Mile End, Middlesex : Historical writing

Descriptive gazetteer entries

These other entries in our collection of descriptive gazetteers are also about Mile End. You may be able to find further references to Mile End in the descriptive gazetteers by doing a full-text search here.

Place Type of entry Source
MILE-END a railway station Imperial
Mile End Old Town township Bartholomew
MILE-END-OLD-TOWN a quondam hamlet Imperial

Travel writing

This website includes the complete texts of books describing journeys around Britain, written between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Selecting one of the links below will take you to the first reference to Mile End within the selected text. This will not always be a description of a visit: travellers often mention places other than where they are, for example as a basis for comparison.

Traveller Section No. of Refs.
Daniel Defoe Letter 5 (London), Part 1: Overview and Suburbs 3
John Wesley 1774-6: Wesley Arrested; A Terrible Ride; A Methodist Isaac Newton; the American War 1

This website includes two large libraries, of historical travel writing and of entries from nineteenth century gazetteers describing places. We have text from these sources available for these places near your location:

Place Mentioned in Travel Writing Mentioned in Historical Gazetteer
Bow Common 0 1
Stepney 5 2
Tower Hamlets 0 2
Bow 7 2
Victoria Park 0 3
Limehouse 10 2
Old Ford 1 2
Bromley 0 2
Ratcliffe 8 2
Bethnal Green 6 2
South Hackney 0 1
Whitechapel 7 2
Mile End New Town 0 2
Shadwell 2 2
St George in the East 0 2
Hackney Wick 0 1
Stratford Marsh 0 1
Poplar 5 3
Haggerston 0 2
London Docks 0 1

Names from historical writing

The following appear as names for Mile End. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name Author Source
MILE END John Marius Wilson Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (Edinburgh: A Fullarton & Co., 1870-72).
MILE END OLD TOWN John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
John Marius Wilson Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (Edinburgh: A Fullarton & Co., 1870-72).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

  • The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
  • Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
  • References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.