yard’s main distinction was as the site of a long-standing chapel, host to a variety of Nonconformist congregations from a contended date in the seventeenth century. Evidence suggests that the first chapel was built after a loan in 1691 from Joseph Davies (1627–1707), a wealthy linen draper in the Minories, who had been imprisoned for his religious beliefs in the 1670s, to provide a home for the congregation of Seventh Day Baptists of which he was a member. Nathan Bailey (d. 1742), who later gained distinction as a lexicographer, is said to have been baptized in the chapel on 7 October 1691. The chapel was certainly in existence by 1693 when it was taxed as an adjunct to the house of the pastor, Henry Soursby (d. 1711). Two further houses in Mill Yard were included in an endowment established by Davis in 1700, derived from property in Essex.[^1] </p>\n\n<p>Legacies from Davis in 1707 and his son, also Joseph Davies, in 1732, and the nature of the congregation’s worship, observing the Sabbath on Saturdays, so enabling them to rent the chapel to more orthodox Nonconformist congregations on Sundays, allowed the chapel to survive into the 1880s. Early congregations that shared the building with the Sabbatarians included the General Baptists, who arrived in 1741 and departed in 1763 to their new chapel in Church Lane, and a congregation of Particular Baptists who met in Mill Yard on and off in the eighteenth century. A widow Atkins’ house elsewhere in Mill Yard was used for meetings of Independents in 1709.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>The chapel of the 1690s was destroyed in 1790 by a fire that began in a tallow chandler’s in Leman Street. Rebuilt on the same site on a north–south axis, the replacement chapel was entered from the middle of its west side, facing the north arm of Mill Yard to Leman Street. Two tall round-headed windows to the east overlooked a burial ground, probably present from 1691, and a minister’s house was attached to the south. The chapel had a simple white-painted interior, with galleries on columns, plain box pews and a pulpit under a sounding board.[^3] The south end of the burial ground was given up in 1845 for the widening of the London and Blackwall Railway. By this time the Sabbatarians were in decline, the congregation having survived a period as just seven women, without a minister, who had to fight off ‘usurpation by strangers’.[^4] The chapel persisted to become a destination for the curious. By 1870 it was a relic of a bygone world, with a congregation of four led by the Rev. William Henry Black (1808–1872), an antiquary and ‘a learned man of an old fashioned and almost extinct type. … Outside rush along the Fenchurch Street trains to and fro, sometimes with a scream which, as you will by-and-by find, will drown the preacher's voice.’[^5] Its green churchyard was studded with gravestones, the ‘most unexpected trees’ and flanked by the quaintest of school houses, the only visible ‘symptom of the 19th century’ being the railway to the south.[^6] In its final days Mill Yard Chapel seems to have enjoyed a modest revival, under Black’s American son-in-law, W. Meade Jones; a visitor in 1882 found a congregation of thirteen.[^7] However, by 1884 the Minister had resolved to move as the site was now bounded east and north by works for the Commercial Road goods depot’s shunting yard. Despite efforts by the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association and Commons Preservation Committee to persuade the Charity Commissioners to prevent sale of the burial ground, the site was given up for railway works and the chapel moved to Mildmay Park, Islington. A Sabbatarian congregation continued until the early twentieth century, with support from the United States, where Seventh Day Adventism flourished. The Joseph Davis Fund was only formally abolished in 2006.[^8] </p>\n\n<p>The chapel was demolished in 1885, since when Mill Yard has been a vestigial alley. The chapel site is now the car park for Polyteck House, 143 Leman Street. </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: The National Archives (TNA), TS27/1068; PROB11/523/109: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Land Tax Returns (LT): MJ/SP/1702: <em>A Handbook to the Places of Public Worship in London</em>, 1851, p. 73: <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) sub </em>Bailey</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Adam Taylor, <em>The History of the General Baptists, in Two Parts. Part Second: The New Connection of General Baptists</em>, 1818, pp. 88–91: Walter Wilson, <em>The History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses</em>, vol. 3, 1810, pp. 260, 310: David S. Katz, <em>Sabbath and Sectarianism in Seventeenth Century England, </em>1988, pp. 178, 197–204: Janice Turner, ‘An Anatomy of a “Disorderly” Neighbourhood: Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair <em>c.</em>1690–1765’, PhD, University of Hertfordshire, 2014, pp. 19, 121–2</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: TNA, TS27/1066; TS27/1068: J. Ewing Ritchie, <em>The Religious Life of London</em>, 1870, pp. 159–66: Isabella (Mrs Basil) Holmes, <em>The London Burial Grounds</em>, 1896, p. 327</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Timothy Larsen, ‘“How Many Sisters Make a Brotherhood?” A Case Study in Gender and Ecclesiology in Early Nineteenth-Century English Dissent’, <em>Journal of Ecclesiastical History</em>, vol. 49/2, April 1998, pp. 282–92: C. Maurice Davies, <em>Unorthodox London: Phases in the Religious Life in the Metropolis</em>, 1874, pp. 207–9</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: Ritchie, <em>Religious Life</em>, pp. 160–1: TNA, TS27/1068: <em>ODNB sub</em> Black</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>Daily Telegraph & Courier</em>, 29 June 1870, p. 5</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: <em>East London Observer</em>, 16 Sept 1882, p. 6</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: TNA, HO45/9476/1081F: Katz,<em>Sabbath,</em> pp. 203–4: <a href=\"https://beta.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-details/?regid=210274&subid=0\">beta.charitycommission.gov.uk/charity-details/?regid=210274&subid=0</a></p>\n",
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"body": "<p>Until around 1720 the land between the backs of houses on the east side of Lambeth Street (developed from the 1680s), and Back Church Lane above its built-up southern end formed a single landholding. A ropewalk ran from Goodman’s Stile in line with Lambeth Street, which it antedated, as far as what became Hooper’s Square. The ropery may have pertained to William James (d. 1668), whose freehold was owned by Allen Badger (d. 1676) of Shoreditch. James built two houses, possibly the buildings depicted at the north end in 1682. Across a ditch next to this rope walk’s north end was where the Gunmakers’ Company established its proof house in 1676. The freehold of the Gunmakers’ land, and probably the entire holding, was sold by John Nicoll, of the Middle Temple, in 1691 to John Skinner (d. 1720), an apothecary with premises near the west end of Whitechapel High Street. This perhaps accounts for the name Physick Garden, which came to be associated with this land. In 1703 Skinner sold the Physick Garden to Captain Benjamin Masters. Ten years later his younger son, (Sir) Thomas Masters (1679–1730), another sea captain, offered part of what was now more usually called Masters’ Garden to the Commissioners for Building Fifty New Churches as a site for a new church, a proposition that did not advance.[^1] Thomas Masters inherited most of this Whitechapel property in 1720. This included the freehold of Masters’ Garden, Masters’ own substantial house in the centre of the land at the south end of a path that later became Gower’s Walk, houses on Back Church Lane, and a lease of the rope walk on the west side.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>The open character of Masters’ Garden persisted under Samuel Gower (d. 1757), a sailcloth manufacturer. Gower was already resident in Church Lane by 1719 and in Masters’ Garden by 1728, possibly in the house of Thomas-Baker Masters (1704–26), Sir Thomas’s son. He was involved in the supply of canvas by 1727, so appears to have established his business before Sir Thomas Masters’ death in 1730. Gower then came into possession of all of Masters’ property. He developed a complex of buildings around the big house, manufacturing sailcloth ‘brought to such Perfection that it far exceeds all Foreign-made Cloth’.[^3] </p>\n\n<p>Gower had a knack for self-advancement as well as business. He became a Major of the First Regiment of the Tower Hamlets in 1743 and was knighted in 1744.[^4] But it was his standing as a Justice of the Peace for Middlesex, which he held by 1737, that brought him greatest advantage and notoriety. He operated a type of protection racket, issuing warrants for thief-takers and sharing the proceeds of prosecutions.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>Gower used his judicial powers to benefit his tenants. In 1739 the actor-manager William Hallam (1712–58), who had performed at the Goodman’s Fields theatre, took a lease of a house and bowling green near the south end of Gower’s land, north of Mill Yard, and east of Hooper’s Square. Having ‘repaired and beautified them both in a very handsome manner’, Hallam opened them to the public in 1740 as the New Wells, a name suggestive of Sadler’s Wells and the New Wells in Clerkenwell, which opened in 1735. Peter Prelleur had written works for the venue in 1739.[^6] The theatre was run by Hallam and his brother Lewis Hallam (c.1714–1756), who also lived in Whitechapel, seemingly in a house near the south end of the east side of Lambeth Street, that being the birthplace of a daughter who later, as Isabella Mattocks (1746–1826), gained fame as an actress and singer. Performances were nightly through most of the 1740s, interrupted from time to time, no doubt partly on account of bankruptcy, albeit brief, in 1745, and perhaps also occasioned by summonses for infringing the patent theatre law and by Whitechapel vestry’s desire to suppress the venue as ‘disorderly’.[^7] The fare was similar to that at Clerkenwell’s New Wells, a mix of tumbling and rope-dancing, scenes of thrilling action, and dramas, often with a theme suggestive of the expected clientele, such as <em>The Sailor’s Progress, or the Humours of Wapping and Stepney</em>, or <em>The Ship Launching: or, Harlequin turn’d Fryer</em>.[^8] Gower issued a licence for the sale of drink at the New Wells, and in 1750 was censured by fellow justices on the grounds that the licence was intended to encourage custom in nearby brothels. In 1751 Gower was again censured for a much wider range of misbehaviours and irregularities committed through his office as a Justice of the Peace, but nothing much came of this.[^9]</p>\n\n<p>The appearance of the theatre is unknown. That it was valued when first opened at only £15 a year rental suggests it was modest in scale, though it had a gallery from the outset. An upper gallery was added in 1745, and in 1749 Hallam announced that ‘The House is alter’d, in a most elegant manner, and Boxes made for the Reception of People of Fashion, with every other suitable Decoration.’[^10] The last performance appears to have been in 1756, by when Hallam had probably gone to America to join his brother, who had taken some of the New Wells scenery with him in 1752.[^11] The New Wells buildings reverted to Gower’s control. Parts of the stage and boxes ‘remained in a mutilated state’ into the early nineteenth century, forming ‘an angle’ of a long range of tobacco warehouses built on the site around 1774 by Samuel Wood.[^12] </p>\n\n<p>When he died in 1757, Gower’s estate included his house and warehouses, also premises either side of a gravel path leading to and from his house (Gower’s Walk), a large cluster of buildings to the south, between Hooper’s Square and Church Lane, including the New Wells and its garden, a large stable yard with an attached tap-house called the Black Horse, and Gower’s Place, eight small houses in a narrow east–west court overlooking the Mill Yard burial ground.[^13] </p>\n\n<p>A son, John Gower (1731–76), inherited, and by 1770 the sailcloth-making firm was Gower, Hammond and Jones, a partnership with Samuel Gower’s foreman, John Hammond (d. 1800), and William Jones (d. 1826). On John Gower’s death in 1776 ownership passed to his nephew, Samuel Gower Poole (1748–1812), a brewer and sugar refiner who had sold the freehold to John Hammond by 1780. Hammond expanded the buildings on the north side of the courtyard, adding a spinning ground. Another large yard that adjoined to the north, sometimes known as Gower’s Yard and with access from Goodman’s Stile, was occupied by Thomas Langley and then John Langley, carpenters, from the 1770s to the 1820s.[^14]</p>\n\n<p>In 1780 Hammond leased land north of the factory either side of Gower’s Walk and the frontage on Back Church Lane to the builder Joel Johnson, who had already built in the vicinity, who put up houses by 1781 and who acquired the freeholds before his death in 1799. Hammond leased the sailcloth factory to Jones, who maintained the business until about 1821. </p>\n\n<p>At this period, the name Gower’s Walk was only sporadically in use, the north end functioning more as an offshoot from Church Lane, the rest either as part of the manufacturer’s fiefdom or as an extension of the snaggle of yards around Mill Yard and Back Church Lane. Housing development on Gower’s Walk showed a similar divide. At the north end the houses built by Johnson in the 1750s to 1780s had a modicum of quality. To the south was the poorest type of court housing, including Wells Yard, Gower’s Row on a northern arm of Mill Yard, and Wells Place in the former Black Horse stable yard. </p>\n\n<p>The first half of the nineteenth century saw the furtherance of this process, with tiny Webb’s Place, two and three-storey cottages east of the sailcloth factory, up by 1813.