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Shoreditch is a place in the London Borough of Hackney. It is a built-up area of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located 2.3 miles (3.7 km) north east of Charing Cross . It is situated at the point where five postal districts converge.
History
The etymology of 'Shoreditch' is debated. A legendary early tradition connects it with Jane Shore, the mistress of Edward IV who according to an ancient ballad died in the eponymous ditch....However as the place is attested as 'Soersditch', long before this, a more plausible suggestion is 'Sewer Ditch', in reference to an ancient drain or watercourse in what was a boggy area adjacent to the 'fens' of Finsbury/Fensbury to the west (Mander 1996). Possibly it refers to the headwaters of the river Walbrook which rose in the Curtain Road area.
Though now part of the inner city, Shoreditch was previously an extra-mural suburb of the City of London, centred around Shoreditch Church at the crossroads where Shoreditch High Street and Kingsland Road are intersected by Old Street and Hackney Road.
Shoreditch High Street and Kingsland road are a small sector of the Roman Ermine Street and modern A10. This, known also as the Old North Road, was a major coaching route to the north, exiting the City at Bishopsgate. The east-west course of Old Street-Hackney Road was also probably originally a Roman Road, connecting Silchester with Colchester, bypassing the City of London to the south (Sugden n.d.).
Shoreditch church (dedicated to St Leonard) is of ancient origin and features in the famous line: 'when I grow rich say the bells of Shoreditch', from the nursery rhyme: Oranges and Lemons.
Shoreditch was the site of the Augustinian priory of 'Halliwell' or 'Holywell' from the 12th Century until its dissolution in 1539. This was a house of nuns. In 1576, the first playhouse in England, known as The Theatre, was opened, on the site of the dissolved priory, and in 1577 the Curtain Theatre was opened in the middle of what is Curtain Road today.
During the 17th century, wealthy traders and Huguenot silk weavers moved to the area, establishing a textile industry centered to the south around Spitalfields Market. By the 19th century Shoreditch was also the locus of the furniture industry; now commemorated in the Geffrye Museum on Kingsland Road. However the area declined, along with both textile and furniture industries, and by the end of the 19th Century, Shoreditch was a byword for crime, prostitution and poverty. This situation was not improved by extensive devastation of the housing stock in the Blitz during World War 2 and insensitive redevelopment in the post war period, in which whole swathes of the old terraces were replaced by brutalist high-rises.
Administration
The medieval parish of Shoreditch (St Leonard's), was originally part of the county of Middlesex until 1889 when it became part of the County of London. The parish vestry was the local unit of administration until the creation of the Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch in 1899 in the same area.Shoreditch town hall can still be seen on Old Street. The Metropolitan Borough of Shoreditch was made up of three main districts in all: Shoreditch, Hoxton and Haggerston. The whole Metropolitan Borough was incorporated into the much larger London Borough of Hackney in 1965.
Famous local residents
- Will Summers - Henry VIII's jester; buried in Shoreditch church.
- James Burbage - Tudor actor and impresario: built The Theatre here, England's first playhouse; buried in Shoreditch church.
- Richard Burbage - Actor in the Lord Chamberlain's Men, Shakespeare's own Company. Renowned for his performance of Shakespeare's greatest roles: Hamlet, Richard III etc. Buried in Shoreditch church.
- Richard Tarleton - Famous Elizabethan comedian. Possibly the original of Shakespeare's Yorick. Buried in Shoreditch church.
- William Shakespeare - According to some reports was a sometime resident of Shoreditch and certainly acted in and wrote plays for the two Elizabethan theatres (The Theatre and Curtain Theatre) within the area. A pub sign which claimed that he drank in the White Horse on Shoreditch High Street has been removed fairly recently.
- Christopher Marlowe - Famous Elizabethan dramatist lived in Norton Folgate, the southern continuation of Shoreditch High Street, and wrote plays for the Shoreditch theatres.
- Marie Lloyd - Born in Shoreditch, where she made her debut in the local music halls. Commemorated in the name of a local pub, where the Cockney songs she made famous ('My Old Man' etc) are still sung by the locals, to this day.
Today
Since post-war decline, Shoreditch has risen up to become a popular and fashionable part of London. Often combined with neighbouring Hoxton, the area has been subject to considerable gentrification in the past twenty years, with accompanying rises in property prices.
A former citadel of the working classes, Shoreditch and Hoxton has been colonised by Boho yuppies and the artistic set who have turned former furniture warehouses into loft apartments and made Hoxton Square the centre of contemporary bohemia. Curtain Road and Old Street are notable for their clubs and pubs which offer a variety of venues to rival those of the West End.
Art galleries, bars, restaurants, media businesses and an urban golf club are further features of this transformation. To the north and east, however urban dereliction reigns and a predatory underclass continues the traditions of criminality pursued by their ancestors (Harrison: 1985; *). Other traditions of working class entertainment survive on Shoreditch High Street where the music halls of yesteryear have been replaced by the greatest concentration of striptease venues in London (Clifton 2002). And further south on Commercial Street the oldest profession of all still plies its trade...
Transport
Nearest places
In 2005 funding was announced for the East London Line Extension which would extend the existing line from Whitechapel tube station bypassing Shoreditch tube station (which closed in June 2006) and creating a new station titled Shoreditch High Street at the site of the old Bishopsgate Goods Yard which was demolished in 2004.Nearest tube stations
Disused stations
See also
References
- This article incorporates text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, which is in the public domain. 1911 Britannica
- Clifton, L. (2002) Baby Oil and Ice: Striptease in East London. The Do-Not Press Limited: London.
- Harrison, P. (1985) Inside the Inner City: Life Under the Cutting Edge. Penguin: Harmondsworth
- Mander, D. (1996) More Light, More Power: An Illustrated History of Shoreditch. Sutton
- Sugden, K. (n.d.) Under Hackney: The Archaeological Story. FHA.
- "Asbo TV" BBC News 10th Jan 2006
External links
"Shoreditch"