The changing face of Poplar
Tower Hamlets may be richer in history than just about any other corner of the globe, but it isn’t a peaceful, uninterrupted history.
In fact, the diversity and colour of our part of London is due in a large part to the changes wrought by industrial rise and decline, the constant arrival and departure of new ideas and cultures, the developers’ wrecking ball and the Luftwaffe’s bombs.
It means that the hamlets of the East End aren’t neat, easily defined ones. As we’ve seen before, Ratcliffe has disappeared altogether. The meaning of Poplar, meanwhile, has changed several times over the last centuries.
Rise of the docks
In the mid-1600s, Poplar had a population of around a
thousand – a mere hamlet linking the much larger villages of Limehouse to the west and Blackwall to the east. These villagers lived along what is now Poplar High Street, but it was events next door, where the East India Company had just set up its shipyard, which were to change everything.
The company took over the little village. In 1628, it bought the land to the north of the high street, building its almshouses there. These were replaced by the new council offices, and then by the recreation ground (lying between Hale Street and Woodstock Terrace).
It also built Poplar Chapel, in Woodstock Street, for the workers. The bosses worshipped elsewhere – merchants and shipbuilders making their homes out in the Essex countryside (then only a mile or so to the east) or in the rich
suburb of Limehouse.
Soaring population
The result was that Poplar never grew rich, though
the population soared from
4,493 in 1801 to 7,708 in 1811, with the building of the West then East India Docks in those years.
A new parish church was needed, and All Saints
was built in Newby Place between 1820 and 1823, with the dock companies contributing to the cost. New homes soon sprung up around the place of worship, and the drift of Poplar northwards had begun.
Poplar now meant a lot
more than the hamlet, and from 1817 the parish of Poplar covered the Isle of Dogs, Blackwall and, looking down from the high ground to the north, the village itself. With Millwall Docks joining the West and East India, Poplar could claim to be the hub of the greatest maritime trading centre in the world.
New buildings were raised, reflecting the new size and importance (if not affluence) of the village. Poplar Chapel was enlarged and became St Matthias, new District Board of Works offices were built next door and a town hall was erected next to All Saints.
But Poplar had already peaked. Although the population continued to grow until around 1900, little housing was built after 1870. The docks were already in decline, although it would be another 90 years or so before they would be shut altogether. In 1886, a new dock opened down the Thames at Tilbury, and Poplar’s lifeblood was choked off. The shops on the high street closed and the little alleys off the once-bustling thoroughfare quickly declined into slums.
1930s council flats
In 1900, the Metropolitan Borough of Poplar was
created, covering the old parish area, but little work was done until the 1930s, when a huge programme of council flat-building took place. The village of Poplar had long been developing to the north of the East India Dock Road, and this triangle of land was redeveloped as the Lansbury Estate.
The final symbolic severing of Poplar from its original lifeblood – the docks – was yet to come. In the 1960s, the Blackwall Tunnel approach was slashed between the high street and the East India Docks. And Aspen Way and Limehouse Link completed the job, as the West India Docks became the glittering towers of Canary Wharf.