[^15] After William Jones’s death in 1826 part of the factory site was built over with a court of twenty-six tenements, Jones’s Buildings, either side of a path that had led from Gower’s house into Lambeth Street. The most significant infill development, and one that reshaped the street pattern, was Wagener’s Buildings, west of the south end of Gower’s Walk, and largely parallel with Lambeth Street. It was built in 1849–50 by J. Glenn of Liverpool Road for John Wagener (1807–84), a Mansell Street (later Wellclose Square) sugar refiner, and consisted of forty-one two-storey houses, and a pub on a prominent south-facing curve. This was called the Duke of Prussia, reflecting Wagener’s German birth.[^16] </p>\n\n<p>An earlier significant development was on the west side of Gower’s Walk, immediately south of the sailcloth factory. There Gower’s Walk Free School opened in 1808. It owed its foundation to William Davis (1766 –1854) of Leytonstone, whose sugarhouse in Rupert Street gave him ample opportunity to observe the untutored children of the neighbourhood. He was a trustee of the Whitechapel Parochial (Davenant) School, to which he introduced Dr Andrew Bell in 1806. Gower’s Walk’s ‘school of industry’ was a different venture, though it also came to be affiliated to the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church on its foundation in 1811. It was intended both to educate children aged eight to fourteen, who had to be baptised members of the Church of England, and to instruct them in ‘the habit of diligence’, through practical skills.[^17] At Gower’s Walk that skill, for boys, was printing (Andrew Bell’s biographer suggests shoemaking was tried first, without success), and for girls, needlework, knitting and learning to mend stockings and gowns. Commercial work undertaken by the children included the printing of the National Society’s annual reports. Most of the proceeds went to the running of the school, with twenty per cent to the schoolmaster and mistress, originally a local couple, William (1775–1818) and Elizabeth Lovell. By 1810 the school’s earnings far exceeded the income from Davis’s endowment. The children received some reward, both in kind – clothing – and a small amount of money, most of which they had to wait till they left the school to receive.[^18]</p>\n\n<p>The school had a simple design, occupying the full width of the relatively narrow site near its west end. It was said to be a converted sugar bakehouse, though this seems a later confusion based on Davis’s business. Early accounts state only that he bought the land, which appears to have been unbuilt up to that time, and paid for the building of the school, which contained two large classrooms on its north side and the printing workshop on its south side, with accommodation for the schoolmaster and mistress. Though much was made in early reports of Davis’s desire for anonymity, in 1821 he commissioned from Sir Francis Chantrey, no less, a bust of himself to go over the door of the school, a sketch for which survives.[^19] </p>\n\n<p>Through its first twenty-five years the school roll was around 100 to 120 boys and 50 to 90 girls. Income from the industrious children meant a new lithography press could be added to the patent Stanhope machine in 1822 and a new printing office was built in 1826. The Davis family maintained a benevolent hold over the school as trustees, entertaining the children to treats at their grand homes in the Essex fringes of London, up to the death of William Davis’s grandson John Coope Davis in 1881.[^20] The school building was acquired along with everything else between Gower’s Walk and Back Church Lane for the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway Company’s Commercial Road goods depot. A new school was built in 1885 not far away on Rupert Street. </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), CLC/L/GI/G/001/MS05231: Church of England Record Centre, MS2716, f.174</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: The National Archives (TNA), PROB11/575/70: LMA, MS8674, vol. 74</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Daily Post</em>, 18 Feb 1736: LMA, Land Tax Returns (LT): TNA, ADM106/787/3; ADM106/807/231: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: <em>Daily Advertiser</em>, 27 June 1743: <em>London Gazette</em>, 13–17 March 1744</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: Janice Turner, ‘An Anatomy of a \"Disorderly\" Neighbourhood’: Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair, <em>c.</em>1690–1765', PhD, University of Hertfordshire, 2014, pp. 88, 121–2, 212–13, 218, 237–40, 286: Ruth Paley, ‘Thief-takers in London in the age of the MacDaniel gang, <em>c.</em>1745–1754’ in Douglas Hay and Francis Snyder (eds), <em>Policing and Prosecution in Britain 1750–1850</em>, 1989, pp. 330–5: John L. McMullan, ‘The New Improved Monied Police: Reform, Crime Control, and the Commodification of Policing in London’, <em>British Journal of Criminology</em>, vol. 36/1, winter 1996, pp. 85–108: Robert J. Myers and Joyce Brodowski, ‘Rewriting the Hallams: Research in 18th Century British and American Theatre’, <em>Theatre Survey</em>, vol. 41/1, May 2000, pp .1–22 (4–5): Sidney and Beatrice Webb, <em>English Local Government from the Revolution to the Municipal Corporations Act: The Parish and the County</em>, London, 1906, pp. 330, 560</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>London Daily Post and General Advertiser</em>, 21 April 1739: LT: Philip Temple (ed.), <em>Survey of London</em>, vol. 47: <em>Northern Clerkenwell and Pentonville</em>, 2008, p. 55</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: LMA, P93/MRY1/090: Myers and Brodowski, ‘Hallams’, pp. 1–22: <em>Daily Advertiser</em>, 31 Jan 1745; 18 March 1745: <em>Daily Post</em>, 14 Aug 1745; Dec 1745: LT: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography sub Lewis Hallam, Isabella Mattocks and Peter Prelleur</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: <em>General Advertiser</em>, 15 May 1744; 8 Nov 1749</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: John L. McMullan, ‘The political economy of thief-taking’, <em>Crime, Law & Social Change</em>, vol. 23, 1995, pp. 121–46: Norma Landau, ‘The Trading Justice’s Trade’, in Norma Landau (ed.), <em>Law, Crime and English Society, 1660–1830</em>, 2002, pp. 46–70 (53–4, 57): Myers and Brodowski, ‘Hallams’, pp. 4–5: Turner, ‘Neighbourhood’, pp. 212–14</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: <em>London Daily Press and General Advertiser</em>, 17 Nov 1740: <em>General Advertiser</em>, 8 Nov 1749: LT</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: <em>Ipswich Journal</em>, 24 Jan 1756: Brooks McNamara, ‘David Douglass and the Beginnings of American Theater Architecture’, <em>Winterthur Portfolio</em>, vol. 3, 1967, pp. 112–35: Myers and Brodowski, ‘Hallams’, pp. 7–22</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: J. Haslewood, T. F. Dibdin, and J. Maidment (eds), <em>The Roxburghe Revels, and other relative Papers</em>, 1837, pp. 118–19: LT</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: TNA, PROB11/832/313: LT: <em>Daily Advertiser</em>, 27 March 1778</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: LMA, GL MS5231: LT</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: LT: Richard Horwood's maps: TNA, IR58/84818/3585–7</p>\n\n<p>[^16]: LMA, District Surveyors' Returns (DSR): Ordnance Survey maps</p>\n\n<p>[^17]: William Bradburn, ‘Industrial Work in English Elementary Schools, II: Industrial Work in Schools During the Early Part of the 19th Century’, <em>Manual Training Magazine</em>, 1919, pp. 120–2</p>\n\n<p>[^18]: J. M. D. Meiklejohn, <em>An Old Educational Reformer: Dr Andrew Bell</em>, 1881, pp. 47–8: A. Highmore, <em>Pietas Londinensis : The History, Design, and Present State of the Various Public Charities in and Near London</em>, 1810, pp. 740–7: <em>The Literary Panorama</em>, vol. 10, 1810, pp. 1162–4: Annual Report of the National Society’, 1814: <em>First Report of the Minutes of Evidence Taken Before the Select Committee of the House of Commons Appointed to Inquire into the Education of the Lower Orders of the Metropolis</em>, 1816, p. 54: <em>Gower’s Walk Free School Annual Report</em>, 1818, pp. 122–4: <em>Reports of the Free School Gower’s Walk Free School</em>, 1833, pp. 122–4, 179–80: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^19]: <em>Literary Panorama</em>, p. 1163: Highmore, <em>Londinensis</em>, p. 741: <em>Chambers Miscellany</em>, vol. 7, 1854, pp. 52–4: Alison Yarrington, Irene D. Lieberman, Alex Potts and Malcolm Barker, ‘An Edition of the Ledger of Sir Francis Chantrey RA, at the Royal Academy, 1809–1841’, <em>The Volume of the Walpole Society</em>, vol. 56, 1991–2, pp. 1–343 (141): National Portrait Gallery, NPG316a(31)</p>\n\n<p>[^20]: <em>Reports of the Free School Gower’s Walk Free School</em>, London 1833, p. 190 and <em>passim</em>: <em>Essex Standard</em>, 6 Sept 1861, p. 2: <em>Chelmsford Chronicle</em>, 15 Sept 1865, p. 8</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>On Back Church Lane building began at the south end, spreading from Rosemary Lane. By 1656, William Trinder, a tallow chandler, had property here that included his own substantial house in Rosemary Lane and several one- to three-hearth houses on Back Church Lane. John Stonyer (1616–82), a shipwright born in Lincolnshire, lived here from the 1640s to his death, with six hearths by 1674. The landholding passed by inheritance to Mary Huskens, Trinder’s great-niece, and then to John Huskens Bayles and, by the 1770s, Mary Trinder Bayles. It embraced the Sun and Sword inn, which was at Back Church Lane’s corner with Rosemary Lane by 1711, possibly much earlier. Around 1735 Bayles (or Bails) Court, thirteen tiny houses, went up behind the corner beside the Sun and Sword. This was on a site that had been an exchange associated with Rag Fair, probably in fact the Old Exchange, mis-labelled the New Exchange on Rocque’s map. Bayles’s houses were already ruinous by the 1760s, though the court persisted into the nineteenth century.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>A long frontage on Back Church Lane north of Trinder’s was held in 1685 by Sampson Shelton Broughton, of the Middle Temple and sometime attorney general of the province of New York where he died in 1705. In 1685 Broughton granted a sixty-one-year lease of a 70ft stretch of frontage some way up the lane to Robert Wyrill, a ‘bone chopper’, which tenure passed on his death in 1709 to his son Thomas Wyrill. The Wyrills maintained a yard for the commercial rendering of animal bones, not a graveyard, as has sometimes been supposed, that continued through the eighteenth century.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>A larger holding between Wyrill’s and Trinder’s, possibly a 340ft frontage offered for building in 1725, was leased by Broughton’s successor to William Jackson (1659–1741). By 1733 three small closes of houses running westwards had been built. The most northerly, Crown Court, adjoined the Rose and Crown public house, whose landlord, a beneficiary of Jackson’s will, was Thomas Henege. All Jackson’s leases had passed to Henege’s widow, Mary Dukey, by her death in 1765. Her grandson William Freeman, abetted and largely supplanted by her grandson-in-law William Everard (1752/3–1821), developed the hinterland, using Crown Court for access. A north–south terrace of about twenty houses called Everard Place went up from around 1779.[^3] </p>\n\n<p>The northern half of Whitechapel’s Back Church Lane frontage was held by Captain Benjamin Masters before his death in 1720, possibly having been acquired from Thomas Trinder, who had inherited part of this property in the 1680s. Of a seafaring family from Poole in Dorset, Masters had bought the nearby Physick Garden in 1703. His Back Church Lane frontage included an inn, the Cherry Tree, ‘famous for the original Scurvy Grass Ale’. Partly of timber construction, the Cherry Tree can probably be identified as one of only two buildings to be depicted on this northern stretch of Back Church Lane in 1682. By 1720 Masters had built some small houses ‘down the step’ to the north of the Cherry Tree on Back Church Lane, and another house that he leased with garden ground to Jonathan Keeling (d. 1732), a gardener. At Masters’ death Keeling’s property was left, along with considerable other property in other parishes, to Masters’ son Ninyon (1685–1731).[^4] </p>\n\n<p>Between Wyrill’s bone yard and the Cherry Tree was the last large undeveloped stretch of Back Church Lane’s west side. It apparently formed part of Benjamin Masters’s landholding as it was in the same ownership as the Cherry Tree. The pub and the land were offered for sale together on one lease in 1776, by when the land had become a burial ground leased jointly by the churchwardens of St Botolph, Aldgate, and St Mary, Whitechapel. Whitechapel’s overflow burial ground on the north side of Whitechapel Road, in use from 1615, was reduced in size in the late 1760s. In anticipation the Vestry resolved in 1765 to find another ground as a temporary measure. The Back Church Lane parochial burial ground was used only until 1796 when the Whitechapel Road ground was enlarged.