The Jungle On The Corner Of Princelet St
Contributing Writer Delwar Hussain remembers growing up in Puma Court, Spitalfields, in the nineteen-nineties
Simon Chambers at the entrance to the ‘jungle’
Next time you walk through Spitalfields, stop at the junction of Princelet St and Wilkes St. Stand with your back to Brick Lane and look closely at the house on the right hand corner. You may be surprised to learn that buried beneath 1 Princelet St is – or rather once was – a ‘jungle.’
Let me take you back to the early nineties when Spitalfields was a place of abandoned buildings, bustling warehouses and overcrowded factories. There was no house on the corner of Princelet St and Wilkes St. It was literally a bomb site and piled with rubbish at least ten feet high, forever threatening to topple over onto passersby. A neighbour, Charlie Brandt who lived at 13 Wilkes St, overlooking the corner, built a fence out of timber and corrugated sheets, yet still the rubbish accumulated.
A plan to clear the rubbish and make a garden upon this site emerged. Like many things, no single person suggested the idea yet organically it came together. The plan was discussed between neighbours and, slowly, things began to happen. History had become piled up in front of us, so we set ourselves the challenge of making a new start.
It took five skips over a period of several months to clear the rubbish from the site. At the very top were plastic shopping bags of domestic refuse, chair legs and glass. Amongst these were syringes, balls of aluminium foil and used condoms. Then followed waste from nearby garment factories, rusty sewing machines and bags of shredded leather and cloth. Underneath it all, rubble and concrete from the Georgian building that had once stood there.
In 1993, I was a shy, introverted thirteen year old. I spent much of my time with the family cat Sheba and thought swearing was one of the worst things a person could do. I dreamt about being a ballet dancer and I did secret and exclusive performances for my siblings in my bedroom. I rarely left the house except to go to the Whitechapel Library to borrow Nancy Drew novels.
Whilst helping clear the site, I met youth workers, teachers, unemployed people, restaurant waiters, a storyteller, single parents, factory workers, a prostitute and other kids. These were the people who lived and worked in the surounding streets, with personalities and histories of kinds I had never encountered before.
Recently, I spoke with Simon Chambers who squatted 3 Princelet St, about what he remembers from that time. I met Simon just before the ‘jungle’ begun and, over the proceeding years, he became my oldest friend. “We had to clean out the space because rats were coming into the house and we asked the council several times to do it, because it was their land, but they refused. So we decided to do something about it ourselves,” he told me.
When the last of the skips was full, I remember all of us standing in the empty space, confident about what we had done but quite unsure as to where we were headed. Yet before long the ‘jungle’ began to take shape. I do not know where the name came from. Maybe it was a reference to the amount of rubbish or, possibly, an over-estimation of what we were going to create?
Neighbours donated soil, plants, bits of wood and tools. We built a wall using cobble stones that we found and Simon made benches out of railway sleepers. “In those days, people would dump all sorts of things that we could pick up. I found a great big door in Liverpool St that had been chucked out when a building was being cleared. We used this for a fence and then painted the wood with engine oil because we thought it would stop it rotting,” he recalled.
After the initial euphoria, we held meetings to discuss what we wanted out of the ‘jungle.’ It was a cultivated place where everyone had a voice and everyone was listened to. Over time, participating in these conversations changed me from the person I had been.
We discussed what to do about the massive buddleia with its lilac flowers that had grown amongst the rubbish. With my newly-developed sense of confidence, I led the charge to cut it down. I wanted the jungle to represent something new, a break from what it had been, but Simon argued that the buddleia should stay, that it had grown while the site had been abandoned and had its story to tell – plus it attracted loads of butterflies. So the buddleia stayed and I did not spend too much time agonising over it, because there were plenty of other things going on.
We organised parties that spilled out onto the street. One autumn, we led a lantern procession from the jungle to the Spitalfields City Farm and performed our interpretation of the Guy Fawkes story. We even considered the possibility of doing an alternative version of the Ripper tours that were becoming popular then, with the idea of inviting tour groups into our jungle.
Sets of keys were necessary to get in through the fence. My younger brother Ali, who was also involved in creating the jungle, remembers the keys circulated in such a way that they were always available from one of the neighbours whenever they were needed. He used to go and chill with his friends in the jungle.
