Stepney Meeting House

The London Borough of Tower Hamlets is a London borough covering much of the traditional East End. It was formed in 1965 from the merger of the former metropolitan boroughs of Stepney, Poplar, and Bethnal Green. 'Tower Hamlets' was originally an alternative name for the historic Tower Division; the area of south-east Middlesex, focused on (but not limited to) the area of the modern borough, which owed military service to the Tower of London. The borough lies on the north bank of the River Thames immediately east of the City of London, and includes much of the redeveloped Docklands area. Some of the tallest buildings in London occupy the centre of the Isle of Dogs in the south of the borough. A part of the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park is in Tower Hamlets. The 2019 mid-year population for the borough is estimated at 324,745. Asian/Asian British Bangladeshis at 32% form the largest ethnic group. The 2011 census showed Tower Hamlets to have the highest proportion of Muslims of any English local authority and that Muslims outnumbered Christians. The borough has more than forty mosques and Islamic centres, including the East London Mosque, one of Britain's largest. Brick Lane's restaurants, neighbouring street market and shops provide the largest range of Bengali cuisine, woodwork, carpets and clothes in Europe. The Lane is also a major centre of hipster subculture.In 2017 a joint study by Trust for London and New Policy Institute found Tower Hamlets to be the 2nd most deprived London borough (after Barking and Dagenham) based on an average calculated across a range of indicators; with high rates of poverty, child poverty, unemployment and pay inequality compared to other London boroughs. However, it has the lowest gap for educational outcomes at secondary level.The local authority is Tower Hamlets London Borough Council.

The George Tavern is a Grade II listed public house and music venue located on Commercial Road in Stepney, London. It is owned and operated by artist Pauline Forster. Formerly known as the Halfway House, the building contains original brickwork some 700 years old, and is mentioned in texts by Geoffrey Chaucer, Samuel Pepys and Charles Dickens. In 2002, artist Pauline Forster bought the derelict building at auction and has reopened it as a music, performance and arts venue, and pub. It is also a popular location for photo, film, and video shoots.

The siege of Sidney Street of January 1911, also known as the Battle of Stepney, was a gunfight in the East End of London between a combined police and army force and two Latvian revolutionaries. The siege was the culmination of a series of events that began in December 1910, with an attempted jewellery robbery at Houndsditch in the City of London by a gang of Latvian immigrants which resulted in the murder of three policemen, the wounding of two others, and the death of George Gardstein, the leader of the Latvian gang. An investigation by the Metropolitan and City of London Police forces identified Gardstein's accomplices, most of whom were arrested within two weeks. The police were informed that the last two members of the gang were hiding at 100 Sidney Street in Stepney. The police evacuated local residents, and on the morning of 3 January a firefight broke out. Armed with inferior weapons, the police sought assistance from the army. The siege lasted for about six hours. Towards the end of the stand-off, the building caught fire; no single cause has been identified. One of the agitators in the building was shot before the fire spread. While the London Fire Brigade were damping down the ruins—in which they found the two bodies—the building collapsed, killing a fireman. The siege marked the first time the police had requested military assistance in London to deal with an armed stand-off. It was also the first siege in Britain to be caught on camera, as the events were filmed by Pathé News. Some of the footage included images of the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill. His presence caused a political row over the level of his operational involvement. At the trial in May 1911 of those arrested for the Houndsditch jewellery robbery, all but one of the accused were acquitted; the conviction was overturned on appeal. The events were fictionalised in film—in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and The Siege of Sidney Street (1960)—and novels. On the centenary of the events two tower blocks in Sidney Street were named after Peter the Painter, one of the minor members of the gang who was probably not present at either Houndsditch or Sidney Street. The murdered policemen and the fireman who died are commemorated with memorial plaques.

The Church of St Mary and St Michael is a Roman Catholic Church at 2 Lukin Street, Commercial Road, E1 0AA in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is an active Roman Catholic church in the diocese of Westminster. The church is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade II listed building.

