Historical events and places in London’s East End.
Visit the Top 5 Museums in London
London is one of the most famous cities in the world, and it boasts an impressive range of excellent museums. If you are planning a trip to London in the near future, try to visit one of the five best museums in the city, all of which are free to enter.
1. The Natural History Museum
This impressive museum in South Kensington is the place to go to find out all about the natural world.
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A tale of a pleasure trip on the River Thames from London Bridge that turned into a terrible tragedy that shocked the nation. The text is taken from a book passed down to me by my grandfather called: Fifty Great Disasters & Tragedies That Shocked The World. Published in the opening years of the 1930s and a book I read many times as a young child. Fascinated by the stories.
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My grandfather (left back row) worked for MacDonald Syers for many years. They were a lift engineering and electrical business based in Calvin Street, Shoreditch East London.
Here they all are very smartly dressed on a works outing to the seaside. Margate in Kent in June 1949.
Photo taken by Sunbeam Photo Ltd,
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Here are a couple of images from the house I grew up in. Most of Ilford in Essex was built up around the late 1800s, during the Victorian style of architecture.
I can remember I used to talk to my friend who lived next door through our bedroom walls.
Long before soundproofing and cavity insulation was thought of. Also every house had a lovely tiled front path,
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My grandfather worked for a company based in Calvin Street, Shoreditch, East London. He spent most of his working life as a lift engineer / electrician in London.
Pre and post WW2. Here he is in action, working on machinery that must now be very very old!
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I’ve just started to go through my old photo albums and scan in some of the more interesting London images.
What I Know About This Photo.
The chap standing on the left is my grandfather’s step-father. He was one of the founders of the Met Police’s flying squad. A highly trained fast response police driver. I can assume that they have attended a burglary or attempted burglary at A.
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If you walk past the BSix Sixth Form College building in Hackney’s Clapton area, you may not notice anything too unusual about the site. But, this was once the site of one of the most impressive Tudor homes in the East End and, at one point in time, it was one of the royal palaces of Henry VIII.
The original building that came to be known as King’s Place and latterly Brooke House,
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The East End of London offers some interesting options for local cuisine not found anywhere else in the capital, or in the rest of the UK for that matter. You may have to dig around a little to find some of these once-common traditional delicacies, but, if you want to experience real East End life, this is certainly worth doing!
London’s East End Food
The area is also renowned for other cuisines introduced by immigrants over the years.
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The East End of London has been home to many major breweries over the years and even to a couple of distinctive types of beers. In the 19th century, the Mann, Crosman and Paulin’s brewery in Whitechapel created a beer that is held to be the daddy of the modern brown ales that are still drunk today.
In Bow, a brewer called George Hodgson and his son created India Pale Ale at the Bow Brewery,
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When we think about war damage in London, we tend to think about the Second World War. After all, the Blitz in 1940 caused significant damage all over the East End. Many civilians lost their lives, their homes and their places of work in the East End.
This area was a natural target for bombing raids, as it was so close to the docklands areas that were vital to the war effort.
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In the 1930s, one narrow East End street, Cable Street, became the location for one of the most famous anti-fascist clashes in England’s history. On the day, local residents fought against the fascist and anti-Semitic principles of Sir Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirt followers.
The Battle of Cable Street has become a celebrated anti-fascist event.
Oswald Mosley and the East End
Oswald Mosley was a politician who switched across the Conservative and Labour parties before setting up the British Union of Fascists in 1932.
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One of the worst incidents to involve civilians during a Second World War bombing raid took place in South Hallsville School in Agate Street in Canning Town in 1940.
For years, people believed that the highest number of civilian casualties in an air raid had happened in another area of the East End, when an accident at Bethnal Green tube station killed 173 people in 1943. The official casualty rates for the South Hallsville School bomb were 77,
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Now located in the East End’s financial capital, Canary Wharf, Billingsgate is one of the capitals’ best known fresh produce markets and its oldest wholesale market. Held to be the leading inland fish market in the country, Billingsgate has a long history, dating back to the 1400s, if not further.
Billingsgate’s Early History
Historically, people couldn’t set up a market without a royal charter.
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Like all of London, the East End is rich in history. Despite modernisation and rebuilding initiatives over the years, you can still find older hidden gems in the area. This isn’t just about historic buildings, streets and scary small alleyways where Jack the Ripper probably walked.
Odd East End Street Names
The East End also still retains some curious old street names with interesting stories behind them that teach us something about the area.
