CHAPTER XV - The Halifax Estate in Spitalfields
ThE area included in this chapter was in the
mid-seventeenth century bounded on the
north by the back part of the houses in
Smock Alley and Raven Row (now Artillery
Passage and Lane), on the south by Wentworth
Street, on the east by Bell Lane and on the west by
Petticoat Lane (now Middlesex Street). (fn. a) It
formed the south-western extremity of the hamlet
and parish of Spitalfields.
Lying adjacent to the City it was one of the
earliest parts of Spitalfields to be built up, with a
haphazard and irregular lay-out. It was one of the
first parts of Spitalfields in which substantial
houses degenerated into slums.
In 1550 the area formed part of two closes of
some eighteen and a half acres, held of the Manor
of Stepney and extending from ’Hogge Lane’
(Petticoat Lane or Middlesex Street) on the west
to Brick Lane on the east. (ref. 1) These are shown
without buildings on Agas's map off c. 1560–70,
which also shows Petticoat Lane without buildings. But by the end of the sixteenth century this
street was built-up. Stow commented on the
development here in the 1603 edition of his
Survey of London: ’This Hogge lane stretcheth
North toward Saint Marie Spitle without Bishopsgate, and within these fortie yeares had on both
sides fayre hedgerowes of Elme trees, with
Bridges and easie stiles to passe over into the
pleasant fieldes, very commodious for Citizens
therein to walke, shoote and otherwise to recreate
and refresh their dulled spirites in the sweete and
wholesome ayre, which is nowe within few yeares
made a continuall building throughout of Garden
houses, and small Cottages: and the fields on either
side be turned into Garden plottes, teynter yardes,
Bowling Allyes, and such like, from Houndes
ditch in the West, so farre as white Chappell and
further towards the East.’ (ref. 2)
The edition of Stow published in 1720 by John
Strype, who was born in a court off the Lane, tells
a story of the building-up of ’Hog Lane ’ which
although probably not relating to the Spitalfields
section of the street indicates some of the disputes
arising out of its development. The two uses of
suburban London clearly shown by Agas, for
archery grounds and tenter yards, were here in
conflict. The enclosure and development of the
area is interpreted more favourably than by Stow:
’In this Hog Lane& helop;, lying on the back side of
Whitechapel, were eight Acres of Land, which
about the year 1574 were in the Possession of one
Benedict Spinola, a rich Italian Merchant; where of he made twenty Tenter Yards and certain Gardens. These, some pretended, were first enclosed
by him, being before open and common. And
hence it came to pass, that in the Year 1584 it
was presented as an Annoyance to the Archers,
and all the Queen's Liege People. And a precept
was awarded to the Tenants & Occupiers of the
Premises to remove their Pales and Fences, and all
Buildings made thereupon: For now many
Clothiers dwelt here, who hereupon applied themselves to the Lord Treasurer of England, and
brought Witness to the contrary: Shewing, that
the same Field, before it was so converted as then
it was, was a piece of ground several, not common,
nor never commonly used by any Archers, being
far unmeet for Archers to shoot in, by reason of
standing Puddles, most noisome Laystals, and
filthy Ditches in and about the same. Also the
Way called Hog Lane was so foul and deep in the
Winter time, that no Man could pass by the same.
And in Summer time Men would not pass
thereby for fear of Infection, by means of the
Filthiness that lay there. So that the Presenters
were utterly deceived, and not well informed in
their Presentments. Afterwards Benedict Spinola
bestowed great Cost and Charges upon levelling
and cleansing the Premisses; and made divers
Tenter Yards, by means whereof the common
Ways and Passages about the said eight Acres
were greatly amended and enlarged, that all
People might well & safely pass…’ (ref. 3)
This part of Spitalfields, lying towards Brick
Lane, was similarly laid out in tenter yards, on
ground forming the ’Tenter Ground’ and Fossan
estates. The part more particularly discussed
here, west of Bell Lane, does not, however, seem
to have been so used but to have had a more
domestic character.
