Typefounders Of East London
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Richard Ardagh, author of Type Archived, A visual journey through typographic history introduces the typefounders of East London
The Caslon tomb at St Luke’s, Old St
Typography can be thought of as the vehicle of words, giving them both form and voice. It is easy to take for granted how quickly we can compose and spread words today when, for centuries, type was manufactured as countless millions of individual physical components, a prerequisite for making the printed word possible.
East London played a huge part in the development of the typefounding industry, acting as a crucible (to use a relevant term) from which came many firsts: styles such as Sans-serif, Slab-serif (or Antique) and Clarendon were all the innovations of London typefounders. Even the screen typeface that you are reading (Georgia by Matthew Carter, 1993) was heavily inspired by the work of punchcutter Richard Austin, born in Finsbury, 1756.
England’s earliest typographer was Wynkyn de Worde, a German immigrant, who came to London around 1480 at the request of William Caxton to help improve his venture running the country’s first printing press. De Worde subsequently established his own press at Fleet St, which has forever after been synonymous with the print trade, and was buried there at St Bride’s Church. (The neighbouring St Bride Foundation is the custodian of much of the area’s rich printing heritage to this day.) But it was another 240 years before the skills necessary to produce original type designs were seen in London.
To create a new fount (font) required several significant stages: A punchcutter would painstakingly engrave master letters in steel, a craft demanding both an outstanding level of skill and artistic scrutiny. Every letter, numeral and symbol had to be cut individually, and replicated again for each size of type produced. Punches were used to strike a block of copper or brass, forming a matrix from which type could be cast. The matrix was fitted to a mould which was adjusted to match the width of the character. Casting could then begin by pouring molten typemetal (an alloy of lead, tin and antimony) into the cavity, which solidified on contact, then breaking the mould apart to release the sort (a single piece of type). In this way, repeated many times over, slowly an endless supply of type could be amassed.
Early English printers had relied on type imported from the Low Countries until, in 1722, an enterprising engraver transitioned into typefounding. A blue plaque at 22-23 Chiswell St marks the site of William Caslon’s pioneering foundry, run from this address for nearly 200 years. Caslon’s masterfully cut Roman and italic types established a uniquely English style for the first time and remain highly regarded – hence the adage, ‘when in doubt, use Caslon’. In the decade prior to Chiswell St, Caslon’s premises were at Ironmonger Row (now Helmet Row) opposite St Luke’s Church, where the family tomb can be seen, its raised stone chest clearly visible from Old St.
As the print trade flourished in the courts and alleys around Fleet St and spread beyond, typefounders situated their businesses nearby. The ward of Cripplegate had been home to early foundries such as Grover and Mitchell before Caslon. Later, the Bristol firm of Edmund Fry relocated there, giving the name Type St to an undeveloped lane, proudly listed on the title page of their specimen books (the street now forms part of Moor Lane).
A short walk away, the Fann St Foundry, established by Robert Thorne and later passing to William Thoroughgood and Robert Besley, occupied the premises at numbers 2, 4 and 6. This street name prevails and the site is now occupied by the Blake Tower. A plaque above the shopfronts opposite, where Aldersgate becomes Goswell Rd, records a now-absent drinking fountain erected in Besley’s memory but has no mention of the foundry.
As typefounding firms grew into more substantial enterprises their proprietors began to hold prominent positions within the City of London. Besley was an Alderman and went on to serve as Lord Mayor (1869-70). Typefounder Vincent Figgins, ‘an amiable and worthy character, and generally respected’, was a Common Councilman for the ward of Farringdon Without and his son James became an Alderman and MP. The ‘VJF’ monogram of their foundry is still visible on the iron railings in front of the Grade II listed building at Ray St in Clerkenwell.
Talbot Baines Reed, known as a writer of school stories for boys, is a figure that looms large in the world of typefounding. Reed inherited the Fann St Foundry in 1881 and went on to write a monumental account of the trade’s history. Whether or not he acquired the practical skills of casting type himself, we can certainly be grateful for his work cataloguing the foundry’s materials and identifying items of special historical interest in his ‘cabinet of curios’. Reed’s premature death at the age of forty-one is commemorated on the family tomb with a large Celtic cross close to the Church St entrance to Abney Park Cemetery, Stoke Newington.
