Shadwell
Shadwell is an area in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in East London, England. It also forms part of the city's East End. Shadwell is on the north bank of the River Thames between Wapping and Ratcliff and Limehouse and is east of Charing Cross. This riverside location has meant the area's history and character have been shaped by the maritime trades.
Historically a hamlet of the Manor and Ancient Parish of Stepney, it became a parish in its own right in 1670. the area of the Hamlet and Parish included areas south of Cable Street including Shadwell Basin and the King Edward Memorial Park.
History
Etymology
In the 13th century, the area was a low lying marsh known as Scadflet, from the Anglo-Saxon fleot, meaning a shallow creek or bay. Because a spring by a church dedicated to St Chad filled a nearby well, a false etymology changed the name into Chadwelle. This changed further into Shadwell.Roman period
In 1975, archaeologists discovered evidence of a port complex between Ratcliff and Shadwell, that was used throughout Roman occupation of Britain, and being most active in the 3rd century AD. The port seems to have initially been used for seagoing ships into the City of London, which is believed to have stopped between 250 and 270AD. A water level drop meant that the port was used primarily for the public bath house near St George in the East, which existed from the first to fourth centuries.In 2019, remains of a Roman Bath House was located in Wapping Lane, on the northeast corner of Sovereign Close.
Archaeologists has also found evidence of a late third-century signal tower in Shadwell. A Roman cemetery containing two coffins was also discovered in Shadwell in around 1615.
Administrative history
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 Shadwell became part of the new County of London in 1889. The County of London was replaced by Greater London in 1965.
16th and 17th centuries
Shadwell's eastern waterfront had been drained in the Middle Ages whilst the western waterfront had been drained during the reign of King Henry VIII, by Cornelius Vanderdelf after an act of Parliament. This had been caused by an increase in London's maritime activities in the 16th century.The riverside areas of East London experienced rapid, low quality development, that reached Shadwell in the late 16th century. Writing in 1598, John Stow describes the poverty of the riverside development that took place then, with its:
John Stow also recalls elm trees being felled in order to make way for tenements. Away from the river the area remained largely undeveloped. In 1650, Shadwell had 703 buildings. Of the houses, 195 were single-storey houses, 473 were two-storey houses, and 33 were three-storey houses, although many were subdivided. The population of Shadwell in 1650 was around 3,500. In the 1660s, a hearth tax was introduced, although around 50% of residents in Shadwell were deemed too poor to pay the tax.
In 1669, Thomas Neale became a local landowner, buying some land reclaimed from the river, and gained Shadwell parish status. In addition, Neale built 289 homes, a mill, and a market, and also established a waterworks on large ponds left by the draining of the marsh. The area had been largely undeveloped and he developed the waterfront, with houses behind as a speculation, and in doing so provided fresh water for Shadwell and Wapping. Shadwell's maritime industries were further developed with roperies, tanneries, breweries, wharves, smiths, and numerous taverns, as well as the chapel of St Paul's. Seventy-five sea captains are buried in its churchyard; Captain James Cook had his son baptised there. Shadwell's new houses were built in an orderly fashion, so that the streets ran between Ratcliff Highway and Wapping Wall. In 1674, Shadwell had a population of around 8,000. The prosperity in this period has been linked to the road connections into London, which were maintained by wealthy taxpayers from Middlesex, Essex, Kent and Surrey.
18th and 19th centuries
A database of UK newspaper adverts, seeking the capture and return of enslaved runaways, known today as Freedom Seekers has identified sisters living and working in Shadwell in the mid-1700s.Jane Gray and her younger sister, Maria, were born in Antigua in 1739 and 1742. They were the enslaved domestic servants of Captain James Barrett and his family. In 1758, when they were 19 and 16 years old, parish records confirm that the Barrett family lived in Musick House Court, just opposite St Paul's Church, Shadwell.
It is not clear how they entered Captain Barrett's service but the surname, Gray, suggests a connection with the Gray family and their plantations in Antigua. John Gray Senior, owned Turnbulls and Gray's Belfast amongst other property on the island, and he may have named the sisters after two of his daughters, who were also called Jane and Maria.
