Black History Walk in Tower Hamlets

An illustrated walk through Tower Hamlets from Tower Hill to West India Docks, taking in sites important to the history of black people in this area. There is a lot to learn, but for the most part this important history remains frustratingly anonymous.

Unlike most of my recent London walks which have come from books or other printed material, this is one I found online. You can access it here on the Tower Hamlets Idea Store website. There are two walks: the one I did not follow in this post goes from Aldgate to Stepney Green

Exploring the Black History of Tower Hamlets

After a lot of general historic walks around my local area, I have been craving new ways of seeing Central and East London. One way is through the story of local communities. I came across a series of walks on the website of the local Idea Store (council services hub); black history seemed an interesting place to start, but future walks will take in the Bengali and Jewish history of the area. This walk follows a similar route to this one from Wapping to Westferry, but sees the area through a different lens.

An important part of 2020 was the Black Lives Matter movement. It is my belief that we each have a duty to learn more about the complex histories around us. It’s easy to learn about important local figures, key dates in history and all that, but it doesn’t tell us much about real people. Historic local communities are often far more rich and multicultural than we give them credit for. And the black experience in this country goes back millennia. Understanding who has lived in a place, how they got there, and what they did there, can bring history to life, as well as throw light on historic issues that we need to address in the present. And as a historian, I see understanding our past as key to making sense of the present, and ultimately working towards a just and equitable future.

The Problem of Locating Personal Black Stories

It is fitting in terms of the historic moment we are living in that this walk ended at the site of a statue that has recently been removed. Robert Milligan was a sugar plantation owner who profited from the labour of enslaved workers; the statue stood outside the Museum of London Docklands from 1997 until its removal in June 2020. This walk is not about white connections with black people, but this ending point to me is emblematic of a difficulty I encountered as I followed this walking trail.

While black people have resided in and contributed to Tower Hamlets for centuries, this history is largely invisible and anonymous. Throughout the walk we will encounter places that we know have connections to black sailors, for example, but very few named individuals. And even those few individuals we can point to are more often that not uncommemorated, so we look at a building to remember a person, rather than official markers. It’s much easier on this walk to point to white people with connections to black people than black people themselves. And that is despite the authors of this walking tour attempting to tackle this history head on, writing:

“Black people have been a feature of East London life since
Roman times. Their presence throughout successive eras
serves as a reminder of Britain’s slave trade, the nation’s
maritime history and the origins and resilience of one of
Britain’s earliest visible minority communities.”

Perhaps this walk can be a jumping off point for me (and my readers) to challenge themselves to uncover more personal histories in and around London, to celebrate ordinary lives, and proclaim extraordinary achievements. Don’t get me wrong – at the end of the day this is an illustrated walk like many others I’ve been on recently. But with more of a thoughtful focus perhaps that I hope you will appreciate.

Black History Walk in Tower Hamlets – Around Tower Hill

The first stop on our black history walk in Tower Hamlets is Trinity Square Gardens. The Gardens stand just opposite the Tower of London; in fact the park began life as a memorial to all those executed at the Tower. To be honest I’ve never even noticed this latter memorial in the Gardens; the much more visible part commemorates deaths from the Merchant Navy and fishing fleets in WWI and WWII. I read in the guide that “[m]any African sailors’ names can be found on the memorial”. But without any indication as to which names these are, the area’s black history already begins to seem impersonal.

At the Tower of London we can stop to remember a black individual (although unnamed) and almost have a memorial to this historic event. In 1692, the Tower had a menagerie of animals, run by Thomas Dymock from the ‘lion office’. Dymock worked alongside an enslaved black youth, whose name is not recorded. What is recorded is that he ran away at the age of 16 with £10 in cash, and Dymock advertised a reward for his return. We don’t know what happened to him, but can hope that he managed a new start.

The Pool of London. The opening of 1936 film *Song of Freedom,* about a black dock worker who becomes a famous opera singer, was shot here. Paul Robeson stars; an American actor, he became a political activist after meeting unemployed workers and anti-imperialist students while studying Swahili at SOAS in London. *Song of Freedom* was the first film to highlight the multi-ethnic population of the docks, according to the walking guide. This stretch of the river has been a point of departure and arrival for many black people over the years. Not all of the arrivals or departures were by choice.