[^5] Finds on this Back Church Lane site have been misinterpreted as evidence of a ‘pest pit’, and confused with Sheen’s burial ground to the north, as well as with the adjoining bone yard. Confusion has also arisen over Cain’s (or Caines’) burial ground on the east side of Back Church Lane in the last decades of the eighteenth century.[^6] </p>\n\n<p>The former parish burial ground on the lane’s west side seems to have come into the ownership of the carpenter John Restall (d. 1838). By 1813 it had been developed with a row of houses facing Back Church Lane with a warehouse at the south end. Davis’s Buildings followed to the rear, off Gower’s Walk as part of William Davis’s endowment of Gower’s Walk Free School. Another yard of small houses further south, probably developed by John Harris, had a small mission hall on its south side by 1875.[^7] These buildings were demolished in the 1880s and 1890s for Browne and Eagle’s wool warehouses and Charles Kinloch’s wine warehouse. </p>\n\n<p>The copyhold of the Broughton land further south had passed to the Rev. Peirce Dod (d. 1797), probably from his father, Dr Peirce Dod (d. 1754), who also held property further north in Whitechapel. This holding passed on to Sir Nathaniel Conant (1745–1822), a magistrate.[^8] By 1797 the small estate consisted of three-quarters of an acre on which there were thirty houses and twenty-three cottages, most on Everard Place and Back Church Lane from the south corner up to the former parish burial ground, but excluding the Sun and Sword and Bayles Court. Conant’s Place, another slum-in-waiting, was added to the north of Everard Place. All of this was destroyed in the 1830s and 1880s for railway developments. The Back Church Lane frontage north of the burial ground also filled up with low-status housing and small-scale industry, with Brunswick Place laid out behind from around 1815. This was nearly all demolished in the 1890s, the exception being Mundy’s Place, a court of two-storey houses which survived until 1937.[^9] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Ancestry: Hearth Tax returns, 1666 and 1674–5: Art Institute of Chicago, 1959.337: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), P/SLC/2/16/34: The National Archives (TNA), PROB11/370/392: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), Land Tax Returns (LT): Richard Horwood's maps</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: THLHLA, P/SLC/2/16/34: ‘Law in Colonial New York: The Legal System of 1691’, <em>Harvard Law Review</em>, vol. 80/8, 1967, pp. 1757–72: Ancestry, LMA, London wills, 1507–1858: Horwood</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: <em>Daily Courant</em>, 20 July 1725: TNA. PROB11/906/203: LT: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: THLHLA, P/SLC/2/16/34: Morgan map, 1682: LMA, Hand-in-Hand MS8674, vol. 106, 74650, 1767: TNA, PROB11/575/70</p>\n\n<p>[^5]:LMA, LT; P93/MRY1/090: <em>Daily Advertiser</em>, 20 May 1776: Bruce Watson, The Burial Grounds of Back Church Lane, Whitechapel’, <em>East London Record</em>, vol. 17, 1994–5, pp. 35–41: <em>London Archaeologist</em>, vol. 6/3, 1989, p. 79</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: W. R. MacDonell, ‘A Study of the Variation and Correlation of the Human Skull, with Special Reference to English Crania’, <em>Biometrika</em>, vol. 3/2–3, March to July, 1904, pp. 191–245 (197–9): Michael Henderson, Adrian Miles and Don Walker (eds), <em>Museum of London Archaeology Monograph 64: ‘He Being Dead Yet Speaketh’: Excavations at Three Post-Medieval Burial Grounds in Tower Hamlets, East London, 2004–10</em>, 2013, pp. 53, 60–3: LMA, GLC/AR/BR/22/BA/6524: <em>Morning Post and Daily Advertiser</em>, 17 June 1777: <em>Morning Chronicle</em>, 21 Aug 1804, p. 4: LT: Ancestry: Horwood: Watson, ‘Whitechapel’, p. 39</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: LT: Horwood: Ordnance Survey maps</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: TNA, PROB11/810/305; PROB11/1384/222: LMA, M/93/322: <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography sub </em>Dod</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 1 Sept 1797, p. 4: Horwood: TNA, IR58/84817/3439–48: Goad insurance map 1887: OS 1873: Post Office Directories: Census: <em>Daily Herald</em>, 6 March 1937, p. 13</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2020-05-07",
"last_edited": "2020-06-05"
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"id": 1066,
"title": "London and Blackwall Railway",
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"body": "<p>By 1835 there were two competing schemes for a railway line between the City of London and the West India and East India Docks – one planned by the Commercial Railway Company and the other by the London and Blackwall Railway and Steam Navigation Depot Company.[^1] The Commercial Railway’s route was to run eastwards from three possible starting points including Crutched Friars, just short of the site of what became Fenchurch Street Station, and to be carried on a viaduct through Whitechapel just north of what is now Royal Mint Street – that is the line that was eventually built. The other company’s railway was to run in a brick cutting or ‘trench’ further north, beginning near Leadenhall Street and progressing north-east parallel with Aldgate High Street before crossing Whitechapel High Street and White Church Lane and then continuing parallel with Commercial Road on its north side.[^2] Both ended close to Brunswick Wharf in Blackwall. (Sir) John Rennie, the son of an eminent dock engineer who had an interest in the East India Docks and who had been involved with earlier unsuccessful proposals for a London to Blackwall railway, surveyed the southern line. The northern route was surveyed by George and Robert Stephenson, father and son, who were all but ubiquitous in railway schemes of the 1830s, assisted by George Parker Bidder. By his own account, Rennie had long proposed a railway line between Fenchurch Street and Blackwall and, seeing the importance of this, Robert Stephenson ‘started another in opposition, which was defeated in Parliament and my line was carried; but my party was not strong enough to carry it into effect; Mr Stephenson’s was, therefore they took up my line, and he was appointed the chief engineer’.[^3] </p>\n\n<p>Of the two schemes, the northern route had an estimated greater cost because of its 12ft-deep cuttings (referred to by advocates of the rival scheme as ‘ditches’) to keep the carriages ‘entirely out of view’, whereas Rennie proposed a viaduct on the southern route, a cheaper way to carry trains through a built-up area.[^4] Another distinguishing feature of Robert Stephenson’s northerly scheme was the use of stationary steam engines, to minimize inconvenience to adjacent properties, in preference to locomotives, which, it was argued, would be dangerous and an ‘intolerable nuisance’. Moreover, in addition to the southern line’s other supposed disadvantages, the nature of the ground there would make it, opponents alleged, ‘indispensable’ that the railway should be carried on a viaduct upon arches of a ‘very great height’.[^5] However, George Stephenson, who had been invited to compare the two schemes in 1835, found that unless the value of property along the southern route should prove to be higher, that line was the more eligible of the two.[^6]</p>\n\n<p>In May 1836 the secretaries of both companies published a joint notice that, at the suggestion of the Parliamentary Committee, an amicable arrangement had been entered into enabling the Committee to decide on the best route and also to appoint the engineer and surveyor. Three months later an Act to unite the two companies gained royal assent.[^7] Despite ongoing opposition, Rennie’s elevated southern route was selected, but, eventually, with the stationary engines that had formed part of the rival scheme. William Tite, the Commercial Company’s surveyor, was appointed Architect and Surveyor to the joint company in August 1836 and shortly afterwards William Cubitt, independent of both former companies, accepted the post of consulting engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel having declined the post. Cubitt was thanked in January 1837 for his work ‘in removing any doubts as to the practicability of forming with advantage a Railway on Arches between London & Blackwall’.[^8] The similarly devised London and Greenwich Railway was then complete as far as Deptford. Cubitt departed and, after an interim arrangement whereby Tite also looked after engineering, in January 1838 George Stephenson and Bidder resurfaced as joint engineers, Tite returning to his original post.[^9] </p>\n\n<p>Tite, whose architectural practice was largely railways based, was responsible for valuations and property acquisition along the route and for the architectural parts of the railway. He had also been set to design the arches and bridges, but when George Stephenson and Bidder were appointed this became their responsibility. Both Stephensons were immediately requested to comment on adopting a plan recommended by Bidder, who probably actually designed the viaduct and bridges. It was certainly Bidder who, with George Phipps, detailed a trussed girder bridge over the Minories for the later extension to Fenchurch Street.[^10] </p>\n\n<p>Robert Stephenson and George Bidder had advised in relation to the northern trench scheme that locomotive engines should not be used because of the risk from sparks to boats in the Regent’s Canal’s Limehouse Basin and to timber and rope yards adjoining the railway. A report by George Stephenson and Bidder in January 1838 took forward the recommendation that the railway be conducted by stationary engines powered by cable haulage. This method, preferred to a four-track locomotive line that had been proposed by Cubitt, was also employed on the Stephensons’ recently completed London and Birmingham Railway extension between Camden Town and Euston. It was calculated that the rope system could match a locomotive in achieving the desirable twelve-minute journey between the termini. In June 1838, Robert Stephenson reported that the contracts for the engines should be entered into and that the plans and specifications were ready to view.[^11] Robert Stephenson and Bidder restated the dangers of locomotives in 1839, now focussing on the risk to people rather than property. Stationary steam engines and rope traction were stated to be more suitable in populous areas, to avoid annoyance from noise, smoke and billowing steam. This was quite against the advice of Rennie, who, having been pushed aside, was reluctant to surrender his original survey drawings. In 1849, after the rope-traction system failed and locomotives were adopted, Rennie could not resist the observation that the line would have been much more profitable had his plan been adopted in the first place; he also noted the folly of ignoring his idea for making the Blackwall railway the main trunk for eastern counties’ traffic.[^12] The individual involvement of George and Robert Stephenson changed over time and at some points their roles are difficult to untangle. It is probably safe to say that both Stephensons were responsible for the London and Blackwall Railway, with Robert as the lead engineer. Thus whilst George Bidder and George Stephenson were the main consultants, Robert Stephenson oversaw the contracts and progress of the engines and related equipment and is said also to have maintained overall supervision. In addition to George and Robert Stephenson, Bidder, Tite, Rennie and Cubitt, others involved at the early stages of the railway’s planning included James Urpeth Rastrick, William Chadwell Mylne and George Leather, engineers who gave evidence, and Dr Dionysius Lardner, a scientific writer who prepared a promotional pamphlet.[^13]</p>\n\n<p>The bill for the formation of the line from Blackwall to the Minories in the City Liberties had passed in 1837. In August 1839 a further Act, which had been fiercely opposed by the Corporation of London and others, authorised the London and Blackwall Railway Company, now so-called, to assume the powers granted to the Commercial Railway Company in 1836 and to extend the line by 415 yards to the Leadenhall Street site formerly occupied by East India House, thereby permitting the first railway terminus within the City of London.[^14]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Building the line</em></p>\n\n<p>By September 1836 Tite had decided on the passage of the railway and begun to serve notice on property holders within fifty feet of the line. His survey was confirmed by James W. Higgins of Furnival’s Inn, who estimated that the cost of the land to be compulsorily purchased would not exceed £216,000 because ‘on a large portion of the line the property is of a very inferior character’.[^15] Under Tite’s direction, the Commercial Railway Company bought up property in and around Cable Street, Chamber Street, (Back) Church Lane, White Lion Street and elsewhere along the line beyond Whitechapel.[^16]</p>\n\n<p>Already in late 1836, Tite and Higgins surveyed the ground and drew up plans for the hoped-for extension from the Minories into the City. At around the same time Edward I’Anson, who later designed the interior of Tite’s Royal Exchange (1840–4), was paid £105 (to Tite’s £214), probably for work on the Commercial Railway Company’s new offices at 34 Cornhill.[^17] Robert Stephenson and Tite collaborated on plans for the Blackwall terminus that were settled in November 1839. Tite himself designed the City terminus, the first Fenchurch Street Station, in 1840–1, enabling him to supervise work at the Royal Exchange at the same time.