Bow Heritage Trail This is a re-working of a pamphlet produced by Bow Neighbourhood in 1990. It is reproduced here with the map at the end.

It is possible to still see many of the Heritage Trail plaques accross Bow but some of them are now missing. Despite this, it is felt the Heritage Trail pamphlet is of interest to those wishing to know more about the local history of the area. Bow Heritage Trail

BOW NEIGHBOURHOOD the better known for visitors. It has set up a signposted Heritage can be used either as an educa- Trail throughout the Neigh- tional resource, or as a pointer bourhood: it.is hoped that lo- for an interesting Sunday after- cal people will both find it of noon stroll. interest and will derive from it a sense of pride in the place in THERE WILL be some sign- which they live or work. The posts to point the direction of trail follows a route through the trail, and to invite people the Bow area passing places of to join it, but the full route is historical interest, which will be shown on the accompanying marked with oval plaques com- map. There are three starting memorating any historical per- points for the trail; Bow Police son or incident associated with Station (near Bow Road Tube); the place. The trail will also link Besso House (near the various "Historic Buildings Tube); and the Neighbourhood of Bow" plaques. Centre at Gladstone Place in the Roman, Road. You can follow THE HERITAGE TRAIL the trail in any direction, and should be both informative and don't have to walk it all, (that interesting, letting people know would take about six hours) just some of the little known facts the parts you find interesting. about the area, and marking out change came problems of poverty, unemployment and overcrowding. There was a workhouse on Bow Road, opposite the Church. Early this century, the local council- lor and MP George Lansbury did much to try and make the lives of the people of the East End less harsh. The East London branch of the Suffragette' movement,headed by Sylvia Pankhurst, and renowned for their militant tactics, were based in Road, and did much to help local Old Ford Road at the end of Wick Lane about 1872 people during the First World War. traveller to Barking Convent, she is said to have fallen into the More recent habitues of the area A BRIEF HISTORY River Lee on one occasion while include the Kray brothers, who OF BOW crossing the dangerous ford, had a club in Bow Road. and to have been nearly swept Bow does have a long, varied and The area we today know as Bow away by floodwaters. It was at often colourful history, which we has a long history, stretching at this point that she decided that a hope you will enjoy exploring on least as far back as Roman times, bridge might be a good idea. The the Heritage Trail. when there was a Roman settle- somewhat unpredictable nature of ment by a ford over the River Lee the rIver was partly responsible at, not surprisingly, OLD FORD. for another of Bow's well known THE TRAIL For many centuries Bow was a landmarks:-the church. The locals, If you start, for example, at the small hamlet by another such ford, fed up of having to wade all the Bow Road Police Station com- surrounded by fields and market way to , knee deep in mud mencing point, you can go down gardens. It is believed, rightly or and flood, to attend the church Bow Road and enjoy leafy BOW wrongly, that the name "Bow" there, pressed for their own CHURCHYARD. On the way, came from the shape of its arched chapel. The "Chapel of Ease" that you pass the old POPLAR TOWN bridge which was probably found- was granted to them in 1311 by HALL This, incidentally, stands ed in 1110 by Queen Matilda, Edward II was the forerunner of on what used to be the site of the wife of Henry I. A regular today's church. annual Bow Fair. ThisWhitsun Floods aside, Bow was always Fair was a yearly event, and considered a pleasant place, with quite a crowd puller in the its "cornfields, pastures and pleas- eighteenth and early nineteenth ant meadows". Samuel Pepys centuries; and arumbustious and noted in his diary that he strolled rollicking time must have been out here for a cream tea. Will had by all, for in 1823 it was Kemp, a friend of Shakespeare's, closed down due to “rowdyism who in 1599 agreed to Morris and vice”. Beyond , Dance all the way to Norwich for where the flyover stands today, a bet, could have made Bow his was the earlier, and prettier, Bow first refreshment stop, but resisted Bridge. the temptation. (He won the bet, incidentally.) .It was not until the A short detour up Fairfield Road second half of the last century will lead you past the imposing that, with the vast increase in the FAIRFIELD WORKS, formerly population of London, Bow began BRYANT AND MAY’S MATCH to be a built up area. With this FACTORY where the ill-used women employees embarked on You can then turn down in 1990, have uncovered further their historic industrial action, COBORN STREET (from which evidence of Roman occupation in the first against sweated labour Music Hall star Charles Coborn, the area. and atrocious working condi- “The Man Who Broke the Bank tions, in 1888. At the far end of at Monte Carlo”, took his stage Earlier excavations of the fourth Blondin Street is the site of CLAY name.) or COBORN ROAD to century Roman settlement at Old HALL a tea room where London- see the charming Georgian villas. Ford have revealed large quanti- ers flocked during the eighteenth Further up Coborn Road is the site ties of cattle bones showing the century to try, among other things, of yet another railway station. marks of butchery. It is possible the eel pies. They had to be care- that the village was an assem- ful on the way, however, because Along St. Stephen’s Road and bly point for cattle from outly- of the large numbers of footpads to the north, is the Roman Road: ing farms in , which were and highwaymen along the Mile THE MARKET. there began in slaughtered there, whence the the 1860s when the majority of carcasses were carried into the the Victorian terraced houses in city. This was a process that was the area were built on what was to be repeated in later years; formerly fields. The market was during the plague of 1361 cattle originally illegal, but withstood were by order slaughtered on one several attempts to have it closed side of town at Stratford and at down. As you move east, past on the other “so VERNON HALL, formerly the as to keep the air free from filthy PASSMORE EDWARDS and putrid smells”. This occurred LIBRARY, and another starting again at the height of the Great point for the trail, you are Plague of 1665 according to approaching the area which used Daniel Defoe, who in his “Journal to be the heart of Roman Bow. of the Plague Year” mentions that meat was killed at Mile End or One of the several Roman burials that way, and brought to market discovered in this area was found upon horses. in ARMAGH ROAD. Archaeo- Bow Railway Station in its heyday. logical excavations around the THE Lefevre Estate uncovered the original ROMAN ROAD which LEE VALLEY End Road! ran from to , Returning to Bow Road, you can crossing the River Lee at Old Up Parnell Road and across the follow the trail West, past what Ford. More recent excavations, footbridge over the East Cross used to be Bow’s two MAIN RAILWAY STATIONS until you reach the site. of GEORGE LANSBURY’S HOUSE. As a Labour MP, he resigned his seat in Parliament over the ·issue of votes for women. As Mayor of Poplar he and the other councillors went to prison for refusing to collect the rates, since the rating system was not fair to poorer boroughs. During the 1930s he was leader of the Labour Party. His political career stands as eloquent testimo- ny to the lifelong concern he felt for all members of the community. KingJohn's Castle, 1787 indeed to be manufactured in Brit- ain. It was the result of an attempt to reproduce much admired Chinese porcelain. A factory was founded in Bow, then moved to the east side of the Lee, where it was known as New Canton. Production began around 1740. New Canton wares were very popular indeed by the 1750s; large quantities of table wares, bowls and vases were made, as Roman Burial found near Morville Street in the 1860's - the coffin was were figurines on popular and probably re-used - note the mismatching lid. topical themes.