The jungle thrived, becoming the centre of the community. A tree was planted and a fishpond dug out. There were treasure hunts at Easter and fireworks at New Year. Ali and Simon remember the bonfires, when we cooked food together and sang.
Over time, there were differences of opinion about who the jungle was for, and when and how it could be used. Some neighbours were concerned that the jungle was being used by ‘unwholesome’ people and the keys were finding their way into the hands of those we did not know, and stolen car radios were turning up amongst the bushes. There was fear that the jungle might become similar to its adjacent plot, also a bomb-site, that was cleared and turned into a car park, where junkies took heroin and prostitutes brought tricks. Yet others said that they did not mind how the jungle was utilised as long as people were respectful of the place.
Such are my memories of the impressions which that time and place left in my mind. With hindsight, the jungle and the discussions it generated seem quaint compared to the monumental changes that were occurring around us. Towards the end of the jungle, in the late nineties, ruined and derelict houses became scarce in Spitalfields as they were bought up by the well-heeled, who fashioned them into the homes they imagined them to once have been.
In my mind, it was around this time that the presence of estate agents became pervasive, though they had stalked these streets for longer than I was conscious of. Our neighbours were changing. Tempted by wads of money, many were moving out. Sweatshop workers were kicked out. My friend Simon, who had lived in Princelet St for many years, was forced to leave too.
Many of the buildings were replaced and occupied by people whom we did not know and whom we rarely saw, who led an altogether different sort of life. A developer came knocking on the doors of the jungle too. No one I spoke with remembered precisely when this happened or the details of it, but the land was sold and the jungle was demolished along with everything it stood for.
I was not around to see this happen. By then, I had become a fully blown teenager, interested in other things. I made new friends with new excitements that took me away from the jungle. I turned my back on it, blotting it out of my memory in order to make room for the next phase of my life. My brother Ali cannot remember the changes either. “One day it was the jungle and next a house had been built on top of it,” he said to me.
Only years later when the streets around it had irrevocably changed, the ‘jungle’ and its existence came back to me, and I realised that the restless roots below 1 Princelet St grew from a different time, of different ideals, sensibilities and possibilities.
Delwar (in blue) assists neighbours in clearing the ‘jungle’
Iqbal Hussain and pal
Charlie Brandt (resident of 7 Wilkes St with helpers)
In the centre, Simon Chambers with Ali Hussain on his shoulders and Iqbal Hussain in front, Halima Hussain to the left, surrounded by neighbours in 1993
Simon Chambers & Ali Hussain stand on the corner of Princelet St today
Simon & Ali with Ali’s daughter and niece
The corner of Princelet St & Wilkes St today where once there was a ‘jungle’
New portraits © Sarah Ainslie
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At Herne Bay
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Reculver Towers
Years ago, I grew fascinated with a ruin upon the seashore in the background of a photograph of members of the Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys’ Club taken by Harry Tichener in 1938. When Maxie Lea, who is featured in the picture, told me that it was taken at Herne Bay, I knew that one day I must go and seek this location for myself.
Yet, when I arrived yesterday and walked from the railway station to the deserted seafront, I discovered there were many other attractions that make this secluded corner of the Kent coast worthy of a visit. Set back fifty yards from the shingle beach, sits a magnificent line of grand hotels and seafront villas. Some are whimsical Victorian fripperies and others are elegant bow-fronted Georgian, and it makes an appealing backdrop to the well-kept and newly-renovated municipal gardens, basking in the September sunlight beneath an azure sky flecked with feathery trails.
A proud white stucco gatehouse guards a poignant remnant of what was Britain’s second longest pier in 1896, now just a stub attached to the shore with the far end marooned out at sea, unreachable and distant since the storm of 1978. You can take a stroll past the huts, adorned with saucy paintings in the style of Donald McGill, to reach the end of what remains and join a sparse line of fishermen and senior local residents, casting their eyes wistfully towards the horizon and awaiting a miraculous reconstruction.
