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The Bancroft Library building has three parts. The oldest or northern part was opened in July 1861 as the Vestry Hall of the Hamlet of Mile End Old Town. Vestries and District Boards in London were set up under the Metropolis Management Act of 1855. In our part of London, there were the Vestries of Bethnal Green, Mile End Old Town and St. George's in the East; and the District Boards of Limehouse, Poplar and Whitechapel. Each Vestry or District Board employed three senior officers: a clerk, a surveyor, and a medical officer of health.
From 1690 to 1856, the Hamlet of Mile End Old Town had been represented by vestrymen in the Stepney Vestry, which met in the vestry at St. Dunstan's Church and shared local government with the courts in the Manor of Stepney. Before 1690, the Hamlet had been part of the Hamlet of Mile End with Bethnal Green, the least important of the four Hamlets or administrative areas into which the parish of Stepney was divided in 1589. The most important was Ratcliff, which included most of the village of Stepney and the riverside villages of Ratcliff, Shadwell and Wapping.
The original hamlets or small villages had been started by Saxon settlers who had sailed here from a part of what is now Germany. In the Middle Ages, men from the twenty or so hamlets to the north-east of the Tower of London had to do guard duty at the Tower, and so their hamlets became known officially as the Tower Hamlets.
By the end of the 16th century, most people living in the Tower Hamlets worked in their surrounding fields to supply the City of London with fresh produce. But the riverside hamlets were also home to most of London's sailors and shipbuilders; and many famous voyages of exploration and colonisation set sail from the riverside hamlets. During the 18th century, the wealthiest sea captains and merchants, trading with Bengal and other parts of India and the Far East, moved to large new houses in Mile End Old Town.
It was with the opening of the docks at the start of the 19th century that most of the remaining fields began to disappear under streets of terraced housing for the people who came here from all over Britain and Ireland and elsewhere in the world to sail the ships, work in the docks and shipyards; and in the factories processing the commodities and raw materials being imported from all over the world. Many of their products were exported from the docks, usually in ships which also took emigrants all over the world. By the end of the 19th century, the East End was the largest industrial area in the world's largest industrial city and greatest port in the world.
It was in a desperate effort to properly and efficiently administer this booming part of the metropolis that the new Vestries and District Boards were set up in the East End. From 1861 right up to the reorganisation of local government in London in 1900, the vestrymen of the Hamlet of Mile End Old Town met regularly in the Vestry Hall in Bancroft Road. Their meetings were held in the first-floor vestry hall, with its tall round-headed windows and fine ceiling with the seals of the Vestry and the Board of Guardians. The Guardians administered the poor law in the Hamlet and ran the workhouse next door in Bancroft Road.
All of the handwritten and printed vestry records, together with those of the other two Vestries and three District Boards (and the ancient documents bequeathed them by the previous administrations) are preserved in our Local History Library and Archives at Bancroft Library. The northern part of which is the oldest of our six surviving 19th century local government buildings:
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St. George's Town Hall - former Vestry Hall for the parish of St. George's in the East (August 1861)
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Half Moon Young People's Theatre - former Offices of the Limehouse District Board of Works (1863)
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Former Offices of the Poplar District Board of Works (1871) VACANT
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Bromley Public Hall - former Vestry Hall for the parish of Bromley St. Leonard's (1880)
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Limehouse Town Hall - former Vestry Hall for St. Anne's Limehouse (1881)
In 1900, the three Vestries and the three District Boards were replaced by the three Metropolitan Boroughs of Stepney, Poplar and Bethnal Green. Between 1901 and 1902, the former Vestry Hall in Bancroft Road was adapted by Stepney Borough Council as its Mile End Library, with a reading room in the old vestry hall on the first floor. In February 1902, the library at the People's Palace in Mile End Road was closed and over 10,000 books were donated to the Mile End Library. In 1905, the Council approached Andrew Carnegie of New York for funds to improve the reference library. With his gift of £6,000, the Council built the substantial two-storey extension at the back of the former Mile End Vestry Hall, and it was opened by the Duke of Argyll in April 1906. The ground floor consisted of a lecture theatre and the first floor housed the new reference library.
The southern part of Bancroft Library was built 1935-37 on the south side of the former Mile End Vestry Hall. It was designed with a similar but less elaborate façade on Bancroft Road, and included an extension of the former first-floor vestry hall, with single round-headed windows and an identical ceiling.
The three Metropolitan Boroughs of Stepney, Poplar and Bethnal Green were amalgamated in 1965 to form the London Borough of Tower Hamlets; and the public library in Bancroft Road was chosen as the Borough's Central Library, with the Tower Hamlets Local History Library in the former reference library on the first floor of Andrew Carnegie's 1906 extension. The Local History Library not only included all the collections previously made and cared for by Stepney Borough Council but the local history collections of Poplar Borough Council (including a nationally important shipping collection) and Bethnal Green Borough Council.
The ground-floor lecture theatre in the 1906 extension was converted by Tower Hamlets Council into the Borough's archive strong room for its own records and all the handwritten records of its numerous predecessors, and all their ancient documents and deeds; and all the items freely donated by numerous organisations and individuals, safe in the knowledge that their precious records would be properly cared for and made available for study by interested local residents and visitors from all over the world. The archive strong room is environmentally controlled to ensure that the documents do not deteriorate, and was opened by Professor Bill Fishman in 1988.
The fifteen hundred year history of Tower Hamlets and all its people from the Saxon settlement to the present day is safely stored and made available for study at Bancroft Library. The oldest part of which, is our oldest surviving local government building, situated more or less in the historic heart of the Borough.
This well-housed repository of our world-wide history is now threatened by the very same Council which set it all up in 1965. A Council which is now an education authority and has just launched a government-funded scheme to build One Tower Hamlets (a borough where all parts of the community can live and work together). Surely the Council realises that to create a caring and tolerant society it must improve the existing services at Bancroft Library to ensure that the Borough's schoolchildren know the history of all the different people and places in Tower Hamlets, as required by the national curriculum.
Over two thousand local residents and others have already signed the petition to keep and improve the local history and archive services at Bancroft Library. Previous generations of East Enders lost both the 1887 People's Palace and its 1936 replacement to Queen Mary College. This generation of East Enders is not prepared to also lose the Bancroft Library to Queen Mary University. Instead of selling our most historic public library for a paltry £1.2 million, and putting its historic collections at risk, Tower Hamlets Council must raise funds for the repair and adaptation of the whole building as the Tower Hamlets Local History Centre for schoolchildren, local residents and visitors from all over the world.
Tom Ridge - Campaign to Save Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives at Bancroft Road
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