CHAPTER VIII - Poplar New Town
The part of the parish north of the East India Dock
Road was commonly known as Poplar Fields until it was
renamed Poplar New Town in the 1830s. In the early
nineteenth century the land was largely given over to
market gardening and pasture,
(ref. 1) apart from a potash
manufactory between Upper North Street and the
'common sewer' which drained the area. Development
of the district east of the sewer began during the 1820s,
but the major phase followed the release of the remainder
of the area for building from the mid-1840s. In 1856 it
was said that 'within the last three or four years ...
buildings have been carried on with rapidity, equalled,
perhaps, by no suburban district of the metropolis'. (ref. 2) The
whole area was developed by the 1870s. The name 'New
Town' was in use by 1836 (ref. 3) and was applied generally to
all the developments north of the East India Dock Road,
but also, more specifically, to those streets within the
ecclesiastical district of St Saviour's (fig. 71). (ref. 4)
Upper North Street coincided with property boundaries for much of its length. There were five ownerships
along its west side by the mid-1840s.
At the southern end John W. Perry Watlington, the
nephew and heir of John Perry, laid out Margaret Street
(from 1876 Swale Street) in 1851, and two dozen houses
were built there within the next few years (see page 132). (ref. 5)
To the north of Perry's land lay an area acquired
by the brothers Oliver and George Evan Evans, and
enfranchised by them in 1845. They set out Evans Street,
and divided the land between them in 1846. (ref. 6) Building
continued until the mid-1850s. (ref. 7) The street initially
extended for 550ft to the western boundary of the Evans'
land, but it was extended c1858 when Pekin Street,
together with Nankin Street, was laid out by Stephen
Redman and the other owners of the adjoining ground,
giving Evans Street access to East India Dock Road (see
page 131). (ref. 8) The whole street was renamed Pekin Street
in 1887.
The Elim chapel was erected on the west side of Pekin
Street in 1883 by the builder W. Howard of Canning
Town for a Strict Baptist congregation from Waterloo
Street in Limehouse. (ref. 9) The building could seat 300, but
by 1902 attendances at services filled less than a third of
the places. (ref. 10) In 1927 arrangements were made to sell the
site, and the chapel was replaced by the Beulah Gospel
Hall and the Excelsior Works of Ernest Perrett Ltd,
flagmakers, both of which were badly bomb-damaged in
the Second World War. (ref. 11)
There may have been some collaboration between the
Evans brothers and James Gates, the owner of the ground
on the Evans' north side, for he enfranchised his land
there on the same day as they did. (ref. 12) Moreover, a short
street, Randall's Buildings, was set out to connect their
two streets. Gates auctioned building lots in Gates Street
in 1846 and had sold all those along its southern side by
1847, when he began to dispose of those on its north
side. (ref. 13) By 1850 there were 37 houses in the street and by
1855 there were 54 houses, a public house, and the
Roman Catholic church of SS Mary and Joseph. (ref. 14) The
street continued westward into Canton Street on the
Conant estate, and the whole length was designated
Canton Street in 1873.
Gates was a contractor who had operated in Poplar for
many years in partnership with Thomas Horne, who
owned four acres on the north side of Gates's land.
Horne died in 1846, and his widow subsequently married
Andrew Hind, a local grocer. Horne's death may have
delayed the development of his estate slightly, but by the
end of 1848 the necessary arrangements had been made.
The first of at least 125 building lots on the newly set
out Thomas and Hind Streets, and along Upper North
Street, were being sold in 1849. (ref. 15) Building was slow, with
only 26 houses completed in Thomas Street by 1855 and
37 by 1863, while the housing in Hind Street was not
begun until 1854, and there were only 17 houses by 1863.
Eventually, there were 116 houses in Thomas Street
(renamed Gough Street, the name of its western
extension), Hind Street and that part of Upper North
Street owned by the Hinds, and nine in Paris Terrace,
which marked the western boundary of the estate. (ref. 16) In
addition, the Poplar Poor Law Guardians took a plot in
Thomas Street for an infirmary. Andrew Hind attempted
to develop parts of the estate himself, but not very
successfully, continuing to operate as a grocer, cheesemonger and tea-dealer, moving first to Limehouse, then
to Pentonville, and by 1857, when he was declared
bankrupt, to Stoke Newington. (ref. 17)
The remainder of the land to the north, as far as the
Limehouse Cut, was part of the estate of Richard
Redfearn Goodlad, who had inherited the freehold on
the death of his father, Richard Goodlad, in 1821. It had
come to Richard in 1780 as a bequest from his mother's
uncle, Rear-Admiral Roger Martin of Droxford, Hampshire. (ref. 18) By the early twentieth century the estate, together
with the lands at Droxford, had passed to one Major
W. A. Daubeney. (ref. 19)
Although R. R. Goodlad was empowered by the terms
of his father's will to grant building and repairing leases,
it was not until 1850 that development began, when the
land to the east of Upper North Street was acquired by
Onesiphorus Randall (see page 207). The land to the
west of the street was disposed of on 99-year leases in
1854 to William Wicks, a builder of Forest Gate near
Stratford – who took that part of it which lay in Sussex
Street, Suffolk Street and the south side of Northumberland Street – and Arthur Antoine Walter, a Limehouse
solicitor, who bought all of the land to the north, except
a strip close to the Limehouse Cut acquired by a James
Flowers in 1850. (ref. 20)
Figure 71:
Poplar New Town. Plan based on the Ordnance Survey of 1894–6 showing division into family estates
Building in these streets proceeded fairly rapidly, both
developers using a number of builders. There were c200
houses on this part of the estate by 1859 and c400 by
1868, with c550 by the end of the century.
(ref. 21)
(fn. a)
The estate
also contained St Saviour's church and schools.
The other area west of Upper North Street developed
during this period was that part of the Conant estate
which lay north of East India Dock Road. The estate
straddled the boundary with Limehouse, almost five acres
of it being within Poplar. The development of the
hinterland coincided with that of the frontages on the
north side of East India Dock Road (see page 127).
Stainsby Road and three streets off its eastern side were
set out in the late 1840s,
(ref. 23) but building along them
progressed only slowly. In 1855 there were 178 building
plots in Canton, Gough and Painton Streets, but only
nine had been built upon, and there were 27 houses in
Stainsby Road. (ref. 24) By 1864 the number of houses in the
four streets had risen to 120 and by 1873 the frontages
were full, with 218 houses. (ref. 25)
That part of Stainsby Road close to the East India
Dock Road had some detached houses and several pairs
of comfortable semi-detached villas. The remainder of
the housing on the Conant estate, as upon the others,
consisted of terraces of small flat-fronted brick houses,
standing directly behind the pavements, generally of two
and three storeys, and some with basements. There were
seven public houses, comparatively few for the size of
the area, and most of the shops were in Upper North
Street and Stainsby Road. (ref. 26)
By the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
parts of the district had developed a distinctly grim
character. The area around St Saviour's in the north was
thought to be 'the poorest part of Poplar' with 'rows of
mean and small houses of that dreary sameness so usual
in the East End'. (ref. 27) This was regarded as a 'very poor
neighbourhood', although the streets further south were
more highly thought of, with Lindfield (formerly Sussex)
Street a 'fair class' street, Hind and Gough Streets of 'a
good class' and Pekin and Canton Streets categorised
as 'fairly comfortable', perhaps even 'very good class
streets'. (fn. 28)