Stepney Areas |
Ratcliffe At the point where the mud of Wapping ended there was a stretch of red stone, formed like a cliff, along the foreshore and this area became known as Ratcliffe from La Rede Clive, the red cliff or a bank of red clay. This seems to be favoured as the most likely place to be used for landing craft in early times. Ratcliffe became Stepney's 'port'. St George's Street, the modern name given to the notorious Ratcliff Highway, runs from East Smithfield to Shadwell High Street. The old name of Ratcliff Highway still clings to the unlovely St. George's Street, which lies to the north of the London Docks, and connects the Tower district with Shadwell. Once upon a time fair elm trees on both the sides of the Highway gave it a dignity which it has long lost. It became notorious early in the present century, owing to a series of murders and to various acts of lawlessness committed by 'Jack ashore'; but now the Street is chiefly remarkable for the shops of dealers in wild beasts, birds, etc. Its former name is derived from Ratcliff Manor, in Stepney. In a vault beneath the Swedish Church, in Prince's Square, which lies off St. George's Street, Emmanuel Swedenborg, the mystic, who died in 1772, is buried. In the July Sessions of the Middlesex Session of Peace for 1683 an order was given to remove the pump rails in White House Street, hamlet of Ratcliff, Stepney, so that the street can be paved by the people of Ratcliff. The original hamlet of Ratcliffe contained 1150 house in 1794 of which 455, together with 36 warehouses, were destroyed by fire on 23 July that year.
A ghostly clergyman is said to haunt Ratcliffe Highway and Ratcliffe Wharf. A former vicar of Ratcliffe Cross ran a seamen's lodging house in the 18th century. He is said to have murdered the seamen for their money. In 1971 4 men said they had seen the figure of an old man with a long white beard, dressed in old fashioned black clothes and holding a cane. He was near the quay and then he disappeared. From The Victorian Dictionary compiled by Lee Jackson:Victorian London (Victorian London - The Queen's London : a Pictorial and Descriptive Record of the Streets, Buildings, Parks and Scenery of the Great Metropolis, 1896)
Link to a Website about Ratcliff Highway |
