Goodman's Fields ~ Theatres 
In 1515, 27 of the nuns died of infection and shortly after the
outbreak of plague, the convent buildings were destroyed by fire. Rebuilding was aided by contributions from
the mayor, aldermen, and citizens of London to the sum of 200 marks but
at the special request of Cardinal Wolsey to the Court of Common
Council, it was decided in 1520 to give 100 marks more to complete the
building. The king donated £200. After the Dissolution, the nunnery was surrendered to Henry VIII by the
last abbess, Dame Elizabeth Salvage, in 1539, who was subsequently
granted a pension of £40, and the nunnery became the residence of John
Clark, Bishop of Bath and Wells, Henry VIII’s ambassador to the Duke of
Cleve [pictured is a drawing of the ruined abbey in 1797]. 
Goodman's Fields
Boggy
land was drained for tenter grounds, with frames (tenters) for drying
washed woven cloth: hence Tenter Street, and the expression 'to be on
tenterhooks'. There were other Tenter Streets and Grounds - including
the one in Spitalfields which in time became the centre of the Dutch Jewish
community (the Sasieni family website gives an excellent account). In past times there was a meat market between Red Lion Street and
Minories, and a thrice-weekly hay and straw market until 1928. 
But by 1678, the land was
beginning to to be sold off for the construction of housing, and this process continued apace. As explained here,
by 1829 there was a roadway around the site which became North, South, East and West Tenter Streets, and it became criss-crossed
with small streets and houses, including St Mark's Street and Scarborough
Street, of which in St Mark's Street only the Scarborough Arms (closed 2010) of 1855 [right, with a bollard in Scarborough Street] and two houses at 31-33 remain: the other housing is of the 1970s and 1980s, with English Martyrs primary school (1969) in the centre. As the 1967 picture of Scarborough Street shows, there were prefabs on this site for some years after the war. Geoffrey Fletcher's London (Hutchinson 1968) comments condescendingly Stand
at the door of the Scarborough Arms, and survey the typical
mid-nineteenth-century artisans' dwellings in Scarborough Street — two
storey in red and yellow brick, with round headed windows and doors —
and take in the prefabs on the spare ground opposite, which impart a
pleasingly mournful 1947 quality to the composition. In fact despite their temporary nature prefabs were generally popular homes, and proved more durable than expected.
As
explained below, and on the St Mark Whitechapel page, it became an impoverished Jewish quarter, as the following 1921
street directory of shopkeepers and other premises in St Mark's Street
shows. According to an article in the Jewish Chronicle in 1920, around the feast of Purim
(based on the story of Esther, when various kinds of mischief-making by
children was part of the ritual, including stamping and booing at the
mention of the villain Haman) children in these streets were hawking
'Haman toffee' at inflated prices - impressing the reporter with their
enterprise! |
St Mark's Street - South Side
7 Morris Borenheim, hairdresser 9 Mrs Hetty Goldstone, coffee rooms 11 Joseph Assenheim, ice cream maker 15 Miss Annie Jones, dairy 21 Joseph Jackson, french polisher 25 Jacob Davis, greengrocer St Marks Church 29 Rev Lionel Smithett Lewis MA (Vicarage) 31 Joseph Levy, chandlers shop 33 Mrs Ada Cohen, baker 35 Scarborough Arms, Mrs Mary Weinberg [pictured above] ... here is Scarborough Street ... 45 Federation of Synagogues Burial Society 47 Alec Golding, tailor ... here is Tenter Street South ... |
North Side
4 Nathan Renkachinsky, boot repairer 6 Mrs Minnie Ginzburg, greengrocer  8 Lazarus Cooper, chandlers shop [right in 1977]... here is Tenter Street north ... 10 Hyman Indick, tobacconist [1] 26 George Rosenfeld, furrier 34 Mrs Betsy Carter, chandlers shop ... here is Scarborough Street ... ... here is Tenter Street South ... [1] born Russia c1879; his wife Fanny died 1922, he died 1955 |
Left is Moses Brothers' Warehouse (c1888 by Dunk & Geden) at 18 North
Tenter Street in 1977 and after conversion to flats in 1995; and two 18th century houses
opposite. Right is
4-6a (1977) and 13-29 North Tenter Street (looking west) in 1967, and 5
St Mark's Street at the corner of North Tenter Street in 1975, all now
demolished.
