Focused around Bethnal Green tube station, this urban neighbourhood is an East End archetype, and is a chequerboard of high-density residential zones, busy thoroughfares, and well-trodden parks. While the residential areas are mainly made up of more modern or post-war tower blocks, there are still a number of original Victorian properties, particularly above the shops on Bethnal Green Road. The area is one of the most diverse in the whole of London, hosting Britain’s largest Bangladeshi community, alongside many residents from the UK, Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean.

This diversity is reflected in the numerous ethnic supermarkets, restaurants, and clothes shops, exemplifying the postcode’s famous multicultural dynamism. The neighbourhood’s accessibility makes it very popular, with Bethnal Green tube station operating on the Central line, and its corresponding overground station making north-south travel easy too. There are also a multitude of bus routes, which, when coupled with the newly opened Elizabeth Line station 10 minutes walk away in Whitechapel, makes Bethnal Green among the city’s best connected neighbourhoods. Many students, young professionals and families all call the neighbourhood home, however creeping gentrification is beginning to price out many who have lived here for decades.

The area was rural until the 16th century, when merchants began building large houses in the fields, turning the countryside into a suburban retreat for the wealthy. By the 18th century houses had begun to spring up along Dog Row (now Cambridge Heath Road), which kickstarted the development of the first manufacturing districts in the East End. The silk-weaving trade spread to the area from Spitalfields, bringing with it Huguenot and Irish weavers. The town was characterised by market gardens and weavers until the 19th century, but as the century progressed and the population of London ballooned, Bethnal Green became one of London’s most notorious slums. Work to eradicate these slums began in Bethnal Green in 1900, but the Second World War prompted a speedier clean up, breaking up long-established neighbourhoods, and replacing the terraces with the vertical towers that dominate the area today.

Bethnal Green tube station was the site of the worst civilian disaster of the entire Second World War, when 173 people were killed in a crush to enter the station while it was being used as an air raid shelter. Reports suggest that an orderly queue entered the station when the air raid siren sounded on the 3rd March 1943, but towards the bottom of the steps an individual tripped, and, unable to see in the blacked-out stairwell, crowds began falling around them, resulting in many fatalities from crushing. Citing wartime secrecy, initial reports were censored, but the true story finally emerged, leading to a number of lawsuits regarding the way that the situation was managed and the multiple past requests for the unsafe steps to be altered to make them safe for large crowds. A brick memorial now sits in Bethnal Green Gardens, in the form of an upside down staircase meant to symbolise the victims’ ascent into heaven.

Rapid gentrification has priced many locals out of the area, making Bethnal Green noticeably socially divided, with some streets remaining poor and others becoming very rich. In this sense the postcode is typical of many parts of urban London that lie just outside the centre in that it is common to see luxury houses back up against gimy tenement blocks

Delivering affordable housing in Bethnal Green is one of Tower Hamlets Council’s key priorities. The council has recently agreed to Section 106, which promises to drive up the quality of affordable homes in one of London’s fastest growing boroughs. Broadway East is an example of one of these developments, occupying the abandoned Marian Place Gasholders. The development comprises 555 homes, including 35% affordable housing, and 1.75 acres of public open space which will retain the iconic frames of both gasholders no.2 and no.5.