EARLY STEPNEY
Stepney covered almost all the area between the suburbs of the City of London and the river
Lea, the eastern boundary of Middlesex, until the early 14th century when the first of several
daughter parishes was created. Partly built up in the Middle Ages and great in size, it served
many economic functions, with contrasting social conditions, over a long period. A maritime
parish with the associated activities and docks, Stepney was also closely involved in London's
economy, especially in housing the latter's industries. The western part provided the first English
home for generations of immigrants, while farther east it was largely suburban in character. (fn. 1)
OSSULSTONE HUNDRED : PARISHES IN THE TOWER DIVISION 1819
The parochial jurisdiction devolved from the much larger vill of Stepney belonging
to the bishop of London and covering east, north-east, and part of north London. (fn. 2)
The vill included Hackney, and probably at one time also Bromley, a parish created
from an estate in 'Stepney' claimed unsuccessfully by the bishop in 1086. (fn. 3) The
date at which the three achieved separate parochial status is not known: since
Stepney gave its name to the vill it is assumed it was a Saxon parochia, (fn. 4) but on the
other hand, because of its closeness to London it may have remained part of the
parochia of St. Paul's until relatively late.
Stepney's boundaries were first delineated in 1703: (fn. 5) to the south was the Thames,
to the east Bromley and, across the Lea, West Ham (Essex), to the north Hackney,
and to the north-west Shoreditch. To the west the City of London's suburban
wards of Bishopsgate Without and Portsoken formed the parishes of St. Botolph
without Bishopsgate and St. Botolph without Aldgate respectively; the second also
included the precinct of St. Katharine by the Tower and East Smithfield.
The ancient parish included the hamlets of Mile End Old Town, Mile End New
Town, and Ratcliff, which remained part of St. Dunstan's, Stepney, and the
following hamlets which became separate parishes: Whitechapel, including part of
Wapping called Wapping-Whitechapel which became the parish of St. John,
Wapping; Stratford Bow, including Old Ford; Shadwell; the major part of Wapping
called Wapping-Stepney, which became the parish of St. George-in-the-East;
Spitalfields; Bethnal Green; Limehouse; Poplar, which included the Isle of Dogs
and its settlements of Blackwall, Millwall, and Cubitt Town.
Under the London Government Act, 1899, the separate parishes were brought
together in three M.B.s: Bethnal Green, coterminous with its parish; Poplar,
including Stratford Bow and Bromley; and Stepney, including all the remaining
parishes, East Smithfield, and the small liberties along the western boundary of
Stepney - the liberty of the Tower, by the river, Holy Trinity (formerly the
precinct of the Minoresses' abbey of St. Clare), just north of the Tower, and Old
Artillery Ground and Norton Folgate, both near Bishopsgate. (fn. 6)
Stepney's land boundaries were not natural: that with Bromley followed the
bounds of an estate given with the foundation of St. Leonard's priory, and a small
area of meadow on the east side of the Lea lay in Stepney. Part of the boundary
with Shoreditch followed a highway from Shoreditch church to Cambridge Heath;
most of the western boundary presumably represented the limits reached by
Londoners' jurisdiction. The boundary with Hackney cut across fields in 1703,
suggesting that it was laid down when that part of the manorial demesne was
unassarted, probably woodland, and before any man-made features were available. (fn. 7)
At its greatest extent Stepney parish covered c. 4,150 a. (1,679.5 ha.), including
land wrested from the Thames. (fn. 8) By 1320 it had lost c. 211 a. to form the parish
of St. Mary Matfelon or Whitechapel, (fn. 9) whose boundaries seem to have followed
those of fields or estates, apart possibly from the line along Back Church Lane,
which may have been the medieval Chapel Street. The new parish took the western
side of Stepney extending from the property and waste lining the north side of the
Colchester road southward to the Thames, with an extension eastward along the
Colchester road and the waste on either side as far as Mile End, probably to share
responsibility for that important highway. Whitechapel may have ended at the river
where the Crash mills stood, but by the 16th century it included a narrow tongue
of reclaimed land running eastward between Wapping's medieval river wall and
the low-water mark and known as Wapping-Whitechapel; it almost completely cut
off from the Thames the rest of Wapping, which remained part of Stepney and
was distinguished as Wapping-Stepney. (fn. 10) Wapping-Whitechapel became the separate parish of St. John, Wapping, in 1694. (fn. 11)
STEPNEY AND TOWER HAMLETS : LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOUNDARIES
Later parishes were formed from the hamlets whose boundaries had been settled by
the late 17th century. (fn. 12) St. Paul, Shadwell (68 a.), was created by an Act in 1670. (fn. 13)
Christ Church, Spitalfields (73 a.), and St. George-in-the-East (formerly WappingStepney) (244 a.) followed in 1729, St. Mary, Stratford Bow (565 a.), and St. Anne,
Limehouse (244 a.), in 1730, and St. Matthew, Bethnal Green (755 a.) in 1743. (fn. 14) The
last new civil parish was All Saints, Poplar (1,158 a.), in 1817. (fn. 15) There remained three
hamlets totalling 830 a. (335.9 ha.) in the parish of St. Dunstan, Stepney: Mile End
Old Town (677 a.), Mile End New Town (42 a.), and Ratcliff (111 a.).