Moses Brothers also built 29-31 West Tenter
Street, a clothing warehouse by Tenter Passage, designed in 1899 by Dunk and Bousfield - left 1977, and after conversion to offices in 1988 (linked to 58 Mansell Street behind); 25-27 (also 1977) were demolished. Rght are houses in this street, and the last building to be demolished in the 1990 excavation.
Right are two views of tenements in East Tenter Street, back to back with those on Leman street, speculatively built c1900 by N & R Davis, with
attic workrooms - perhaps with Jewish tenants in view? - and the exterior and interior of the adjacent warehouse, now offices.
By
the 18th century the area had acquired a
reputation for wild behaviour. John Walsh's collection of dance tunes,
published in the 1730s, includes a 'Goodman's Fields Hornpipe' [left]. 
But
there were protests. A 'general meeting' in 1729 in the Hoop and Grapes alleged
that being
so near several publick Offices, and the Thames, where so much Business
is negotiated, and carried on for the support of Trade and Navigation,
will draw away Tradesmen's servants and others from their lawful
Calling, and corrupt their Manners, and also occasion great numbers of
loose, idle and disorderly Persons, as Street-Robbers and Common
Night-Walkers, so to infest the streets, that it will be very
dangerous for His Majesty's subjects to pass the same.
Arthur Bedford, chaplain of Hoxton Hospital and Sunday afternoon
preacher at St Botolph Aldgate, inveighed against the project from the
pulpit. He cited a line from the play Gibraltar:
'Whores are dog-cheap here in London. For a man may slip into the
play-house Passage, and pick up half-a-dozen for half-a-crown'. Odell
was forced out, and handed over management to the audacious Henry
Giffard. 
The same year
the actor-manager David
Garrick made his successful début as Richard
III [playbill left, and William Hogarth's 1745 picture of him in this rôle]. As Benjamin Victor wrote, Coaches
and chariots with coronets soon surrounded that remote playhouse
(History of the Theatres
of London and Dublin 1761). The
final production, The Beggar's Opera [right],
was in 1742. Four years later it
was pulled down; a further building on the site briefly showed other
forms of entertainment, but was converted into a warehouse and burned
down in 1809 [see Frederick T.
Wood, 'Goodman’s Fields Theatre' in The Modern Language Review,
Vol. 25, No. 4 (Oct. 1930), pp. 443-456, and Watson Nicholson, The Struggle for
a Free Stage in London (1966) chapter 2]. There were other theatres in the area in the 19th century: the Royalty Theatre
in Well Street, and Wilton's Music Hall in Grace's Alley, and the Garrick in Leman Street.
A local businessman/playwright who crossed swords with Garrick - though
to his credit later secretly championed him in a conflict with Kenrick
- was Joseph Reed (1723-87).
Born in Stockton-on-Tees, where his father was a rope-maker, he
continued this trade when he settled in Sun Tavern Fields in 1757. It
funded his literary activities, which began with a 'mock tragedy' of
1758, Madrigal and Trulletta [right], performed at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden 'under the direction of Mr Cibber', which occasioned a riposte to the criticism of Tobias Smollett, A Sop in the Pan for a physical critick, in a letter to Dr. Sm*ll*t, by a Halter-maker. This was followed by The Register Office in 1761. His 1767 version of Dido
was the cause of his clash with Garrick: it played for three nights
only, and was only later published. More successful was his comic opera
version of Tom Jones two years later, also performed at the Theatre Royal. He also published The Tradesman's Companion, or Tables of Avordupois Weight, a treatise on the monopoly of hemp, and a humorous account of his own life. He was buried at Bunhill Fields cemetery. 
