Metropolitan Borough of Stepney
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Stepney is a district in the East End of London in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The district is not officially defined, and is usually used to refer to a relatively small area, however for much its history the place name applied to a much larger manor and parish. Stepney Green is a remnant of a larger area of Common Land formerly known as Mile End Green.
The area was built up rapidly in the 19th century, mainly to accommodate immigrant workers and displaced London poor, and developed a reputation for poverty, overcrowding, violence and political dissent. It was severely damaged during the Blitz, with over a third of housing totally destroyed; and then, in the 1960s, slum clearance and development replaced most residential streets with tower blocks and modern housing estates. Some Georgian architecture and Victorian era terraced housing survive in patches: for example Arbour Square, the eastern side of Stepney Green, and the streets around Matlock Street.
Etymology
The first surviving record of the place name is from around 1000 AD as Stybbanhyð, "Stybba's hyð"; hyð developed into hithe (meaning landing-place) in modern English, so "Stybba's landing-place". The parish of Stebbing in Essex also appears to have taken its name from an individual called Stybba. The hithe itself is thought to have been at Ratcliff, just under half a mile south of St Dunstans Church.
Changing Scope
Historically, Stepney was a very large manor and Ancient Parish which covered most of what would become the East End. From 1900 to 1965 the place-name was applied to the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney, which in 1965 became the south-west part of the new London Borough of Tower Hamlets which currently administers the area. There is currently a Stepney episcopal area in the Anglican Diocese of London, which covers the London boroughs of Hackney, Islington and Tower Hamlets, and has its own suffragan bishop.
The area of Stepney has had no local government definition since 1965, but is used to refer to the whole former parish and also to a relatively small area within it.
Manor and Ancient Parish
For hundreds of years the term Stepney referred to the Manor and Ancient Parish of Stepney. The first contemporary record of the Manor is around the year 1000, it covered an area equivalent to the modern borough of Tower Hamlets, as well as the district of Hackney (in the wider modern borough of the same name). The origins of the Manor are not known, but its large size, relatively rich soils and position adjacent to the walls of London have led to suggestions that the manor was the foundation grant of land made to the Bishop of London to support the creation of the new diocese of London (the East Saxon see) at the time of the establishment of St Paul's Cathedral in 604 AD.
St Dunstan's church is recorded (not contemporaneously) as having been founded in 952, and as the first church in the manor, will have served the whole of that landholding. The proto-parish of Stepney will therefore have covered the same area as the manor. A church at Hackney is first mentioned in 1275 but is likely to have been in place for some time before then. From the early 1100s, greater enforcement of Canon law made it difficult to form new parishes so Hackney is likely to have formed a distinct parish by this time, however it remained a sub-manor of Stepney. It was usual for one or more manors to form a parish, but the manor of Stepney's great size meant that this was reversed with two parishes (Stepney and Hackney) serving the single manor of Stepney. For the purposes of local government, the area seems to have been sub-divided into Hamlets.