Black History Walk in Tower Hamlets – Royal Mint Street to Wilton’s Music Hall

Royal Mint Street was once Rosemary Lane, one of the worst slums in London. Chartist agitator David Anthony Duffy lived here. Described in the language of the time as ‘a man of colour’, he was arrested in 1848 as an organiser of a demonstration in Kennington which ended in a riot. The Chartists were a movement aiming to increase political power for working class people.

Just off Cable Street is a plaque commemorating the 1936 Battle of Cable Street. The battle was between Oswald Moseley’s fascist Blackshirts and a passionate group made up of the local Jewish community, dock workers of all ethnicities, communists, and ex-servicemen. This area has a recorded history of black settlement going back centuries. In 1787 a group of black drinkers kicked some constables out of a nearby pub. In 1919 there were race riots across the country, including in this neighbourhood. According to the walking guide, local racists objected to white women fraternising with black men, and set fire to a cafe. By the 1950s this area was known as the ‘Harlem of London‘ due to its concentration of black residents.

As we detour off Cable Street, we come to Wilton’s Music Hall. It was once one of many music halls across the city, but is now a rare survivor. Audiences of up to 3,000 would watch shows here. The walking guide lists three associations between Wilton’s and the black history of the area, with varying degrees of positivity. Firstly, institutions such as these helped to popularise the deeply racist ‘minstrel‘ show. Secondly, in 1888 Wilton’s became a 1,000 bed mission, with black sailors among others seeking accommodation here. And thirdly, the first company to take on a lease at Wilton’s when it reopened as an entertainment venue was Broomhill Opera. Broomhill staged many important productions here, including the first all-black Carmen, the South African mystery plays and a black version of The Beggar’s Opera.

Black History Walk in Tower Hamlets – Bandele ‘Tex” Ajetunmobi and E. R. Braithwaite

Somewhere around this part of Cable Street lived Bandele ‘Tex” Ajetunmobi. His story reminded me a little of Vivian Maier; both were prolific but private amateur photographers, part of whose archives were saved by chance after they died. The difference is that Ajetunmobi, originally from Nigeria, is still very difficult to track down. His work was ‘rediscovered’ in a 2002 exhibition at the now defunct Spitz Gallery. But it took me some time searching online to find this post which contains a number of his photographs. I love the informality of his work, and the insight into the East End in the mid-20th Century. Autograph apparently now holds the archive of his work, so hopefully he can be brought to more public attention as a photographer.

Bigland Street School, now Mulberry Girls’ School, is one of the places where Guyanese writer E. R. Braithwaite taught. He is most famous for his autobiographical novel *To Sir With Love.* The famous film version with Sidney Poitier was shot in and around Shadwell and Wapping. Despite having served as a bomber pilot in the RAF, Braithwaite struggled to find employment due to racism and eventually retrained as a teacher.

This building was once St George in the East School. It was the first in the area that E. R. Braithwaite taught at. It’s now flats, I think.

Black History Walk in Tower Hamlets – St George in the East Back to Cable Street

St George in the East, a church by Nicholas Hawksmoor. I couldn’t resist the unrelated photo of the skull and crossbones. This church was the site of many black baptisms. One was of an enslaved 15 year old girl, Anne Clossen. She then left her master and entered well-paid employment with a local surgeon.

This is unrelated to our black history walk, but is something I’ve always found fascinating. On the grounds of St George in the East stands this abandoned building. It started as a mortuary chapel in 1876. By 1904 it was no longer in use, and the Borough of Stepney turned it into a branch of the Whitechapel Museum. You can still make out the words *Metropolitan Borough of Stepney Nature Study Museum* over the door. It had an educational focus, and introduced urban Londoners to many different kinds of live animals. A biting monkey caused particular concern. It closed during WWII and never reopened. More recent projects to restore it have been unsuccessful, and it’s now getting to be too late.

This mural commemorates the Battle of Cable Street which I wrote about earlier. Despite what I said about the multi-ethnic group of anti-fascist locals, there is only one black face in the crowd. You can see him in the image at top right, just above the banner.

And now a little pictorial interlude as we walk to the Limehouse end of Cable Street. As you can see, it’s a mix of pre- and post-war social housing, industrial buildings which are now flats or studios, and rarer Georgian buildings.

Black History Walk in Tower Hamlets – Limehouse to Commercial Road

The area around Limehouse Basin has long been multicultural. As well as housing London’s first Chinatown, there has been a black presence here for centuries. Author Thomas De Quincey noted the high concentration of visible minorities in 1827. Today it is visibly part of the urban regeneration of the Docklands.