John
Strype, whose 1720 Survey
of London updated Stow, describes the
area as chiefly inhabited by thriving Jews. From 1748 there was
a Portuguese Jews hospital in Leman Street - it moved to Mile End
Old Town in 1792. | .....We make a small excursion into Mansell Street, which is quiet. All about here, and in Great Ailie [sic] Street, Tenter Street, and their vicinities, the houses are old, large, of the very shabbiest-genteel aspect, and with a great appearance of being snobbishly ashamed of the odd trades to which many of their rooms are devoted. Shirt-making in buried basements, packing-case, or, perhaps, cardboard box-making, on the ground-floor; and glimpses of very dirty bald heads, bending over cobbling, or the sorting of "old clo'," through the cracked and rag-stuffed upper windows. Jewish names - Isaacs, Levy, Israel, Jacobs, Rubinsky, Moses, Aaron - wherever names appear, and frequent inscriptions in the homologous letters of Hebrew. Many of these inscriptions are on the windows of eating-houses, whose interior mysteries are hidden by muslin curtains; and we occasionally find a shop full of Hebrew books, and showing in its window remarkable little nick-nacks appertaining to synagogue worship, amid plaited tapers of various colours. |
The artist David Garshen Bomberg
(1890-1957), a member of the group of local Jewish artists and writers
which later came to be known as the 'Whitechapel Boys' (Isaac Rosenberg
and Mark Gertler were two other members), made this drawing [left] in chalk on
paper of his sister Raie (1897- c1921), according to their younger
sister in about 1910 when he was still living at the family home at 20 Tenter Buildings, St
Mark's Street.
Bomberg was was born in Birmingham, the son of Abraham, a Polish
leather-worker; they moved to the East End in 1885 (where he attended
Castle Street School, unlike his siblings who went to the Jewish Free
School), which opened for him the world of Jewish theatre and culture
which inspired much of his early art. His mother Rebecca died in 1912
at the age of 48, when he was studying at the Slade; she had supported
his career, including helping him set up a studio next door, and the
loss hit him hard. It inspired two drawings of 1913 entitled 'Family
Bereavement' (above) -
and he moved away from home. (The first and third of these pictures are in the Tate Gallery.)
Prescot Street
 The
north side of Prescot Street was the site of an
archaeological project prior to the building of a hotel [left, towards South Tenter Street] - see here for details,
including video diaries and material about the significance of the
site. In 1678 numerous Roman funeral urns
and lachrymatories, with bars and
silver money were found here, showing it to have been a Roman burial
ground. It
may have been linked with the sixth legion of the Roman army, for in
1787 a stone 15" x 12" x3" was found with the inscription [right]: |
D M
FL AGICoLA. MIL. LEG. VI. VICT. V. AN. XLII. VI. D. X. ALBIA. FAUSTINA. CoNIVGi INCoNPARABILI F C |
No.21 (now the Abbey Bank Building) was the site of the London
Infirmary
for ‘sick and diseased manufacturers, seamen in the merchant service
and their wives and families’ from 1741, moving in that year from
Featherstone Street in Moorfields. The house was rented from Sir
William Leman at 24 guineas a year; it expanded to five houses, and
included a mortuary, a herb garret (for drying and storing medicinal
herbs) and a cold bath (since its first physician was a devotee of
therapeutic bathing). In 1747 it moved to its present site at Mount
Field, Whitechapel Road as the London Hospital. The excellent Barts
and The London
website provides much more detail about this and other hospital sites.
There is
an fascinating museum at the former St Philip's Church, Newark Street
behind the main hospital buildings. The
Prescot Street site was then let to the Magdalen Hospital;
when this in turn moved, it was used for various purposes, including
the offices of the National Cigar & Tobacco Workers Union.
