What Was The Whitechapel Mount?

Nearly two centuries ago, a strange hill rose above the flat landscape of London's East End. It stood high enough to appear on maps, serve as a landmark for travellers, and offer sweeping views across the city. Unlike most hills, Whitechapel Mount, as this hill was called, was almost certainly man-made. Yet, nobody is entirely sure how it came to be.

Was it a giant rubbish heap? A burial mound from one of London's deadly plague outbreaks? A remnant of Civil War fortifications? Or was it created from debris left behind by the Great Fire of London?

The answers remain uncertain, making Whitechapel Mount one of the most curious lost landmarks in the history of London.

Illustration of the Whitechapel Mount as it appeared on Illustrated London News, 28 April 1862. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Whitechapel Mount stood in the East End of London, near what is now the area around Whitechapel and Shadwell. It rose roughly 70 to 80 feet above the surrounding ground, with trees growing on its slope and a small building upon its summit. It was one of the most prominent features in the district.

The hill appears on numerous 18th-century maps and is mentioned in contemporary descriptions of London. Visitors climbed it to enjoy panoramic views of the city, the River Thames, and the growing docks to the east.

The origins of the Whitechapel Mount are still disputed, and there are many theories about how such a hill had appeared in an otherwise flat part of the city.

The Laystall Theory

The most widely accepted explanation is that the Whitechapel Mount was a waste heap.

In the 17th century, the city maintained designated dumping grounds known as laystalls, where refuse from various wards was deposited. Historical records show that Whitechapel was selected as one of these sites. These laystalls contained all sorts of refuse: human waste, street sweepings, foul-smelling grains from breweries, and domestic refuse. Over many years, the immense volume of waste generated by a rapidly growing city may have resulted in the formation of a substantial artificial hill that later became known as Whitechapel Mount.

A laystall at King's Cross London. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Like modern landfills, the laystalls created economic opportunities for a variety of businesses. They employed gangs of impoverished men, women, and children to sort through the refuse and recover materials for reuse. Among the most common forms of domestic waste was coal ash, a valuable ingredient in brickmaking. By the end of the 18th century, London's rapid expansion had created an enormous demand for bricks. Numerous brickfields sprang up around the city, and, as one contemporary observer noted, "at night, a ring of fire and pungent smoke encircled the City." An Old Bailey case from 1809 records that the extraction of coal ash from Whitechapel Mount for brickmaking had significantly reduced the size of the hill.

A Legacy of the Great Fire

Another theory is that the Whitechapel Mount was formed or augmented from rubble from the Great Fire of London of 1666.

The fire destroyed much of the medieval city, generating enormous quantities of rubble and debris. Some historians have suggested that this material may have been transported eastward and deposited in Whitechapel, contributing to the formation of the mound. The theory is plausible. Whitechapel Mount became prominent during the decades following the Great Fire, and the city certainly faced the challenge of disposing of vast amounts of wreckage.

Plague Burial Ground

One of the most controversial and disputed origin theory is that Whitechapel Mount was the burial place of victims of the plague epidemic.

London suffered repeated outbreaks of plague during the 16th and 17th centuries, culminating in the Great Plague of 1665. Across the city, a number of mass burial pits were dug and victims were thrown into them and later covered with earth. According to later traditions, there may have been such a pit in the Whitechapel area, and after the Fire of London, rubble from the fire was thrown over the plague pit to cover it up.

The London Hospital. Part of the Whitechapel Mount can be seen on the right. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Although this theory is disputed, at least one source mentions the existence of great number of human bones when the Mount was partially excavated. In 1803, Joseph Moser wrote:

In the course of last summer [1802], when part of the rubbish of [Whitechapel Mount] had just been removed, I had the curiosity to inspect the place, and observed in the different strata a great number of human bones, together with those, apparently, of different animals, oxen, or cows, and sheep’s horns, bricks, tiles, &c. The bones and other exuvia of animals were in many places, especially towards the bottom, bedded in a stiff, viscid earth, of the blueish colour and consistence of potter's clay, which was unquestionably the original ground, thrown into different directions, as different interments operated upon its surface.

Relic of the English Civil War

A fourth explanation traces the hill to the English Civil War.

During the 1640s, Parliament constructed extensive defensive earthworks around London to protect the city from Royalist attack. Some two dozen earthen forts were built at intervals around the city and its main suburbs, interconnected by an earth bank and trench, to form a ring 18 miles in circumference. According to reports these forts were completed by 1643.