In December 1639 and February 1639/40
Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Cleveland, Lord of
the Manor of Stepney, made a bargain and sale to
Henry Montague, Earl of Manchester, for
£1,180, of most of the area here discussed, with
half the soil of the bounding roadways. Some
sixty-nine messuages were then mentioned on the
site. (ref. 4) In June 1643, after the Earl's death, William Smith (or Smyth) of the Middle Temple,
esquire, and others, who had obtained possession of
the Manor in the previous March, (ref. 5) made a further
bargain and sale of the same property, and of other
land in Mile End New Town, to Mawrice
Tresham of the Middle Temple, esquire, Edward
Montague of Boughton, Northamptonshire, esquire, and William Montague of the Middle
Temple, esquire. (ref. 6) The two Montagues were
perhaps the Earl of Manchester's nephews. The
Spitalfields and Mile End New Town properties
appear, however, to have passed eventually to the
Earl's son, George, and from him to Edward
Montague of Horton, Northamptonshire, the two
properties being always held together. Both subsequently passed to the Osborn family (see page
227).
In about 1642 a survey of the Manor excluded
the north-eastern part of the area, later occupied
by the Spitalfields workhouse and the original site
of the Jews’ Free School: this part seems never to
have been owned by the Montagues.
The survey lists eighty or ninety buildings on
the site, appreciably more than the 1639–40
deeds, giving the considerable yearly rental of
some £460. Twenty of the houses were held by
’Alderman Hyford’. In Bramble Alley (now
obliterated) and Wentworth Street were seven
’paper built’ houses, probably of plaster. (ref. 7)
Among the largest houses were the four owned,
with three gardens, in 1639 by Phillip Jacobson. (ref. 8)
These presumably included the house of John
Strype, silk throwster, where John Strype the
antiquary was born in 1643. He describes in his
edition of Stow's Survey the vicinity of Middlesex
Street. ’And a little Way off this, on the east side
of the Way, down a paved Alley, now called
Strype's Court, from my Father, who inhabited
here, was a fair large House, with a good Garden
before it; built and inhabited by Hans Jacobson,
a Dutchman, … King James's Jeweller,
wherein I was born. But, after French Protestants, that in the said King's Reign, and before,
fled their Country for their Religion, many
planted themselves here, viz. in that Part of the
Lane nearest Spittle-Fields, to follow their Trades,
being generally broad weavers of Silk, it soon
became a contiguous Row of Buildings on both
Sides of the way.’ (ref. 9) The elder Strype died here in
1648. (ref. 10)
The decline of the area from one of prosperous
domesticity to one of small tenements is illustrated
by the history of the Strypes’ property. In 1691
the younger Strype leased to George Ford, a dyer,
his freehold estate in Strype's Yard, consisting of a
workshop and three messuages. By 1714 one of
these, described as formerly ’one great messuage’,
had been divided into two tenements, and by 1723
further subdivision had made the original three
messuages into six. (ref. 11)
Ogilby and Morgan's map of 1677 shows the
area between Petticoat Lane and Bell Lane fairly
well built-up in irregular courts and yards divided
by gardens, having an appearance similar to that of
adjacent parts of the City and Whitechapel rather
than to the rest of Spitalfields which had been
more recently laid out in streets.
This irregular development was never
thoroughly reconstructed until modern times, but
considerable piecemeal rebuilding took place between the periods of Ogilby and Morgan's and
Rocque's maps.
In 1691 a private Act gave Elizabeth, the
widow of Edward Montague, power to grant,
with her trustees, leases of her property in Stepney for not more than fifty-one years. The houses
on her land, presumably both in Spitalfields and
Mile End New Town, were said to be mostly ’old
Timber buildings and very apt to be ruinous and
in decay’; but if building or repairing leases for an
assured term of years could be granted there were
several persons willing to take leases ’ of the said
Houses which are old and ruinous and of small
value and in the place thereof and in other voyd
places to new build good and Substantiall Houses whereby very considerable improvements may be
made’. (ref. 12)
The rebuilding included some reconstruction
of the layout. Part of this, the making of Montague Street in the south-eastern corner of the area,
is shown completed on Gascoine's map of 1703.
