Sao ,iqoccto NEWSLETTER Volume 2 Issue 8 Spring 2004 0 C I CONTENTS: Information Programme 2 Making Money 8 London Archive Users Forum 3 Bromley Hall 9 Correspondence 4 The Great Assembly Hall 10 Making History 5 Morpeth Street Central School 12 Book Review 6 School Times in the 1920s 14 Memories of lIow Road 7 Coach Trip and Booking Slip 16 ELI-IS Newsletter Sprin gy, 2004 Editorial Note: rhilT .V.CAR:Or A 1 r ..1,,,, ,...0....0, . V Ar .1t, w- .t. Ar,r.orlorArwwirwww/Anwirwirsourw2m:ryi Ihe Newsletter is edited, typeset and produced EAST LONDON P by Rosemary Taylor and Philip Mernick with HISTORY SOCIETY the assistance aim editorial team comprising, e Doreen Kendall, Doreen Osborne and David PROGRAMME Jan-May 2004 ■••-•.,2172rak,■511174draftriAmiTh5 siesirurwAr41,41•WWW:041154,..510•WC,.0YAMmoydrones, Behr. i ,etters and articles on East End histoiy and reminiscences are always welcome and we Thursday 15 April make every effort to publish suitable material. Whilst hand-written articles are acceptable, Brunel and the Great Eastern. items of interest that are typewritten or even better still, on disk will get priority!! Speaker: Clive Chambers Enquiries to Doreen Kendall, 20 Puteaux louse, Cranbrook Estate, Bethnal Green, Salm-day 1 May 2004 London E2 ORF, Tel: 0208 981 7680, or Philip Mernick, email: phikamernicks.com Spring Coach Trip to All queries regarding membership should he Charleston, Alfriston, and addressed to Harold Mernick, 42 Campbell Berwick Church Road, Bow, London E3 4DI Coach Trip Organiser: Check out the Ilistoty Societys website at Ann Sansom (Tel 020 8524 4506) www,east londonliistoty.org.uk. (See back cover for del ails and hooking form) The present committee am Philip Mernick, Chairman, Doreen Kendall, Secretary, Harold Mernick, Membership, David Behr, Programme, Ann Sansom, Doreen Osborne, Thursday 13 May Bob Dunn, and Rosemary Taylor. Oven Meeting I-Tow we entertained ourselves: The 1)rogra mine Children's Games to Street Parties Suggestions and ideas for Future topics and/or speakers for out- lecture Programme are always welcomed. II' you can suggest someone Note: or indeed if you would like to give a talk The lectures are held on Thursday evenings yourself, please do conic along to the Open at 7.30 inn in I he Latimer Congregational Evening in May, and meet David Behr, our Church I !all, Ernest Street, El. Ernest Programme co-ordinator. Street is between 11 arford Street and Whitehorse Lane, off Mile End Road /Alternatively, email our Chairman Phillip (Opposite Queen Mary and Wesi field Merrick at phRa. memicks.com with your College). The nearest Underground Stations comments and suggestions. are Mile End and Stepney Green. Bus No. 25. 2 Newsletter Spring 2004 tA indexed - nearly one sixth of the total The London Archive of surviving Sun policy registers for Users Forum London. We are indexing the volumes by flume `A Place in the Sun' of insured, address ol insured, occupation or status of insured, and Index appears online... location of property insured (whether land or chattels). We are also recording In February 2004 the first output of the other names and occupations of Place in the Sun indexing project was individuals and businesses mentioned in posted on the web at www.a2a,org.uk. the registers. This represents 53,697 policies from 30 policy registers of the Sun Fire The index can be found at Insurance office from 1816 - 1824. www.a2a.org.uk. (once you have entered a search term, choose A team of volunteers, led by project `Guildhall Library from the .ocation manager Susan Sneddon, has worked of Archives menu; or choose the theme on the registers since January 2003. To `A Place in the Sun on the Extended date they have completed the indexing Search screen). Detailed instructions on of 38 registers, with more iii using the index are available at preparation. Funding from the Heritage www.history.ac.uk/gh/sun.him. Lottery Fund has supported the first 15 Information about the project can be months of the project. LAUD has also obtained by contacting the Project succeeded in securing funding from Manager at [email protected], or by Awards for All to support the project to leaving a telephone message on 07939 continue to March 2005. 