Worrying times for East End Historians

The news that Bancroft Library is to be sold as part of the expansion of the London University Queen Mary College will have shocked anybody who has an interest in the history of the East End of London, whether that interest is social, family or economic. I love this place, situated in Bancroft Road Stepney it holds nothing but fond memories for me. It smells the way a library should, it looks like a library should: no CD's, no DVD's, no coffee! The library is about a hundred yards away from where my Mum was born and where my Uncle Fred was born and went to school. He shared a classroom with the Krays, after leaving school he joined the RAF and later the City of London police, they went into care in the community.

It was here in April in the summer of 1987 that I discovered a newspaper report of my Grandad playing cricket for George Green School v Poplar. The report in the 17th June 1932 edition of the East End News called his bowling 'deadly' and his figures of 9-0-18-7 seemed to back-up the headline - that's seven opposition wickets for eighteen runs for the non-cricket followers. He was 22 at the time so it must have been an old boys team. In the library archives I found other members of my family in directories, polling books, newspaper reports as well as the 'usual' local history archives such as the census returns. I also deposited a collection of papers in the library back in 1989, nothing particularly personal but original documents that would add a little bit to the collection.

The sale of the library will mean that the collection will be split, the records which are for the three old London boroughs of Stepney, Poplar and Bethnal Green will be scattered (not literally I hope) to various repositories and will not be managed by a knowledgeable locally born and trained group of professional archivists but people with little or no local knowledge and who don't have any particular feeling for the area. One of the books that is rarely out of my reach when I am working on my family history is the 1982 book A History of Tower Hamlets by Colm Kerrigan. The book was actually published by the library under the guidance of the Tower Hamlets Community Services, the book wouldn't have been possible without the help of the archive and the people who worked in it, a fact acknowledged by both the preface and the introduction.

Tower Hamlets Council have been guilty of a lot worse things in recent years but the wilful destruction of a cohesive collection of archives relating to the part of the Boroughs 1,000 year history for the sake of expanding the University must be up there with the worst. It's not as if the University couldn't expand in other directions. The halls of residence have crept eastwards along the Mile End Road as far as the Regents Canal but there is room in the area which wouldn't involve the academic equivalent of 'knocking through this wall to give us more room.'

Unfortunately there is no online petition but those people who do value their history are writing to the Tower Hamlets Libraries and Leisure Services Department.