Other changes, including the making of Cox's
Square and its linking with Middlesex Street and
Bell Lane, were probably carried out later, perhaps under leases granted to John Cox and to
Henry Philp of Stepney, bricklayer, by Elizabeth
Montague and others in about 1708. (ref. 13)
In the second quarter of the eighteenth century
the first and second Earls of Halifax of the third
creation, George Montague and George Montague-Dunk, granted leases probably associated
with rebuilding. Builders taking leases of old or
newly erected property in this period included
William Yates of St. Anne's, Westminster, or St.
George's, Bloomsbury, bricklayer, John Lovell
of St. Botolph's, Aldgate, joiner, Thomas Laxon
or Saxon of the same, bricklayer, and Samuel Simpson of St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, bricklayer. The
last undertook in 1741 to spend £350 on building
four brick houses. (ref. 14)
In 1728 a site in the north-eastern part of the
area, fronting on Bell Lane and Frying Pan Alley,
was acquired by Spitalfields parish for a workhouse
(see page 285). It seems not to have been manorial
or Montague property in the mid-seventeenth
century, and in 1720 had been owned by John
Furnes, a clothworker, whose descendants retained the freehold in the late eighteenth century.
In the 1750's the workhouse was vacated, and by
1791 the site, still largely open, was occupied by
houses and lodgings. (ref. 15) By 1810 a ’new-built
Freehold Porter Ale and Table Beer Brewery’,
ccupying part of the site and boasting of ’ (ref. 2) inexhaustible wells of very fine water’, was being
offered for sale. (ref. 16) In 1818 the mortgage of a
warehouse and storehouse on this site, described as
’lately part of Constitution Brewery’, in which
Thomas Fowell Buxton had an interest, was being
assigned. (ref. 17) The site was later occupied by the
London General Omnibus Company (ref. 18) and in
1890 was acquired for the Jews’ Free School
which had been established on the north side of
this site in 1820. (ref. 19)
By this time the area had acquired a strongly
Jewish character. Nightingale, writing in 1815,
said that Strype's Yard, then corrupted to ’Tripe's
Yard’, had become ’like Petticoat Lane, the
resort of the lowest order of Jews’. (ref. 20) The streetmarkets of Petticoat Lane and Wentworth Street
(the latter growing up mainly after the great
immigration of the 1880's) and the former Jews’
Free School are diverse aspects of Jewish life in
this area.
In 1849 an Act authorized the trustees under
the will of Sir George Osborn, to whom the Montague estate had descended, to sell the Spitalfields
property in order to discharge mortgages on other
parts of the Osborn estate. (ref. 21) A considerable part
of the estate, however, remained unsold in the
twentieth century.
The present aspect of the area is largely of late
nineteenth-century origin. It was created partly
by the expansion of the buildings of the Jews’ Free
School and partly by the London County Council's
widening of Petticoat Lane and reconstruction of
the area between Strype's Yard and Cobb's Yard.
In 1883 the Metropolitan Board of Works
widened Middlesex Street between Whitechapel
High Street and Wentworth Street, as part of the
Goulston Street improvement plan. (ref. 22) In 1889
the London County Council was asked by the
Whitechapel District Board to extend the improvement northward by widening that part of the
present Middlesex Street which lay north of
Wentworth Street, and which was then known as
Sandy's Row. The street hitherto had had no
direct communication with Bishopsgate Street.
When, therefore, the City Commissioners of
Sewers at this time asked the Council to contribute
towards their project for widening the western end
of Widegate Street where it joined Bishopsgate
Street, the Council took the opportunity to arrange
for the construction of a new street to join Widegate Street to Sandy's Row. A further line of
communication from Bishopsgate Street to Whitechapel and the docks was thus provided. The
Council agreed to pay half the cost of the Widegate Street improvement and also to widen Sandy's
Row to forty feet between the new street and
Wentworth Street. In September 1891 the
Council resolved to apply to Parliament for power
to carry out that part of the work which lay
within the County, which was granted in the
London County Council (General Powers) Act
of 1892. (ref. 23) The Council began to act on their
powers in July of that year.
The Act permitted the Council to acquire
land as far east as Cox's Square and New Court.