Wickhams was a department store on the north side of the Mile End Road in London's East End, closing in the 1960s.

The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have universally accepted boundaries to the north and east, though the River Lea is sometimes seen as the eastern boundary. Parts of it may be regarded as lying within Central London (though that term too has no precise definition). The term "East of Aldgate Pump" is sometimes used as a synonym for the area. The East End began to emerge in the Middle Ages with initially slow urban growth outside the eastern walls, which later accelerated, especially in the 19th century, to absorb pre-existing settlements. The first known written record of the East End as a distinct entity, as opposed to its component parts, comes from John Strype's 1720 Survey of London, which describes London as consisting of four parts: the City of London, Westminster, Southwark, and "That Part beyond the Tower". The relevance of Strype's reference to the Tower was more than geographical. The East End was the urbanised part of an administrative area called the Tower Division, which had owed military service to the Tower of London since time immemorial. Later, as London grew further, the fully urbanised Tower Division became a byword for wider East London, before East London grew further still, east of the River Lea and into Essex. The area was notorious for its deep poverty, overcrowding and associated social problems. This led to the East End's history of intense political activism and association with some of the country's most influential social reformers. Another major theme of East End history has been migration, both inward and outward. The area had a strong pull on the rural poor from other parts of England, and attracted waves of migration from further afield, notably Huguenot refugees, Irish weavers, Ashkenazi Jews and in the 20th century, Sylhetis. The closure of the last of the Port of London's East End docks in 1980 created further challenges and led to attempts at regeneration, with Canary Wharf and the Olympic Park among the most successful examples. While some parts of the East End are undergoing rapid change, the area continues to contain some of the worst poverty in Britain.

Trinity Green Almshouses (formerly Trinity Hospital) are a series of Grade I listed almshouses on Mile End Road in Whitechapel in London. They were originally built in 1695 to provide housing for retired sailors, and are the oldest almshouses in Central London. The buildings were damaged during the Second World War, and were restored in the 1950s by London County Council.

Bishop Challoner Catholic Federation of Schools is a Roman Catholic secondary school and sixth form, located in the Shadwell area of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, England. In May 2015, the name of the schools formally changed from "the Collegiate" to its current nomenclature of Bishop Challoner Catholic Federation of Schools. The school is a voluntary aided federation of a boys' school, a girls' school and a co-educational sixth form. The school is administered by Tower Hamlets London Borough Council and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Westminster. In 2016, around 50% of the intake was Roman Catholic. Whilst the pupil profile at Bishop Challoner is diverse, Bangladeshi children are very significantly under-represented in comparison to Tower Hamlets as a whole and the schools receive few applications from Bangladeshi parents. Nevertheless, in 1992, local parents unsuccessfully challenged the admission policy to Bishop Challoner RC Girls' School in the House of Lords (R v Governors of the Bishop Challoner Roman Catholic Comprehensive Girls' School ex parte Choudhury and Purkayastha). Tower Hamlets Borough’s high levels of child poverty are evident in the high proportion of children entitled to free school meals which in 2011 stood at 57%.

Stepney was an ancient civil and ecclesiastical parish in the historic county of Middlesex to the east and north east of the City of London, England.

Stepney Green Park is a 4.62 hectare park in Stepney, Tower Hamlets, London. It is a remnant of a larger area of common land. It was formerly known as Mile End Green. A Crossrail construction site occupies part of the green, with Stepney Green cavern below it. It gives its name to the surrounding neighborhood of Stepney Green.

Arbour Square police station was located in Stepney, London. Built in the 1840s by the Metropolitan Police, it became known for holding IRA members and the Kray Twins. It was closed down in 1999 and squatted twice before being redeveloped into apartments.

The Black Horse was formerly a pub at 168 Mile End Road, Stepney, London E1. It is a Grade II listed building, built in the early-mid 19th century.