Bethnal Green
Bethnal Green is an area in London, England, and is located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is in east London and part of the East End. The area emerged from the small settlement which developed around the Green, much of which survives today as Bethnal Green Gardens, beside Cambridge Heath Road. By the 16th century the term applied to a wider rural area, the Hamlet of Bethnal Green, which subsequently became a Parish, then a Metropolitan Borough before merging with neighbouring areas to become the north-western part of the new Tower Hamlets.
Economic focus shifted from mainstream farming produce for the City of London - through highly perishable goods production, weaving, dock and building work and light industry - to a high proportion of commuters to city businesses, public sector/care sector roles, construction, courier businesses and home-working digital and creative industries. Identifiable slums in the maps of Booth in Life and Labour of the People in London were in large part cleared before the aerial bombardment of the Second World War which accelerated clearance of many tightly packed terraces of small houses to be replaced with green spaces and higher-rise social housing.
Toponymy
The topographer Daniel Lysons suggested in the late 18th century that Bethnal was a corruption of Bathon Hall which would have been the residence of a notable Bathon family who owned large parts of Stepney, the parish of which Bethnal Green was part. "Green" related to one which lay "about half a mile beyond the suburbs".More recently it has been suggested that the name could be a derivation of the Anglo-Saxon Blithehale or Blythenhale from the 13th century. healh would have meant "angle, nook, or corner" and blithe would have been the word for "happy, blithe", or come from a personal name Blitha. In either case, the Dictionary of London Place Names supports a contraction involving hall or healh, noting h-dropping in local dialects, to Bethnal Green.
History
Origins and administration
The term Bethnal Green originally referred to a small common in the Manor and Ancient Parish of Stepney; around which a small settlement developed. By the seventeenth century the area had become a hamlet, a territorial sub-division of Stepney, with a degree of independence. Continued housebuilding and population growth in the 18th century led to the hamlet area becoming a fully independent daughter parish in 1743. The parish had a church, a benefice and vestry in 1743.In 1855 Bethnal Green was included within the area of the Metropolitan Board of Works to which it nominated one member and the various local government bodies were replaced by a single incorporated vestry which consisted of 48 elected vestrymen.
Under the Metropolis Management Act 1855, any parish that exceeded 2,000 ratepayers was to be divided into wards; as such the incorporated vestry of St Matthew Bethnal Green was divided into four wards : No. 1 or East, No. 2 or North, No. 3 or West and No. 4 or South.
The parish became a Metropolitan Borough in 1900, which merged with some of the neighbouring areas, to become the new London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in 1965.
The area was part of the historic county of Middlesex, but military and most civil county functions were managed more locally, by the Tower Division.
The role of the Tower Division ended when Bethnal Green became part of the new County of London in 1889. The County of London was replaced by Greater London in 1965.
Early history
In what would become northern Bethnal Green a tract of common land, which stretched to the east and west, a part of the Manor and Ancient Parish of Stepney. The heath was used as pasture where people grazed their sheep in the 13th century, though 1275 records suggest at least one house stood there. Stepney's Manor House was located in Bethnal Green from at least 1207, on a site subsequently occupied by the London Chest Hospital.Emblems
Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green
The area was once best known for the popular early modern ballad, The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green, which tells the story of a beautiful young woman named Bess, the daughter of a blind beggar. The earliest known explicit mention of the ballad is from 1624, but it was clearly well established by that date, as two other ballads of similar date were said to have been sung to the tune of the Blind Beggar. A play on the same theme, almost certainly based on an existing ballad, is known to have been performed in 1600.According to one version of the legend, found in Thomas Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry published in 1765, the beggar was said to be Henry, the son of Simon de Montfort, but Percy himself declared that this version was not genuine. A version published in 1934, closely based on Percy's but with some amendments to include much older material, contains 67 verses. The ballad recounts how Bess leaves Bethnal Green to seek her fortune, and stays a short time at the Queen's Arms inn at Romford. There, her beauty quickly attracts four suitors, three of whom lose interest when she declares her background, while the fourth, a knight is unconcerned by her father's status. The couple marry, and despite his seeming poverty, the beggar gives a huge dowry to the knight, to the bitter dismay of the other three suitors. The Blind Beggar public house, just on the Bethnal Green side of the historic boundary with Whitechapel, is reputed to be the site of his begging.
A depiction of the beggar is known to have been used on the head of the local beadle's staff in 1690. Later, the beggar and his daughter were the basis of the common seal of the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green. The legend also inspired Elisabeth Frink's sculpture Blind Beggar and his Dog on the Cranbrook Estate in Bethnal Green.
Mulberry
Bethnal Green is famous for its mulberry trees, most notably the Bethnal Green mulberry at the site of the former London Chest Hospital, which is reputed to be the oldest tree in the East End. Many of these mulberry trees may be a legacy of unsuccessful 16th and 17th century attempts to boost the weaving industries that Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, Spitalfields and other East End districts relied upon so heavily.Mulberries were used as the local emblem when it was a partly self-governing neighbourhood of Tower Hamlets from 1986 to 1992, and the symbol can still be seen on many local street signs. The mulberry is also used as a symbol of the East End more generally, and is featured on the coat of arms of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
Growth
The Green and Poor's Land is the area of open land now occupied by Bethnal Green Library, the Young V&A and St John's Church, designed by John Soane.In John Stow's Survey of London the hamlet was called Blethenal 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 it was to be kept open and rent from it used for the benefit of poor people living in the vicinity. From that date, the trust has administered the land and its minute books are kept in the London Metropolitan Archives.
Bethnal House, or Kirby's Castle, was the principal house on the Green. One of its owners was Sir Hugh Platt, author of books on gardening and practical science. Under its next owner it was visited by Samuel Pepys. In 1727 it was leased to Matthew Wright and for almost two centuries it was an asylum. Its two most distinguished inmates were Alexander Cruden, compiler of the Concordance to the Bible, and the poet Christopher Smart. Cruden recorded his experience in The London Citizen Grievously Injured 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. Even today, the park where the library stands is known locally as "Barmy Park".
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, written by A.J. Robinson and D.H.B. Chesshyre.
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 western side of Bethnal Green for 30 years. Joe Anderson, 'All England' champion of 1897, was from Bethnal 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 Harlow, whose rector was the Reverend 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.
The silk-weaving trade spread eastwards from Spitalfields throughout the 18th century. This attracted many Huguenot and Irish weavers. Large estates of small two-storey cottages were developed in the west of the area to house them. A downturn in the trade in 1769 led to the Spitalfield Riots, and on 6 December 1769, two weavers accused of "cutting" were hanged in front of the Salmon and Ball public house. The weaving industry is now commemorated in the name of the Weaver Line railway which serves the area.
Bethnal Green Road Market on the road of the same name, founded in the 18th century, grew and grew and became more full with stalls. By 1959 stalls were choking the streets and the council attempted to relocate the market but had no success. In 1986 there had been many shop closures but the stalls were still trading. The street market is now today recognised as a major local shopping area.