Borough in London, England
Tower Hamlets
A single borough holds the Tower of London, Britain's curry capital and a skyline of bank towers, and its name comes from the villages that once guarded the Tower.
Key information
- County
- Greater London
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 310,000 (2021 Census)
- Area
- about 20 square kilometres
- Known for
- Canary Wharf, Brick Lane, the Tower of London, the Docklands and the East End
- What locals are called
- East Enders, and Cockneys in the traditional sense
- Famous people
- Sylvia Pankhurst, George Lansbury, Clement Attlee, Thomas Barnardo
- Football clubs
- Millwall, founded on the Isle of Dogs in 1885
About Tower Hamlets
Named after the Tower's neighbours
Tower Hamlets sounds like a fairytale village, but the name is military. The hamlets and parishes east of the City of London were once expected to supply men to guard the Tower of London. That area was known as the Tower Division, and the name stuck. The Tower itself, with its ravens, Crown Jewels and Beefeaters, sits on the borough's western edge. So one of the most famous castles in the world is a neighbour to the terraces of Whitechapel and Wapping. Wapping has its own dark claim to fame. Pirates were hanged at Execution Dock on the Thames shore, and Captain Kidd met his end there in 1701. The Prospect of Whitby pub still stands nearby.
The mosque that has been a church and a synagogue
Brick Lane is the borough in miniature. The building on the corner of Fournier Street was built in 1743 as a Huguenot chapel. It later became a Methodist chapel and then a synagogue, and today it is the Jamme Masjid mosque. Each wave of newcomers to Spitalfields left its mark on the same bricks. Huguenot silk weavers came first, then Irish workers and Jewish families fleeing persecution in eastern Europe. From the 1960s, Bangladeshi migrants, many from Sylhet, made the area their own. Brick Lane became known as Banglatown, and its curry houses are a big reason the British curry story is so tied to east London. For a very different local classic, the Brick Lane Beigel Bake has long been a favourite for salt beef beigels, a reminder of the Jewish East End.
From dockers to Canary Wharf
For roughly two centuries the Thames-side districts ran on shipping. The West India Docks opened in 1802 and the Isle of Dogs became one of the busiest industrial areas on earth. The docks closed progressively from the late 1960s into the early 1980s, and the West India and Millwall docks shut to commercial shipping in 1980, leaving the area derelict. The transformation was dramatic. One Canada Square opened in 1991 and at 235 metres was the tallest building in the UK until The Shard arrived in 2012. The Docklands Light Railway began running in 1987 to serve the new development. Canary Wharf takes its name from the fruit trade with the Canary Islands, which used a warehouse on the site. Today it is home to some of the world's biggest banks, just a short walk from the old dock communities that grew up beside it.
Rebels, reformers and rough justice
Tower Hamlets has a long record of making trouble in a good cause. In 1888 the matchgirls of Bryant & May in Bow went on strike over appalling conditions, a landmark moment for British trade unionism. In 1921 Poplar councillors, led by George Lansbury, went to prison rather than collect rates they said the poorest borough could not afford. In 1936 local people joined with Jewish and Irish dockers to block Oswald Mosley's fascists at the Battle of Cable Street. Sylvia Pankhurst based her East London Federation of Suffragettes in Bow. Clement Attlee, later prime minister, lived in Stepney and served as its mayor. Dr Thomas Barnardo opened his first home for destitute boys in Stepney in 1870. The borough has a darker notoriety too. The Whitechapel murders of 1888 gave the world Jack the Ripper, and the Ten Bells pub in Spitalfields still trades on the story.
Bells, blooms and a People's Park
The Whitechapel Bell Foundry cast the original Liberty Bell and, in 1858, the Big Ben bell still in use today. The first Big Ben bell, cast by John Warner & Sons in 1856, cracked and was replaced. The foundry made bells for centuries before it closed in 2017. Nearby, the Whitechapel Gallery has shown art to East Enders since 1901. On Sundays, Columbia Road fills with flower stalls and the cries of traders selling armfuls of blooms. Spitalfields Market and the Old Truman Brewery draw crowds for food, vintage clothes and street art. Victoria Park, opened in 1845 and nicknamed the People's Park, gave overcrowded east Londoners some fresh air. In April 1978 it hosted the Rock Against Racism carnival, with The Clash on the bill and around 100,000 people in attendance. Millwall Football Club began here too. It was founded in 1885 by workers at J.T. Morton's canning and preserve factory on the Isle of Dogs, before moving south of the river in 1910.