Information about Bethnal Green

Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green (Greater London)
OS grid reference	TQ345825
London borough	Tower Hamlets
Ceremonial county	Greater London
Region	London
Constituent country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	LONDON
Postcode district	E2
Dialling code	020
Police	Metropolitan
Fire	London
Ambulance	London
UK Parliament	Bethnal Green and Bow
London Assembly	City and East
European Parliament	London
List of places: UK • England UK • London

Coordinates: Bethnal Green is an area in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London. Bethnal Green is located 3.3 miles (5.3 km) north east of Charing Cross.

Boundaries

Bethnal Green forms a part of Tower Hamlets, centred around the Central Line tube station at the junction of Bethnal Green Road, Roman Road and Cambridge Heath Road. The district was originally a part of the Parish of Stepney, but formed a separate parish in the 19th century, as the population increased. This parish bordered the London Borough of Hackney in the north and west (at Shoreditch), and Mile End in the east. To the south is Whitechapel.

The district is associated with the E2 postal district, but this also covers parts of Shoreditch, Haggerston and Cambridge Heath.

The areas name is believed to have come from an earlier Bethan Hall Green which because of local pronunciation as Beth'n 'all Green and the resulting confusion was changed to "Bethnal Green" by the 19th Century. Between 1986 and 1992, the name Bethnal Green was applied to one of seven neighbourhoods, to whom power was devolved from the council. This resulted in replacement of much of the street signage in the area, that remains in place.^[1] This included parts of both Cambridge Heath and Whitechapel - north of the Whitechapel Road - being more associated with the post code and administrative simplicity, than the historic districts.

History

Early history

A Tudor ballad about the 'Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green' tells the story of an ostensibly poor man who gave a surprisingly generous dowry for his daughter's wedding. The tale furnishes the parish of Bethnal Green's coat of arms. According to one version of the legend,found in Percy's Reliques of ancient English poetry, the beggar was the son of Simon de Montfort, but Percy himself declared that this version was not genuine..

Boxing has a long association with Bethnal Green. Daniel Mendoza, who was champion of England from 1792 to 1795, though born in Aldgate, lived in Paradise Row, on the West side of Bethnal Green, for 30 years. Since then numerous boxers have been associated with the area, and the local leisure centre, York Hall, remains notable for presentation of boxing bouts.

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

Modern history

In the nineteenth century, Bethnal Green was characterised by its market gardens and by the silk-weaving trade. Having been an area of large houses and gardens as late as the eighteenth century, by about 1860 Bethnal Green was mainly full of tumbledown old buildings, with many families living in each house. By the end of the nineteenth century, Bethnal Green was one of the poorest slums in London. Jack the Ripper operated at the western end of Bethnal Green and in neighbouring Whitechapel.

By 1900, the Old Nichol Street Rookery was demolished, and the Boundary Estate opened on the site, near the boundary with Shoreditch. This was the world's first council housing, and brothers Lew Grade and Bernard Delfont were brought up here^[2].

On March 3, 1943 at 8:27PM the unopened Bethnal Green tube station was the site of a wartime disaster. Families had crowded into the underground station due to an air raid siren at 8:17, one of 10 that day. There was a panic at 8:27 coinciding with the sound of an anti-aircraft battery (possibly the recently installed Z battery) being fired at nearby Victoria Park. In the wet, dark conditions, a woman slipped on the entrance stairs and 173 people died in the resulting crush. Although a report was filed by Eric Linden with the Daily Mail, who witnessed it, it never ran. The story which was reported instead was that there had been a direct hit by a German bomb. The results of the official investigation were not released until 1946.^[3] There is now a plaque at the entrance to the tube station, which commemorates it as the worst civilian disaster of World War II. It is estimated that during WWII, 80 tons of bombs fell on the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green, affecting 21,700 houses, destroying 2,233 and making a further 893 uninhabitable. There were a total of 555 people killed and 400 seriously injured.^[4]

During the 1960s, the infamous gangsters the Kray twins lived in Bethnal Green, but by the beginning of the twenty-first century, Bethnal Green, in common with much of the old East End, began to undergo a process of gentrification.

The former Bethnal Green Infirmary, later the London County Council Bethnal Green Hospital, stood opposite Cambridge Heath railway station. The hospital closed as a public hospital in the 1960s and was a geriatric hospital under the NHS until the 1980s. Much of the site was developed for housing in the 1990s but the hospital entrance and administration block remains as a listed building. Marcus Garvey was at one time buried here, before his body was returned to Jamaica.

