Qualla: East End of London https://qualla.com/east-end-of-london en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:14 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/east-end-of-london-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: East End of London https://qualla.com/east-end-of-london East End of London: Introduction https://qualla.com/east-end-of-london/ Photo credit Murgatroyd49, CC BY 4.0. Stand on Cable Street on a Sunday afternoon, in front of the enormous mural painted on the side of the old town hall, and you can read the date 4 October 1936 in the rendering. That was the day a hundred thousand East Enders - Jewish, Irish, English, communist, anarchist, dock workers, housewives, anyone who had decided enough was enough - blocked the British Union of Fascists from marching their black-shirted columns through the neighbourhood. They won. The fascists were turned back and made to parade in the West End instead. Cable Street is one episode in a much longer story that the East End tells about itself: that this is the part of London that arrivals come to, that the established population resents them, that the resentment eventually subsides, and then the next arrivals come. Huguenots, Irish, Jewish, Chinese, African, Bangladeshi, Somali. Each wave joining and remaking the place. The East End is the working-class heart of London. It also, more than almost any neighbourhood in Europe, is a record of who came and what was done to them and how they built lives anyway.

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Image: Murgatroyd49 | CC BY 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/east-end-of-london-wp/gcpv-east-end-of-london-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full East End of London: Built by the River https://qualla.com/east-end-of-london/ Photo credit Ewan Munro from London, UK, CC BY-SA 2.0. Industries followed the Thames. Rope makers needed long straight runs to twist their hemp - the modern streets near Mile End still trace the old roperies, narrow and unnaturally straight. Shipfitting was happening at Ratcliff in 1354 and at Blackwall by 1485. On 31 January 1858 t...

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Image: Ewan Munro from London, UK | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/east-end-of-london-wp/gcpv-east-end-of-london-built-by-the-river.mp3 0:06 2 full East End of London: The Weavers and the Pogroms https://qualla.com/east-end-of-london/ Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.0. Each wave of immigration left a building behind. The Huguenots - French Protestants fleeing Catholic persecution after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 - settled around Spitalfields and brought silk weaving with them. They built a small chapel on Fournier Street in 1...

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Image: CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/east-end-of-london-wp/gcpv-east-end-of-london-the-weavers-and-the-pogroms.mp3 0:06 3 full East End of London: The Battle of Cable Street https://qualla.com/east-end-of-london/ Photo credit JRR (J.R.R.), Public domain. On 4 October 1936, Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists assembled between three and five thousand uniformed blackshirts and announced they would march through the heart of the Jewish East End. Up to one hundred thousand people - Jews, Irish dockers, communists, trade unionis...

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Image: JRR (J.R.R.) | Public domain

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/east-end-of-london-wp/gcpv-east-end-of-london-the-battle-of-cable-street.mp3 0:06 4 full East End of London: Bombs, Slums, and Tower Blocks https://qualla.com/east-end-of-london/ Photo credit QuintusPetillius, CC BY-SA 4.0. The East End was bombed harder than almost any neighbourhood in Britain during the Blitz of 1940-41. The docks were the target; the working-class housing around them was burned with the docks. Whole streets disappeared. After the war, slum clearance that had been interrupted by t...

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Image: QuintusPetillius | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/east-end-of-london-wp/gcpv-east-end-of-london-bombs-slums-and-tower-blocks.mp3 0:06 5 full East End of London: Pearlies, Bow Bells, and Bangladeshi Curry https://qualla.com/east-end-of-london/ Photo credit The wub, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Whitechapel Bell Foundry opened in 1570 and ran continuously until 2016, the oldest manufacturing company in Britain when it finally closed. It cast Big Ben, the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, and the original Bow Bells of St Mary-le-Bow, by tradition the bells you had to be b...

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Image: The wub | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/east-end-of-london-wp/gcpv-east-end-of-london-pearlies-bow-bells-and-bangladeshi-curry.mp3 0:06 6 full