East End, London

The East End of London, usually called the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London, and north of the River Thames. It does not have universally accepted boundaries, though the various channels of the River Lea are often considered to be the eastern boundary. It comprises of areas of Central London, East London and London Docklands.

The East End's emergence began in the Middle Ages with initially slow urban growth outside the eastern walls, which subsequently accelerated, especially in the 19th century, to absorb pre-existing settlements. The first known written record of the East End as a distinct entity, as opposed its component parts, comes from John Strype's 1720 'Survey of London', where he describes London as consisting of four parts: the City of London, Westminster, Southwark, and "That Part beyond the Tower". The relevance of Strype's reference to the Tower was more than geographical. The East End was the urbanised part of an area called the Tower Division, which had owed military service to the Tower of London for time immemorial. Later, as London grew further, the fully urbanised Tower Division became a byword for wider East London, before East London grew further still, east of the Lea and into Essex.

The area was notorious for its deep poverty, overcrowding and associated social problems. This has led to the East End’s history of intense political activism and association with some of the country’s most influential social reformers. Another major theme of East End history has been that of migration; both inward and outward. The area had a strong pull on the rural poor from other parts of England and attracted waves of migration from further afield: notably Huguenot refugees, who created a new extramural suburb in Spitalfields in the 17th century.,Irish weavers,Ashkenazi Jews and, in the 20th century, Sylheti Bangladeshis.

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