The completion of Regent’s Canal in 1820 meant an easily accessible supply of heavy materials and lumber. Furniture-makers and wood trades flourished in Hoxton, including ‘printer’s joiners’ such as Gould & Reeves. The firm operated from Wenlock St where, as well as producing large wooden type for posters, they made the cabinets to house it and other furniture required by printing offices. And by 1900, as light industry spread further eastwards, the heirs of the Caslon foundry would open a factory at Rothbury Rd in Hackney Wick that employed over a hundred workers.
By the turn of the twentieth century, typesetting was undergoing a revolution. Automated solutions were introduced that enabled printers to break their reliance on a huge workforce of compositors (who set the type cast by traditional foundries by hand) and replace them with new typecasting machinery.
The Monotype Corporation, pioneers of this technology, still chose to locate their headquarters in the time-honoured district (Monotype’s building was at 43 Fetter Lane, just off Fleet St, until it was destroyed by a bomb in 1941 during the Blitz). But the coming of this new way of servicing the print industry brought dramatic changes and rendered the practices of the traditional foundries archaic, even though a small number continued trading for a few more decades. London’s last active typefoundry was Stevens, Shanks & Sons Ltd at 89 Southwark St, who were still casting type into the seventies.
Thankfully, unlike in many other countries, the materials of Britain’s preeminent typefounding industry were not lost forever when later technologies began to take hold. Having eventually all been absorbed by Stephenson Blake & Co of Sheffield, the artefacts of the traditional foundries mentioned here, along with the working hot-metal plant of the Monotype Corporation and Robert DeLittle’s York wood letter factory, were rescued in the nineties and held at the Type Archive in Stockwell. Unfortunately, although a hub of activity for over thirty years, it closed in 2023, following the death of its driving force, Sue Shaw (1932-2020).
The majority of the National Typefounding Collection is now in the care of the Science Museum. But before materials were removed from the Type Archive, where I was a volunteer, I managed to document some highlights which are presented in my book Type Archived.
M sort (piece of type) cast from a hand-mould
Stages of typefounding: punch, matrix
Stages of typefounding: mould, type
Caslon’s brass patterns for casting large type from sand, c.1770 (photograph copyright Andra Nelki)
Helmet Row, off Old St, where William Caslon established his first type foundry in 1727
Title page of Edmund Fry’s 1816 type specimen book showing the firm’s Type St address
Thorowgood’s Four-line Pica Ornamented matrices, 1821
Figgins’ Five Lines Pica, German Text, from the foundry’s 1815 type specimen
Figgins’ Letter Foundry in Ray St, Clerkenwell
Vincent Figgins’ initials are still to be seen upon the iron work on the front of the letter foundry
Monotype Gill Sans matrices (photograph copyright Andra Nelki)
Click here to buy a copy of Type Archived by Richard Ardagh
The definitive account of the legendary Type Archive provides a stunning visual tour of traditional typefounding, tracing the origins of typography and the printed word.
Founded in London in 1992, the Type Archive brought together some eight million artefacts that tell the story of typography and printing. Now, for the first time, a new book by long-serving Type Archive volunteer Richard Ardagh sheds light on the organisation’s extraordinary materials, celebrating their significance and importance to both the history of art and engineering.
Type Archived presents the typographic treasures that made this possible, from the engraved punches (master letters) and matrices (dies for casting), to the letterpress type and printing presses that put ink to paper. Inside the book, these items have been arranged into chapters by material: iron, steel, copper, brass, bronze, lead, wood, and paper.
Alongside specially commissioned photography, the book features a detailed summary of the trials and achievements of the Archive, an essay on the techniques of typefounding, a glossary of terms and detailed image captions describing the objects, their designers and uses.
