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| This eastside stretch of Burdett Road
is between St Paul’s Way and Thomas Street. St Paul’s Church, Bow Common,
consecrated in 1859, was built and endowed by William Cotton, a local developer. The Lovat
Arms public house was built 1862 and stands on the corner of Thomas Street with Lovat
Terrace the adjoining houses. This new road, to link Mile End Road, Bow with East India Dock Road, Limehouse, had been proposed in 1856. The Petition, to support the road, gave among its reasons that it would benefit those people living in the riverside Parishes of Stepney and Poplar, by providing them with easy access, via Grove Road, to newly laid out Victoria Park. Built in 1862, Burdett Road is around a mile long and seventy feet wide and named after Angela Burdett-Coutts, who paid for it to be built. The building of the Road also allowed housing developments to take place along it and in the immediate area. This district became by 1870 a favourite place for middle-class East End families to live in. Only thirty years before the area around Burdett Road had been described as semi-rural. The lovat Arms and all the houses were destroyed in the Blitz. St Paul’s Church was badly damaged in an air-raid on 20th September 1940 and closed. In another air-raid on 19th March 1941, what remained of the Church was gutted by incendiary bombs. The ruins of the Church were removed in 1958 when a new Church was constructed. The new St Paul’s Church, a listed building, was consecrated on the 30th April 1960. The lovat Arms was rebuilt in the 1960s. lovat Terrace was replaced with Butler House, a typical 1960s block of flats. Recently the lovat Arms has been demolished and the site awaits future development. |