(The Friendly Society of Operative Tobacconists was established as a
craft union in 1834, becoming the United Tobacconists' Society in 1836
and the United Kingdom Operative Tobacconists' Society in 1881;
membership was widened in 1925, as a result of a 1918 conference, to
include all tobacco workers - including women, who by World War II
formed the majority of membership; it disaffilated from the TUC in 1926
over poaching allegations, but rejoined in 1941. In 1946 it merged with
the National Cigar and Tobacco Workers' Union, and in 1986 became part
of TASS - the Technical, Administrative and Supervisory Section - and
two years later of MSF - the Management, Science & Finance Union.)
Nos.1 & 9 were developed in Art Deco [Pevnser specifies 'Amsterdam School'] style in the 1930-33 by the
Co-operative Wholesale Society's architect L.G. Ekins, and used by the
Co-op Bank; they are
Grade 2 listed buildings. J.C. Blair's carving over the doorway of
no.1
symbolises CWS principles - two individuals shaking hands beneath a
hive of bees where the bees gain benefits from mutual co-operation [see below on the wheatsheaf, another Co-op symbol]. Formerly offices, in
1999 no.1 was converted into 150 luxury flats (winning awards).
In July 2008 some corporate directorates of Barts and the London moved
into no 9 - bringing them full circle (see above). See below for the CWS headquarters in Leman Street.
No.15 is the neat and narrow Princess of Prussia public house, built around 1880. (Princess Anna Amalia (1723-87) was a gifted musician, whose sister married the Crown Prince of Sweden.) Next door, at No
16,
was
Whitechapel County Court, a 4-storey Italianate building of
1857-8 by Charles Reeves & Lewis G. Butcher (showing an early
Ruskin influence) [pictured in 1938, and today as the Cafe Spice
Namaste - it has a
noted Parsi chef from Goa]. On the north side of the street is
Kingsland House, which the current Pevsner describes a gargantuan Postmodern offices in the Stirling vein with pink and beige strpied cladding and a curved corner tower.
For a short period in
the latter part of the 19th century there was a synagogue in
the street, and from 1857-80 the Jewish Widows' Home Asylum was at n.67 before
moving to Hackney. In the early 20th century the Association for the
Protection of Women and Girls ran a refuge for young girls arriving in
London and at risk from pimps and procurers. See above and here for more details of Jewish welfare agencies in the area. Boon's Kosher Hotel was at no.12 - left is a lavish wedding menu of 1892. Bonn's Matzos was taken over by Rakusens in the 1970s (more details here). Right is Prescot Street in 1935, looking eastwards. 
Leman Street (formerly Red Lion Street)
'Leman'
is an old term for a mistress or lover, which may be the
reason why some local people
pronounce it 'Lemon', and it is so named on some old maps, although the origin of the name is explained above. In
1831 a theatre was built in the street; and see here for
the background to this 1850 'fireproof' sugar refinery [right]. The
continued German presence in the street is shown by the two
early 20th century postcards, the first of a 'Christian Home for German
Artisans' at
88-90 (later a German YMCA), the second of a private hotel at 114. The
mix of domestic and industrial premises continued apace, and is
explored in more detail here in relation to the 1921 street directory.
The Eastern
Dispensary
was was set up in Great Alie Street in 1782 by a group of doctors (including the Quaker physician
and anti-slavery campaigner Thomas Knowles, who died in 1786 from a
fever caught from a patient), with the
Duke of
Wellington as President. It moved to new
premises
in Leman Street [now 19A] in 1858 [pictured right]. It
closed in 1940 because of wartime
difficulties, and in 1944 the building was leased to the Jewish
Hospital Committee; the Charity Commission refused transfer to the
London Hospital, so assets were transferred to the Marie Celeste
Samaritan Society in 1952. Since 1998 the building has been a pub and
dining room. A 1787 booklet about the Dispensary sold a few years ago for
£1350!