Places of interest

• Museum of Childhood, part of the Victoria and Albert Museum
• Centre for Recent Drawing
• London Buddhist Centre

Trivia

• Most of the sketches of Andy & Lou in Little Britain are filmed in Bethnal Green. The shop where they buy the snake is actually Magri's pets, a shop at 205 Roman Road owned by former boxing champion and East End boy Charlie Magri.
• Bethnal Green is notable for the staple cheap London meal, pie and mash with jellied eels^[5]. Kelly's is one such place, with two outlets in Bethnal Green.
• A notable and popular local market is the Columbia Road Flower Market.^[5]
• The seventh model for Lara Croft - Karima Adebibe comes from and lives in Bethnal Green with her family.^[6]
• In the fictitious videogame The Getaway, Bethnal Green is presented as the hub of cockney gangster activity.
• The 1947 Ealing Studios film It Always Rains on Sunday was set in Bethnal Green, with extensive filming in the local area. It provides an excellent insight on post war East London, showing bomb sites and slums before most were swept away during the redevelopment in the 1960s and later.^[7]
• The area is mentioned in one of the Harry Potter books.
• Bethnal Green is the location of the BBC house for the contestants in the programmes Any Dream Will Do (TV series) and How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?

The Green and Poor's Land

The Green and Poor's Land is the area of open land now occupied by Bethnal Green Library, The Museum and St. John's Church. In Stow's survey of London (1598) the hamlet was called "Blethenal Green, now called Bednal Green". It was one of the hamlets included in the Manor of Stepney and Hackney. Hackney later became separated.

In 1678 the owners of houses surrounding the Green purchased the land to save it from being built on and in 1690 the land was conveyed to a trust under which the land was to be kept open and rent from it used for the benefit of poor people living in the vicinity. From that date until now the trust has administered the land and its minute books are kept in the Greater London Record Office.

Bethnal House or Kirby's Castle was the principal house on the Green. One of its owners was Sir Hugh Platt (1552-1608), author of books on gardening and practical science. Under its next owner it was visited by Samuel Pepys. It became associated with the ballad of the Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green (see Thomas Percy).

In 1727 it was leased to Matthew Wright and for almost two centuries it was a mad house. Its two most distinguished inmates were Alexander Crudens, compiler of the Concordance to the Bible, and the poet Christopher Smart. Crudens recorded his experience in The London Citizen Grievously Injured(1739) and Smart's stay there is recorded by his daughter. Records of the asylum are kept in the annual reports of the Commissioner in Lunacy.

The original mansion, the White House, was supplemented by other buildings. In 1891 the Trust lost the use of Poor's Land to the London County Council. The asylum reorganised its buildings, demolishing the historic White House and erecting a new block in 1896. This building became the present Bethnal Green Library. A history of Poor's Land and Bethnal House is included in The Green (A.J. Robinson and D.H.B. Chesshyre).

Other Houses on the Green

The north end of the Green is associated with the Natt family. During the 18th century they owned many of its houses. Netteswell House is the residence of the curator of the Bethnal Green Museum. It is almost certainly named after the village of Netteswell, near Harwell, whose rector was the Rev. Anthony Natt. A few of its houses have become University Settlements. In Victoria Park Square, on the east side of the Green, No.18 has a Tudor well in its cellar. (Source, The Green, Land assessments records, Gascoyne's survey of 1703.)

On Monday 14th May 2007, builders digging on a housing plot discovered a World War II bomb, which was at first thought to be a boiler in Palmers Road, Bethnal Green. The 1 m long, 500 lb device has now been dismantled by bomb disposal experts. 50 local people had to be evacuated and Roman Road was closed to all traffic, causing problems with the shops, council offices and health services.^[8]

Education

For details of education in Bethnal Green see the List of schools in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets

Transport

Nearest places

• Liverpool Street
• Bow
• Haggerston
• Stepney
• Whitechapel
• Shoreditch
• Hoxton
• Spitalfields

Nearest tube stations

• Bethnal Green tube station
• Whitechapel tube station
• Stepney Green tube station

Nearest railway stations

• Bethnal Green railway station
• Cambridge Heath railway station

References

See also

• Bethnal Green and Bow (UK Parliament constituency)
• Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green

External links

• Tower Hamlets London Borough Council information about Bethnal Green

•  • [ e] London Borough of Tower Hamlets

Districts: Bethnal Green • Blackwall • Bow • Bromley-by-Bow • Cambridge Heath • Cubitt Town • Globe Town • Isle of Dogs • Limehouse • Mile End • Millwall • Old Ford • Poplar • Ratcliff • Shadwell • Spitalfields • Stepney • Wapping • Whitechapel Attractions Tower of London • St Katharine Docks • Christ Church, Spitalfields • Museum of Childhood • Museum in Docklands Parks and open spaces in Tower Hamlets Street markets Petticoat Lane • Brick Lane Market • Columbia Road market • Old Spitalfields market • Roman Road market Constituencies Bethnal Green & Bow • Poplar & Canning Town

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