Bow Quarter is a gated community in Bow in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The building was originally the Bryant and May match factory, and was the site of the Match Girls' strike in the 1880s. The factory was redeveloped in the 1980s, in one of east London's first urban renewal projects.
From the mid-19th century to more than three-quarters of the way through the 20th century it was the location of the Bryant and May match factory. At the turn of the two centuries it was London's largest factory. [1]
The 3 acre (1.2 hectare) site, acquired by William Bryant and Francis May in 1861, contained a number of factories that had once been used for the manufacture of candles, crinoline and rope, but had fallen into disrepair. [2] Assistance in adapting the site for match making was provided by John Edvard Lundström, the Swedish safety match maker. [2]
The London matchgirls strike of 1888 started in the factory, caused by the poor working conditions; including fourteen-hour work days, poor pay, excessive fines and the severe health complications of working with white phosphorus, such as phossy jaw. This led to the establishment of the first British trade union for women. [2] A blue plaque outside the entrance commemorates the role of social pioneer and feminist Annie Besant in leading the demands for better pay and conditions. The result was that some of the first welfare institutions in Britain for industrial workers began on this site, including the provision of a dentist. [2]
The present main factory building was constructed in 1909–10. [3] At full production in 1911, the Bow site employed more than 2,000 women and girls. [4] It finally closed in 1979, when 275 people worked there, production being transferred to Litherland near Liverpool. [5] Designed by Holman and Goodsham, it is concrete-framed red brick building, with two tall towers of ten stories. It is a Grade II Listed building. [6]
The site had fallen into disrepair when in 1988, developers Kentish Homes, with designs from ORMS Architects (chief project architect Oliver Richards) - embarked upon one of east London's first urban renewal projects. In a history of the development in his 2009 book A Journey Through Ruins - The Last Days of London, historian Patrick Wright describes the process of gentrification of the area. As he puts it: "The coinage dreamed up to turn the Bryant & May factory into the Bow Quarter gave an altogether new turn to the rhetoric of an east London trade that local Member of Parliament (MP) George Lansbury once dismissed as 'room farming'. As the sales line of the developers went: 'Parisians have the Latin Quarter, New Yorkers have Greenwich Village. Now in East London, a stone's throw from the City, there's a new Quarter..." [1] However, unlike the former two, the latter would be "generated by a single speculative stroke".
Today Bow Quarter consists of 733 one- and two-bedroom flats and penthouses, together with a handful of workers' cottages built around the late 19th century. Set in 7 acres (28,000 m2) of landscaped grounds, amenities include a residents' gym and a convenience store.
The majority of the flats today are located in former factory and office buildings. Arlington, for example, was built as offices in 1874; Lexington and Manhattan date from the factory site redevelopment in 1911. The Victorian cottages near the entrance provided accommodation for the company directors whilst Staten was built as extra office accommodation in the late 1950s. The Park buildings (East, Central and West) were added in the mid-1990s.
In 2004, the TV series If... shot scenes in the fictional gated community Regent's Court inside Bow Quarter. Some residents were interviewed by the production team during the making of the programme. [7] [8]
Current residents include James Lance, Katy B and Sunday Girl. Previous residents have included John Barrowman and Steve Strange.[ citation needed ] Former resident Danny Wallace declared his flat a micronation in the TV series How to Start Your Own Country . AudiopleXus mastering studio is located in the Bow Quarter.
In April 2012, the Ministry of Defence identified the water tower as a potential location for surface-to-air missile defences during the 2012 Summer Olympics. [9] One resident, a Guardian journalist, reported opposition to the scheme[ citation needed ], but other residents were supportive of the move. [10]
A match is a tool for starting a fire. Typically, matches are made of small wooden sticks or stiff paper. One end is coated with a material that can be ignited by friction generated by striking the match against a suitable surface. Wooden matches are packaged in matchboxes, and paper matches are partially cut into rows and stapled into matchbooks. The coated end of a match, known as the match "head", consists of a bead of active ingredients and binder, often colored for easier inspection. There are two main types of matches: safety matches, which can be struck only against a specially prepared surface, and strike-anywhere matches, for which any suitably frictional surface can be used.
Stratford is a town in East London, England, within the London Borough of Newham. Part of the Lower Lea Valley, Stratford is situated 6 miles (9.7 km) east-northeast of Charing Cross, and includes the localities of Maryland and East Village.