[^18] </p>\n\n<p>The railway was planned at the same time as was the Commissioners of Woods and Forests’ scheme for making a new road from the London Docks to Spitalfields via Leman Street, planned in 1836–40, but not seen through at the south end until 1845–6. Injunctions to co-operative liberality did not prevent clashes, as over the crossing of what became the south end of Leman Street (see below).[^19] </p>\n\n<p>George and Robert Webb were the railway’s first contractors, responsible for building the centre portion of the line. Thomas Jackson built the London end, the remainder to the east was constructed by Grissell and Peto. The Webbs began work on 1 October 1838 and had completed nearly half the foundations for the whole viaduct by February 1839 when Bidder and George Stephenson calculated that the Webbs would be able to turn seven arches a week. The Webbs and Jackson were also the contractors at the Royal Exchange.[^20] </p>\n\n<p>The London and Blackwall Railway opened with a 5ft gauge (with only one track) on 4 July 1840, the second track was brought into use on 3 August, at which time Stepney Station also opened. The line was claimed as both a public necessity and an economic opportunity, as it would unite the docks, goods and passengers, ‘directly with the heart of London’.[^21] As the <em>Morning Chronicle</em> put it, this represented ‘an immense saving of time, risk and expense’.[^22] </p>\n\n<p>By June 1840 the cost of property had amounted to £330,814 of total expenditure thus far of £643,343. Because the inner part of the route, including across Whitechapel, was already built up with streets and houses, the width of the railway land was restricted to twenty-five yards except where particular installations, passing places or loading points were required. Even allowing for the width restriction, the viaduct was costly due to the generous compensation allowed by the 1836 Act. Although by early 1839 the amount paid for land was said to be some £40,000 less than the estimate because it had been made for a greater width of line than had been found necessary, the costs had mounted to more than the company was prepared to admit publicly. The estimate did not however take into account the value of the arches. Supposedly watertight, these were, the engineers reported, suitable for stabling, workshops and stores – the company had already received rental applications. Surplus property, seventy-four freehold dwelling houses and several plots of building land, was sold off in 1841–2. Arches were available for rent, at least some on 999-year leases.[^23] </p>\n\n<p>Tite reported to the House of Commons in 1846 that the whole of the railway, which had opened to Fenchurch Street on 2 August 1841, had cost £1m. He claimed ‘it was better to spend the million to run to Fenchurch Street, than to spend £750,000 to stop at the Minories’.[^24]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Working the line</em></p>\n\n<p>The railway was worked by two pairs of stationary steam engines, of 400-horsepower and 200-horsepower, located respectively at the Minories and Blackwall termini to drive the winding gear. Robert Stephenson recommended and issued contracts to Maudslay, Sons and Field for the large engines and the Horseley Company of Tipton for the small engines. Appointed and overseen by Robert Stephenson, A. Moser (or Mozer), ‘designed the whole of the machinery executed by Maudslay and Field’.[^25] Fire safety, proximity of a terminus to the City and the hoped-for extension within its boundary had been factors in the choice of stationary engines; the absence of steam and relative silence of the system were again stressed in the proposal to extend the line into the City.[^26] </p>\n\n<p>The trains were hauled on a cable made of hemp rope measuring 5¾ inches in diameter, onto which the carriages were locked; this was in two parts, one for propelling carriages in each direction. The cable was made by Sir Joseph Huddart and Co. of Limehouse, supplier to the East India Company’s ships, and cost upwards of £1,200.[^27] The cable operating system has been lucidly described: ‘At each terminus a train of seven carriages would be waiting and at the intermediate stations a single coach stood on each track. At a signal by the electric telegraph both engines would start winding: the carriages from the local stations then travelled singly to their respective termini, followed by the main train which would deposit five of its coaches at stations along the way. On arrival at the terminus the remainder of the train would join the waiting five carriages from the intermediate stations to form a complete train, and the cycle would be repeated.’[^28] George Parker Bidder, who had the reputation of being a ‘calculating genius’, designed the method of disconnecting a carriage at each station while the rest of the train went on without stopping. The hemp ropes broke after a short time and were replaced with wire ropes of different kinds; these presented other problems due to twisting.[^29] </p>\n\n<p>Bidder was also instrumental in the London and Blackwall Railway Company’s adoption of electric telegraphy and a pivotal figure in the early development of that technology. William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone’s patent for use on English railways had been taken out in 1837 and used for the first time on the Great Western Railway, and for the second time by the London and Blackwall, thought to be the first company to have used the system for the entire length of its railway. The telegraph instruments, which enabled the stationary engine system to be worked safely, were enclosed in neat mahogany cases with bells to announce when the trains were to start.[^30] </p>\n\n<p>Once both lines were working services ran every fifteen minutes between 8.30am and 8.45pm. Soon, the railway became known as the ‘four-penny rope’, after the price of a second-class standing ticket. It had been hoped that the dock proprietors might use the railway for transporting goods. They initially showed interest but then refused to pay for rail connections into the docks. Thus in its early years the line’s traffic consisted almost exclusively of passengers using the steamboats which called at Brunswick Wharf.[^31] Jehangeer Nowrojee and Hirjeebhoy Merwanjee, Bombay naval architects studying at Chatham Dockyard in 1841, reported that those wishing to avoid the Pool of London, or who were ‘in a hurry to reach a dinner of white bait, can be whirled from the City to Blackwall by the Blackwall railroad’.[^32] In the seven weeks following the opening of the railway on 6 July 1840, the number of passengers was 334,354, thought disappointing though not far short of the daily traffic of 8,000 passengers hoped for in 1838. The Fenchurch Street terminus did little to improve numbers. Hopes for greater traffic had been based upon replacing horse buses and steamers at greater speed so that people would travel by rail to join steamers at Blackwall.[^33] Some two million passengers were carried on the line in 1841 but, partly because steamboat owners were reluctant to link their services with the railway at Gravesend, the railway company struggled to make the line pay. It soon saw the necessity of modernising the system by standardising the gauge and using locomotives to connect the London and Blackwall Railway with other lines.[^34] At this experimental stage of railway construction there was no standard gauge and the London and Blackwall track was wider than usual at 5ft. This and the cumbersome cable-haulage system put the railway at a serious disadvantage, since it could not be connected with and its trains could not run on most other lines.[^35]An Act authorising a junction line from Stepney Station to the Eastern Counties Railway, which did also have a 5ft gauge, was passed in 1845 and, in spite of dock-company opposition, the associated London and Blackwall Railway (Widening) Act passed in 1846. Tite set about acquiring property on the north side of the line required for widening or likely to be rendered unusable by the proximity of heretofore absent locomotives; in Whitechapel this included the Little Prescot Street Baptist chapel.[^36]</p>\n\n<p>The London and Blackwall Railway Company invited Joseph Locke to investigate the best means of altering the gauge of the rails and shortly afterwards to consider a report from Arthur Wightman, the company manager, on the adoption of locomotive instead of stationary power. Locke reported in February 1847 that it would be better to make the changes in tandem. He stressed that ‘you cannot (so long as you continue the present system) make the Blackwall Railway other than it is – a merely local and isolated line. … if you intend to extend or enlarge this railway, you must either make a new railway alongside, or otherwise adapt it to the exigencies of those requirements’.[^37]</p>\n\n<p>The Eastern Counties Railway track was converted to the now national standard gauge of 4ft 8½in. by 1847 and the London and Blackwall followed in 1849 when the conversion to locomotive operation was also completed. Six small Crewe-type engines, painted blue, were named Stepney, Shadwell, Blackwall, London, Bow and Thames; one worked the line until 1883.[^38] </p>\n\n<p>The railway was reported to have a large passenger traffic by 1850, especially in the summer months, to and from the terminus at Blackwall, where the train met steamboats leaving for Greenwich, Woolwich, Gravesend, Margate and elsewhere in the estuary. But much of that traffic was soon lost to the Eastern Counties Railway’s North Woolwich line and the South Eastern Railway’s Gravesend line, which carried passengers direct.[^39] In 1851, the new East and West India Docks and Birmingham Junction Railway (the North London Railway from 1853), opened a junction with the London and Blackwall. In the first half of the year over 1,750,000 passengers caught the train, ‘much to the delight of the London and Blackwall’.[^40] The <em>Illustrated London News</em> reported a sixpenny second-class return journey from Fenchurch Street, marvelling at the direct communication created between the east of London and the northern suburbs:</p>\n\n<p>Through the windows we had a glimpse of the Tower of London; but soon emerged from the covered way, amid roofs of houses, an ocean of pantiles, and groves of chimneys. We passed the sugar-baking district of Goodman’s-fields, the London Docks, Wapping, St George’s-in-the-East – a neighbourhood crowded with a busy, dingy, working- or sea-going population.[^41]</p>\n\n<p>The ‘covered way’ referred to the Fenchurch Street to Minories extension. The Minories bridge was covered with slates and corrugated iron lit by side windows on a wooden framework, reportedly for the comfort of passengers and neighbouring occupants, probably also to conceal the passage of trains into the City of London.[^42]</p>\n\n<p>The London and Blackwall and Eastern Counties companies launched a joint venture in 1852 as the London, Tilbury and Southend Railway Company (LTSR), whose line between Forest Gate and Tilbury Fort opened in 1854. Soon after, that line was leased to its builders, Peto, Brassey and Betts, for twenty-one years. When their lease expired, the LTSR took on the working and soon after became independent. It was originally intended that this railway would carry Londoners to and from Tilbury, from where they would be ferried to the pleasure gardens at Rosherville, Gravesend. It was also hoped that the line would transport imported goods from Thames Haven, further east on the Essex side of the estuary. However, it was the growth of Southend as a tourist attraction that ensured its future as a successful commercial venture. In return, the railway, which from 1877 had a station at Leman Street (see below), was instrumental in establishing Southend as ‘London-on-Sea’, the fabled resort of East Enders. As a LTSR advertisement put it in 1887, the line from Fenchurch Street was ‘the shortest, quickest, and cheapest route to Gravesend, Rosherville Gardens, Southend-on-Sea, and Shoeburyness’.[^43] </p>\n\n<p>The Eastern Counties Railway was absorbed by the Great Eastern Railway Company in 1862 and negotiations led to an Act of 1865 authorizing the London and Blackwall Railway Company to lease the line to the Great Eastern Railway Company for 999 years. The London and Blackwall Railway thus became part of the Great Eastern system, but it remained independent until 1923 when it became part of the London and North Eastern Railway.[^44] </p>\n\n<p>Passenger traffic between Fenchurch Street and Blackwall slowed in the early twentieth century, as steamers were replaced by train services and people moved further out into distant eastern suburbs. John Betjeman later recalled ‘the frequent and quite empty trains of the Blackwall Railway {that} ran from a special platform of Fenchurch Street. I remember them well. Like stage-coaches they rumbled slowly past East-End chimney pots, wharves and shipping, stopping at black and empty stations.’[^45] The service to Blackwall ceased altogether during the General Strike in May 1926, but the former LTSR services from Fenchurch Street to Stepney continued to carry a heavy volume of traffic on the viaduct, including trippers on cheap tickets to Southend and Ramsgate. British Railways electrified the former LTSR line from 1959 and in 1961 steam locomotives ceased.[^46] </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Viaduct</em></p>\n\n<p>The viaduct of 1838–40 was 20ft high with a 4,020-yard (3,676m) run of around 285 semi-elliptical or three-centred arches, mostly 30ft in span, extending from the Minories to West India Dock Road. It was built of yellow-stock brick with a continuous corbelled stone cornice above the arcade. Slightly projecting piers were mostly 3ft 6in. wide, broader beside road bridges. Much of it can still be seen, though in Whitechapel it is largely hidden behind recent structures.