Roman Road commemorates the ancient route from London to Colchester without being actually that road.
Roman Road got its name in Victorian times. Archaeologists discovered the original Roman road between London and Colchester in the 1840s – running parallel to this one.
Roman Road is now one of the main roads in East London running from Bethnal Green in the west to Bow in the east. It traverses two postcodes, E2 and E3.
The modern Roman Road evolved from a footpath called the ’Driftway’ which ran beside a windmill on the present site of Ford Close. Old Ford was then the main road and a toll road linked Mile End to Grove Road in Hackney.
The Metropolitan Board of Works started to build Roman Road from the 1850s onwards along the line of the Driftway. This extended Bethnal Green Road and Green Street eastwards and was paid for by local residents and businesses. In the 1870s, plans to extend the Roman Road to Stratford fell through.
This western section was originally Green Street. There were 48 buses a day along Green Street by 1882. In the 1930s, Green Street was merged into Roman Road – and all the shop and house numbers were changed accordingly.
As the road was built, housing, trades and manufacturing, most famously the Bryant and May Match Factory, developed.
Roman Road was originally lined with streets of Victorian housing of mixed quality. The area was typical of the East End with the very poor and well to do living only a street apart.
Roman Road was a centre of Suffragette activity with the headquarters of the East London Federation of Suffragettes at 400 Old Ford Road. Their newspaper, Women’s Dreadnought was published from 321 Roman Road.
The first flying bomb in London fell 200 yards from Roman Road in Grove Road in June 1944.
With post-war slum clearance, a large slice of the Victorian housing disappeared, to be replaced by housing estates.