| Stepney Notes |
Stepney Growth Domesday (compiled in 1086) only mentions one Vill (a group of houses), Stepney, which contained 3 tenants in chief. The Bishop of London, was the principal landholder, and he was in dispute with the other two regarding their land holdings. The Bishop had ten subtenants. The manor consisted of 183 peasants made up of 74 villains (free but bound to his feudal lord, which meant he was bound to his land holding), 52 bordars (a small holder), and 57 cottars (tenant of a cottage, with or without land). Domesday describes the area: 'In Ossulstan hundred, the Bishop of London holds Stepney for thirty-two hides. (A hide was a variable unit of land between 90 and 120 acres, enough for a household.) There is land to twenty-five ploughs. (The area of land which could be cultivated in a year using one ox-team.) Fourteen hides belong to the demesne (land kept for the lord himself), and there are three ploughs there; and twenty two ploughs of the villains (a tenant held in agricultural service). There are forty-four villains of one virgate each (usually 30 acres of arable land - but this could vary); and seven villains of half a hide each; and nine villains of half a virgate each; and forty-six cottagers of one hide (a labourer who dwells in a cottage); they pay thirty shillings a year. There are four mills of four pounds and sixteen shillings save fourpence. Meadow sufficient for twenty-five ploughs. Pasture for the cattle of the village, and fifteen shillings. Pannage for five hundred hogs and forty shillings (pasture for swine). Its whole value is forty-eight pounds; and it was worth the same when received; in King Edward's time fifty pounds. This manor is, and was part of the see'. The Bishops of London, it was said, had held it since 'time out of mind.' The population of the whole area was probably between 700 and 900 persons and much of the land was under cultivation for the Bishop. Within a few of centuries shipbuilding was drawing migrant workers into the area. Many shipwrights, however, were reluctant to move away from their safe havens in Norfolk and Suffolk and they were forced to build ships at the Ratcliffe shipyard for the king, this containing a suitable area of deep water. In 1356 Guy de Seintcler and John Straunge conscripted ships carpenters in East Anglia to build ships and barges for the King in Ratcliffe. Most of the lands in Stepney were, by the 15th century, being rented out by the Bishop of London to farmers and small industries. The Bishops of London for the time continued to use Bishops Hall as a country residence. At this time the area was still covered mainly in woods and fields but City merchants were increasingly building their houses. Dyeing was local industry and William Dyer of Stratford le Bow died in 1404 and left leaden vessels and other dyeing utensils to his cousin, William. Many positions such as bailiff were not a matter of installing someone who could do the job best but by election. Those men eligible by reason of age and health were expected to take their turn and in 1407 John Cornewalys, a Londoner, refused to take the position of bailiff to which he had been elected and had to forfeit 3 acres of wheat in Fannersfield. Richard Brook was the Hackney beadle from 1408 until 1417, and possibly again in 1431. During the Middle Ages the fields in Stepney continued to supply food to the City of London. Foreign trade was dominated at this time (and for many centuries) by German merchants. Ships were hired from the Venetians and Flemish but gradually the English began to build and man their own ships. In 1485 to prevent competition within the City from outsiders the citizens of London paid the King for a charter which said 'that no stranger from the liberties of the same city may buy or sell from any other stranger to the liberty of the same city, any merchandise or wares within the liberties of the same city'. This effectively placed the sale of all goods entering the area into the hands of the the City. It went on to say that the Citizens could take the goods of anyone attempting to sell their goods in the City who was not entitled by this charter to do so. It did not end there as the goods thus forfeited could be sold and the original owner would receive no recompense. An exception was made in the case of 'great men, lords and nobles, and any other English and strangers, of what condition they shall be, may freely buy' so long as they did not sell to anyone else. After 1488, fishing by net between Wapping Mill and London Bridge was forbidden. Most of the fishermen in this area came from the Poplar area. 