Qualla: Whitechapel Mount https://qualla.com/whitechapel-mount en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:15 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/whitechapel-mount-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Whitechapel Mount https://qualla.com/whitechapel-mount Whitechapel Mount: Introduction https://qualla.com/whitechapel-mount/ Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. Imagine an artificial hill - higher than the brand-new London Hospital, longer than four hundred yards, ascendable by horse and cart - sitting beside the road that ran east out of Georgian London. People built houses on top of it. Cockney enthusiasts hunted for antiques in its soil. Highwaymen used its slopes to hide stolen goods. And nobody could quite agree on what it was. Was it a fort from the English Civil War? A plague pit covered up with rubble from the Great Fire? Or just the city's largest rubbish heap dressed up with a polite name? The strangest answer is that Whitechapel Mount was probably all of those things at once. By 1808, it was gone - sold off and pressed into bricks that still stand in buildings across the East End.

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/whitechapel-mount-wp/gcpv-whitechapel-mount-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Whitechapel Mount: The Mud Wall Called the Fort https://qualla.com/whitechapel-mount/ Photo credit Sir Christopher Wren, Public domain. When Sir Christopher Wren mapped Whitechapel in 1673, he labelled the rising ground as the mud wall called the Fort. In 1643, with King Charles I's armies threatening to sack London, the city had hastily thrown up a ring of twenty-three or twenty-four earthen forts and connecting...

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Image: Sir Christopher Wren | Public domain

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/whitechapel-mount-wp/gcpv-whitechapel-mount-the-mud-wall-called-the-fort.mp3 0:06 2 full Whitechapel Mount: Plague Rumours https://qualla.com/whitechapel-mount/ Photo credit George Cruikshank, Public domain. In 1665, the bubonic plague killed somewhere between seventy and a hundred thousand Londoners. Aldgate, Whitechapel, and Stepney were hit hard, and the official mass graves filled faster than the gravediggers could keep up. The men driving the dead carts were, in the words of one...

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Image: George Cruikshank | Public domain

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/whitechapel-mount-wp/gcpv-whitechapel-mount-plague-rumours.mp3 0:06 3 full Whitechapel Mount: London's Dustheap https://qualla.com/whitechapel-mount/ Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.0. The most likely explanation is also the least romantic. In 1671 Parliament designated seven official laystalls - sanctioned rubbish tips - for the City of London, and Whitechapel Mount was one. All the household rubbish from Portsoken, Tower, Duke's Place, and Lime Street wards c...

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Image: CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/whitechapel-mount-wp/gcpv-whitechapel-mount-londons-dustheap.mp3 0:06 4 full Whitechapel Mount: Antique Hunters and Boar's Heads https://qualla.com/whitechapel-mount/ Photo credit Unknown letter writer in the 'Morning Chronicle', 1805, Public domain. Because Londoners believed the Great Fire theory, the dismantling of the Mount in 1807 and 1808 attracted treasure hunters. Cockney enthusiasts sifted the soil for relics of pre-Fire London. They found - or claimed to find - a silver tankard and a Roman coin. The most spectacular...

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Image: Unknown letter writer in the 'Morning Chronicle', 1805 | Public domain

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/whitechapel-mount-wp/gcpv-whitechapel-mount-antique-hunters-and-boars-heads.mp3 0:06 5 full Whitechapel Mount: Mount Terrace https://qualla.com/whitechapel-mount/ Photo credit Derek Harper, CC BY-SA 2.0. Today the Mount survives as a street name. Walk south from the Whitechapel Road and you reach Mount Terrace, E1 - a row of bricks that may literally have been made from the hill they now name. The Royal London Hospital occupies most of the former site. Redevelopment has occasiona...

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Image: Derek Harper | CC BY-SA 2.0

]]> Tue, 19 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/p/v/whitechapel-mount-wp/gcpv-whitechapel-mount-mount-terrace.mp3 0:06 6 full