THE EAST: OLD FORD LANE, GREEN STREET, AND GLOBE TOWN.
For centuries the area east of the green was virtually empty
of houses. It is unlikely that any owners occupied
Bishop's or Bonner's Hall after Bishop Bonner.
Lessees like John Fuller (d. 1592), wealthy
Londoner and so-called judge, (fn. 61) lived there, as
did Sir Hugh Platt in 1594. (fn. 62) Some people
described as 'of Bishop's Hall' from 1592 to 1640
may have been servants but the presence of
silkweavers and bricklayers by 1612 suggests
that the house was tenemented. (fn. 63)
By 1642 the site contained five additional
houses, one of them an alehouse created out of
two houses. (fn. 64) The old dining room had been
pulled down by Bishop Richard FitzJames
(1506-22) (fn. 65) and by 1652 the brick manor house
had been 'torn to pieces', with only the walls still
standing. The outhouses and offices had been
converted into four timber cottages; a fifth cottage stood apart, probably on the east side of the
lane to the manor house. (fn. 66) A sketch map of 1648
depicting a small plain building of two storeys,
with large chimneys on either side, may not have
been intended as an accurate representation of
Bishop's Hall. (fn. 67) In 1655 the mansion house was
taken down and the materials were used to build
four new houses (fn. 68) as a single structure with two
wings, three storeys, and attics with dormer
windows. Substantial rebuilding may have taken
place between 1671 when Thomas Walton, who
taught at Bishop's Hall in 1673, was assessed for
10 hearths at an empty house, and 1674 when
his assessment was for 30 hearths. (fn. 69) By 1741
three or four wooden houses, possibly those
mentioned in 1652, joined the main building on
the west. The most easterly, next to the lane,
was a public house, (fn. 70) probably the Three Golden
Lions of 1750. (fn. 71) A large sum was laid out in
repairs and new building on the farm to the east
of the lane in 1721. (fn. 72) Thereafter there was little
change before the creation of Victoria Park in
the 1840s. (fn. 73)
The only other dwellings in 1703 were a group
on the boundary at Grove Street, where they
formed part of the Hackney hamlet of that name,
and single buildings in Rushy (Russia) Lane and
the driftway (later Green Street). (fn. 74) The Rushy
Lane cottage probably originated as a wastehold
property, in existence by 1648 (fn. 75) and by 1741 an
inn, the Blue Anchor, which gave an alternative
name to the lane. (fn. 76) Between 1760 and the 1790s
another building stood to the south, at the
junction with Old Ford Lane; it was called
Globe Hall in 1826, when Globe Cottage had
been built to the north. (fn. 77) The Green Lane
buildings had apparently disappeared by 1750. (fn. 78)
In 1790 Charles Digby, whose copyhold estate
of Eastfields had been enfranchised, sold most
of it to John May Evans, William Timmins, and
Martin Wilson, an Aldgate brewer who provided
the finance for the building of what became
Globe Town. (fn. 79) Evans and Timmins began
building at the western end of the estate on either
side of Green Street, bounded on the west by
Globe Street and Back Lane. In 1790 and 1791
they applied to build 92 houses in Globe Lane
(Street), Digby Street, 'in the square' at the back
of Digby Street, Green Street, and North
Place. (fn. 80) They sold plots to other builders. James
Price of Mile End Old Town, for example, bought
a plot in Globe Street in February 1790 and
immediately applied to build 8 small houses. (fn. 81)
Other builders were William Willcox of Poplar, (fn. 82)
Edward Smith of Oxford Street, (fn. 83) and William
Lovell of Shoreditch. (fn. 84) Lovell Street, together
with Bully Rag Row or Digby Walk, existed by
1792. (fn. 85) Evans and Timmins were also active on
Cradfords estate where Green Place and West
Street were being laid out in 1791. (fn. 86) They sold
four houses in the road later known as Bullard's
Place to Richard Bullard, mercer of St. Gilesin-the-Fields, in 1792, (fn. 87) when they had also built
