The East End has a collection of place names – like Cambridge Heath – which demonstrate a more rural past.
The earliest recorded use of the Cambridge Heath name was as Camprichthesheth in 1275. It was an area of gravel situated between marshland to the east and west. A forest known as Bishopswood, lingered in the east until the 16th century. The high, dry expanse of heath belonged to the old Stepney Manor to the south and, during the 13th century, records have the heath as being used as common pasture. Long before the mass enclosures of common land during the Middle Ages, any man or woman could come here to graze their sheep. By 1275 at least one ’ancient’ house stood here.
A merchant tailor of London called John Slater took out a 99 year lease in 1587 on a piece of waste 24 rods by 11 rods on the west side of the heath and south of Hackney Road to the north. No building followed and the lease had lapsed by 1652.
There was no development on the Bethnal Green side of the boundary until maybe 1720.
In time, Cambridge Heath developed eight principal estates: Parmiter, Rush Mead, Bullock, Chambers, Cambridge Heath, Bishop’s Hall, Sebright and Pyotts.
We’ll deal with their history one-by-one.
Cambridge Heath estates
In 1722 the trustees of Parmiter’s charity purchased 4½ acres of waste on the west side of Cambridge Road (the road later to be renamed Cambridge Heath Road) on either side of Hackney Road. The charity had its beginnings in the will of Thomas Parmiter, a silk merchant, who was also to endow ‘six almshouses and one free school house or room’ in Bethnal Green. This was to grow into Parmiter’s Grammar School, in Approach Road – it later moved to Watford. One house had been built at each end of the estate by 1760 and by 1775, three houses. In 1724, the waste on the west side of the road, next to a sewer, was leased to Thomas Thorne, a Bethnal Green carpenter, who built a house there. Several cottages were been built by Thomas King, a Hackney glazier, on waste beside the road by 1729.
More sustained activity began in 1786, when Parmiter’s charity leased its entire estate to a man called Wilmot, who built six houses and then sold it on in 1790 to William Lovell, who built five more. In 1791 the trustees granted two more leases to Lovell. By the late 1790s Howard’s Place, Heath Place and the Hare public house fronted Hackney Road and Cambridge Road.
By the turn of the nineteenth century, Cambridge Place formed the north-western boundary of the Parmiter estate. Between 1788 and 1791 applications were made to build 18 more houses at Cambridge Heath. In 1808, the southern portion of the estate was leased to James Waddilove and William Causdell, builders from Hackney Road. They had constructed Suffolk Place and Felix Street by 1812; also Clare Street, Barossa Place and Felix Place by 1819.
Durham Place, fronting Hackney Road on the Rush Mead estate, was being built in 1789. In 1792, roads were planned to the south: Elizabeth Street, Claredale Street (originally Lausanne Street and then Claremont Street) and Durham Street. Builders who took 99-year leases included James Nicoll from Marylebone and William Selby from Hanover Square. Bond’s Place had been built by 1810, under an agreement of 1807 with Benjamin Bond of Hackney. Temple Street formed the eastern boundary of the Rush Mead estate by 1821, Building extended south with Catherine Street and Charles Street by 1836, when there were 266 houses on the estate.
Andrew Pritchard, ’tilemaker of Hackney Road’ had bought Bullocks on the north side of Hackney Road by 1792 when he contracted William Olley, a Woolwich bricklayer, to build houses in Hackney Road next to a factory. The houses, called Matthew’s Place, had been built by 1800. Oxford House existed by 1808, and Ann’s Place (later Pritchard’s Road) formed the western boundary by 1819. The Oval, with 36 cottages and a chapel, on the eastern boundary by 1836. Much of the estate though was occupied by a fish pond until the mid 19th century.
Chambers, the most northerly estate on the east side of Cambridge Road, leased out land for building from 1802. That year, William Ditchman of Hackney Road leased a strip on the west fronting Cambridge Road and another on the east. He built houses fronting the road by 1804, Newmarket Terrace in Russia Lane in 1805, and houses in new roads at the northern end of Cambridge Road: Norfolk Street, Martha Street and John Street. John Scott, an Islington brickmaker, from 1808, built Prospect Place in Russia Lane and also houses in a new road running north from it (West Street) and later Potter’s Row after Thomas Potter, his sublessee. Lark Row, at the eastern boundary of Chambers, had 10 houses by 1812.
In 1807 the Leeds family agreed with Joseph Brown from Durham Place to develop their Cambridge Heath Estate between Rush Mead and Parmiter’s estate. In 1808 Brown engaged James Waddilove and William Causdell to build 30 houses. They were employed at the same time on Parmiter’s estate, with which a joint layout was apparently made.
By 1812 Cambridge Circus existed on the eastern boundary of the Cambridge Heath estate and by 1821 Hope Street and Minerva Street ran from Hackney Road to Old Bethnal Green Road. Other streets – Bellona Street (Matilda Street) and Centre Street – were in the southeast. Philadelphia Place and Minerva Place faced Hackney Road. While there was a continuous frontage on Old Bethnal Green Road, about a third of the estate was still available for building in 1831.
On the eastern side of Cambridge Road, the five acre field belonging to Bishop’s Hall was leased in 1811 to the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, which built the Episcopal Jews’ chapel and associated buildings, named Palestine Place by 1836.
To the north and south were portions of Pyotts estate. To the south developed in the 1790s as Patriot Square. To the north, Prospect Place (Row) fronted Russia Lane and Grosvenor Terrace fronted Cambridge Road by 1826. Gloucester Street between Cambridge Road and the north-south section of Russia Lane, was laid out in 1826 and built by 1836.
Sebright’s Estate was long undeveloped. Aware of its ’increasing and improving neighbourhood’, the trustees obtained an Act in 1813 to grant long building leases. In 1821 they leased a large part north of Hackney Road to Joseph Teale of Shoreditch, who was responsible for the building of Seabright Street by 1822, Seabright Place, Gloucester Place and Hill Street by 1826, and Wolverley Street and Teale Street by 1836. By then there were 250 houses on Sebrights north of Hackney Road.
By the 1840s, the urbanisation of Cambridge Heath was largely complete. The Bethnal Green gasworks, named after the then-Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green were built in 1866 by John Clark. Until the 1960s, they were used to manufacture and store town gas made from coal.
Cambridge Heath railway station opened on 27 May 1872 by the Great Eastern Railway. In 2015 Cambridge Heath transferred to London Overground and now appears on the tube map.
Cambridge Heath and neighbouring Bethnal Green were unequal halves of the same manor, and late in the 19th century, became part of the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green. This was incorporated into the new London Borough of Tower Hamlets in 1965.