Though most of the ancient parish lies on River Terrace high flood plain gravel on
top of London Clay, the area north-west of a line from the north-west corner of Victoria
Park to the south-west corner of Bethnal Green parish consists of brickearth, patches
of which also overlie the gravel elsewhere. (fn. 16) The gravel ends just short of the Lea,
which runs through a valley of alluvium lying over London Clay, which provided an
important area of meadows and grazing. (fn. 17) In the south part of the parish the gravel
ends at a line which runs from the northern half of St. Katharine's docks, north of the
London docks, to the junction of Cable Street and Butcher Row, then continues to
the southern end of West India Dock Road, along Poplar High Street, and then to the
north-west corner of the East India docks. The edge of the gravel formed a steep bank
in Wapping and Shadwell, called the Linches from the 12th century; it had been the
site of a Roman road and was later that of Ratcliff Highway. (fn. 18) Along the Thames an
alluvial belt, joining the alluvium of the Lea valley, includes the whole of the Isle of
Dogs, the land around the Limehouse basin, and the southern parts of St. George-inthe-East and Whitechapel, lying on London Clay or on Woolwich and Reading Beds.
All the parish, save the western part of Bethnal Green and a patch near the
west end of Commercial Road, lies at less than 15 m. above sea level; the riverside
and the south-east parts lie at less than 10 m. (fn. 19) Deposits since Roman times have
added to the Neolithic alluvium along the Thames, where much of the land may
have been submerged at high tide as late as the 2nd century A.D. (fn. 20) By the 12th century
those areas were known as marshes, the most important being Walmarsh or Wapping
marsh, in St. George-in-the-East and Whitechapel, and Stepney marsh or Poplar
marsh, in the Isle of Dogs. (fn. 21) The extent of the alluvial marsh may explain why a
landing-place, the Stybba's hythe which evolved as 'Stepney', gave its name to
a large area of Middlesex: (fn. 22) the only place on the north bank below London
where the river approaches the gravel ridge to make landing feasible is at Ratcliff
Cross, where Butcher Row meets Ratcliff Highway, and in the 1st century A.D. the
bank may even have been farther north, possibly as far as Cable Street. (fn. 23)
The marshes provided sites for medieval tidal mills. (fn. 24) By the early 13th century
embanking and drainage had created much cultivated land: arable adjoined the
river wall at Wapping that gave its name to Walmarsh. (fn. 25) An inquiry in 1324 on
the area between St. Katharine's marsh and the vill of Shadwell (that is, Walmarsh)
found that an unknown lord of Stepney in 'ancient time' had recovered about 100
a. with banks and ditches; when they had fallen into disrepair he had granted
42½ a. to freemen and the rest to his bondmen, all of whom held by the service
of maintaining the river walls and sewers under the supervision of two wall-reeves
answerable to the manor court. The measure had worked well, except when bad
weather or exceptionally high tides had left the tenants in need of financial help. (fn. 26)
A tenement near Limehouse called the Mote had a similar obligation to repair river
walls. (fn. 27)
The high tidal range made necessary repeated reclamation work until adequate
embanking was carried out in the 16th century. The Crown often appointed
commissions to inspect and repair stretches of riverbank from the City eastward,
occasionally well into Essex. The earliest commission known was in 1297-8; another
was named in 1324 after major flooding, and they later became frequent, with nine
between 1354 and 1381, and five between 1395 and 1407. In 1395-6 the lord lost