Some researchers have proposed that Whitechapel Mount originated as part of these fortifications. An account of this can be found in the journal of William Lithgow, a Scottish merchant and traveller, who toured the defences during their construction describing all the forts, including the one at Whitechapel:

Advancing thence along the trench dyke (for all the trenches are deep ditched about) which runneth through Wappine fields to the further end of White-chappell, a great way without Aldgate, and on the road-way to Essex; I saw a nine-angled fort, only pallosaded and single ditched, and planted with seven pieces of brazen ordonance, and a court du guard, composed of timber, and thatched with tyle-stone, as all the rest are.

After the civil war these fortifications were swiftly removed because they spoiled productive agricultural land.

Like the others, this theory is also difficult to verify. The defensive lines certainly passed through the general area, but surviving records do not clearly identify Whitechapel Mount as a specific Civil War structure.

A mid-18th century showing the location of the Whitechapel Mount. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Whatever its origins, Whitechapel Mount became a familiar part of London's landscape. By the 18th century, it was widely known to residents and visitors alike. Maps marked its location, and travellers referred to it as a notable feature of the East End. Its summit offered a rare opportunity to survey the sprawling metropolis from above.

The mount also became the subject of speculation and folklore. Because nobody could say with certainty how it had been created, stories accumulated around it just as surely as earth and debris may have accumulated in its construction.

As London expanded during the 19th century, the mount gradually lost its place in the landscape. Urban development transformed the East End. Land became increasingly valuable, and the hill was eventually levelled or absorbed into surrounding construction projects. By the middle of the 19th century, Whitechapel Mount had largely vanished.

While the hill was being excavated, flocks of cockney enthusiasts thronged to the site to search for valuable items. Various antiques were reported to have been found, such as Roman coins and a silver tankard. One particular find that gave some credence to the “fire debris” theory was a spectacular carved boar's head with silver tusks that supposedly hung at the Boar's Head Inn, Eastcheap. This inn had positively burned down in the Fire of London.

No direct archaeological investigation of the site has ever taken place. However, redevelopment of the nearby Royal London Hospital in late 20th century allowed archaeologists occasional glimpses. In a paper published in 1994, the author describes traces of a ditch which was inferred as part of the Civil War defences. The full paper is not available for reading, but the abstract of the paper is reproduced below:

An evaluation produced evidence of a deep cut feature on the alignment of the English Civil War defences. A subsequent excavation found the feature to be a ditch, 5.5m wide and 1.4m deep, filled with waterlain silts (the earliest dating to the 17th century), which was backfilled in the late 18th century. Other activity consisted of an undated drainage channel. Later, there were two post holes possibly forming a fence-line and possibly associated with a rutted gravel surface that post-dated the infilling of the ditch. A large quantity of post-medieval red ware sugar cone moulds and collecting jars were recovered from the infilling of the ditch and later levelling of the site.

However, a subsequent investigation in the early 2000s found no evidence of any Civil War fortification.

There was no evidence pertaining to civil war defensive structures. The excavation work on the Front Green (MoLAS 2004) produced evidence for the presence of at least two back-filled post-medieval cellars in this area. Limited 'evidence for quarrying was also found, possibly carried out after the mount in this area was flattened at the beginning of the 19th century.

Rather, the investigators found burial remains:

There was evidence for coffins (decayed wood and coffin nails) and the bodies were lain in an east-west alignment, with the skulls at the west end, typical of Christian burials. The burials are thought to be within a burial ground where organised, probably Christian, burial rites were performed. These burials are outside and are likely to pre-date the known burial ground to the south of the hospital.

So what are we to make of all this? The most likely answer is that Whitechapel Mount was not the product of a single event but the accumulation of many layers of history. Over the centuries it may have served as a burial ground, a dumping site for refuse, a repository for debris from the Great Fire, a military earthwork, and perhaps much more. It is this uncertainty that makes Whitechapel Mount so fascinating. For generations it dominated the skyline of East London, yet today it has vanished so completely that few people are even aware it ever existed.

References:
# Whitechapel Mount. Wikipedia
# Whitechapel Mount and the London Hospital (1999). David Flintham
# London Hospital Medical College, Newark Building, New Road, London E1, London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Anthony (Tony) Mackinder
# The Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel Road, London, E1: An Archaeological Evaluation Report. R Aitken