Place Name
Directional the road leading from Shoreditch to Bethnal Green. The eastern end of the route has been in existence since at least 1703 when it appeared on Joel Gascoyne’s map but it peters out into fields. It wasn’t until 1879 that the Metropolitan Board of Works carried our improvements extending the road westwards with the new section running from Brick Lane to Shoreditch High Street. The name Bethnal Green was first recorded in the 13th Century as Blithehale, and is thought to refer to a small parcel of land belonging to an Anglo Saxon property owner called Blīòa or Blitha. David Mills in A Dictionary of London Place Names suggests there could be an alternative suggestion: “The first element may be Old English blīthe ‘pleasant’ or an old stream name Blī the ‘pleasant one’. In any case by 1341 the name had been modified to become Blithenhale but in the following century the Middle English word grene was added in reference to the village green, the area still being far from the City in this period, and so in 1443 it became Blethenalegrene in 1443 and by 1657 as Bethnal Greene.