Route lies the site of a medieval Lee from the medieval period Business flourished during the mansion house, known as“KING onwards was baking. Flour was 1750s, only to decline markedly JOHN’S PALACE”. Should you ground in water mills along the during the 60s due to the rise of wish to venture further into the river, later windmills. Some of the other such manufacturers at Chel- Lee Valley you can see the feat of best documented bakers of Bow sea, Worcester, and Lowestoft. Victorian engineering that is the are those of the sixteenth cen- Finally, in 1775, the business was tury mentioned in John Stowe’s sold to one William Duesbury, and at the end of Dace Road, “Survey of London” who fed the who moved the manufacturing the RIVER LEE itself once the city in 1512, when “there was a loek-stocr:-and-barrel to Derby. dividing line between Saxon and shortage of wheat in the garners The factory was then turned over Viking territory successfully de- of the city, not a hundred quarters fended by King Alfred the Great in all”. Stowe later mentions the in 894, when he blocked the river unequal terms under which bread and the Vikings had to abandon was allowed to be brought into the their ships and flee. The Lee Val- city: bakers of bread at Stratford- ley in the past, as today, has been Ie-Bow were allowed to bring an area characterized by industrial daily, except Sabbath and princi- activity. pal feasts, “divers long carts laden with bread, the same being two One aspect of the “food industry” ounces in the penny wheat loaf concentrated around the River heavier than the penny wheat loaf baked in the city, the same to be sold in Cheape”.