'Proclamation by the Mayor and Aldermen forbidding the casting of refuse into the Thames, and commanding that no manner person fisher nor other draw any net between Ratcliff Mill or Wapping Mill westward towards London Bridge nor from London Bridge unto the Nasshe (Naze?) against the Bishop of Durham's place upon the pain that may fall thereof. Also that no manner person fish in the said water of Thames with any manner net from the Temple Bridge (a pier or jetty maintained on the riverside by the owners of the Temple) unto the Tower of London nigh any wharf on both sides of the same Thames by a space of 20 fathoms. Also that no manner person fish in the said water with any casting nets or angles or with any manner nets but if they hold the assise upon pain of imprisonment of their bodies and losing of the said nets and angles and the fishes taken with the same, and also the same nets and angles to burnt in Chepe. (Cheapside)' The coming of Henry VII to the throne brought a period of peace and prosperity to the country after the turbulence of past decades. He financially assisted shipbuilders to construct merchant ships which could be quickly adapted into warships. Much of this, no doubt, helped to build the industry along the Stepney waterfront. During the sixteenth century warehouses and sheds owned by the Coopers Company were converted to dwellings. Richard Wood, a turner, leased from them 'a little room once part of a hayloft'. The business of subdivision to provide more housing had started. People were flocking into the area and this started a housing shortage. Houses were divided up to provide homes for more than one family as were warehouses, sheds and lofts. The population of Stepney was probably by then in excess of 5000. Elizabeth I proclaimed '...where there are such great multitudes of people brought to inhabit in small rooms, whereof a great part are seen very poor, yea, such as must live of begging, or by worse means, and they heaped up together, and in a sort smothered with many families of children and servants in one house or small tenement.' In the 16th century the parish was divide into four areas: Ratcliffe, Limehouse, Mile End and Poplar. Each had its own churchwarden and officers. By 1641 Ratcliffe had become so large that it had to be divided into Ratcliffe and Wapping Wall, each with its own churchwarden. The following year the inhabitants of Blackwall petitioned the E.I.C. for a chapel of ease and the site was given for St Matthias, the foundations being laid in 1650. Wharves, ship yards and small provision and victualling businesses developed in the area during the 16th and 17th centuries. Ships had been built along the banks of the Thames for centuries and King Henry's flag ship the 'Mary Rose' was brought to Blackwall for work to be carried out. It was he who brought the great shipbuilding development to Stepney with the building of his navy along the Thames shoreline. Stepney now acted as a magnet for people from all over England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales and from abroad. The whole area was thriving. All along the river new building was taking place. Ship and repair yards, accommodation for the workers, victualling stores, bakeries, biscuit and pulley makers, breweries, chandleries, timber and sail yards. To the east there were farms which supplied the ships and the City and cattle from the North and West country were pasteured at Bethnal Green and Ratcliffe prior to being slaughtered. The City of London, for centuries, had control of the only legal quays in the City and had guarded its rights to exact dues from all ships which off loaded dutiable goods (those which could receive cargo and had custom clearance). The City did not allow ships to off load such goods outside the walls. Gradually though, as the centuries passed, the Port of London outgrew the City waterfront and extended itself along the Stepney bank bringing more prosperity to the area. Throughout the 16th and 17th centuries the area became a place of considerable immigration. People fleeing from religious intolerance and persecution came from France, the Low Countries, Poland, Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal and Sicily. The skills which many of them brought were to influence the area for centuries. Cloth, wool and silk weaving, goldworking, brewing, land drainage, gardening, clock and gun making, paparmaking, glassmaking were skills at which many of the immigrant foreigners were adept. Even at the end of the 16th century the area from Shoreditch to Stepney was still countryside with just a few houses from Aldgate to Whitechapel. Most of the building having taken place along the atwerfron. There were, by now, four churches serving the area although St Dunstan's was to remain the mother church for the area. As well as St Dunstan's there were St Mary Matfellon, a chapel of ease; a second chapel of ease at Bow, and Holy Trinity, Minories. Soon there would be more for the population was growing fast. In 1617 a chapel of ease was built at Wapping, St John at Wapping, and the area became a parish in 1694. This was an area in need, apparently, of much reform for the Wapping brothels were raided in 1622 and the inhabitants arrested. The parishioners were warned that they would not be allowed to take their children and servants into their pews so 'that the Ancient Inhabitants of the parish may be there placed'. De Beauvoir Town was open country at this time with a few mansions. The population of Stepney had reached about 24000 by 1630. By the end of the century, helped by the influx of emigrants, the population was to rise to about 90000. In 1636 there were 31 taverns in Stepney. Truman's brewery was established in Brick Lane, Spitalfields in year of the Great Fire. In the years following the restrictions on foreigners becoming