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Charles Jones, Photographer
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Garden scene with photographer’s cloth backdrop c.1900
These beautiful photographs are all that exist to speak of the life of Charles Jones. Very little is known of the events and tenor of his existence, and even the survival of these pictures was left to chance, but now they ensure him posthumous status as one of the great plant photographers. When he died in Lincolnshire in 1959, aged 92, without claiming his pension for many years and in a house without running water or electricity, almost no-one was aware that he was a photographer. And he would be completely forgotten now, if not for the fortuitous discovery made twenty-two years later at Bermondsey Market, of a box of hundreds of his golden-toned gelatin silver prints made from glass plate negatives.
Born in 1866 in Wolverhampton, Jones was an exceptionally gifted professional gardener who worked upon several private estates, most notably Ote Hall near Burgess Hill in Sussex, where his talent received the attention of The Gardener’s Chronicle of 20th September 1905.
“The present gardener, Charles Jones, has had a large share in the modelling of the gardens as they now appear, for on all sides can be seen evidence of his work in the making of flowerbeds and borders and in the planting of fruit trees. Mr Jones is quite an enthusiastic fruit grower and his delight in his well-trained trees was readily apparent…. The lack of extensive glasshouses is no deterrent to Mr Jones in producing supplies of choice fruit and flowers… By the help of wind screens, he has converted warm nooks into suitable places for the growing of tender subjects and with the aid of a few unheated frames produces a goodly supply. Thus is the resourcefulness of the ingenious gardener who has not an unlimited supply of the best appurtenances seen.”
The mystery is how Jones produced such a huge body of photography and developed his distinctive aesthetic in complete isolation. The quality of the prints and notation suggests that he regarded himself as a serious photographer although there is no evidence that he ever published or exhibited his work. A sole advert in Popular Gardening exists offering to photograph people’s gardens for half a crown, suggesting wider ambitions, yet whether anyone took him up on the offer we do not know. Jones’ grandchildren recall that, in old age, he used his own glass plates as cloches to protect his seedlings against frost – which may explain why no negatives have survived.
There is a spare quality and an uncluttered aesthetic in Jones’ images that permits them to appear contemporary a hundred years after they were taken, while the intense focus upon the minutiae of these specimens reveals both Jones’ close knowledge of his own produce and his pride as a gardener in recording his creations. Charles Jones’ sensibility, delighting in the bounty of nature and the beauty of plant forms, and fascinated with variance in growth, is one that any gardener or cook will appreciate.
Swede Green Top
Bean Runner
Stokesia Cyanea
Turnip Green Globe
Bean Longpod
Potato Midlothian Early
Pea Rival
Onion Brown Globe
Cucumber Ridge
Mangold Yellow Globe
Bean (Dwarf) Ne Plus Ultra
Mangold Red Tankard
Seedpods on the head of a Standard Rose
Ornamental Gourd
Bean Runner
Apple Gateshead Codlin
Captain Hayward
Larry’s Perfection
Pear Beurré Diel
Melon Sutton’s Superlative
Mangold Green Top
Charles Harry Jones (1866-1959) c. 1904
The Plant Kingdoms of Charles Jones by Sean Sexton & Robert Flynn Johnson is published by Thames & Hudson
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The Secret Gardens of Spitalfields
Thomas Fairchild, Gardener of Hoxton
Buying Vegetables for Leila’s Shop
Cockney Beanos
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A beano from Stepney in the twenties (courtesy Irene Sheath)
We have reached that time of year when a certain clamminess prevails in the city and East Enders turn restless, yearning for a trip to the sea or at the very least an excursion to glimpse some green fields. In the last century, pubs, workplaces and clubs organised annual summer beanos, which gave everyone the opportunity to pile into a coach and enjoy a day out, usually with liberal opportunity for refreshment and sing-songs on the way home.
Ladies’ beano from The Globe in Hartley St, Bethnal Green, in the fifties. Chris Dixon, who submitted the picture, recognises his grandmother, Flo Beazley, furthest left in the front row beside her next door neighbour Flo Wheeler, who had a fruit and vegetable stall on Green St. (courtesy Chris Dixon)
Another beano from the fifties – eighth from the left is Jim Tyrrell (1908-1991) who worked at Stepney Power Station in Limehouse and drank at the Rainbow on the Highway in Ratcliff.
Mid-twentieth century beano from the archive of Britton’s Coaches in Cable St. (courtesy Martin Harris)
Beano from the Rhodeswell Stores, Rhodeswell Rd, Limehouse in the mid-twenties.