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The Whitechapel Bell Foundry is one of the most famous manufacturers of bells in the world. The foundry was located in the heart of the East End, the foundry is also the oldest manufacturing company in Britain, according to the Guinness Book of Records. It has made some of the best known bells in the world, including Big Ben and the Liberty Bell.
Whitechapel Bell Foundry, The Oldest Manufacturing Company in Britain.
The foundry was first formally established in 1570,
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During the Second World War, the Germans started a range of strategic bombing missions across Britain. The worst of the bombing raids came to be known as the Blitz. This is an abbreviation of the German word “blitzkrieg”, or lightning strike.
Starting in 1940, the Blitz devastated many major cities in the country – London came under particular pressure and, at height of the Blitz,
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In the early years of the Second World War, bombing raids tended to use traditional bombs and incendiary devices. These were used to great effect in sustained attacks during the Blitz, for example. However, later in the war, the Germans developed new technologies and created the V1 and V2 rockets or flying bombs.
These were long-range artillery weapons that could be launched on Britain from Germany.
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The BBC’s Call the Midwife is one of the channel’s most popular shows. Set in the East End of London in the 1950s, this is a heart-warming programme that also gives us an insight into just what life was like in the East End during this period. Covering the work done by the nuns and midwives based at a convent, Nonnatus House, in Poplar, the show takes us back to an East End that was soon to change.
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Housing has been a historical problem in London’s East End. This was once always a heavily populated area, with workers living there to be close to their jobs on the docks and on industrial sites. There was often a lack of decent housing, which together with the relative poverty of the area, resulted in many people living in sub-standard and squalid conditions.
The East End Dwellings Company History
During the Victorian age,
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One of worst disasters of the First World War in the country happened at Silvertown in West Ham in the East End of London. This was not down to bombing raids or action by the Germans, but was as the result of a simple accident.
The Silvertown Explosion at West Ham.
This happened in 1917 when TNT in a munitions factory owned by Brunner-Mond caught fire and exploded.
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The Thames Tunnel, built between 1825 and 1843 was the first underwater tunnel in the world. It spans the Thames between Rotherhithe and Wapping in the East End of London and introduced the UK to the Brunel family.
The Thames Tunnel – Connecting Wapping and Rotherhithe.
The tunnel was conceived by Marc Isambard Brunel, father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel,
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The Ragged School Museum is located in Mile End, close to Mile End Park. The building was originally the largest of London’s free schools for poor children, known as the Copperfield Road Free School. It is a museum that is a great visit with kids (you can show them how lucky they really are!) but is also fascinating for adults as it really brings social history and the conditions of the East End’s poor families to life.
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Over the centuries, the East End has always been a bit of a crime hot spot. Its position on the outskirts of the city, its often overcrowded population and its poor and relatively deprived conditions compared to the rest of London often made this one of the least safe areas to visit and live in the capital.
East End Gangsters
In crime terms,
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The East End of London has seen more changes than most other areas in the city in recent years. Following severe damage during the Second World War, much of the area was rebuilt.
Despite this fact, the area did not ever really regain its former status as a hub of docklands industry.
The Olympics and the Regeneration of the East End
Recently,
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Local Eastenders will tell you that there were a lot of changes to the area after the Second World War and some parts were probably unrecognisable from the way they looked in pre-war years.
The East End in the Second World War
The area was heavily targeted and bombed by the Germans, and much of the regeneration in the East End came about in the late 1940s and 1950s to repair war damage and rebuild local infrastructures that had disappeared.
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The Port of London used to be the biggest port in the world; it is still the second largest in the country. The location of the Thames and the river’s sea access has played a major part in the general history of London, making it a significant trading site for centuries. Sea access also brought some negatives to the city, however, as it attracted smugglers, pirates and mutineers.
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Although some foreigners and people living in other places in the UK, assume that all Londoners are cockneys, this isn’t technically 100% true.
The East London Cockney.
You can technically only be a Cockney if you were born in the East End of the city. To be really specific, you must have been born within the sound of Bow bells. These are the bells of St Mary-le-Bow church in Cheapside.
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Bethnal Green tube station is located in the heart of London’s East End. It is the site of one of the worst disasters in the country during the Second World War, even though it wasn’t in use as a station and didn’t take a direct hit in bombing raids.
The Bethnal Green Tube Disaster of 1943
On March 3rd 1943,
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