There are several listed buildings in the street: left is no.66,
a brown brick 4-storey house of about 1760, with attic added later, at
various periods of its existence: exterior and interior in 1910, when
it was Manor House Working Men's Home (it may have served a similar
function for some years previously: in 1888 John Wood, of this address,
a chemist and widower, died at Whitechapel workhouse of contusions); and in dereliction in 1964; listed Grade II in 1973, forming a group with nos.60-70 (noting its wood
doorcase with plain Ionic columns, pulvinated frieze and bracketed
cornice with pediment, semi-circular fanlight, archivolt with key and
mouleded impost blocks) it is shown today (with attic removed), as the premises of New Holbud Ship Management Ltd. Two other Grade II listed buildings [right] are no.137 with a late 18th/early 19th century façade [at one time the manager's office of the London, Tilbury & Southend Railway's nearby goods depot, and now the Red Chilli curry club], and no.141 with vestiges of an early 18th century façade [which was a mosque for a time, and is now an Indian restaurant], with the Brown Bear in between at no.139.
In
1887 the Co-operative Wholesale Society [see above, Prescot Street] opened the grand headquarters
of its London operations on
the corner of Leman Street and Hooper Street [three views left], a seven-storey structure
in brick, granite and Portland stone incorporating a sugar warehouse
and a prominent clock tower, designed by J.F. Goodey of Colchester, a
CWS committee member about whom little is known. Right is the CWS wheatsheaf logo, Labor and wait, carved on the building. The wheatsheaf [like the bee, above] was a symbol of co-operation - one stalk cannot stand alone - and
is found in various forms on Co-op buildings up and down the land; the
American spelling 'labor' was deliberately used to show solidarity with those
fighting slavery in America, drawing on the final words of the poem 'A
Psalm of Life' by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82) Let us, then, be up and doing, / With a heart for any fate; / Still achieving, still pursuing, / Learn to labor and wait. (The words also provided the chorus of a contemporary temperance song.)
The
large red-brick complex on the corner of Leman and Alie Streets was
developed in the 1970s as a computer, interbank cheque clearing and IT
development centre for National Westminster Bank,
with an extension added in the 1990s. The 'campus' also included
buildings at 75 and 135 Leman Street (the latter, Eastgate House, right),
linked by a bridge; for a time it had its own pub, The Long Bar
(originally signed as 'Management Services Division'). NatWest was
taken over by the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2000 and the computer
mainframes went elsewhere. 
Demolition and re-development of the site
began in 2006 to create Berkeley Homes' City Quarter, and is ongoing: here are visualisations of the project. The painting of the demolition [above] is © Joanna Moore, 'The Town Mouse'. The site is one of Tower Hamlet's strategic allocations - left is the draft development plan (under the Local Development Framework) - CAB 051/112. Right
is Leman Street in the 1930s (looking south); in 1963, from the top by
Aldgate East station; the junction of Leman and Cable Streets some
years later; and, at the other end of the street, a Roman Catholic procession in the 1960s; see here for a link to a site with many other historical pictures of Roman Catholic events in the area.
is south of Prescot Street, running alongside and underneath the railway; it was surveyed for Charles Booth's 1888 survey. Today, at its western end is Barneys
Seafood, the last remaining fish wholesaler with roots near
Billingsgate Market, whose factory shop sells jellied eels and other
traditional East End fare (lots of good recipes on their site).
At the other is a Travelodge, and
contemporary housing development - example right.
On the corner of Leman and Chamber Streets was the warehouse of British American Belts Ltd, latterly described as plastic goods manufacturers, which was dissolved in 1969 - right in 1970, with its contemporary replacement, an office block at no.120.
Variously
shown on old maps as Ayliffe, Aylie and Alie Streets, often divided
between 'Great' / 'Little' (west / east of Leman Street), little
remains of its history, for instance as the location of several
dissenting chapels (see here), though on the eastern side the German Lutheran Church
and school remain. On the western side, at 30-44, is a terrace of houses of c1720 (much altered), some with ground-floor shop
extensions out to the street [left], mostly modern but the one at 32 is Victorian. 34 has a carved doorcase (noted by Summerson in Georgian London).