Turning my gaze to the east, I could already recognise the towers at Reculver shining white in the far distance and encouraging me to take my leave of the town and seek the coastal path. The outskirts of Herne Bay present a curious mixture of dereliction and some cherished Regency villas, culminating in Marckari’s ice cream parlour where I had my first taste of an authentic Turkish delight ice cream. Thus fortified, I strolled onward upon the broad featureless concrete promenade with the towers reassuringly present, constantly in my vision.
Climbing a winding stairway takes you to the cliff path, lined with sloes and hawthorn, and giving way to meadows that descend towards Reculver. Soon, the towers are no longer an image on the horizon but looming above you. You ascend the path beneath them as a colony of swifts swoop and dive over your head, filling the air with their cries before returning to roosting places high in the turrets. You have arrived upon a raised platform of green, overlooking the sea, where the sweet fragrance of nectar hangs in the air. This was where the Romans built a fort in 42AD, when this was the end of the land and the marshes to the east were open water, known as the Wantsum, a channel that isolated the Isle Of Thanet from the mainland.
St Augustine brought Christianity to Kent at the end of the sixth century and, by AD 669, King Ecgbert gave this land for the foundation of a monastery. A tall church was built upon the Roman ruins, creating a landmark that signalled the spiritual significance of this favoured spot, visible from such a great distance. In 1810, the ruins of this church were reconstructed by Trinity House to create a stable structure that could function as a navigational aid. Once there was a thriving village of Reculver, yet the encroachment of the sea and regular flooding led to its decline until only a couple of houses are left today. Yet it retains a distinctive atmosphere and, after all this time, the imposing sea-battered towers are like natural excrescences of rock.
Setting out across the marshes as the afternoon sun declined, I was entranced by the naturally occurring gardens upon the shingle, where grey-green sea kale grew in star shapes complimenting the pink leaves of sorrel spreading close to the ground and interspersed with curious bushes of yellow poppies that seeded themselves all along the beech. Glancing over my shoulder, the towers of Reculver seemed to get no further away, watching over me now as they had beckoned me earlier.
Nine miles to the east of Herne Bay, I arrived at Birchington – a suburban resort with art deco villas, some dignified austere brick farmhouses and an unexpected half-timbered medieval cottage. My feet were sore and my face was burned from wind and sunshine, and I fell asleep upon the train – only waking again as we drew into London to wonder if the whole excursion had been a dream.
Herne Bay pier was once the second longest in Britain
Bow-fronted Georgian terrace on the seafront
Regency villas in a side street
The path to Reculver
At Reculver
Harry Tichner’s photograph of Maxie Lea (standing right) at Herne Bay in 1938
1685 Map of the lost village of Reculver
At Minnis Bay
Cottage at Birchington-on-Sea
At Walthamstow Pump House
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Tiggy, the Pump House cat
What could be a more appealing excursion in these balmy summer days than a trip to a sewage pumping station in Walthamstow?
Although I would not claim to any special interest in mechanical things, I was astonished and delighted by the mind-boggling collection of pumps, engines, trains, buses, fire engines, steam rollers, cranes, historic domestic appliances and model railways to be discovered here.
Unfortunately when the suburban streets of Walthamstow grew up and spread across the fields, all the sewage ran downhill and accumulated in the Lee Valley. Undeterred, the Victorians installed massive engines driven by steam power to ensure that their magnificent drainage system kept the effluvium flowing smoothly. So efficient were these sewage pumps, manufactured by William Marshall Sons & Co, that they ran continuously from 1885 for over ninety years until steam power was replaced by electricity in the nineteen-seventies.
At this point, the historic machinery might have been lost forever if a group of local visionaries had not stepped in to cherish the pumps, engines and boilers. One of these far-sighted enthusiasts was Melvin Mantell who took me on a personal tour of some of the highlights of the pump house collection and explained how it all came about.
“For years, I knew Big Dave the heavyweight boxer who ran the greengrocer underneath the railway bridge in Leyton High Rd. One night his wife, an enormous woman, rang me up to ask ‘Are you coming down to the farm to have a look at the engines?’ I thought, ‘What the hell is she on about?’ but I knew she worked for the council at the depot where the rubbish was dumped. She said, ‘The old pump house has got steam engines in it.’ All the years I had been going there with my dad, dumping rubbish and seeing the building but ignoring it. She said, ‘We’re having an open day, would you like to visit?’