[^47] In addition to the termini, intermediate stations were provided at the Minories (closed 1853), Shadwell, Cannon Street Road (closed 1848), Stepney, Limehouse, West India Dock and Poplar. Until the opening of Leman Street Station in 1877, Whitechapel had no passenger station.Bidder and Robert Stephenson had substituted concrete for puddled gravel in the foundations (saving £2,500), and overseen aspects of the viaduct’s external appearance, suggesting a ‘somewhat less sightly’ form of stone coping (saving £1,700), and that abutments and piers in ‘conspicuous situations’ at White Lion Street (subsequently removed during road widening to form the south end of Leman Street), Old Church Lane (later Back Church Lane), and elsewhere should be faced in malm bricks to render them ‘more ornamental than they otherwise would be’, at an extra cost of about £25 per bridge.[^48] The ‘stone-weathered cornice, of bold outline’ supported the standards of cast-iron railings of ‘neat design, with pedimented caps’. This ‘light and ornamental iron palisade’ was said to be an aesthetic and acoustic improvement on the solid parapet of the London and Greenwich Railway.[^49] But railings were soon replaced with parapet walls, in some places as early as 1849, during alterations for the conversion to locomotive power.[^50]</p>\n\n<p>The overall elegance of the viaduct was soon obscured. Arches were let and fenced in (see below), though some did remain open. Perhaps for this reason, perhaps on account of the short length of the line through an already built-up district, this, the world’s second elevated railway, did not attract as many painters or photographers as did the slightly earlier London and Greenwich viaduct. Thus, with the exception of engravings of the stations and termini and the wider arches over the Regent’s Canal, there is little detailed surviving early visual record. </p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Widening and other alterations</em></p>\n\n<p>The London and Blackwall Railway (Widening) Act had passed in 1846, but this phase of widening, surveyed by Joseph Locke, was not completed until a decade later, by when it had become increasingly necessary due to growing traffic arising from junction with the Eastern Counties Railway in 1851 and the opening of a branch line to the new London and North Western Railway goods depot at Haydon Square in 1853. The main line from Minories to Stepney was widened on its north side by 15ft west of Leman Street, and by 8ft 6in. to the east in works of 1853–5, further legislation up to the London and Blackwall Railway Act of 1855 extending powers granted in 1846. Locke’s plans of 1845 were slightly revised in 1854 by (Sir) George Berkley, who suggested further widening on the south side beside Royal Mint Street. That followed in 1862 as sidings for a Midland Railway Company goods depot.[^51] Along with this and the spur to the Haydon Square depot of 1853, other sections of widening on the line’s south side created sidings for other facilities (see below): south of Mansell Street for a Great Northern Railway Company depot in 1857 and 1862; and flanking Leman Street for the Great Eastern Railway Company’s London Docks branch viaduct up to 1864, and for Leman Street Station from 1872. These south-side improvements were in effect partial realization of an otherwise abortive scheme of 1859 for improved links to the docks.[^52]</p>\n\n<p>Further increases in traffic, improved dock linkages and the building of the LTSR Commercial Road Goods Depot led the Great Eastern Railway Company and the LTSR to agree in 1884 on the necessity of again widening the London and Blackwall line. A fourth track on the north side was sanctioned with the passing of the London and Blackwall Railway Act of 1885. The Great Eastern Railway Company began acquiring property, including Imperial Warehouses (or Buildings) on the south side of the junction of Leman Street and Chamber Street, but the project was held up by differences over which company should pay. David Lyell, on the staff of the Great Eastern’s engineer John Wilson, had joint responsibility for the project with Berkley, the London and Blackwall’s engineer. Lyell was appointed resident engineer in 1891, when drawings and specifications were completed. The work was carried out in 1892–3, but the additional down line did not open until March 1896. The improvement, which doubled the width of the railway through Whitechapel, involved new lengths of viaduct on the line’s north side, along Chamber Street and from Leman Street to Back Church Lane, with steel or wrought-iron girders on brick piers, the engineering brick detailed so as to differ markedly from the brickwork of 1839–40 and alterations of 1853–5.[^53] The base of the Haydon Square Junction signal box, dating from the 1892–3 widening of the mainline viaduct, can still be seen on the south side of Chamber Street, almost opposite Magdalen Passage. This signal box, which controlled traffic into Fenchurch Street Station as well as to the Haydon Square depot, was made redundant in 1935. The remnants at street level were in use in 2019–20 as a works entrance for the Royal Mint Gardens development.[^54]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Bridges</em></p>\n\n<p>Twenty-five cast-iron girder bridges carried the London and Blackwall Railway across roads. There were originally two iron bridges over roads at least partially in Whitechapel, over White Lion Street and Back Church Lane; narrower thoroughfares were crossed by the brick arches of the viaduct, but two of those were before long replaced or supplemented by girder bridges. Bridges on the Great Eastern Railway network including the London and Blackwall line were numbered in a system dating from 1911 and still in use.</p>\n\n<p>On the west side of the parish, Bridge 500, over Mansell Street was preceded in 1839–40 by a brick arch over Little Prescot Street, Bidder having made arrangements for an intended bridge to be substituted by an arch. Little Prescot Street was greatly widened as an extension of Mansell Street in the Tower Bridge Approach road scheme and the present 60ft-span plate-girder bridge was installed in 1905–6.[^55]</p>\n\n<p>Bridge 503 over Leman Street was preceded in 1839–40 by two ‘arches’. To the east, over White Lion Street, an ‘iron arch’ of 40ft span that incorporated cast-iron girders was measured askew at the request of Whitechapel parish. There was another standard 30ft-wide brick arch to its west. Road widening here was already in view and in March 1840, prior to the opening of the railway, Bidder, James Pennethorne and Thomas Chawner, surveyors for the Commissioners of Woods and Forests, were interviewed as to the practicability of reconstruction with a wider iron bridge. Costs were no doubt prohibitive and nothing happened in the short run.[^56] In 1846 Pennethorne complained that the passage of the railway across White Lion Street had ‘greatly interfered’ with the widening there of what had become the south end of Leman Street.[^57] Accordingly, the 1846 Act for widening the railway provided for the formation of a wider bridge over Leman Street to designs approved by the Commissioners of Woods and Forests. It specified that the new bridge would be supported in the centre by a pier faced in stone. The north-side line widening was carried through in 1853–5, with the succeeding Act of 1855 including provision for the Leman Street pier. The arch to the west was duly replaced with a horizontal bridge supported by a stone-faced pier. The semi-triangular masonry island of 1853–5 survives to support the railway across Leman Street. General strengthening of bridges to support locomotives was intended in 1847, but the original bridge of 1839–40 was not strengthened until 1869 when cast-iron girders were replaced in wrought iron. The whole bridge was rebuilt during the line widening of 1892–3 when the sections of 1839–40 and 1853–5 were removed. Three wrought-iron main girders introduced in 1869 were reused, with new cross girders and longitudinal troughing and a robust cast-iron column north of Leman Street’s masonry pier.[^58] </p>\n\n<p>After what local papers reported as a long and well-ventilated discussion, Whitechapel District Board of Works agreed in 1858 to erect a urinal under the railway in Leman Street. This was placed within the pier’s south side and underground. Stepney Borough Council improved and extended the Leman Street public conveniences in 1923–4. They appear to have been removed in the 1980s when the Docklands Light Railway’s viaduct was built.[^59] </p>\n\n<p>The next bridge to the east, No. 505, crosses Mill Yard. On the south side, the original brick arch of 1839–40 was widened in 1853–5. On the north side, a 27ft-span plate-girder bridge of 1892–3 forms part of a continuous metal viaduct with jack arching.</p>\n\n<p>Bridge 506 stands over Back Church Lane. The original cast-iron bridge, strengthened in wrought iron in 1869, has been replaced by a 35ft-span plate-girder bridge, probably datable to 1892–3. To its north, another 27ft-span plate-girder bridge is certainly part of the 1892–3 widening. On the south side, yet another girder bridge of 1892–3 has been removed.[^60] Chamber Street was spanned only by the Haydon Square branch-line bridge of 1851–3 until mainline widening in 1892–3. An additional plate-girder span was then introduced, in part supported on another large cast-iron column, and the old bridge was replaced.[^61]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p><em>Arches</em></p>\n\n<p>Railway arches created a new kind of sheltered space in London and other cities and quickly came to be employed for a range of purposes. George Stephenson had foreseen the potential in 1835, proposing that the London and Blackwall line’s arches would be ‘most valuable as Depots and Dwellings places’.[^62] Two years later, William Cubitt repeated the notion that arches could serve for housing – in the event, this was only put into practice in a short run in Limehouse. Even before the London and Blackwall Railway opened there were enquiries about renting arches and in September 1840 they were advertised as to let.[^63] </p>\n\n<p>Arches in Whitechapel were used by railway companies for storage, depots and stabling. At Leman Street Station, as at other stations further down the line, one was fashioned into an entrance and booking hall. They were also leased to other parties for stabling, workshops and warehouses and let or sub-let with land and house or other property attached, as for example in Chamber Street. In some cases arches were given up during the building of the viaduct to lessen claims for compulsory purchase compensation.[^64]</p>\n\n<p>By 1846, virtually all the arches were occupied, often by sub-lessees and mostly for storage or as workshops. In 1843, temperance meetings were held in an arch reached through a coffee shop in Rosemary Lane (later Royal Mint Street). Schools were built into the viaduct east of Whitechapel, while educational use of the arches within the parish was confined to the forming of two playgrounds for St Mark’s National School (see p.xx). There was a skittle ground next to Swallow’s Gardens, and stabling, cowhouses and sheep pens lay between Mill Yard and Back Church Lane, probably as relocations of a complex of cow yards and sheds displaced by the building of the railway. In 1848 seventeen cows, six horses and some pigs were kept in one arch at Mill Yard.[^65] Arches were also used in more makeshift ways and, as Henry Mayhew reported in 1849, families could be found ‘nestling under the arches of the Blackwall Railway … children cradled as it were in vice and crime, cheek by jowl with the vilest prostitutes and the meanest thieves’.[^66] </p>\n\n<p>The Act of 1855 that enabled widening of the line specified that if the works obstructed light in Little Prescot Street, Chamber Street and Swallow’s Gardens the railway company would be obliged to provide gas lamps in the arches. There were, however, complaints about water dripping through the arches.[^67] From the 1850s stabling, often for goods depots, became more widespread. Private individuals and companies also rented arches for stabling. Samuel Blow, a builder, converted four arches to stable use in 1881. Stables occupied most of the arches beneath the East Smithfield branch viaduct.[^68]</p>\n\n<p>From about 1920 motor garages began to replace stables, as for the Lep Transport Company, the Sun Transport Company, City & East London Service Garages Ltd and the Co-operative Wholesale Society. The International Bottle Co. Ltd and J. Walker & Co. had bottle stores.[^69] Among the more unusual possible uses recorded in the twentieth century was an application of 1906 for an arch in Chamber Street from V. Chautard & Christensen and John Scholes Ltd on behalf of the Mermaid Theatre Company.[^70] During the Second World War, Stepney’s public air-raid shelters included sandbagged arches beneath the main line near Leman Street Station and under branch lines, at least some of which remained unaltered until the 1950s.[^71]</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: The following account is based on research and text prepared for the Survey of London by Rebecca Preston. We would like also to acknowledge help from Robert Thorne, Tim Smith and Peter Kay.</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), MR/U/P/0158–9: British Library (BL), Maps 3535.(2.)