London Districts: Bow (Documentary)

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Bow is an East London district inside the London Borough of Tower Hamlets 5 miles from Charing Cross in Travelcard Zone 2.
During the 1100’s, Matilda, wife of Henry I, managed to fall into the River Lea soaking up all her clothes on one of her awkward journeys over to Barking Abbey.
Out of vexation, she ordered a three-arched stone bridge to be built in a bow-shape across the ford of the river to rid her of any further embarrassment.
Such a bridge had never been seen before, existing 66 years before the first stone-version of London Bridge, making it the very first in London, and almost certainly, the whole country.
Bow was originally just a part of ‘street-ford’, or Stratford as we know it today, and is an abbreviation of Stratford-le-Bow of which the Bow part referred to that bowed bridge over the ford connecting Essex to Middlesex at the time. From that, this district was then written down as an official settlement in its own right.
The fictional district of ‘Walford’ in the BBC soap drama EastEnders has an imaginary East End location occupying the real-life map position of Bromley-by-Bow; a district just underneath Bow.
The canopy of this entrance door to what was the old Poplar Town Hall has a rarely noticed but interesting mosaic from 1938 depicting River Thames landmarks and Docklands connections into Bow.
This Central London church in Cheapside is called St Mary-le-Bow and its bells are named the Bow bells. The name of the church and its bells are purely coincidental in regards to the Bow district.
A survey about the distance of the bell soundwaves was carried out in 2000. Today, the bells can be heard 3 miles to the south, 4 miles to the west, 5 miles to the north, and 6 miles to the east of Cheapside. Therefore EastEnders are more likely to be Cockney than anyone else.
Two Latin inscribed archways from 1986 bookend the market alluding to the area’s Roman past.
As the name suggests, Roman Road was built by the Romans as a main route from Londinium to their Colchester fortress. Green Street market was renamed Roman Road when archaeological discoveries of the actual medieval road were uncovered running parallel to it in 1845.
Long standing businesses like the George Kelly pie and mash shop of 1939 continue to delight hungry shoppers whilst maintaining the area’s character.
For the last 200 years, EastEnders in particularly, have flocked to it time and time again for ridiculous bargains hard to find elsewhere. A visit would be announced as ‘Im gahn dahn the Roman’.
As an offshoot, the people here then could produce a popular blue and white porcelain by mixing cattle bones and clay to became what is known as Bow Porcelain.
This bus garage first opened as a ‘Tram’ depot back in 1908, before becoming the main depot that garaged London’s iconic ‘Routemaster’ buses up until 2004. Today, it continues to garage most of TfL’s east London’s bus fleets.
Bow Church is the main place of worship in the district having been on the site in some form for 700+ years. The present building dates back to 1490.
During the reign of Mary I, in the 1700’s, it became well-known as a Catholic incineration site. Prisoners from Newgate would be transported here and literally roasted alive.
The Bryant and May matches factory of 1843 had 5,000 employees knocking out 300 million matches per day making it very lucrative, but girls were working 14 hours a day for peanuts and over-exposure to phosphorous, which can kill.
Cockney Rhyming slang was first used in the East End during the early 19th century and was used specifically by East End natives.
A more modern form of rhyming originated specifically in Bow through the Grime music genre, manifesting the gritty East End infrastructure and industrial docklands elements into its sonic production and fully embracing the authentic lingo of the working class environment into their lyrics. The two prominent pioneers who kicked it all off, Wiley & Dizzee Rascal, both grew up in and created the genre from this district.