178246, If you would like to get involved in the project as a volunteer, The Sun policy registers offer an you would be very welcome. Please unparalleled source for details of the contact Susan as above for details. business, family and social history of the times they cover. From our initial stopping point of 1824, we are continuing forwards in time to 1830. The period is one where records are especially va luable for family historians, there is an unbroken run of London-centred volumes, and Guildhall Library has an excellent series of London street maps (by Robert Horwood). We hope i►at the project will result in over 50 registers being 3 Newsletter Spring 2004 Mr II W Andrews, Haldane, 134 Fleetwood CORRESPONDENCE Avenue, Holland on Sea, Essex: 1%)01,111k,N;,43v-bp4tXt).eft:" I write to you as a complete stranger, so start by offering my apologies. A relative of mine, David II Cutler, 27 IZavensworth Road, one of your subscribers, passes on to me Mottitiv,itam, London, SE9 4LW, writes: copies of the Newsletter from time to time. I noticed in Volume 2 Issue No. 7 that East read 1he book (hat was published by your End history Mid Mminiscemces are always good office, A Pictorial History of Victoria welcome, for publication. To this end, 1 Park. It was a wonderful book and most. enclose an article from memory, of school interesting and the photos were interesting too, times in the 920s, now some eighty years they bring the past back to life, in a way. ago, that might be worthy of publication, I am afraid it is not on disk or typewritten, as you I have to say that apart from two relatives in request, but in plain schoolboy block Dalston and two in Shoreditch, I have had capitals. little contact with Hackney apart from an annual visit to my optician in Mare Street. I Two local gentlemen you might know by have been going there for over 40 years. name are friends of mine, and have been for Recently, quite by chancel came across a years, from City of London days. One is Mr group of relatives in Essex and in Ipswich that David Webb, the librarian and curator of the 1 knew nothing about. They are related on my Bishopsgale Institute, the other is Mr Baritrop, fathers side. We met and I found that my lecturer on East End History, and writer of a grandmother and some of my aunts and uncle weekly piece for the local East I lam paper, the were born in Chapman Road not far from recorder, called Reflections. I contribute at Victoria Park. It would be interesting to know times with pieces of City and East End times how my grandparents met as he lived in and since 1930.1 came to the City of London at 14. was born in Lambeth. years of age, as a messenger boy to a large photographic retail shop, learnt the trade and I think local historical societies do a wonderful stayed with the same firm for 56 years, retiring service to their own areas. They give people. as a working director. 1 retired in 1986. As you Particularly people whose families have lived can imagine, with my job and the camera, I there for generations, a feeling of continuity took hundreds of photos over those years. On with their past. Hackney and the East End are retirement, I gave them all to Mr David Webb rich in history. I have visited parts of Hackney for safekeeping. 1 was born in Plaistow in and llomerton, and Hackney Wick to see 1916, sadly my family were all killed in the where my grandparents lived etc. Miich of Docks Blitz in 1940. My early days then, were course has been pulled down but there were spent in and around West !lam, East Ham and some building they inay have seen. SOIL it the Docks..In closing, 1 do hope 1 have not been most interesting. 1 hope soon to visit been out of order in writing to you, or should Victoria Park. My grandparents moved to say, printing to youl I m afraid that at Waterloo, then Kennington in the 900s. In eighty-seven years now, my longhand is very 1940 they were killed in an air raid trench in shaky! Kennington Park with many others. (Editors Note: Thank you fOr writing to us, In conclusion, I wish you and your colleagues Mr Andrews, the article on your schooldays in well for the future and 1 hope your research Plaistow appears in this issue) proves to be very exciting. 1;1,11S Newsletter Sp ing 2004 Mrs S A Winfield, 2 St Albans Close, Holmewood, Chesterfield, Derbyshire writes: MAKING fa-STORY fgo.FotwAksfai,t4,13oqw4rpvgvi4Itsleosz4 1 received my history newsletter last week, and I do enjoy reading them very much, but I Our congratulations to Joanna Roberts and often wonder why Canning Town isn't in Ada ['rice, both well known to East London these letters, as I was born and lived in history enthusiasts, who were made MBEs in Canning Town in 1921. I do have books about the New Years Honours List. Canning Town, hut cannot seem to get the streets that I would like to see again – Alice Joanna, a regular at our lectures, and a familiar Street, near Tidal Basin, Wick Road and face to those who attend Ragged School streets sin [(wilding.