The Blasted Heath: Green Dragons, Black Lions, Red Lions

Monday, March 18, 2013

Green Dragons, Black Lions, Red Lions

Green Dragon Yard reads like something from a fantasy work by Lord Dunsany. But such a yard exists in London. Green Dragon Yard, like Kings Arms Court, and the now demolished Black Lion Yard, owes its name to the various inns that stood along the road eastwards from London , running directly from Aldgate High Street to Whitechapel High Street and then Whitechapel Road and Mile End Road. These inns stood outside the city walls and the yards and courts run north to join Old Montague Street.

The Black Lion Inn is mentioned in Dickens’ Barnaby Rudge in 1840 , it had been there from at least 1746. Later Black Lion Yard became a centre for jewellers and became known as the Hatton Garden of the East End. At that time of the 21 shops in the yard, twelve were jewellers. Every Jewish young woman about to marry went there with their mothers to buy Sabbath candles. Despite petitions to save it, it was demolished between 1972 and 1975. The horrible concrete building, Black Lion House, with Habibson’s Bank at ground level, now stands on its site at Whitechapel Road. Strangely perhaps, the Red Lion pub stood at 2a Black Lion Yard and was there from at least 1831 to the 1890s.

If you walk eastwards from there you will see an arched doorway that is the entrance to Green Dragon Yard. Unfortunately, where one you were able to walk through from Whitechapel road to Old Montague street, property developers have one again conducted a land grab and stopped up what was once a public thoroughfare at both ends. There is no street sign at the Whitechapel Road end and the only indication that this is the entry to Green Dragon Yard is a sign on the intercom next to the gate. The Yard is still listed in the A-Z.

What now appears to be a gated byway for the relatively well -off once was the home of the impoverished working class. Writing about this in his book The Battle with The Slum (1902) Jacob A.Riis says:

“I photographed Green Dragon Yard as typical of what I saw about me. Compare the court and the yard and see the difference between our slum problem and that of Old World cities…The population of Green Dragon Yard was greater than the sight of it would lead you to expect, for in Whitechapel one-room flats were the rule”.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28228/28228-h/28228-h.htm#img009

Phyllis Etchells in her memories of living in the East End recalls:

“Green Dragon Yard-1906

By the time my sister was about 2 years old we had moved to a two roomed house in Green Dragon Yard. ..

The interesting thing about Green Dragon Yard was that it was a quiet street between two busy thoroughfares.

The square at the entrance to the street was obviously where the coach and horses turned to arrive at the old inn.

At the Whitechapel Road end of the yard there was a very narrow entrance to

the main thoroughfare. At that entrance there was a bollard - no doubt to

stop men with barrows from using it as a short cut.

.....There was great poverty in Green Dragon Yard.

Green Dragon Yard was a taste of Victorian England. The houses had

wooden shutters at the windows.....It was a sheltered and happy place to