four in North Street nearby. (fn. 88) Although most
houses were built by Evans and Timmins
themselves, (fn. 89) they granted a 99-year lease of land
between West and North streets to Edward
Holdsworth, carpenter of Bethnal Green. (fn. 90) By
1800 there were c. 90 dwellings, many of them
small cottages, in the area then designated Green
Place. (fn. 91)
Opposite, on the north side of Green Street,
houses had been built in Bonner Street and
Pleasant Row by 1800 (fn. 92) and spread eastward
during the next decade. Evans was no longer
associated with Timmins and Wilson by 1806
when they conveyed ground in what by then was
called Globe Town. (fn. 93) Jefferys, Cross, Sidney (or
Sydney), Norton, and Type streets had been
built there by 1808, (fn. 94) partly by Timmins but also
by others such as Henry Hawkes (fn. 95) and John
Caton (fn. 96) both of St. George-in-the-East, and
Samuel Cotterell, of Stepney. (fn. 97)
Development quickened on neighbouring
estates at about the same time. On the south side
of Green Street, east of Timmins's land, Smarts
Street by 1808 had houses built by another
carpenter from St. George-in-the-East, Samuel
Maryon, (fn. 98) and adjoining streets to the east and
south existed by 1812: East Street, Surat and
Hampden places, and Twig Street and Twig
Folly. (fn. 99) North of Green Street there were houses
on the south side of John Street, north of
Pleasant Row, by early 1808, when Samuel
Ridge, then described as farmer, enfranchised 7
a. north of John Street and Timmins's Globe
Town, bounded north by Old Ford Lane and
west by Bishop's Street. (fn. 1) He had built many
houses there, in John, Bishop's, and King
streets by 1822. (fn. 2) Building took place on the
neighbouring Pyotts from 1818, starting near the
green and spreading east of Globe Street (Back
Lane) by 1820, when 17 houses in Grosvenor
Place and 14 in Park Street were leased to
William Bradshaw. Several plots, usually with
houses, were leased for 80 years during the
1820s. Ridge took a lease of part of the estate
near the green in 1818 and two leases of plots
south of Old Ford Lane in 1823. While
continuing to farm from Bonner's Hall, he was
by then described as a brickmaker (fn. 3) and by 1825
he had built houses in George's Place fronting
Old Ford Lane. (fn. 4) He was let 2 a. adjoining the
canal from the Sotheby estate in 1822, where his
houses fronted Green Street by 1823, and
bought land from Timmins's widow. When
Ridge died in 1839 his freehold and leasehold
property south of Old Ford Lane stretched from
Globe Street to the canal and contained 75
houses. (fn. 5)
The two largest estates, Bishop's Hall and
Broomfields, saw little development. East of the
canal a few cottages, King's Arms Row, stood
on the south side of Old Ford Lane by 1799. (fn. 6) In
1803 Sir Thomas Coxhead, owner of Broomfields,
had made an agreement with Henry Stevens and
James Butt, brickmakers of Mile End, for a new
road (New Grove Road) with houses fronting it
at the eastern end of the parish. Only a few had
been built on either side of the Mile End boundary
when Coxhead died in 1811, after which his
successors abandoned the enterprise. (fn. 7)
The second phase of building on Cradford
estate in the 1820s and 1830s involved William
Walter Gretton and John Butler, all their names
being given to new roads as development spread
westward to meet the already built up Eastfield
estate. Also involved in the development was
William Mudd, carpenter of Hackney Road, (fn. 8)
and the Union Building Society, which gave its
name to Union Row (later Morpeth Street), where
its members leased houses in 1834. (fn. 9) By 1836
there were over 370 houses on Cradfords, part
of a total of 1,088 houses in the eastern area, 550
to the north and 538 to the south of Green Street. (fn. 10)
The East: principal estates
1 Bishop's Hall, 1a Robinson's Charity, 2 Cass, 3 Goosefields, 4 Pyott, 4a Pyott Sotheby, 5 ? St. Paul's (Bowes 2), 6 Eastfield, 7 Cradford, 8 Broomfields