</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: John Rennie, <em>Autobiography of Sir John Rennie, FRS</em>, 1875, p. 293: John Cordy Jeaffreson with William Pole, <em>The Life of Robert Stephenson, FRS</em>, vol. 1, 1864, pp. 228–9; <em>Report of the Trustees of the Commercial Road to the Proprietors, affording a comparative view of the capabilities of the Commercial and East India Dock Roads with Reference to the Railways to the East and West India Docks and Blackwall</em>, 1835, pp. 1–6</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: <em>Statements Illustrative of the Necessity for Additional Means of Communication between London and Blackwall</em>, 1836, pp. 22–3</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: <em>Statements Illustrative</em>, pp. 13–14, 19: <em>House of Commons Committee on the London and Blackwall Railway Bills</em>, 17 May 1836, p. 22: The National Archives (TNA), RAIL385/73, 5 Aug 1835</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: <em>Public Ledger and Daily Advertiser</em>, 8 Oct 1835, p.2: TNA, RAIL385/73, 5 Aug 1835</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: <em>Morning Post</em>, 18 May 1836, p. 1; <em>The Standard</em>, 15 Aug 1836, p. 1</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 5–30 Aug 1836, 24 Jan 1837</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 26 Dec 1837, 2–9 Jan 1838</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: TNA, RAIL385/1–4 Jan 1838: <em>Railway Times</em>, 23 Feb 1839, p. 157; 4 May 1839, p. 360: Francis Wishaw, <em>The Railways of Great Britain and Ireland</em>, 2nd edn, 1842, p. 269: Peter Kay, <em>London’s Railway Heritage</em>, vol. 1: <em>East</em>, 2012, p. 4: Mike Chrimes and Robert Thomas, ‘Railway Building’, in Bailey (ed.), <em>Stephenson</em>, p. 278</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: <em>House of Commons Committee on the London and Blackwall Railway Bills</em>, 1836, pp. 20–1, 24–5: TNA, RAIL385/1, 13 Sept and 22 Nov 1836, 24 Jan, 31 Oct and 26 Dec 1837, 2–4 Jan and 12 June 1838: RAIL 385/76: Michael Bailey, ‘The Mechanical Business’, in Bailey (ed.), <em>Robert Stephenson</em>, pp. 193–5: George Stephenson and G. P. Bidder, <em>London & Blackwall Commercial Railway</em>, 1838, pp. 9, 13</p>\n\n<p>[^12]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 28 Feb 1839: <em>Autobiography of Sir John Rennie</em>, pp. 293–4</p>\n\n<p>[^13]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 20 Sept 1836: Chrimes and Thomas, ‘Railway Building’, in Bailey (ed.), <em>Robert Stephens</em>on, pp. 263–4</p>\n\n<p>[^14]: J. E. Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway: A History of the London and Blackwall System</em>, 1984, p. 20: Donald J. Grant, <em>Directory of the Railway Companies of Great Britain</em>, 2017, p. 328: Wishaw, <em>Railways</em>, p. 257: F. H. W. Sheppard, <em>London, 1808–1870: The Infernal Wen</em>, 1971, p. 129: House of Lords Debates, 9 July 1839, vol. 49, cc74–6, London and Blackwall Railway: ‘Report on the opening of the Blackwall Railway Extension’, 29 July 1841, <em>Parliamentary Papers (PP)</em>, vol. 41, 1842, p. 153</p>\n\n<p>[^15]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 20 Sept 1836</p>\n\n<p>[^16]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 23 Aug, 13 and 19 Sept 1836: <em>London Evening Standard</em>, 4 Oct 1838, p. 4: <em>Railway Times</em>, 27 July 1839, p. 579: LMA, SC/PM/ST/01/002: Geoffrey Body and Robert L. Eastleigh, <em>The London & Blackwall Railway</em>, <em>c</em>.1964, p. 2</p>\n\n<p>[^17]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 1 and 8 Nov and 6 and 15 Dec 1836: LMA, SC/GL/PR/LC/48/5/p7502182; SC/GL/PR/WM/011/ALD/k1289238</p>\n\n<p>[^18]: TNA, RAIL385/73, 7 Nov 1839: RAIL385/1, 18 March 1840: Stephen Porter (ed.), <em>Survey of London</em>, vol. 44: <em>Poplar, Blackwall and the Isle of Dogs</em>, 1994, p. 597</p>\n\n<p>[^19]: <em>Second Report from Select Committee on Metropolis Improvements</em>, 1838, pp. 95–8: <em>First Report from Select Committee on Metropolis Improvement</em>, 1840, pp. 23–7: TNA, RAIL385/1, 4 Dec 1839</p>\n\n<p>[^20]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 28 Feb and 4 Sept 1839, 18 March 1840: <em>The Times</em>, 6 July 1840, p. 14:<em> Bell’s New Weekly Messenger</em>, 23 Jan 1842, p. 3</p>\n\n<p>[^21]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 28 Feb 1839: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, p. 20</p>\n\n<p>[^22]: <em>Morning Chronicle</em>, 6 July 1840, p. 4</p>\n\n<p>[^23]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 28 Feb 1839:<em> Morning Advertiser</em>, 23 Jan 1841, p. 4; 6 June 1842, p. 4: Wishaw, <em>Railways</em>, p. 268: Kellett, <em>Railways</em>, pp. 259–60; Alan A. Jackson, <em>London’s Local Railways</em>, 1978, p. 163</p>\n\n<p>[^24]: As quoted in Kellett, <em>Railways</em>, pp. 41–2: Wishaw, <em>Railways</em>, pp. 257–8; Body and Eastleigh, <em>Railway</em>, p. 2</p>\n\n<p>[^25]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 12 June and 10 July 1838, 27 March and 3 April 1839: Wishaw, <em>Railways</em>, p. 263:<em> Minutes of Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE)</em>, vol. 5, 1846, p. 159: Body and Eastleigh, <em>Railway</em>, p. 2</p>\n\n<p>[^26]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 28 Feb 1839: Jackson, <em>London’s Local Railways</em>, pp. 161, 164–5; J. E. Connor, <em>London’s Disused Railway Stations: the East End</em>, 2018, p. 47</p>\n\n<p>[^27]: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, p. 17: Body and Eastleigh, <em>Railway</em>, p. 2:<em> Morning Chronicle</em>, 6 July 1840, p. 4: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), L/SGE/A/5/3, <em>House of Commons Committee on the London and Blackwall Railway Bills</em>, 17 May 1836, p. 12</p>\n\n<p>[^28]: <em>The Oxford Companion to British Railway History</em>, 1997, p. 282: Wishaw, <em>Railways</em>, p. 265</p>\n\n<p>[^29]: <em>Minutes of Proceedings of the ICE</em>, vol. 5, 1846, pp. 143–60: TNA, RAIL385/1; 23 Sept 1840: Body and Eastleigh, <em>Railway</em>, p. 4</p>\n\n<p>[^30]: Stephen Edward Murfitt, ‘The English Patent System and Early Railway Technology 1800–1852’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of York, 2017, p. 176: <em>Morning Post</em>, 16 Jan 1846, p. 6: A. J. Robertson, ‘Description of the Machinery Erected by Messrs Maudslay, Son, and Field at the Minories Station’, <em>Minutes of the Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers</em>, vol. 5, 1846, pp. 143–55; Jackson, <em>London’s Local Railways</em>, p. 164; John Small (ed.), <em>A Hundred Wonders of the World in Nature and Art</em>, 1876, p. 498; Connor, <em>Fenchurch Street to Stepney</em>, p. v:<em> Morning Chronicle</em>, 6 July 1840, p. 4</p>\n\n<p>[^31]: Jackson, <em>London’s Local Railways</em>, p. 164: Wishaw, <em>Railways</em>, p. 265: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, p. 24: Porter (ed.),<em> Survey of London</em>: vol. 43, p. 13</p>\n\n<p>[^32]: Jehangeer Nowrojee and Hirjeebhoy Merwanjee, <em>Journal of a Residence of Two Years and a Half in Great Britain</em>, 1841, p. 84</p>\n\n<p>[^33]: Body and Eastleigh, <em>Railway</em>, pp. 3, 6: Wishaw, <em>Railways</em>, pp. 267–8</p>\n\n<p>[^34]: Sheppard, <em>London</em>, pp. 128–9: Body and Eastleigh, <em>Railway</em>, pp. 11–13; Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, p. 30</p>\n\n<p>[^35]: <em>Morning Chronicle</em>, 6 July 1840, p. 4: Weale <em>et al</em>, <em>Ensamples</em>, p. xli: Porter (ed.),<em> Survey of London</em>: vol. 43, p. 13</p>\n\n<p>[^36]: <em>Journals of the House of Commons</em>, vol. 101/2, 19 June 1846, p. 903: TNA, RAIL385/75: <em>An Abstract of the Special Acts Authorizing the Construction of Railways</em>, 1847, pp. 574–6:<em> London Evening Standard</em>, 29 May 1846, p. 8</p>\n\n<p>[^37]: <em>Railway Times</em>, 27 Feb 1847, p. 284</p>\n\n<p>[^38]: <em>Globe</em>, 8 July 1845, p. 3: Parliamentary Archives (PA), HC/CL/PB/2/14/9, pp. 7–8, 21–22: Historic England Archives (HEA), London Historians’ File, TH38: Bailey, ‘Mechanical Business’, in Bailey, <em>Stephenson</em>, pp. 195–6: Body and Eastleigh, <em>Railway</em>, p. 14: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, p. 35: Jackson, <em>London’s Local Railways</em>, p. 166</p>\n\n<p>[^39]: <em>Pictorial Half-Hours of London Topography</em>, 1850, p. 231: Body and Eastleigh, <em>Railway</em>, p. 9</p>\n\n<p>[^40]: Sheppard, <em>London</em>, p. 131</p>\n\n<p>[^41]: <em>Illustrated London News (ILN)</em>, 15 Nov 1851, p. 601</p>\n\n<p>[^42]: ‘Report on the opening of the Blackwall Railway Extension’, 29 July 1841, PP, vol. 41, 1842, p. 154: J. E. Connor, <em>Fenchurch Street to Barking</em>, 1998, p. xi</p>\n\n<p>[^43]: T. Cook, <em>Cook’s Handbook for London</em>, 1887, p. 105: H. D. Welch, <em>The London Tilbury & Southend Railway</em>, 1950 (edn 1963), p. 1</p>\n\n<p>[^44]: 28 Vic cap.100: Jackson, <em>London’s Local Railways</em>, p. 167: Grant, <em>Directory</em>, p. 328</p>\n\n<p>[^45]: John Betjeman, ‘London Railway Stations’, <em>First and Last Loves</em>, 1952, p. 79</p>\n\n<p>[^46]: T. Rowland Powel, ‘London’s Loneliest Line’, <em>The Railway Magazine</em>, July 1936, p. 47: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, pp. 83, 94: Jackson, <em>London’s Local Railways</em>, p. 170: <a href=\"https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1960/jan/27/fenchurch-street-tilbury-southend-line\">api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1960/jan/27/fenchurch-street-tilbury-southend-line</a></p>\n\n<p>[^47]: Wishaw, <em>Railways</em>, p. 259: John Weale, Benjamin Franklin Isherwood, Edward Dobson, <em>Ensamples of Railway Making</em>, 1843, p. xxxii: Body and Eastleigh, <em>Railway</em>, p. 3</p>\n\n<p>[^48]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 6 Nov 1838</p>\n\n<p>[^49]: Wishaw,<em>Railways</em>, p. 259: <em>Mechanic and Chemist</em>, 18 July 1840, p. 95</p>\n\n<p>[^50]: Kay, <em>Railway Heritage</em>, p. 5</p>\n\n<p>[^51]: PA, HL/PO/PB/3/plan1846/L109; HL/PO/PB/3/plan1855/L7: <em>An Abstract of the Special Acts Authorizing the Construction of Railways</em>, 1847, pp. 574–6: 18 & 19 Vic., c. xc: <em>Morning Chronicle</em>, 16 Feb 1853, p. 7: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, p. 108: Kay, <em>Railway Heritage</em>, p. 12</p>\n\n<p>[^52]: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 19 Sept 1857, p. 1: Ordance Survey (OS) map of <em>c.</em>1851–5 via Old-Maps.co.uk: PA, HL/PO/PB/3/plan1860/L24: <em>London Gazette</em>, 22 Nov 1859, pp. 4209–10: Kay, <em>Railway Heritage</em>, p. 12</p>\n\n<p>[^53]: TNA, HO45/9476/1081F:<em> Journal of the ICE</em>, vol. 16, March 1941, p. 81:<em> Minutes of the Proceedings of the ICE</em>, vol. 15, 1894, pp. 382–5: Kay, <em>Railway Heritage</em>, pp. 13–14: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, p. 68: Connor, ‘Recalling Leman Street’, pp. 50–1</p>\n\n<p>[^54]: Kay, <em>Railway Heritage</em>, p. 20: Connor, <em>Fenchurch Street to Barking</em>: Ian Baker, ‘Tracing Earlier Railway Remnants near the DLR’, <em>London Railway Record</em>, Oct 2002, pp. 266–7</p>\n\n<p>[^55]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 4 Dec 1839: Kay, <em>Railway Heritage</em>, pp. 3–4, 9, 18–19</p>\n\n<p>[^56]: <em>First Report from Select Committee on Metropolis Improvement</em>, 1840, pp. 23–7</p>\n\n<p>[^57]: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 2 July 1846, p. 3</p>\n\n<p>[^58]: <em>An Abstract of the Special Acts Authorizing the Construction of Railways</em>, 1847, p. 575: 18 & 19 Vic., cap. xc, p. 1241: TNA, RAIL385/48: <em>Railway Times</em>, 27 Feb 1847, p. 284: Kay, <em>Railway Heritage</em>, pp. 5, 9, 18</p>\n\n<p>[^59]: <em>East London Observer (ELO)</em>, 20 March 1858, p. 2: OS 1873: LMA, GLC/TD/PM/CDO/05/133974; District Surveyors' Returns (DSR): THLHLA, L/THL/D/2/30/88</p>\n\n<p>[^60]: Kay, <em>Railway Heritage</em>, pp .20–21</p>\n\n<p>[^61]: TNA, RAIL385/48: Kay, <em>Railway Heritage</em>, p. 19</p>\n\n<p>[^62]: TNA, RAIL385/73, 5 Aug 1835</p>\n\n<p>[^63]: <em>London & North Eastern Railway Magazine</em>, vol. 27, 1937, p. 336: THLHLA, P/MIS/87: Kay, <em>Railway Heritage</em>, pp. 4–5</p>\n\n<p>[^64]: TNA, RAIL385/1, 20 Sept 1836: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 10 June 1841, p. 1</p>\n\n<p>[^65]: <em>Globe</em>, 25 May 1840, p .3: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 5 Dec 1843, p. 4: PA, Hl/PO/PB/3/plan1846/L109, pp. 12, 21–3: LMA, MR/U/P/0158:<em> Morning Advertiser</em>, 17 Oct 1848, p. 4</p>\n\n<p>[^66]: <em>Morning Chronicle</em>, 6 Nov 1849, p. 4: TNA, MEPO3/140</p>\n\n<p>[^67]: 18 & 19 Vic., cap. xc, p. 1242: Wishaw, <em>Railways</em>, p. 258: <em>The Sun</em>, 9 Dec 1854, p. 4: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 2 April 1856, p. 6: <em>ELO</em>, 7 Nov 1857, p. 2</p>\n\n<p>[^68]: DSR: Goad insurance plan, 1887: TNA, RAIL1189/1299</p>\n\n<p>[^69]: DSR: THLHLA, L/SMB/C/1/3, pp.39–40</p>\n\n<p>[^70]: TNA, RAIL1189/1297</p>\n\n<p>[^71]: THLHLA, LCM/1677: TNA, HO207/862: National Railway Museum, CIVE/15/2/14</p>\n",
"created": "2020-05-11",
"last_edited": "2021-08-20"
},
{
"id": 1060,
"title": "Early demolished buildings at 86–104 Leman Street",
