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| Tower Hamlets History |
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London's East End and Tower Hamlets
The history of East London and Tower Hamlets is the history of its immigrants and a history of resistance. The area historically has been a place for those fleeing persecution, beginning with Huguenot refugees, French Protestant craftspeople and silk weavers escaping from Catholic persecution, who made Tower Hamlets their home. A hundred years later Jews fleeing pogroms found their way to Tower Hamlets and at the same time Chinese people were settling as a result of merchant trading activity.
The hamlets built around the famous tower lead to the name Tower Hamlets.
Image: Children at the Chinese Mission, Pennyfields, 1936 (Courtesy of Local History Library & Archives)
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"The East End of London is the hell of poverty. Like one enormous, black, motionless, giant kraken, the poverty of London lies there in lurking silence and encircles with its mighty tentacles the life and wealth of the City and of the West End."
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J.H. Mackay 'The Anarchists' (Boston 152:1891)
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The farming hamlets that congregated around the famous Tower of London led to the name Tower Hamlets. The area slowly became a shipbuilding and repair centre vital to trade and London's economy. In 1536 the dissolution of monastries freed land for building and the area really began to expand and develop, shipbuilding spread rapidly along the riverside with the biggest concentration developing in what is now Wapping or the Isle of Dogs.
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Image: London Docks, Western dock, North Quay c.1970 (Courtesy of Local History Library & Archives)
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Even as far back as the 16th Century the split between East and West London was already marked. The West attracted gentry, professionals and courtiers whilst the East was a focus for trades, industry and commerce.
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