Lanfranc Estate: Three names, two bombs and a slave trader
Once the home of a Victorian shipping magnate connected to the slave trade, the Lanfranc Estate was built from the rubble left by World War II’s Blitz.
Organised like a game of Tetris, the 12 blocks of Lanfranc Estate are arranged in a rectangular pattern around Olga Primary School. The low-rise red brick blocks, built between 1969 and 1975, are unified by the recognisable blue square panels that have become a visual landmark signifying to travellers on Grove Road that they have reached Bow’s Roman Road.
Out of the ashes
The estate was part of a spree of desperately needed council housing after WW2’s Blitz had razed much of the East End to the ground. Grove Road has the dubious honour of being the site of two of London’s most historic bombings during World War II.
On the first two days of the Blitz, on 7 and 8 September 1940, German planes unleashed a barrage of bombs over the East End, including on Grove Road where 14 houses were obliterated killing eight people. Only one house was left standing – the vicarage.
Four years later, on 13 June 1944, just 100 metres further down the road, the first V-1 flying bomb used by the Germans in London during World War II fell on Grove Road. It decimated the railway bridge and nearby housing, killing six people.
A name with three stories
There are two competing theories about how the Lanfranc Estate came to bear its name.
The original Lanfranc was an Archbishop of Canterbury, the head of the Church of England, just under a millennia ago. Appointed by the legendary victor of the Battle of Hastings, William the Conqueror, the Italian church reformist was appointed in 1070. Given the vicarage was the only building to have survived the Blitz on this stretch of Grove Road, perhaps they named the estate after this religious figure?
Alternatively, the estate could have been named after HMHS Lanfranc. Originally a passenger ship which shuttled customers between Liverpool and Brazil, the behemoth of a ship was commandeered as a hospital ship during the First World War. It was sunk by German U-boats in 1917, killing 35 people, including 15 wounded German prisoners of war.
The simpler explanation is that the estate was named after nearby Lanfranc Road. Built-in 1880, the road predates the post-war build. It was originally called Lawfranc Road, which is thought to have been a spelling mistake as the name was changed to Lanfranc in 1930.
A troubled start
The Lanfranc Estate was designed by John Hume, the council architect who also designed the Malmesbury estate.
Building work started in 1969, however, the initial construction firm, Rowley Bros, went bankrupt in 1970. An ongoing dispute about debts they owed to the council briefly halted the building. Finally, the building firm Minter and J R Roof took on the project in 1971. The final block was opened by the son of Myer Diamond, a local shop owner, in 1975.
The estate had a troubled beginning. From the outset, residents had complained about a lack of communal and green spaces. Then, just a few years later in 1978, Council records declared the estate to be ‘cramped, unlovely and unloved’ with 69% of the spanking new Lanfranc having defects.
Then in the 1980s, the Lanfranc Estate was plagued by its version of the recent cladding scandal. Back in the 1980s, asbestos was a problem that afflicted housing. Safe while intact, when damaged the fibres could become airborne and were highly cancerous when inhaled.
Parliamentary records show that the labour MP for Stepney, Mildred Gordon, lobbied parliament for a grant to remove asbestos from Lanfranc in 1985. A tidy sum of £15 million was agreed. The estate is now run by Clarion, a housing association, which like many, has been plagued by cladding issues since the Grenfell disaster.
Nevertheless, it was not all doom and gloom. Several residents who grew up on the estate recall jolly Saturday nights at the Cornwallis Pub.
Rosalie Russell recalls that Diamond House, the leftmost block closest to Medway Road, was named after her grandfather Myer Diamond. Myer ran a grocery shop on the Roman Road. Manifestly a pillar in the community, Diamond’s store was named after his first wife Deborah who died at 42 in 1921 leaving five children behind. Myer later married his wife’s sister Hannah pictured next to the Bovril below:
From Villa to Council estate
Going back even further in time, this plot of land was once the home of Thomas Blythe, a wealthy Victorian shipping magnate with links to the slave trade. In 1830, he built a plush Victorian villa with lavishly landscaped gardens.
At this point, the Industrial Revolution was still in its infancy and Tower Hamlets was mostly rolling fields. His sons, James and Harvey, ran the Mauritian sugar trade and were later compensated after slavery was abolished in 1834. Blythe’s daughter married Benjamin Buck Green who became head of the Bank of England.
As the Industrial Revolution heated up, the influx of workers to the East End meant the area became less fashionable for fashionable folk. The mansion was knocked down in 1870 to make way for the terraced two up, two down houses that still line many streets off Roman Road. Medway and Lanfranc Roads were laid ten years later in 1880.
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