Lost Roads of the East End
A closer look at the newly colourised 1746 map of Wapping and Whitechapel.
Welcome to Londonist: Time Machine’s Friday edition for paying subscribers, with a healthy, wholesome preview for everyone else.
Today, I’m following on from Wednesday’s article, which presented my newly colourised map panel showing parts of Whitechapel, Wapping and Bermondsey in 1746. If you haven’t read that one yet, then do go back and take a look. If you have read it, then boot up the page again, because you’ll want to refer to it during what follows. Specifically, I’m going to take a closer look at some of the roads of the East End back in 1746, some of which have been renamed, and others vanished.
That’s for the main section. First, as ever, the History Radar…
History Radar
Upcoming events and exhibitions of interest to London history fans.
🌺 LOST GARDENS: Lambeth's Garden Museum has a new exhibition looking at the history of London's lost gardens. View artworks, photos and archive documents that uncover former green spots in London — including those sitting on the sites which are now home to Somerset House and Waterloo station. Runs until 2 March
🏰 PALACE TOUR: Got historically minded kids? For half-term week (29 October), join an interactive family tour at Fulham Palace, taking you both inside and outside the building. Complete challenges, and have a go at dressing up as a past palace resident, as you learn more about its history.
⚰️ STOKER: Everyone knows the story of Dracula, but the life of his creator Bram Stoker is not so well known. It was a very Londony life, working with Henry Irving at the Lyceum Theatre and hanging out at the London Library. A talk by biographer Paul Murray at the Irish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith on 29 October will lift the (coffin?) lid on Stoker’s life. (Thanks for the tip, Jack!)
🤷♀️ WOMEN & FREUD: The women who helped Freud invent psychoanalysis are the subject of a new exhibition at the Freud Museum in Hampstead, which opens on 30 October. Patients, Freud's own daughter and her partner, and artists all feature.
📘 BLACK BRITISH HISTORY: On 1 November, writer Joanna Brown and illustrator Angela Vives launch their new biographical book, Bright Stars of Black British History. Head to the National Archives to hear about important people of African descent, including John Blanke, the African Tudor trumpeter, and Claudia Jones, the community activist who brought Carnival to London.
🔥 GAS LAMPS: As the nights draw in, Jane Parker is back with a new season of her gas lamp tours on 1 November. The first, From Palace to Piazza, looks at the street lighting between Victoria and Covent Garden, including the first street in London to be lit by gas. Can’t make the date? Jane has many reruns lined up, along with a second tour route.
🎶 GATTI'S MUSIC HALL: On 2 November, the London Canal Museum stays open late for a special concert performance in the style of Carlo Gatti's Music Hall Theatre — a venue which was run by the entrepreneur and ice importer and his family. See The New Players' Theatre Company in an evening of Victorian-style entertainment. The museum itself is also open late, so you can learn about the history of Carlo Gatti and the ice trade.
🛞 VETERAN CAR RUN: The Veteran Car Run on 3 November sees more than 100 pre-1905 vehicles setting off from London to Brighton. You'll have to be up early to cheer them on — they begin leaving Hyde Park around 7am, heading through Lambeth towards Croydon, and on to the coast.
🎭 BLACK THEATRELAND HISTORY: Also on 3 November, The Theatreland Black History Walk uncovers the hidden history of African presence in London's West End. The tour explores the contributions of Black performers throughout history. Learn about iconic figures like Paul Robeson, trailblazing Black women producers, and the impact of US Civil Rights on British theatre. Discover insights into racist stereotypes that were challenged and enjoy stories of Black magicians and comedians.
⚓️ THAMES SHIPWRECKS: Footprints of London guide Rob Smith offers a virtual tour of shipwrecks in the Thames. From your own home — and without getting wet — learn about 12 ships that have sunk in the Thames, from a Roman cargo ship, to a mysterious sinking in the Cold War. Also on 3 November.
Lost Roads of the East End
In the process of carefully colouring in the John Rocque map, I regularly stumble across interesting names and peculiar corners that I’d not encountered before. I thought I’d use today’s newsletter to point out a few of them from the most recent map panel.
1. Hangmans Gains
One of the more evocative names on the map appears just to the east of the Tower of London. In fact, it appears twice. The road known as Hangmans Gains forms something of a loop. You could even say it is noose-like. Surely… surely, you’d imagine, the name is some reference to the execution site on the adjacent Tower Hill.
Nope. Not according to historian John Strype, anyway. Writing a generation before this map, Strype tells us that Hangmans Gains is a corruption of the towns of Hammes and Guisnes in Flanders. People from these towns came over to London during the reign of Elizabeth I, to escape religious persecution. They were given a small area in St Catherine’s parish to settle, and this was it. I must admit, this explanation does get my urban-myth-sensor tingling, but the Flemish connection was certainly real, and you can see a Flemish Churchyard labelled just to the north.
Today, Hangmans Gains is a Tesco Express.
2. Knock Fergus
I’ve been writing about London for 20 years, and even I had no idea that the East End ever sported a major road called Knock Fergus. How remarkable. Today, this is the section of Cable Street that runs along the top of Swedenborg Gardens.
Who, or what, is a Knock Fergus? Turns out that Knockfergus was an Elizabethan name for the town of Carrickfergus, in what is now Northern Ireland. We might, then, correctly guess that London’s Knock Fergus was largely inhabited by Irish folk. A letter of 1605 describes the area as “peopled with Irish of very base sort, who live only by begging… mere rogues and lewd people that live by stealth, pilfering and shifting”. The name had changed to plain old Cable Street by the end of the 18th century.