We now head along Narrow Street and through Ropemakers Fields to Commercial Road. The East and West India Companies built Commercial Road to facilitate transport of goods to and from the docks. As you can see, Limehouse once had a nice Passmore Edwards Library on Commercial Road, but it looks as if it will become yet more flats.

Another aside is this church, Our Lady Immaculate and St Frederick, just before Commercial Road. From a distance it looks like a statue of the Virgin Mary on the top, but is in fact Christ in the manner of a ship’s figurehead. Perfect to make all the sailors feel at home.

This fabulous building (yes, you guessed it, now flats) was once the Empire Memorial Hostel. It opened in 1924. The memorial aspect was to the sailors of all races who died during WWI. The hostel provided a place to stay for sailors arriving in London without accommodation until they found their next job. Men from all over the British Empire and the world, including many black sailors, stayed here until it closed in 1979.

Just across from the Empire Memorial Hostel is St Anne’s Limehouse. It is another Hawksmoor church, and is important historically although it has no particular black connection. I will mention it again in an upcoming walk in Greenwich. A great post here describes the history of the church and this odd pyramid.

Black History Walk in Tower Hamlets – Westferry to West India Dock

This is the Passmore Edwards Sailor’s Palace. John Passmore Edwards was a great philanthropist who funded many public buildings, including libraries as we saw earlier. This was another hostel for sailors waiting to sign onto their next ship, like the Empire Memorial Hostel but on a smaller scale. We know that black sailors stayed here, but like so many stops along this walk, we neither know their names nor can see any trace of them, aside from the ‘Africa’ engraved above the door.

Where this block of flats now stands, was once the Strangers Home for Asians,
Africans and South Sea Islanders. It opened in 1857, and combined accommodation, repatriation service and mission. The Home closed in 1937, and Clement Atlee opened these flats in its place in 1946.

Again we find ourselves looking for the traces of what once was. Somewhere around here was Charlie Brown’s Pub, popular with sailors from the Caribbean. The Limehouse Link saw the redevelopment of this area and the end of the pub in the 1990s.

We are now back at the thick defensive walls of the West India Docks, which we saw on our Wapping to Westferry walk. This time the walking guide draws our attention to the names on this inscription. The docks guaranteed the safe handling of products including sugar and rum. Many of the City financiers who contributed to them made their fortunes from enslaved labour on Caribbean plantations.

Another plantation owner is commemorated in this arch topped by a sailing ship. The ship is *The Hibbert* – George Hibbert was instrumental in the construction of West India Docks.

And To Finish – The Space Where Robert Milligan Used to Be

And now we finish, as I said at the outset, with an encouraging sign of changing attitudes towards history. This spot, in front of the Museum of London Docklands, is where the statue of Robert Milligan stood until 2020. It has been replaced with what looks to me like a feminist guerilla artwork. You can see old Robert on his way out in this interesting article. I am firmly on the side of removing statues of those whose importance to society came from the use of enslaved labour. Those who would see them remain encourage us to use them as a jumping off point for a lively debate. But the thing is that we take public statues for granted. If they have a statue, they were an important person. Most passers-by are not pausing to consider how they got their money and whether their actions were acceptable or not by today’s standards. It is the removal or reevaluating of statues which provokes that all-important debate. And in my opinion, the continuing damage of celebrating particularly problematic people outweighs the historic value of a statue of some guy I’ve never heard of. We can quickly get into grey areas from here, but I think some cases are fairly clear cut. Ok that’s it, op-ed complete!

Final Thoughts

I hope that now, by the end of this walk, you have seen in action some of the factors I highlighted in the beginning. There is a rich history of black presence in Tower Hamlets. But a lot of it is either anonymous (eg. we know black sailors stayed here but we don’t have individual stories); or invisible (eg. we only know this or that person was here because the walking guide tells us, not because they are publicly commemorated).

That is not to say that this walk wasn’t fascinating. I really enjoyed following it and learning more about my neighbourhood’s history. I also enjoyed reading more about certain aspects when I got home, to further increase my knowledge of Tower Hamlets’ black history. But more than anything I hope this will be a jumping off point for me and anyone else who has been inspired to learn more. As a reminder, the walk I followed (and another from Aldgate to Stepney Green) can be found here.

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About Me

Erin Caswell