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| The Great Assembly Hall, at 31 Mile
End Road, was the Headquarters of The Tower Hamlets Mission, founded by Frederick Nicholas
Charrington in 1870. Frederick Charrington was born in Bow Road on the 4th February 1850. As a young man, working in the family’s brewery in the Mile End Road, he became very religious and started walking the streets of the East End at night trying to convert the down-and-outs to Christ and his teachings. It was on one of these walks that he saw the harsh effects of drunkenness and decided that his life’s work would be helping other people. He renounced his inheritance in Charrington’s Brewery, worth over a million pounds, and devoted his life to teetotalism and ridding society of vice in all its manifestations. He realised that if his Tower Hamlets Mission was to be successful it would need a permanent home in the East End. By his own efforts, he was able to raise sufficient funds to buy a site on the Mile End Waste and build the Mission. The Great Assembly Hall foundation stone was laid by the Earl of Shaftesbury in November 1883 and opened by John Jory, a millionaire colliery owner, on the 8th February 1886. The centre of the collection of buildings, that made up the complex, was the huge Assembly Hall, capable of seating 5,000 people, with rooms set aside for meetings and social activities. Charrington realised that he had to fed the hungry first before any religious service. So every Sunday the first 700 people queuing outside The Great Assembly Hall would receive a hot meal for the price of signing "the pledge". During the Match Girls strike of 1888, he allowed them to use The Great Assembly Hall for their meetings. Again in 1912, he allowed Jewish Tailors to meet there during their strike against the sweating system. Also in 1912, during another great dock strike, Charrington oversaw the feeding of hungry dockworkers’ families. Frederick Charrington died in the London Hospital in 1936. He had feed the hungry, fought against the exploitation of women and backed workers in their struggle for social justice. It had been his proud boast, just before his death, that The Great Assembly Hall had remained open for 22,000 consecutive days. In 1941, The Great Assembly Hall was gutted by incendiary bombs. On the site, after the war, a temporary small hall carried on the Mission’s work. Then in February 1959 a new complex was opened on the site. This was redesigned in 1987 to meet the new needs of The Tower Hamlets Mission. |