Across the road, opposite the north end of St Mark's Street (originally
Alie Place, with houses of c1820 on the corner), is Half Moon Passage [right in 1981 and today], an alley between a symmetrical pair of 18th century houses (now offices) at nos.17-19 leading to Braham Street. The Half Moon
Theatre Company
began life in a former synagogue at no.27, before moving in 1979 to a
former Methodist chapel on the Mile End Road (now closed, though their
work with young people continues). See here for 'The Hutch' - the Jewish Working Men's Club and Lads' Institute, and headquarters of the Jewish Lads' and Girls' Brigades.
The group of buildings from 21-29 [left in 1973] show
how the street has changed. The early 19th century White Swan public
house, at no.21, with its curved window and fancy lamp bracket, is
still here -
now with an extension into no.23. The small building at
no.25 had been Miss Lily Gray's wholesale grocer's shop (also at 19 Prescot
Street) until she went bankrupt in 1938. Later it became Mrs Millie
Ginsberg's Dining Rooms - 'Tea Always Ready', read the sign. By 1981 it
was occupied by Khan and Sons [right]. Nos. 23-25 were demolished and replaced by a 4-storey office building, with 5-storey flats (nos.29-47) to their right. 
Right
are the impressive premises of Hammer, Theelen & Co on the corner
of Alie and Mansell Streets, in 1977. 'Ellenberg, Hammer & Co', the
partnership of Francis Siegfried Ellenberg, Sevrin Theelen and Carl
Erich Hammer, general merchants
of Great Winchester Street in London and Broadway in New York, was
dissolved in 1909, continuing as separate companies on both sides of
the Atlantic. Hammer, Theelen & Co were trading from Lawrence Lane
in Cheapside in 1913 as Japanese silk merchants, but
also involved with other products, including the 'Landophone', a device
to enable chauffeurs to communicate with their passengers in traffic. The Auto for 1913, commented that speaking tubes were potentially hazardous and none too cleanly, and that electric telephones were not much louder:  If, therefore,
the sound at the receiver could be intensified, the electric telephone
would be much the best way of speaking to the driver ... All that [the Landophone]
really is, is an extra powerful telephone, consisting of an ordinary
transmitter, an intensifying induction coil, a megaphone-like receiver
and a battery of accumulators. The receiver hangs on a hook mounted
inside the car and is held by a spring clip; the receiver is fixed near
the driver to some convenient part of the car, such as the steering
column, or even on the dash. The intensifying coil with the necessary
terminals, is contained in a neat, polished wood box so that should it
to be exposed to view it does not spoil the appearance of the car. To
obtain the best results a battery of eight volts should be employed. A
complete 'Landophone' set, without the accumulators, is sold at the
price of £4 15s. and the finish and appearance are good in every way. |
Here
are some further contrasts. Left are
pictures from 1930-49....
... and scenes of
dereliction in the 1980s (including Shaffer Ltd. at no.33 and 'British
Smoked Salmon'); right today are flats at 14-20, and at the end of the road the office
blocks on the opposite corners - no.1, and 55 Mansell Street (including
RBS). 
On
the east side of the street, beyond the German chapel, planning
permission was given to Barratt's in 2007 for a 27-storey tower block
(235 flats plus retail units) - their tallest East London project
to
date - and an adjacent 7-storey commercial block on the site of former
factory at nos.61-75, with completion originally envisaged by 2012. Pictured is the derelict site, and visualisations of the future.
...in the north-west corner of the parish is the Hoop and Grapes at 47 Aldgate High Street (nearly opposite Aldgate tube
station). Allegedly the oldest licensed house in the City, parts of it
were built in 1593, over much older cellars. Originally called The
Castle, then the Angel & Crown, then Christopher Hills, it took its
present name (referring to the sale of both beer and wine) in the
1920s. It is one of three timber-framed
buildings (the one on the right was refaced in the 18th century) to
survive the Fire of London, which stopped 50 yards away. It has been
much-restored since this 1950s picture. More details and images here.