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"body": "<p>A large three-storey double-fronted house at No. 86, possibly rebuilt in 1769, survived until 1910 when it was acquired by the Co-operative Wholesale Society. Thomas Harris (d. 1750), a citizen silkthrower, lived here and the property was described as ‘The Great House’ when Naphtali Hart Myers (1711–1788), a prominent American-English merchant, purchased the freehold in 1777. By 1812 the house had passed to his son, Dr Joseph Hart Myers, physician to the Bet Holim London hospital, but from at least 1814 it was leased to Judah Cohen, a West India merchant who held several plantations in Jamaica and over 200 enslaved people. In partnership with his brother Hymen Cohen, he used the Leman Street property as secondary to the firm’s base at 51 Mansell Street; David A. Lindo also used this address in the 1830s. Like neighbouring houses, No. 86 fell to use for cigar-making . A stable and coach-house onto the Tenter Ground were replaced by a large warehouse over nearly all of the rear garden. From 1874, the East London Industrial School, founded in 1854 as the East London Shoeblack Society, used the house. The school moved to Lewisham in 1884, and No. 86 was altered to accommodate the Whittington Club and Chambers for Working Youths, a descendant of the school and a social initiative from Toynbee Hall that aimed to benefit working boys and men aged sixteen to twenty, many of them shoeblacks, with discipline and recreation. In 1901 ninety-six males, many of them shoeblacks, were housed. Over one of the ground-floor windows a low-relief carving or cast of unknown date depicted Dick Whittington and his cat with a ship sailing towards the shore with figures in the clouds blowing trumpets.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>A comparably substantial house on the site of Nos 88–90, perhaps also rebuilt in the 1770s, had been held by Thomas Umfreville, who died in Connecticut in 1738. It was later occupied until 1808 by Peter Ainsley, a merchant, coal factor and Fishmonger, in partnership with his brother Joseph Ainsley. Barnett Moss, a looking-glass maker and glass merchant, present at different addresses on Leman Street from the 1830s, was the last occupant in the late 1850s. Around 1860 the house was replaced by a mirrored three-storey pair. John Jacobs, a builder and almost certainly responsible for the rebuild, lived at what became No. 90 into the 1880s. No. 88 was first inhabited by Thomas Stones, an importer of cheroot cigars.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>No. 88 housed the Scandinavian Sailors’ Temperance Home, a mission begun in the 1870s by Agnes Hedenström for the Swedish Free Church, from 1880 to 1888 when it moved to larger premises in Poplar. By 1890 the house had been put to use as the German Artisans’ Home and Christian Hotel, a branch of the German YMCA, overseen by William Muller, Secretary. A thirty-six bed capacity increased to sixty-three when Muller took over No. 90 in 1891. He had a five-storey rear addition built in 1897, and in 1901 forty-seven men of mostly German and Austrian birth were recorded staying at ‘the Christian Home for Christians’. The CWS had purchased the freehold to Nos 88–90 in 1895 and had cleared the houses by 1908 for enlargement of its tea warehouse.[^3] </p>\n\n<p>No. 92 was another comparably substantial double-fronted eighteenth-century house, claiming four rooms on each of three floors and vaulted cellars, with ‘a handsome entrance hall … [and] a geometrical stone staircase’.[^4] William Hawes was resident here by 1733 and in the years around 1760 Edward Hawkins, the son of Samuel Hawkins, lived here. By 1830 the household goods included a ‘fine-toned piano-forte on turned legs’.[^5] Thereafter into the 1860s the house was the private residence of Charles Berry, a flour factor. It was then acquired by Dakin and Bryant, sugar refiners, who around 1868 redeveloped the entire plot – house, garden, coach house and three-stall stable, with five-storey sugarhouse premises. This use was short-lived and a Hebrew academy run by Nehemiah Ginsbury was based here in the 1880s. Thereafter a period of disuse followed.[^6] </p>\n\n<p>At Nos 94–102 there was a short terrace of more standard-width houses, also of three storeys, basements and attics, probably built in the late eighteenth century, in part replacing two large houses of 1684–5 built by Thomas Cole and John Hanscombe, a brewer, at the Prescot Street corner. In the second half of the nineteenth century these houses were predominantly inhabited by cigar merchants and tailors of East European Jewish origin, though John, Thomas and Henry Baddeley, solicitors, were long-standing tenants of No. 98.[^7] From at least 1788, the Golden Lion public house (No. 104) stood at the corner of Leman Street and Prescot Street, overseen by Samuel Silvester, a victualler, until his death in 1806. It comprised a bar, sitting room, and tap room on the ground floor, with an extensive cellar and a large club-room on the first floor. The second floor and attics were domestic quarters.[^8] For most of the nineteenth century, the pub was run by a series of landlords of German extraction, who incorporated upper-storey lodgings for sugar-bakers. In 1853, the Golden Lion was the flashpoint for an attack by Irish sugar-bakers on their German counterparts, the former claiming that the latter were unfairly filling positions with their countrymen, squeezing the Irish out of work. The disturbance in the pub led to ‘serious rioting’ on Leman Street which became a ‘battlefield’ before peace was restored.[^9] The Golden Lion was a meeting place for the Society of United Friends of Poor Germans in the 1860s, when a lease advertisement claimed it as ‘one of the best and most respectable houses … certainly the most commanding position in the neighbourhood’.[^10] </p>\n\n<p>The English and Scottish Joint Co-operative Wholesale Society purchased Nos 94–104 in 1886. This precipitated demolition and replacement by the CWS’s London tea department.[^11]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>Daily Advertiser</em>, 25 Nov 1777: The National Archives (TNA), PROB11/778/232: London Metropolitan Archives (LMA), LMA/4673/D/01/004/002; A/ELI/003; Tower Hamlets Commissioners of Sewers ratebooks (THCS): District Surveyors' Returns (DSR): Ordnance Survey maps (OS): Richard Horwood's maps: S. Massil, ‘Naphtali Hert Myers (1711–1788): New Yorker and Londoner’, <em>Jewish Historical Studies</em>, vol. 43, 2011, pp. 97–124 (123): Post Office Directories (POD): <a href=\"https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/firm/view/553857610\">www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/firm/view/553857610</a>: <a href=\"http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/14235\">www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/14235</a>: C. Hall, N. Draper, K. McClelland, K. Donington, R. Lang, <em>Legacies of British Slave-ownership</em>, 2014, p. 57: Census: <em>The Justice of the Peace</em>, 21 March 1874, p.185: S. A. Barnett, ‘University settlements’, in W. Reason (ed.), <em>University and Social Settlements</em>, 1898, p.26: <a href=\"http://www.childrenshomes.org.uk/EastLondonIS/?LMCL=gPo_nd\">www.childrenshomes.org.uk/EastLondonIS/?LMCL=gPo_nd</a>: <em>East London Advertiser (ELA)</em>, 14 March 1903</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: <em>Sun</em>, 10 Aug 1808, p. 1: LMA, Land Tax Returns (LT); LMA/4673/D/01/004/002;COL/CHD/FR/02/1242/050; THCS: East Sussex Record Office, SAS/AB/1098: OS: Horwood: Census: POD</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Census: POD: B. W. Hildebrandt, <em>It Can be! 150 Years German YMCA in London, 1860–2010</em>, 2010: Stephen Porter (ed.), <em>Survey of London</em>, vol. 43: <em>Poplar, Blackwall and the Isle of Dogs</em>, 1994, p. 403: DSR: <em>London Daily News</em>, 28 March 1904, p. 8: postcard, 1901: National Co-operative Archive (NCA), E&SCWS Tea Committee Minutes, 12 Nov 1895, 21 Nov 1895, 12 July 1897: Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives (THLHLA), Building Control file 22355</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: LMA, LMA/4673/D/01/004/002:<em> Morning Chronicle</em>, 16 Aug 1820, p. 4</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 16 March 1830, p. 3: LT</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: LMA, LMA/4673/D/01/004/002: OS: DSR: POD: Bryan Mawer's sugar database: Census: <em>East London Observer</em>, 26 Aug 1865</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: LMA, LMA/4673/D/01/004/002: TNA, C10/544/6: OS: POD: Census</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: TNA, PROB11/1445/219: LMA, LMA/4673/D/01/004/002: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 3 Feb 1807, p. 4: <em>Morning Chronicle</em>, 29 July 1812, p. 4</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: <em>Bells New Weekly Messenger</em>, 22 May 1853, p. 5: <em>Morning Post</em>, 29 Dec 1856, p. 7: <em>ELA</em>, 26 Oct 1861, p.3: THLHLA, P/RIV/1/15/20: Census</p>\n\n<p>[^10]: <em>Morning Advertiser</em>, 1 Nov 1866, p. 8</p>\n\n<p>[^11]: NCA, Co-operative Wholesale Society Minutes, 23 July 1886: THLHLA, WBW/11/8</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2020-05-07",
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"id": 1062,
"title": "Goodman’s Fields East: early development",
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"body": "<p>Sir William Leman launched the development of Goodman’s Fields as a whole around 1678 and had laid out a large quadrangle of roads by 1682 when he let several large holdings to John Hooper on 62½-year building leases. Hooper, probably originally from Devon, was a timber merchant and a citizen draper who became a major undertaker in the development of the Leman estate. The streets laid out by 1683 east of Leman Street included Hooper’s Square to the south, with Rupert Street and Lambert (later Lambeth) Street radiating north from it to meet Alie Street, the former northern edge of Goodman’s Fields. That Hooper laid out Hooper’s Square and Lambert Street may be inferred from the street names, Lambert being his well-connected wife Margaret’s surname before their marriage in 1679.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>Hooper developed directly himself on his Leman leases, and also by granting shorter, fifty- and fifty-one-year building leases to other undertakers, in some or all of which he was financially involved. Among these collaborating speculators, all liverymen, were Thomas Slocock (d. 1691), a carpenter and Clothworker, Gawen Birkhead (1641–1705), a bricklayer Goldsmith, Thomas Baynard, a Tallow Chandler, Robert Hart, a Plasterer, Robert Massey, a Joiner, Sently Whitehead (d. 1696), a Blacksmith, Francis Handley, a Plasterer, James Friend, and John Bankes, who was employed directly by Hooper on Leman Street may have had a similar role elsewhere in this area.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>Leman’s leases to Hooper in August 1682 included the whole east side of Leman Street between Alie Street and Hooper’s Square (now Hooper Street), a plot of unspecified width facing Alie Street, probably the whole frontage between Rupert Street and Lambeth Street, with a 503ft depth behind. Other smaller holdings in Lambeth Street and Rupert Street may have been parts of these larger parcels.[^3] Hooper evidently also held land in Hooper’s Square, that included the ‘Bare tavern’, later the Brown Bear, and a bowling green (which may have been part of John Nicoll’s property east of a ropewalk parallel with the east side of Lambert Street. It seems likely that the whole of the Leman estate between Leman Street and Lambert Street south to Hooper’s Square was held by Hooper by the time of his early death in May 1685. At that point a number of houses were still building, including six adjoining the Bear in Hooper’s Square. </p>\n\n<p>Hooper had been living in some style, probably in one of his own three-storey houses, an abode that included a ‘gilt room’ and a set of tapestries in his mother-in-law’s room. But he was in debt for several thousand pounds, mostly to his wife’s prosperous mercantile relatives – her uncle Samuel Foot (d. 1710), her great-uncle Robert Foot (d. 1714), and her uncles by marriage, Sir Michael Heneage (1632–1711), of Gray’s Inn, and later Usher of the Exchequer Court, and Thomas Juxon (1636–1705), Lord of the Manor of East Sheen. Hooper also had financial dealings with Sir Anthony Deane (1633–1721), a shipbuilder and protégé of Samuel Pepys. One of Hooper’s debts, for a defaulted mortgage of £600 to Sir Stephen Evance, saw Hooper’s widow Margaret assign his Leman leases of 1682, including forty-five houses in Leman Street, Alie Street, Lambert Street and Rupert Street, to Evance in 1686.[^4] </p>\n\n<p>Substantial parts of this land evidently remained undeveloped into the eighteenth century. In 1693 Evance was taxed for open land, the largest piece of which had a 286ft frontage at the centre of the east side of Leman Street. This was offered in 1712 as a possible site for a new church to the Commissioners for Building Fifty New Churches.[^5] </p>\n\n<p>Even so, Evance seems to have actively involved himself in developing the Leman lands whose leases he had held from Hooper since 1686. These included frontages in Alie Street (120ft on the south side between Rupert Street and Lambeth Street), Lambert Street (60ft on the west side), and Rupert Street (four houses on 86ft of frontage, some of which probably formed a block with the land on the west side of Lambert Street). In 1699 Evance took a lease from the New River Company ‘of piped water for use in Lambert Street’, and another for Rupert Street in 1701, suggestive of further development.[^6] The Alie Street holding likely conforms with eight houses on the south side of Alie Street, later Nos 72–86. Though comparatively narrow with three windows squeezed into 15ft fronts, these were substantial houses, of three storeys and attics over area-lit basements, their doors with projecting hoods on carved brackets. Sir Caesar Child, Evance’s legatee in 1712, extended the lease of 1682 in 1722 after he resolved his inheritance. That might indicate the build date. Child’s son-in-law, Jonathan Collet, renewed leases in 1744 and the row formed part of property acquired by Edward Hawkins in 1779 from John Newnham’s trustees.