Montfort House was built in 1901 by the East End Dwellings Company, a Victorian philanthropic model dwellings company, operating in the East End of London in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

The flamboyant red- and yellow-brick of Montfort House, with a Georgian porch and internal staircase, was designed by Ernest Emmanuel.

The East End Dwellings Company’s aim was to “house the very poor while realizing some profit, their particular purpose being to erect blocks of dwellings, to be let by the room, so that the poorest class of labourers could be accommodated”. The company’s first venture was Katharine Buildings in Aldgate, followed by a number of schemes in Bethnal Green. They went on to build around the East End and the company used female rent-collectors, including Beatrice Potter, one of the founders of the London School of Economics & Political Science.

The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green

The legendary character The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green was in fact a man called Henry de Montford. He was the son of Simon de Montford, and inherited the mansion known as Montfort House, a large red brick building in the street now known as Victoria Park Square. He was wounded, and lost his sight at the battle of Evesham in the year 1265.

After his recovery, aided by a baroness, he was left dressed in beggars clothes. During his recovery period he also managed to get the baroness pregnant, the resulting baby girl being named Besse. Besse had many male admirers when she reached adulthood, including a knight.

Of these possible suitors, the knight was the only one who would lower himself to approach a poor old beggar for permission to marry his daughter. Henry the ‘poor old beggar’ gave his permission, as well as a hundred pounds to be spent on a wedding dress – a significant sum in those days.

The blind beggar appears on Bethnal Green’s coat of arms, and also has the infamous pub named after him. There is also the famous Ballad of Bethnal Green, a ballad written in Tudor times. A bronze statue of the Blind Beggar by the late Dame Elizabeth Frinks can be seen on the Cranbrook Estate in Roman Road.

Bethnal Green Tube Disaster

On 3 March 1943 at 8:27PM the unopened Bethnal Green tube station was the site of a wartime disaster. Families had crowded into the underground station due to an air raid siren at 8:17, one of 10 that day. There was a panic at 8:27 coinciding with the sound of an anti-aircraft battery being fired at nearby Victoria Park. In the wet, dark conditions the crowd was surging forward towards the shelter when a woman tripped on the stairs, causing many others to fall. Within a few seconds 300 people were crushed into the tiny stairwell, resulting in 173 deaths. Although a report was filed by Eric Linden with the Daily Mail, who witnessed it, it never ran. The story which was reported instead was that there had been a direct hit by a German bomb. The results of the official investigation were not released until 1946. There is now a plaque at the entrance to the tube station which commemorates it as the worst civilian disaster of World War II, and funds are being raised for a memorial.