Me and a few others, we decided to come down on Thursday evenings and take care of the engines. We were known as the ‘Friends of the Pump House.’ At first, we were just cleaning off the rust with a Brillo pad and some oil, but my dad and old Reggie Watlings, the surface grinder who has been dead a long while, they restored the engines. We stripped them down and rebuilt them completely. Now we come down here every Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday during the day. We love everything about this place. We are open every Sunday for visitors free of charge and we get a lot of visitors coming in. It is quite staggering.”
What makes this museum so charismatic is that it has been accumulated by enthusiasts rather than organised for any didactic purpose and it was my pleasure to spend a morning with the small band of volunteers who tend to it each week. Cramming all these objects into a cabinet of wonders emphasises a joyous delight in human ingenuity as expressed through mechanical contrivances of all kinds. If you are seeking a celebration of the East End’s heritage of industry and technological innovation, this is the place.
Melvin Mantell – “I was born in Brewster Rd in Leyton in 1947 and I still live in that house today. I started work in 1969 in a builders’ merchants and then I went into the trade doing carpentry work, which I had learnt at school, staying on to get qualifications. Carpentry is my thing, including woodturning, and I have made furniture and cabinets.”
Sid Bell works in restoration of artefacts. ‘I was born in Forest Gate and my first job was at Nonpareil Engineering in Walthamstow. When I was fifteen then I went into making hydraulic motors of cast iron used in the construction of the Victoria Line. They could not have sparks down there because of the risk of explosion so engines were driven by oil pressure. I have built railway engines and made all the parts myself. Nowadays, I am retired and I help old people out in their gardens, and I am here three days a week. I made all these displays and organised the tools.’
In the Pump House
Entrance to the Pump House
Tube trains under repair
Abdul Seba is the IT manager and works on the restoration of trains
Melvin with a favourite bus from his collection
Steam roller
Historic domestic appliances
Walthamstow in miniature
A model of Walthamstow Station
A model of Liverpool St Station
Mozz Blunden, company secretary, location manager, painter, canteen manager and toilet cleaner
At St Augustine’s Tower
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St Augustine’s Tower
I wonder how many people even notice this old tower, secreted behind the betting office in the centre of Hackney? Without a second glance, it might easily get dismissed as a left-over from a Victorian church that got demolished. Yet few realise St Augustine’s Tower has been here longer than anything else, since 1292 to be precise.
“It is an uncompromising medieval building, the only one we have in Hackney,” Laurie Elks, the custodian of the tower, admitted to me as we ascended its one hundred and thirty-five steps, “and, above all, it is a physical experience.” Climbing the narrowing staircase between rough stone walls, we reached the top of the tower and scattered the indignant crows who, after more than seven centuries, understandably consider it their right to perch uninterrupted upon the weather vane. They have seen all the changes from their vantage point, how the drover’s road became a red route, how London advanced and swallowed up the village as the railway steamed through.
Yet inside the tower, change has been less dramatic and Laurie is proud of the lovingly-preserved cobwebs that festoon the nooks and crevices of his cherished pile, offering a haven for shadows and dust, and garnished with some impressive ancient graffiti. The skulls and hourglasses graven upon stone panels beside the entrance set the tone for this curious melancholic relic, sequestered among old trees just turning colour now as autumn crocuses sprout among the graves. You enter through a makeshift wooden screen, cobbled together at the end of the eighteenth century out of bits and pieces of seventeenth century timber. On the right stands an outsize table tomb with magnificent lettering incised into dark granite recording the death of Capt Robert Deane, on the fourth day of February 1699, and his daughters Mary & Katherine and his son Robert, who all went before him.
“There was no-one to wind the clock,” revealed Laurie with a plaintive grimace, as we stood on the second floor confronting the rare late-sixteenth-century timepiece that was once the only measure of time in Hackney, “so I persuaded my sixteen-year-old daughter, Sam, that she would like to do it and she did – until she grew unreliable – when I realised that I had wanted to wind the clock myself all along. I would come at two in the morning every Saturday and go to the all-night Tesco and buy a can of beans or something. Then I would let myself in and, sometimes, I didn’t put on the light because I know the building so well – and that was when I fell in love with it.” Reluctantly, Laurie has relinquished his nocturnal visits since auto-winding was introduced to preserve the clock’s historic mechanism.
