Home › Suburbs › Suburbs: Fields

Suburbs: Fields

Spa Fields, now built over, owed their designation to a medicinal well, or Spa, discovered in 1206, and subsequently known as "The London Spa." The proper description of Bunhill Fields is Bonhill, i.e., "good hill" Fields, so styled because the victims of the Great Plague were buried here in 1665. Moorfields was formerly a bleak moor skirting the northern portion of the marshy land known as Fensbury, now Finsbury, already referred to.

Shoreditch did not receive its name from Jane Shore, neither is the word a corruption of "Sewer Ditch," as some writers have suggested. This district really comprised the manor of Sir John Soerditch, a wealthy London citizen and a valiant knight who fought by the side of Edward the Black Prince at Crecy and Poictiers. Whitechapel was designated after the White Chapel of St. Mary, built in 1673.

Goodman's Fields perpetuated the name of the owner of the land now known as the Minories, upon which a Priory of the Nuns of St. Clair was afterwards built. Shadwell is a corruption of St. Chad's Well, discovered in this neighbourhood in ancient times. The once-notorious Ratcliffe Highway derived its name from the Manor of Ratcliffe, belonging to the adjoining parish of Stepney. title has now been changed to St. George's Street.

Stepney was anciently described as Stebenhithe, signifying that it contained a wharf or haven belonging to one Steben or Steven. Spitalfields marks The the site of the ancient Priory of St. Mary of the Spittle, dissolved in 1534. The French refugees established the silk manufacture here in 1685.

Bethnal Green recalls the existence of the old family of the Bathons, whose history is first recorded in connection with their property situated in this neighbourhood during the reign of Edward I.

Hoxton is a corruption of Hogsdon, meaning hog's town. In proof of this statement we may add that HOG LANE still exists in the vicinity. De Beauvoir Town preserves the family name of the De Beauvoirs, whose original ancestor, Richard de Beauvoir, of Guernsey, resided here in princely style. Copenhagen Fields were so called after a tea-house opened by a Dane, about the time when the King of Denmark paid a visit to James I. Haggerstone is a corruption of "Hergotestan," the literal Saxon for "Our God's Town." Hackney was originally described as Hackoneye, signifying an ey, or portion of well-watered pasture land, appropriated by a Danish chief named Hacon [see CHELSEA, &c.].

Dalston is properly Daleston, or Vale-town.

This was a quiet suburban village situated in a valley during the days when the northern districts of the Metropolis were more or less wooded-as witness Stoke Newington, or the new town in the meadow by the wood. The word Stoke comes from the Anglo-Saxon stoc, a wood or stockade; ton is the Old English for town, and ing the Anglo-Saxon for a meadow, also a family settlement. Southgate is expressive of the southern entrance to the en- London Districts and Suburbs. closure, anciently known as Enfield Chase; and Kingsland the royal domain adjacent to it.