citizens of London was relaxed. Most of the old wharves of the City had been destroyed and the wharves of Stepney became stimulated in growth. The City, just five years after the Fire, found it necessary to pass laws in 1671 regarding the use of the City streets for garbage disposal. The streets in some areas of Stepney could not have been any better and were probably far worse and these conditions continued for many more years. Unpaved streets, choked communal sewers (if any existed), dirt, ashes and soil (meaning night soil), dead animals and parts of animals, dregs of ale and beer, carrion, stinking flesh, rotten oranges and onions, rubbish, dung, sand, gravel and house roof tiles were all thrown out into the streets. The river was little better. William Sherwin, believed to be the first English calico printer, established works by the River Lea. On open grounds nearby the cloths were laid out to bleach and dry and by the end of the 18th century 80 acres of grounds were used for this purpose. Charles II in July, 1682 gave John Batch and his heirs the right to 'keep two markets every week ... in or next a certain place called Spittle Square, in the parish of Stepney'. This was the start of Spitalfields fruit and vegetable market. In 1682 a fire in Wapping burnt down 1000 houses and boats and about 50 people were killed. Ratcliffe and Wapping were, by the 1680's, the principal centres for brothels. Wealthier houses, particularly those of shipmasters (captains)of Wapping and Scandinavian timber merchants, were built in and around Wellclose Square. Fortunes were made by the timber merchants when wood was imported after the Great Fire to rebuild the City. King Christian V of Denmark gave the church (1696) which was in this square, for his sailors to worship in. Christian Street is named after him. The area held industrious people who went about their business in a sober manner. Gradually the building was spreading out towards Bethnal Green's open fields. In 1694 a kettle of pitch was knocked over in a barge builders shop and half of Ratcliffe was burnt along with the Coopers' Free School. The population of the area in 1600 had been 21,000 and by 1700 this had reached over 80,000 and many of the people were employed on riverside work. In the early 18th century much of the area began to suffer from overcrowding. The import of seacoal into the capital meant the increase in the number of unskilled labour needed to move it around the London area, many of whom lived in Stepney. The bad planning over the centuries and the land tenure customs had started to indicate the future for the area. 'During the latter half of the 18th century the expansion of London had been towards the west, north and the south. The expansion towards the east, which had begun with the Huguenot settlement at Spitalfields at the end of the 18th century had halted and London, on the east, seemed reluctant to proceed beyond the limits of goomans Fields. development of the flat faced terrace type, 'exported' from Central London, staked out claims in Edmonton, Clapton, Hackney, Stoke Newington, Bow, Bromley by Bow, Greenwich, Rotherhithe, Stepney, Mile End and so on; but the only industry proper to the 'East End' until near the last decades of the 18th century was that of market gardening; and not until the very end of the century was the purely agricultural western Essex pushed back by eastern London. The change from a district of rural and riverside villages set in wide tracts of arable land came about through the building of London's new docks.' (London Growing - The Development of the Metropolis by Michael Hamson, Hutchinson, page 181.) The law of 4 acres to each cottage was gradually ignored as was the occupation of one family per cottage and rooms were being subdivided to provide further rooms for letting. The squalor which had begun was to continue until the 20th century. One family to a room and bed became the standard. People began dying faster than they could be replaced. Overcrowding, poverty, unemployment, illness and drink took their toll on the inhabitants. Wapping and Whitechapel began to acquire unsavoury reputations. Those who could not avoid it ended up in St Katherine's Workhouse to pick oakum. (Old tarred ropes which had to be untwisted and teased out so that it could be used to caulk the seams of ships.) The basic food for the common folk then was bread and cheese and beer. Between 1811 and 1851 the Mercers Company, who owned much of the land in old Stepney, erected 1,100 houses for tradespeople and artisans. By the mid 19th century the shipbuilding industry at Thames-side near Bow and the fitting and repair yards at Blackwall employed between 3000 and 4000 men. Work was also available in the area at huge sugar refineries and Truman's Breweries. The conditions of employment here were better than usual but other large manufacturing companies started moving out of Whitechapel towards Bow Common. Apart from the Dock companies most of the waterside work available was in small firms and many were on a sub-contract basis which thrived on a surplus of unskilled labour. Extracted
from 'A History of London' by R J Mitchell &
MDR Leys:
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