place name
Catherine Parr (1512 – September 5, 1548), who as the sixth and last wife of Henry VIII was Queen of England between 1543 – 1547. A feisty and intelligent widow, when Catherine showed an interest in Protestantism, Henry had her arrested. Though she managed to avoid the fate of her predecessors, all but one also with nearby streets named after them, bringing stability and peace to the court, while serving as a dutiful stepmother to Henry’s three children. She persuaded the king to restore his daughters Mary and Elizabeth to the orders of succession and acted as Regent when Henry went to war with France. She retired from court after the king’s death in 1547. This is one of a cluster of local streets on the so-called Boleyn Estate built in about 1880 and named after five of Henry’s six wives on account of a dubious local legend linking Anne Boleyn with a local mansion known locally as Boleyn’s Castle, where she is said to have lived and the king is meant to have come to court her. The castle-like mansion with tower was located at the southern end of Green Street. In 1904 its grounds were rented to West Ham Football Club and became the infamous Boleyn Ground.