This was to allow the clearance of dilapidated property in the area, in addition to the proposed
street widening. The difficulty of rehousing the
displaced inhabitants, however, prevented the
clearance being carried out at this time, and only
the property actually needed for the street was
acquired and demolished. The line between the
new street and Wentworth Street was widened by
setting back its eastern side. The complete
thoroughfare, from Bishopsgate Street to Wentworth Street, was opened in March 1896. The
cost of the work in Sandy's Row alone was
£53,426. The name ’Middlesex Street’ was then
applied to the whole new line of street.
In February 1897 the Council made an agreement with Sir Algernon Osborn, as part of a
scheme for the clearance of the whole area between the Jews' Free School, Wentworth Street,
Bell Lane and Sandy's Row. By this Osborn was
enabled to purchase the property fronting on to
Sandy's Row. In April 1899 the Council sanctioned his plan for the laying-out of three new
streets on the site, and the work was completed in
October 1904. These new streets were originally
to be called Tripe Street, Cobb Street and Short
Street. Just before the completion of the project
Tripe Street was renamed Strype Street. (ref. 24) Short
Street became Leyden Street in 1913. The congested courts previously on the site were thus
completely swept away, and only the narrowness
of Frying Pan Alley survives as a reminder of the
previous character of the area.
Petticoat Lane Tabernacle
Demolished
In March 1710/11 it was stated that there were
two Anglican chapels of ease or ’tabernacles’ in
Spitalfields. (ref. 25) One of these was Sir George
Wheler's Tabernacle and the other presumably
the tabernacle in Petticoat Lane. These two
chapels were mentioned again in a petition of
17 February 1713/14 from the principal inhabitants of Spitalfields to the Commissioners for
Building Fifty New Churches, and referred to as
’two Small Chappells which are and always have
been maintained at the charge of such of the
inhabitants who have and do frequent the same’. (ref. 26)
In 1714 James Paterson described the Petticoat
Lane Tabernacle as ’a Chapel of Ease to the
Inhabitants of that Lane, and others of that populous Parish of Stepney; erected some Years ago at
their Charge. It's built of Brick, covered with
Tile, it's well pew'd, but very low and dark,
being close joyn'd to divers Houses, for which it
was first designed.’ (ref. 27) Presumably the tabernacle
was abandoned when Christ Church was opened
in 1729. A deed of 1741 gives the position of the
building, then a workshop, on a plot of ground
abutting west on Petticoat Lane, east on Strype's
Yard and south on Strype's Passage. (ref. 28) Gascoine
notes a ’Tabernacle Yard’ on this site in his map
of 1703.
The Jews' Free School, Bell Lane
The Jews' Free School was founded in 1817,
for boys only, and incorporated the Talmud
Torah which had been established in 1732 by the
first Great Synagogue, Duke's Place. (ref. 29) In 1820
the trustees purchased a site with a frontage of
93 feet in Bell Lane and 116 feet in Frying Pan
Alley, (ref. 30) and built a school to accommodate 600
boys and 300 girls. (ref. 18) The school was run
according to Lancaster's system, under which the
boys were taught in one large school-room,
100 feet long and 50 feet broad, by a master
assisted by monitors. The girls' school was
arranged in the same way in a room which
measured 70 feet by 40 feet. (ref. 31) Alterations and
additions were made to the building in 1848, (ref. 32)
and again in 1855, when the architect was James
Tillott and the contractors were Brass and Son,
whose tender was for £2,192. (ref. 33) These alterations
were made necessary by the increase in the number
of pupils, which in 1851 amounted to 1,200, (ref. 34)
and in 1859 to 1,800 children, made up of 1,000
boys and 800 girls. (ref. 35) The boys' school was still
taught by one master with twelve apprentice
pupil-teachers. (ref. 36)
In 1864 land between the school and Sandy's
Row was purchased, the trustees providing half
the purchase money and Sir Anthony de Rothschild the other half. (ref. 18) Eighteen class-rooms, a
gymnasium, and four playgrounds were erected on
the land in the following year. (ref. 31) The Ordnance
Survey map of 1873 shows the plan of the buildings after these additions.
