Old Bethnal Green Road had a series of rather racy names until the nineteenth century.
In 1549, Brick Lane was described as leading northwards from Spitalfields to meet ’the way from Bishop’s Hall to Halliwell Street’.
The western part of that way, which probably existed in 1223, was called Cock Lane by 1538 and the rest called Rogue Lane by 1642 and Whores Lane in 1717. This became Old Bethnal Green Road after a more direct route of it south, Bethnal Green Road, was made by an Act of 1756 on the line of a bridleway.
Lanes that became the eastern end of Old Bethnal Green Road and of Three Colts Lane, and which both led from Cambridge Road, existed in 1388 as New Lane and Water Lane respectively.
Control of Old Bethnal Green Road lay with the Bethnal Green parish, which removed its tollgate in 1827.