The sisters arranged their own baptisms, on different days, in July 1758. Not at St Pauls, in the parish they lived, but at St Margaret's, Westminster. It is possible that they intended to establish themselves in a different parish, and did not want the Barretts to know. Four months later, the sisters ran away.
By the mid-eighteenth century, Shadwell Spa was established, producing sulphurous waters, in Sun Tavern fields. As well as being used for medicinal purposes, salts were extracted from the waters and used by local calicoprinters to fix their dyes. By the mid-eighteenth century, many houses in Shadwell had been rebuilt. "Seamen, watermen and lightermen, coalheavers and shopkeepers, and ropemakers, coopers, carpenters and smiths, lived in small lathe and plaster or weatherboard houses, two storeys and a garret high, with one room on each floor"; the average rent was £2/7/0. In 1768, London coal workers who were protesting for higher wages began shooting at the landlord of the Roundabout Tavern in Shadwell; as a result, seven of them were hanged in the Sun Tavern fields. Their execution was witnessed by around 50,000 spectators, the largest crowd at a hanging since the hanging of Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers in 1760. in 1794, many houses on the Ratcliffe Highway were destroyed by a fire which "consumed more houses than any one conflagration has done since the Great Fire of London", and also destroyed many boats, and around £40,000 of sugar.
Shadwell Waterworks was sold in 1801 to the London Dock Company; the waterworks were the first ones in London to use a Watt steam engine in 1788. The waterworks were later sold to the East London Waterwork Company for £300,000 in 1808, after an Act of Parliament allowed the company to obtain a compulsory purchase order. The modern area is dominated by the enclosed former dock, Shadwell Basin, whose construction destroyed much of the earlier settlement - by this time degenerated into slums. The basin once formed the eastern entrance to the then London Docks, with a channel leading west to St Katharine Docks. It is actually two dock basins – the south basin was constructed in 1828–32 and the north basin in 1854–8. A new entrance to Shadwell dock was opened in 1832, giving Shadwell access to the River Thames. Between 1854 and 1858, a 45 feet wide new entrance to the docks was constructed to allow larger ships into the dock. Shadwell Basin was one of three locked basins connecting the docks to the River Thames, and is the only one of the three still in existence today. In 1865, HMS Amazon docked at Shadwell Basin in order to pick up around 800 Mormons who were emigrating to America, and in 1869, the Blue Jacket clipper, then the fastest clipper in the world, began her journey to Canterbury, New Zealand in Shadwell Basin. In 1865 during excavation for the creations of some docks at Shadwell, four nearby houses were flooded. In 1844, Shadwell was recorded as having had a population of 10,060, and having ten almshouses built using money from James Cook. Watney Market developed into a busy shopping area around this time.
In the 19th century, Shadwell was home to a large community of foreign South Asian lascar seamen, working on the sea-lanes to British India. There were also Anglo-Indians, from intermarriage and cohabitation between lascar seamen and local girls. There were also smaller communities of Chinese and Greek seamen, who also intermarried and cohabited with locals. In 1805, lascars caused disturbances in the streets of Shadwell which ended with 15 people being hospitalised, and 19 people being arrested.
During Victorian times, Shadwell and the East End were not seen as pleasant places. The growth of Shadwell's port led to an increase in the number of prostitutes in the area, and the area was known as the centre of the capital's opium smoking, and in 1861, Shadwell paid a poor rate of 3 s. 9d. An 1889 book The Bitter Cry of Outcast London described Ratcliffe, Shadwell and Bermondsey as a "revolting spectacle", a "dark vision", and a "ghastly reality", whilst Charles Dickens' unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood involves a journey to an opium den in Shadwell, which includes the line "Eastward and still eastward through the stale streets he takes his way, until he reaches his destination: a miserable court, specially miserable amongst many such."
In 1885, Shadwell Fish Market was opened as an alternative to Billingsgate Fish Market. Although Shadwell had the advantage of three times the river frontage of Billingsgate and access via train, the fish market was ultimately unsuccessful. In 1901, it was sold to the City of London Corporation, and was eventually closed in 1914. The site later became King Edward Memorial Park in 1922, when it was opened by King George V, and was Shadwell's first park. From 1868 to 1932, Shadwell was home to the East London Hospital for Children, before it moved to Wapping, and was later closed down in 1963.