[^7] </p>\n\n<p>From an early date, this area looked to the south, to Wapping and the river for its economic and demographic links. There was a notable presence of mariners of all classes, the title ‘Capt.’ featuring widely. Capt. John Hubbard, from 1690 the master of successively larger frigates, was resident in Lambert Street in 1701. The terrace at 72–86 Alie Street was particularly popular with naval men. Capt. Colebatch was in the westernmost house by 1733, succeeded from 1756 by Capt. Charles Robinson (d. 1781). Capt. Purser Dowers (1706–77), a shipwright’s son from a family of Dutch origin, lived in some style in one of the more easterly houses from 1756, with his ‘housekeeper’ Elizabeth Curtis to whom he left a substantial legacy and the well-appointed contents of the house, including silver, porcelain and two four-poster beds.[^8] </p>\n\n<p>St Paul’s Reformed Church, London’s third oldest German Protestant congregation, founded in 1697, moved to Hooper’s Square in the early nineteenth century. The Calvinist church had begun at the Savoy Palace and moved to Duchy Lane, close by, in 1771. That church had to be abandoned to make way for Waterloo Bridge. The church council favoured a move to Whitechapel to be amid the area’s <em>Deutsche Kolonie</em> and a church was built on the east side of Hooper Square in 1818–19. Small schools were added to the rear, for boys in 1834 and girls in 1852, both rebuilt in the 1870s.[^9] The congregation was once more uprooted in 1884, to make way for the church-like pumping station to the Commercial Road goods depot that survives on the south side of Hooper Street. It moved to Goulston Street.</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: The National Archives (TNA), C11/49/29; C 5/79/43; PROB11/380/99: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: TNA, C8/510/53; C11/49/29; PROB11/431/418: Ancestry</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: TNA, C11/49/29</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: Ancestry: TNA, PROB11/520/131; PROB11/540/294; C5/49/29: W. R. Powell (ed.), <em>A History of the County of Essex</em>, vol. 4,<em> Ongar Hundred</em>, 1956, pp. 198–200: A. P. M. Wright (ed.), <em>A History of the County of Cambridge and the Isle of Ely</em>, vol. 6, 1978, pp. 192–4: <em>Calendars of Treasury Books, 1704–11</em>, <em>passim</em>: <em>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography sub</em> Deane: www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1660-1690/member/deane-sir-anthony-1633-1721</p>\n\n<p>[^5]: Church of England Recrod Centre, MS2750 f. 65</p>\n\n<p>[^6]: Four Shillings in the Pound Assessments, 1693–4: TNA, C111/192; C111/183</p>\n\n<p>[^7]: East Sussex Record Office, SAS/AB/1098: TNA, C11/49/29; IR58/84831/4845–52</p>\n\n<p>[^8]: TNA, ADM106/420/113; ADM106/469/148; ADM106/450/296; ADM106/546/19: Ancestry: Brian Lavery, <em>The Ship of the Line</em>, vol. 1:<em> The Development of the Battlefleet 1650–1850</em>, 2003, pp. 160–3: Angus Konstam, <em>Naval Miscellany</em>, 2013, p. 95</p>\n\n<p>[^9]: London Metropolitan Archives, ACC/1767/001</p>\n",
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"title": "12-20 Osborn St 1795-1877",
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"body": "<p>'A two-house sugar refinery and warehouses, Whitechapel ... extensive freehold and leasehold premises ... situate in Osborn St, having a frontage of 135 ft and area of 11,723 sq ft, and comprising: a most substantially erected freehold warehouse of 4 floors with wrought iron girders and supported on cast iron columns, the walls of sufficient thickness to carry 3 additional floors if required; a lofty brick built warehouse with 2 stages, steam boiler house in basement, a handsome octagonal chimney shaft 150 ft high, paved gateway entrance; and a leasehold former sugar house of nine floors, steam engine house, dwelling houses, stores, offices, and yard.'[^1]</p>\n\n<p>These details show the buildings soon after the premises at 2 Osborn St had ceased production in 1875. The development of the site for sugar refining began in late 1795 when Robert Dewes and George Ansell acquired the lease to 4 Whitechapel Rd. Early in 1796 they leased the land behind it that opened onto Osborn St to the west and abutted south on other ground of Daniel Peacock and Isaac Smith, east on Nags Head Inn, and north on the court house of the Court of Requests. In 1806 they took additional partners, and the site was referred to as 'messuage, sugar houses and ground on east side of Osborn St'. The partnership was dissolved in 1821 with the business continued by the Dewes family until Robert Dewes's death in 1832, when George Bankes took over the premises. Charles R. Dames and John F. Bowman leased the refinery from the Bankes family after George's death in 1843. Richard Dames replaced Bowman in 1855. Dames senior died in 1861 and Richard continued the business until, like other refineries, it ceased to make money. It was put up for sale in 1875 and Dames finally surrendered the lease back to the Bankes family in 1877.[^2]</p>\n\n<p>[^1]: <em>The Times</em>, 8 Nov 1873, The Times, 10 Nov 1875</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: LMA Bankes Family Archive O/038/005-019; 'Sugar Refiners & Sugarbakers', www.mawer.clara.net</p>\n",
"created": "2016-11-30",
"last_edited": "2021-04-01"
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{
"id": 1071,
"title": "Leman Street Station",
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"body": "<p>Until the 1870s there was no station on the London and Blackwall line in Whitechapel; the first passenger station after Fenchurch Street was Shadwell. The Great Eastern Railway Company first mooted a station at Leman Street in 1871 and works began in 1872 under George Berkley, the Great Eastern’s engineer. Patrick & Son were the contractors. The station was sited east of the branch line to the East Smithfield depot, with its entrance south of the main line at the foot of Leman Street’s east side. However, access was poor, the footbridge stairs were too close to the platform edge and there was not enough clearance between platforms. To rectify this, the viaduct had to be extended outwards beyond its existing overhang to the south and across Leman Street for the up platform. This arrangement was agreed in January 1875 but the opposite platform also needed lengthening and it was not until June 1877 that the station finally opened. There was additional access to the platforms via Mill Yard. The booking hall and parcels office were on the south side near the junction of Cable Street and Leman Street.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>When the viaduct was widened in 1892–3, the station was rebuilt in red brick, with additional access created beneath new arches to the north. From this time non-stopping trains ran on the new north side of the viaduct, and local services on the south side. Henceforward Leman Street Station only had a platform on that side.[^2] </p>\n\n<p>London experienced its first Zeppelin raids in 1915 when bombs were dropped on a swathe of East London including Whitechapel. The track north of Royal Mint Street was damaged, and on 13 October, a high-explosive bomb hit the north side of the railway in Mill Yard, knocking down a wall within the station and breaking its windows. The station closed hereafter until July 1919. It was again damaged in the Blitz and closed permanently on 7 July 1941.[^3] Much of the station was demolished during electrification in 1959–61. After road widening in the 1960s, remnants of the former station entrance lingered at the junction with Cable Street. The last station structures including the booking hall were demolished in the 1980s for the building of the Docklands Light Railway. A bricked-up entrance can still be seen on the east side of Leman Street in the brick abutment beneath the line of 1892–3.[^4] </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: The National Archives (TNA), MT6/180/16: Metropolitan Board of Works Minutes, 1 and 29 Nov 1872, pp. 489, 610: Parliamentary Archives, HL/PO/PB/3/plan1874/L10; HL/PO/PB/3/plan1876/L13: J. E. Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway: A History of the London and Blackwall System</em>, 1984, p. 100: J. E. Connor, ‘Recalling Leman Street’, <em>London Railway Record</em>, April 1998, pp. 45–53</p>\n\n<p>[^2]: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, pp. 68–9</p>\n\n<p>[^3]: Jerry White, <em>Zeppelin Nights: London in the First World War</em>, 2014, pp. 125–6: Ian Jones, <em>London: Bombed Blitzed and Blown Up: The British Capital Under Attack Since 1867</em>, 2016, p. 81: Ian Castle, <em>Zeppelin Onslaught: The Forgotten Blitz 1914–1915</em>, 1918: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, pp. 73–4, 87: Geoffrey Body and Robert L. Eastleigh, <em>The London & Blackwall Railway</em>, <em>c</em>.1964, p. 27</p>\n\n<p>[^4]: TNA, MT114/533: J. E. Connor, <em>London’s Disused Railway Stations: the East End</em>, 2018, p. 55: Connor, <em>Stepney’s Own Railway</em>, pp. 91, 100</p>\n",
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"body": "<p>When the Docklands Light Railway opened in 1987, it reused much of the London and Blackwall Railway line between Westferry Road to the east and Cannon Street Road, from where it branched off to run parallel to the south through Whitechapel to the Minories. The initiative for the light railway grew out of ideas of the 1960s and ’70s for improving connections to and boosting redevelopment in London’s Docklands. The London Docklands Development Corporation, formed in 1981 to secure regeneration, co-sponsored a report of 1982 with the Greater London Council, London Transport, and the Departments of Transport, the Environment and Industry. This recommended two light-railway routes, Ted Hollamby, the LDDC’s director of Architecture and Planning being a strong advocate. Government funding was quickly forthcoming and Parliamentary approval followed in April 1984. London Transport took responsibility for planning, construction and the running of the railway. The main route was settled as running east–west, largely on the London and Blackwall line, to connect the Isle of Dogs to Tower Hill, in fact stopping on the east side of Minories at a terminus named Tower Gateway. </p>\n\n<p>Designs for stations and other structures, trains and signs were prepared by Arup Associates in conjunction with G. Maunsell & Partners, the engineering firm known for the use of prestressed concrete in bridges, Kennedy & Donkin and Henderson Busby, railway and electrical engineers, Design House and Pentagram, design consultants. Building and equipment was by a consortium formed by GEC and John Mowlem. A new concrete viaduct on tall white columns was built for the westerly stretch, running through Whitechapel on the north side of Cable Street and Royal Mint Street. Queen Elizabeth II officially opened the Docklands Light Railway on 30 July 1987 and regular services with automatically driven trains on standard-gauge track started a month later. The line was extended westwards into the City to Bank Station in 1991. This involved a southwards doubling of the viaduct in the Whitechapel part of the line, the new railway going into tunnel just within the parish on the site of the former Midland Railway City Goods Station, since built over for Royal Mint Gardens.[^1]</p>\n\n<p>In 1997–9 One Mile East, a public art trail from Mansell Street to Cable Street funded by numerous public bodies and development firms, included the brightly coloured painting of the DLR’s columns around Leman Street. This was done by artists, led by Zoe Benbow, and local residents, including some from the Aldgate Hostel (now Wombat’s) for homeless people. Ceramic signage was made by Duncan Hooson. </p>\n\n<p>[^1]: Stephen Porter (ed.), <em>Survey of London</em>, vol.44: <em>Poplar, Blackwall and the Isle of Dogs</em>, 1994, pp. 689–90</p>\n",
"created": "2020-05-11",
"last_edited": "2021-08-20"
},
{
"id": 136,
"title": "Hajja Mariam Ali",
"author": {
"id": 15,
"username": "jamil"
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"b_name": "East London Mosque",
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"body": "<p><img alt=\"\" src=\"/media/uploads/features/954/MrsTaslimAlli.jpg\"></p>\n\n<p>Hajja Mariam Ali (née Josephine Mary Morgan) was the wife of Haji Taslim Ali (see above), welfare officer at the East London Mosque and undertaker. Mariam met her husband while both were working in a car assembly factory in Coventry, probably soon after the Second World War (their eldest son, Gulam, was born in 1948). They moved to London in the mid-1950s, first setting up a restaurant on Old Montague Street. They gave this up when Taslim Ali began his long association with the East London Mosque around 1956. Mariam was responsible for the women’s funeral arrangements.</p>\n\n<p>By all accounts, Mariam was a formidable personality, running a one-person welfare service from East London Mosque, for example offering comfort to homeless merchant seamen: “I keep them with me sometimes a week or so. I try to give them a homely atmosphere. I tell them, ‘There’s a tin of biscuits and some tea,’ so they can make a cup of tea when I don’t feel like it, which isn’t very often.”</p>\n\n<p>She cared for the poor, perhaps because she had known poverty herself growing up in South Wales: “I remember being without shoes on my feet. I remember my mother and father crying because we had no food in the house. I remember my father walking from Wales to London in 1926 to sing in the streets for pennies.”</p>\n\n<p> </p>\n",
"created": "2016-09-14",
"last_edited": "2020-05-11"
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