rents from submerged land and the manor paid expenses for attending the inquiries
at Whitechapel into repair of walls. (fn. 28) In 1429 ordinances were to be made for
Stepney and Walmarsh similar to the laws and customs of Romney marsh, in order
to obtain labourers and make quick repairs. A similar commission was appointed
in 1447 for land as far north as the parish churches of Bromley, Stepney, and
Whitechapel, but floods in 1448 led to an inquiry into the cause. Further
commissions were held in 1455, 1467, 1474, and 1480. (fn. 29) The large number of
freeholders, whom the manor court could not easily coerce, probably accounted
for presentations in the king's courts, as in 1369-70, when landholders were
summoned to repair their stretches of wall. (fn. 30)
Flooding in Stepney or Poplar marsh hastened the transition from arable to
pasture in the 15th century and saw the abandonment of a settlement at the south
end of the Isle of Dogs. (fn. 31) In 1448 a major breach in the wall on the south-west of
the marsh through neglect by the freeholder John Harpur, presumably as lord of
the manor of Pomfret, was said to have allowed the flooding of c. 1,000 a. (fn. 32) Sixteen
years later 400 a. of Stepney manor were still flooded, causing loss of revenue to
the bishop, of 7 tenements and 9 cottages to his tenants, and of land on other
manors. (fn. 33)
More permanent solutions were found in the 16th century: after the whole of
Wapping marsh had been flooded, building was encouraged on top of the wall c.
1570, the site of the roads called Greenbank and Wapping Wall, and gradual
enwharving on the river side helped to contain the tides. (fn. 34) Statutory commissions
for sewers in the 16th and 17th centuries for all the areas around London provided closer
supervision and spread the financial burden more widely. (fn. 35)
A watercourse, probably rising near Spitalfields, ran south-eastward through
Haresmarsh to Mile End, crossing the Colchester road near the junction with
Cambridge Heath Road, passing north of the parish church, and curving round into
Poplar to enter the Thames at Limehouse dock. It may have given the name to
Brokestreet, near the church, by the 14th century. (fn. 36) In 1703 it crossed the Colchester
road by a bridge, known as Stonebridge in 1731. (fn. 37) The stream was gradually culverted
and by the late 18th century, when it was known as the Black Ditch, was clearly
distinguished only between Rhodeswell Road and the Thames. Long straight
stretches suggest that its course had already been modified. (fn. 38)
Other watercourses may have been small streams running into the Thames but later dug
out for drainage. The 13th-century Cropats ditch near Cropats well, south of Hachestreet
(later Cable Street), (fn. 39) was possibly the stream that ran along Nightingale Lane to the Crash
mills. Although a 16th-century plan shows it running from East Smithfield, it was more
likely to have risen in Wellclose Square. (fn. 40) Another stream rose in the gravel near Shadwell
well, by the site of St. Paul's Shadwell, and was still known to residents in 1684. (fn. 41) A stream
c. 12 ft. wide that existed by the 12th century formerly skirted the road at the eastern
junction of Butcher Row with White Horse and Cable streets. It probably flowed from
north-east to south-west, but has not been traced to the Thames. (fn. 42)
In the 20th century a concealed stream arose at the junction of Devons Road and Weston
Street, in Bromley, and ran erratically southward to cross Poplar High Street and then
turn eastward through the workhouse to Poplar dock. The only other known 20th-century
stream (also concealed) rose at the junction of West and South Tenter streets in Goodman's
Fields, in Whitechapel, and ran south to the Thames at Tower Bridge. (fn. 43)