Moving on to the eighteenth cen- tury, and another aspect of industry, the historian Harrison mentions the great number of 1906 St. Barnabas' Church to the scarlet dyers and calico printers left and the Earl of Aberdeen Pub located at Bow, “for the particu- to the right. lar convenience ofthe place for the execution of their business”. to the production of turpentine and Perhaps an echo of their labours small liniments. remains in the name of Dye House Lane. The nineteenth century saw the heavy industrialization of the Lee During the eighteenth century Valley, attracted by the plentiful one notable trade in Bow was the supply of water, and proximity to St. Mary's Church, Bow c.1896 manufacture of porcelain, the first the city, and hence a substantial Twig Folly Bridge. It then moves along the Roman Road to turn off through the Driffield Road Con- servation Area, which contains many pleasant Victorian houses. As the trail continues south along Lyal Road and Selwyn Road, it is possible to take a short digression to 45 NORMAN GROVE, in the rear yard of which was sited the suffragettes’ Co-operative Toy Industry during the First World War. Women workers there were, unusually for , paid the full male wage rate of 5d an hour Bonner Hall Gates, the main entrance to the park, in the last century. or £1 a week. This and other schemes of the suffragettes, such market and a large labour force. bathrooms were in short supply as nursery and cost-price restau- A map of Bow of 1862 reveals in the nineteenth century, and the rant were an attempt to help wom- around the River Lee a manure lakes were very popular up until en of the area, already a poor one, works, soap works, lime kilns, gas the building of the LIDO in the weather the even more straitened works and tar works. 1930’s the MEMORIAL FOUN- times of the war. Unfortunately, Returning to the main trail, this TAIN presented to the park by the toy factory could not compete continues up to VICTORIA philanthropist Baroness Angela with commercial concerns which PARK, passing an “Historic Burdett-Coutts in 1862 and the paid far lower wages to their Buildings of Bow” plaque. located forum and demonstration ground, workers, and closed shortly after on the “TOP 0’ THE MORNING” used for speeches and public the end of the war. PUBLIC HOUSE which com- meetings_from the late nineteenth memorated one Thomas Briggs of century to the early twentieth cen- Moving south again, there is an Clapton, victim of the first murder tury, and by interests as diverse as opportunity to view the grandeur to becommitted on a railway train. the Suffragettes and the followers of Tredegar Square, one of the On 9th]uly1864, while travelling of Oswald Mosely. finest Georgian Squares in this on the Railway, he part of London. It was built as part was viciously assaulted by one Leaving the park, the trail pro- of the great development phase Franz Muller, who intended to gresses south along the canal tow of the late eighteenth and early steal his gold watch, and when path, past the old warehouses op- nineteenth centuries, on the lands found on the tracks in a critical posite Royal Victor Place on the of one Sir Charles Morgan of condition he was carried to this , as far as pub. He died later the same day.

The trail then enters VICTORIA PARK, an area of great interest in itself and a very popular place. It was begun to be laid out in 1844 for the recreation of the people of what was a very cramped and congested East End.

The trail passes many points of interest in the park; the STONE ALCOVES which once formed part of old . The old bathing lakes private Entrance to Bow going east, 1783 Bryant and May's Match Factory.

Tredegar, after whom several streets and pubs locally have been named. TREDEGAR SQUARE it- self was begun in 1828 and on the north side developed in a grand manner. When completed, it at- tracted mainly professional people; for instance William Ephraim Snow, apothecary, surgeon and general practitioner and his family lived in numbers 25 to 26 from at least 1845.

Reaching Mile End Road again, one further side track passes west of Grove Road, past GUARDIAN ANGELS CHURCH, which was opened in 1903, and the building of which was paid for by the then Duke of Norfolk and his sisters Lady Margaret and Lady Mary Howard.

Beyond that lies the NEW GLOBE PUBLIC HOUSE built in wig and whiskers. The crowd 1821, behind which was the NEW was taken in. The balloon mean- GLOBE PLEASURE GARDENS. while, unattended, came down in This was the scene of a great hoax a country farm where it was found in 1844, when a hot air balloon- by a worker who had never seen ist about to give a display there, a balloon before: he raced to the in order to avoid going up in the farmer, saying, “Come quickly balloon himself, substituted for and bring your gun; there’s a mon- himself a sack filled with straw, ster in the long mead rolling about and a mop wearing hat and a false in the agony of death. There is also an ordinary man lay- ing dead on the grass.” Near there also, in LONGFELLOW ROAD, since demolished to make way for , at number 57, lived Eddie Philips, British Light Heavyweight Boxing Champion between 1935 and 1937.

This, is but a brief introduction to the Heritage Trail; there are many more plaques to be seen, and many moreinteresting facets of the Neighbourhood’s history to be discovered.

Old Font, Bow Church

Roman Road Market, 1914