It was the Knights Templar who gave the tower its name when they owned land here, until the order was suppressed in 1308 and their estates passed to the Knights of St John in Clerkenwell who renamed the church that was attached to the tower as St John-at-Hackney. Later, Christopher Urstwick, a confidant of Henry VII before he became king, retired to Hackney as rector of the church and used his wealth to rebuild it. Yet, to the right of the entrance to the tower, rough early medieval stonework is still visible beneath the evenly-laid layers of sixteenth century Kentish ragstone – bounty of the courtier’s wealth – that surmount it.
When the village of Hackney became subsumed into the metropolis, with rows of new houses thrown up by speculators, a new church was built down the road in 1797, but it was done on the cheap and the tower was not strong enough to carry the weight of the bells. Meanwhile, the demolition contractor employed to take down the old church was defeated by the sturdy old tower and it was retained to hold the bells until enough money was raised to strengthen the new one. Years later, once this had been effected, the fashion for Neo-Classical had been supplanted by Gothic and it suited the taste of the day to preserve the old tower as an appealing landmark to remind everyone of centuries gone by.
Thus, no-one can say they live in Hackney until they have made the pilgrimage to St Augustine’s Tower – where Laurie is waiting to greet you – and climbed the narrow stairs to the roof, because this is the epicentre and the receptacle of time, the still place in the midst of the mayhem at the top of Mare St.
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Laurie Elks, Custodian of the Tower
Fred Iles, Meter Fixer
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Fred & Marie Iles with Smudge
Fred Iles was born half a mile from his allotment in Stepney and his wife Marie grew up in Garden St that once stood where the allotment is today. They were married in St Dunstan’s, just across the road, and lived fifty yards away in Rectory Sq. As for Smudge, she is a local too and gave birth to two litters in the allotment shed.
Fred grows potatoes, cabbages, strawberries, gooseberries, runner beans and nasturtiums to draw the bees in his allotment, which is a small enclosure at the heart of Stepney City Farm. Surrounded by on all sides by other plots, this is a secluded corner sheltered from the wind where Fred can pass his time gardening peacefully in the company of his cat.
Fred had a good crop of strawberries this year and, while boney old Smudge patrolled the territory, Marie searched among the runner beans and discovered the first pickable specimens of the season.
“We never had a garden of our own. My grandfather Edmund lived with us when I was a child, he had come up to London from Bristol originally with two children and he ended up with four sons and three daughters. He was a great pigeon fancier and our backyard was all pigeon lofts where he kept three hundred pigeons – that’s a lot of pigeons. He was very successful at it and when he was dying he called me into his bedroom and showed me his box of medals and asked me to take one. I picked the silver one because it had a picture of a pigeon on it. There were gold ones I could have picked but I was too young to understand. He told me that Iles is a French name and that my ancestor fought in Napoleon’s army and was brought over to Bristol as prisoner of war and then stayed.
I was born in 1926 just half a mile from here in Hartford St, in a little cobbled yard called Wades Place. My father William was a seaman in his younger days and he went all over the world. I don’t know how he learnt about classical music but he was very knowledgeable and he used to play the Gounod’s Faust and Viennese waltzes on his harmonica for me.
I was here for part of the Blitz. It started on a Saturday afternoon at 3pm. I was in the yard and I heard the roar of the aeroplanes. I was thirteen and I thought it was our planes coming back, but it wasn’t. My father took me inside and we sat under the stairs which we thought was the safest place. I couldn’t see anything but I could hear the sound of the anti-aircraft guns and the engines of the planes and, at my age, I found it very exciting.
By the time they came back to bomb the docks, we had an Anderson shelter in the garden and we sat there listening to the sound of bombs dropping. My father decided it was too much and sent me and my mother and my sister to his brother in Oxford. He worked in the Morris factory which, at that time, was building aeroplanes and he got me job at fifteen making cowling panels for the side engines of Hawker Hurricanes. It was exciting work but it was miserable waiting in the cold for the bus to go to work at seven in the morning.
