Boundary Estate

51.526°N 0.074°W / 51.526; -0.074

The Boundary Estate is a housing development in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London.

It is positioned just inside Bethnal Green's historic parish and borough boundary with Shoreditch, which ran along Boundary Street, on the western edge of the estate. In 1965 Bethnal Green merged into the new London Borough of Tower Hamlets, while Shoreditch merged into the new London Borough of Hackney. Boundary Street continued to form the boundary between the two new local authorities.

The estate, constructed from 1890, was one of the earliest social housing schemes built by a local government authority. It was built on the site of the demolished Friars Mount rookery[1] in the Old Nichol, with works begun by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1893 and completed by the recently formed London County Council.

Soil from the foundations was used to construct a mound in the middle of Arnold Circus at the centre of the development, surmounted by an extant bandstand.[2] The estate consists of multistorey brick tenements radiating from the central circus, each of which bears the name of a town or village along the non-tidal reaches of the Thames.