Balfron Tower is a 26-storey residential building in Poplar, Tower Hamlets, East London. Built in a Brutalist style, it forms part of the Brownfield Estate, an area of social housing between Chrisp Street Market and the A12 northern approach to the Blackwall Tunnel. It was designed by Ernő Goldfinger in 1963 for the London County Council, built 1965–67 by the GLC, and has been a listed building since 1996. Balfron Tower is stylistically similar to Goldfinger's later Trellick Tower in London.
Bow is an area of East London within the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is primarily a built-up and mostly residential area and is 4.6 miles (7.4 km) east of Charing Cross.
Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park is a local nature reserve and historic cemetery in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets within the East End of London. It is regarded as one of the seven great cemeteries of the Victorian era, the "Magnificent Seven", instigated because the normal church burial plots had become overcrowded.
Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, 2-2-0 represents the wheel arrangement of two leading wheels on one axle, two powered driving wheels on one axle, and no trailing wheels. This configuration, which became very popular during the 1830s, was commonly called the Planet type after the first locomotive, Robert Stephenson's Planet of 1830.
Bryant & May was a British company created in the mid-19th century specifically to make matches. Their original Bryant & May Factory was located in Bow, London. They later opened other match factories in the United Kingdom and Australia, such as the Bryant & May Factory, Melbourne, and owned match factories in other parts of the world.
Bow Church is the parish church of St Mary and Holy Trinity, Stratford, Bow. It is located on a central reservation site in Bow Road, in Bow, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. There has been a church on the same site for approximately 700 years. The church was bombed in the Second World War, and the bell tower was reconstructed just after the war.
William Bridges Adams was an English author, inventor and locomotive engineer. He is best known for his patented Adams axle – a successful radial axle design in use on railways in Britain until the end of steam traction in 1968 – and the railway fishplate. His writings, including English Pleasure Carriages (1837) and Roads and Rails (1862) covered all forms of land transport. Later he became a noted writer on political reform, under the pen name Junius Redivivus ; a reference to a political letter writer of the previous century.
The matchgirls' strike of 1888 was an industrial action by the women and teenage girls working at the Bryant & May match factory in Bow, London, England.
England's Glory is a brand of non-safety matches, available in the United Kingdom, using a celebrated image of a Victorian battleship, HMS Devastation.
St James Duke's Place was an Anglican parish church in the Aldgate ward of the City of London It was established in the early 17th century, rebuilt in 1727 and closed and demolished in 1874.
The Matchgirls is a musical by Bill Owen and Tony Russell about the London matchgirls strike of 1888. It premiered at the Globe Theatre, London, on 1 March 1966, directed and choreographed by Gillian Lynne.
The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have universally accepted boundaries to the north and east, though the River Lea is sometimes seen as the eastern boundary. Parts of it may be regarded as lying within Central London. The term "East of Aldgate Pump" is sometimes used as a synonym for the area.
Fish Island is an area in east London, England in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It encompasses one of 58 designated conservation areas in Tower Hamlets, with many of its buildings considered important to Britain's industrial heritage, though there are no listed buildings in the area.
The Cranbrook Estate is a housing estate in Bethnal Green, London, England. It is located next to Roman Road and is based around a figure of eight street called Mace Street. The estate was designed by Francis Skinner, Douglas Bailey and an elder mentor, the Soviet émigré Berthold Lubetkin.
The Mersey Match Factory, later known as The Matchworks, is a former match factory on Speke Road, Garston, Liverpool, England. The factory closed in 1994, and has since been converted into offices and workshops. It had opened in 1921, having been built for Maguire, Paterson and Palmer, and later used by Bryant and May. The factory was the first building in the United Kingdom to be constructed using the flat-slab concrete technique. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building.
Roman Road, is a road in East London, England, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets entirely on the B119 on the B roads network, and lies on the old Roman road in the Roman Empire called the Pye Road running from the capital of the Iceni at Venta Icenorum to Londinium and today hosts a street market. Beginning in Old Ford at its eastern end, it passes into Globe Town and then enters into Bethnal Green to its western end.
Sarah Chapman was a British trade unionist who was one of the leaders of the 1888 Bryant & May Matchgirls' strike. Chapman and others involved in the strike have since been recognised as "pioneers of sex equality and fairness at work who left a lasting legacy on the trade union movement".
The Matchmakers' Union was a British trade union formed in 1888 following the successful Matchgirls' strike. On its creation, it was the largest union of women and girls in the country, and inspired a wave of collective organising among industrial workers.