By 1883 the number of children in the school
had reached 2,900, and the increasing pressure of
applicants made it necessary to rebuild the original
Bell Lane section of the school, thereby providing
accommodation for 3,100 children. This rebuilding, which cost about £21,000, was from
the designs of Messrs. N. S. Joseph and Pearson of 45 Finsbury Pavement, and the contractors
were Ashby Brothers of Kingsland Road. The
work was completed in six months while the children were accommodated in temporary buildings
erected on the playgrounds. By this time the boys
were being taught by a headmaster and thirtynine teachers and the girls by a headmistress and
thirty-three teachers. The children paid a fee of
1d. per week where possible. (ref. 31)
In 1890 another site in Bell Lane to the south
of the school buildings was acquired, (ref. 37) but it was
not built upon until 1904, when, on 29 June,
Lord Rothschild laid the foundation stone of a new
wing which was to extend from the old building
south to Strype Street. The whole project included a rebuilding of the western part of the
school, and a wing facing Petticoat Lane. The
building erected in 1883 was untouched by this
work, which was completed in 1907 and cost
£ 70,000. The architect was E. R. Robson, and
the builder J. Carmichael. (ref. 38) Building work was
carried on day and night with no interruption
of the school's work. (ref. 39) Most of the new building
was raised on piers to provide covered playgrounds
for the children, who now numbered 3,500. The
school was said at this time to be the largest
elementary school in the country or indeed in the
world. (ref. 40)
The school was closed in 1939 and the buildings, parts of which were badly damaged by
enemy action during the war of 1939–45, were
disposed of by the trustees and are now used for
commercial purposes. It is intended that the
trust funds of the school shall be applied towards
the erection of a new Jewish secondary school in
St. Pancras.
The wide four-storeyed front to Bell Lane is a
well-ordered design of early Italian Renaissance
derivation carried out in red brick and terra-cotta,
materials which impart a distinctly Bolognese
flavour. The composition is asymmetrical: at the
south end is a narrow bay, slightly recessed from
the following sequence of six wide bays, with
a two-light window in each storey, and finally a
recessed face with two narrow bays flanking a
wide one. The single and two-light windows of
the second and third storeys are set in round-headed arches, with terra-cotta arabesque lunettes;
moulded string courses serve as sills for each upper
storey, and the piers and mullions of the top-storey windows support the crowning entablature.
The entrance is in the fifth wide bay from the
south. This block was planned with four storeys
of class-rooms ranged along the north, east and
south sides of a large top-lit assembly-hall. (fn. b)
The Strype Street block has a four-storeyed
front of light red brick, banded with black brick
and combined with white glazed terra-cotta. The
style cannot be easily defined, but free Jacobean
will serve for a label. The central porch with
blocked columns is surmounted by a three-sided
bay of white terra-cotta, extending through two
storeys. Above this is a shallow loggia of three
bays, with segmental arches resting on tapered
columns with Ionic capitals. The faces flanking
this central feature have two windows in each
storey, the lower ones with flat gauged arches,
the upper with ribbed segmental arches. Each
outer angle breaks out into an octagonal turret
and the whole fantasy is crowned with a curveting
parapet. A note in The Builder of 19 January
1907 suggests that the architect ’intended to
differentiate the school from an L.C.C. or C. of
E. School, to make it distinctive’, and distinctive it
certainly is.
The lofty four-storeyed front of the Middlesex
Street block is an eclectic design in red brick and
terra-cotta, reflecting the Gothic manner of
Alfred Waterhouse. The body of the front, with
four windows to each storey, is recessed between
gable-crowned wings, the south projecting less
than the north. Although moulded string courses
define the storeys, the second- and third-storey
windows are linked by arabesque aprons and
framed by tall round-headed arches. Similar
arches frame the four top-storey windows in the
centre, which are surmounted by small gables.
The front of each wing has a large two-light win-dow in its fourth storey, but below this the
fenestration is different, the south wing having
two windows per storey and the north having one,
placed to the right. A flêche rises centrally from
the ridge of the steeply pitched roof. The ground
storey is now largely obscured by modern shop fronts, but the open bays under the south wing can
be discerned.