Bethnal Green, E2

Bethnal Green is an area in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London. Bethnal Green is located 3.3 miles (5.3 km) north east of Charing Cross.

In the nineteenth century, Bethnal Green was characterised by its market gardens and by the silk-weaving trade. Having been an area of large houses and gardens as late as the eighteenth century, by about 1860, Bethnal Green was characterised by tumbledown old buildings, with many families living in each house. By the end of the nineteenth century, Bethnal Green was one of the poorest slums in London. Jack the Ripper operated at the western end of Bethnal Green and in neighbouring Whitechapel.

By 1900, the Old Nichol Street Rookery was demolished, and the Boundary Estate opened on the site, near the boundary with Shoreditch. This was the world's first council housing, and brothers Lew Grade and Bernard Delfont were brought up here.

In 1943, the unopened Bethnal Green tube station was the site of a wartime disaster. Families had crowded into the underground station to escape German bombing, but the sounds of explosions started a panic. 173 people died in the resulting crush. The news was not released at the time for fear of damaging wartime morale, but there is now a plaque at the entrance to the tube station.

During the 1960s, famous gangsters the Kray twins lived in Bethnal Green, but by the beginning of the twenty-first century, Bethnal Green, in common with much of the old East End, began to undergo a process of gentrification.

The former Bethnal Green Infirmary, later the London County Council Bethnal Green Hospital, stood opposite Cambridge Heath railway station. The hospital closed as a public hospital in the 1960s and was a geriatric hospital under the NHS until the 1980s. Much of the site was developed for housing in the 1990s but the hospital entrance and administration block remains as a listed building. Marcus Garvey was at one time buried here, before his body was returned to Jamaica.


Most of the sketches of Andy & Lou in Little Britain are filmed in Bethnal Green. The shop where they buy the snake is actually Magri's pets, a shop on Bethnal Green Road owned by former boxing champion and East End boy Charlie Magri.

Bethnal Green is famous for the staple cheap London meal, pie and mash with jellied eels. The most famous pie and mash shop is Kelly's. They have two outlets in Bethnal Green.

It is also famous for the street market on the Roman Road, which specialises in fashions.

The 7th model of Lara Croft - Karima Adebibe comes from and lives in Bethnal Green with her family.

In the fictious videogame The Getaway, Bethnal Green is presented as the hub of
cockney gangster activity.

The 1947 Ealing Studios film It Always Rains on Sunday was set in Bethnal Green, with extensive filming in the local area. It provides an excellent insight on post war East London, with bomb sites and slums before most were swept away in redevelopment of the 1960's and later. The area is now very close to the planned Olympic Games of 2012. The film is now available on DVD.

Bethnal Green on Wikipedia
Bethnal Green
London Borough of Tower Hamlets

Public transport links in Bethnal Green, E2

Real estate agents in Bethnal Green, E2

Properties listed on eleflat.co.uk

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