I got called up to the army on D-Day, June 6th 1944 and I was eighteen years old on my birthday, 30th June. They summoned me for 20th July, the day they tried to assassinate Hitler, so I had three weeks freedom before they put me in the army. By the time I’d learnt to shoot a gun, for some unknown reason they put me in the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers. I was posted to the anti-aircraft guns around London and then they sent me to an experimental laboratory in Shoeburyness where they were working on radar. I found I had an easy time for three and a half years until I was discharged in 1947.
I went to the Labour Exchange and the man said, ‘There’s not much going but I like the look of you so why not come and work on this side of the counter? And when a good job comes in you can get it.’ I worked there for six months, and my father was unemployed and he came in and signed on the dole. After six months, the London Electricity Board came along and I worked there for twenty-six years, at first in the office and then as a meter fixer.
When I started here at the allotment, it was quite hard. It was still a bomb site and I had to clear the bomb damage before I could plant anything. There were just six of us pensioners then and I needed something to do in my spare time. They retired me at sixty in 1986, but I started my allotment here four years before that. Smudge turned up on the allotment one day, fifteen years ago. And I thought ‘poor old cat’ and decided to feed it, so she made the allotment her home and now I have to come and feed her every day.”
Fred aged five with his sister Phyllis and cousin Rosamund in 1931, taken by Griffiths in the Roman Rd
Fred in uniform at eighteen years old, 1944
Fred and his pal Gimlet in Shoeburyness
Fred stands at the base of the aerial in Shoeburyness.
Fred (left) enjoys a pint with Bernard & Jack at Shoeburyness in 1946
Fred (top left) with pals on the beach at Shoeburyness
Fred & Marie get married at St Dunstan’s Stepney, 1st August 1953
Fred & Marie on their wedding day.
Fred in the seventies.
Fred & Marie with their prizewinning dog Rufus, in July 1984 at Stepney City Farm – when Rufus won the dog with the waggliest tail and best mongrel.
Fred grew some magnificent hollyhocks on the allotment in the nineties
“Smudge turned up on the allotment fifteen years ago. And I thought ‘poor old cat’ and I decided to feed it, so she made the allotment her home and now I come every day to feed her.”
Fred and Smudge
Gooseberry time in Stepney
Fred & Marie Iles celebrated their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary in 2018
Stepney City Farm runs a Farmers’ Market every Saturday from 10am – 3pm, selling food from local producers at affordable prices.
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Summer At Arnold Circus
Huge thanks to Farokh Talati, Head Chef at St John Bread & Wine, for so generously baking this magnificent Apple Strudel for the guests on The Gentle Author’s Tour of Whitechapel this Sunday. Click here to book for a Whitechapel Tour
At this time of year, the canopy of trees over-arching Arnold Circus is an awe inspiring sight to behold, as if a forest clearing had been magically transported and placed at the centre of a maze of city streets. From within the tiny park you see the towering red brick mansion blocks framed by trees, imparting an atmosphere of lyrical romance entirely in tune with the Arts & Crafts ethos of Britain’s first Council Estate.
Yet, if you wander further within the Estate, you come upon satellite gardens contrived by the residents using old baths, canes and twigs as a means to create temporary vegetable plots among the yards between the buildings. The idiosyncratic forms of these curious contraptions hung with glinting things offer a sympathetic complement to the regularity of the architecture and it makes your heart leap to see cherished home grown vegetables nurtured so tenderly in unexpected circumstances.
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The Tree Huts Of Epping Forest
Who can resist the lure of the forest in summer? Since Epping Forest is a mere cycle ride from Spitalfields, each year I visit to seek refuge among the leafy shades. And, in the depths of the forest, I come upon these makeshift tree huts which fascinate me with the variety and ingenuity of their design.
Who can be responsible? Is it children making dens or land artists exploring sculptural notions? Clearly never weatherproof, they are not human habitations. I wondered if the sprites and hobgoblins had been at work constructing arbors for the spirits of the forest. But then I remembered I had seen something similar once before, Eeyore’s hut at the edge of the Hundred Acre Wood.
Some are elaborate constructions that are worthy of architecture and others merely collections of twigs which tease the eye, questioning whether they are random or deliberate. They conjure an air of ritualistic mystery and, the more I encountered, the more intrigued I became. So much effort and skill expended suggest deliberate purpose or intent, yet they remain an enigma.
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