Taken on the way to Southend, this is a ladies’ beano from The Beehive in the Roman Rd during the fifties or sixties in a coach from Empress Coaches. The only men in the photo are the driver and the accordionist. Joan Lord (née Collins) who submitted the photo is the daughter of the publicans of The Beehive. (Courtesy Joan Lord)
Terrie Conway Driver, who submitted this picture of a beano from The Duke of Gloucester, Seabright St, Bethnal Green, points out that her grandfather is seventh from the left in the back row. (Courtesy Terrie Conway Driver)
Taken on the way to Southend, this is a men’s beano from The Beehive in the Roman Rd in the fifties or sixties in a coach from Empress Coaches. (Courtesy Joan Lord)
Beano in the twenties from the Victory Public House in Ben Jonson Rd, on the corner with Carr St. Note the charabanc – the name derives from the French char à bancs (“carriage with wooden benches”) and they were originally horse-drawn.
A crowd gathers before a beano from The Queens’ Head in Chicksand St in the early fifties. John Charlton who submitted the photograph pointed out his grandfather George standing in the flat cap holding a bottle of beer on the right with John’s father Bill on the left of him, while John stands directly in front of the man in the straw hat. (Courtesy John Charlton)
Beano for Stepney Borough Council workers in the mid-twentieth century. (Courtesy Susan Armstrong)
Martin Harris, who submitted this picture, indicated that the driver, standing second from the left, is Teddy Britton, his second cousin. (Courtesy Martin Harris)
In the Panama hat is Ted Marks who owned the fish place at the side of the Martin Frobisher School, and is seen here taking his staff out on their annual beano.
George, the father of Colin Watson who submitted this photo, is among those who went on this beano from the Taylor Walker brewery in Limehouse. (Courtesy Colin Watson)
Pub beano setting out for Margate or Southend. (Courtesy John McCarthy)
Men’s beano from c. 1960 (courtesy Cathy Cocline)
Late sixties or early seventies ladies’ beano organised by the Locksley Estate Tenants Association in Limehouse, leaving from outside The Prince Alfred in Locksley St.
The father of John McCarthy, who submitted this photo, is on the far right squatting down with a beer in his hand, in this beano photo taken in the early sixties, which may be from his local, The Shakespeare in Bethnal Green Rd. Equally, it could be a works’ outing, as he was a dustman working for Bethnal Green Council. Typically, the men are wearing button holes and an accordionist accompanies them. Accordionists earned a fortune every summer weekend, playing at beanos. (courtesy John McCarthy)
John Sheehan, who submitted this picture, remembers it was taken on a beano to Clacton in the sixties. From left to right, you can seee John Driscoll who lived in Grosvenor Buildings, Dan Daley of Constant House, outsider Johnny Gamm from Hackney, alongside his cousin, John Sheehan from Constant House and Bill Britton from Holmsdale House. (Courtesy John Sheehan)
Images courtesy Tower Hamlets Community Homes
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Ron McCormick’s Whitechapel
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Ron McCormick photographed Whitechapel & Spitalfields in the early seventies and these pictures were exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1973.
Hessel St
Royal Oak, Whitechapel Rd
Old Montague St
Blooms, Whitechapel High St
Old Montague St
Old Montague St
Princelet St
Black Lion Yard
Fournier St
Brick Lane
Club Row
Brick Lane
Settle St, Whitechapel
Great Eastern Buildings, Quaker St
Woodseer St
Great Eastern Buildings, Quaker St
Sandys Row
Brick Lane Market
Christ Church School
Settle St, Whitechapel
Photographs copyright © Ron McCormick
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Philip Marriage’s Spitalfields
Midsummer With The Druids
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In the grove of sacred hawthorn
One Midsummer, Photographer Colin O’Brien & I joined the celebrants of the Loose Association of Druids on Primrose Hill for the solstice festival hosted by Jay the Tailor, Druid of Wormwood Scrubs. As the most prominent geological feature in the Lower Thames Valley, it seems likely that this elevated site has been a location for rituals since before history began.
Yet this particular event owes its origin to Edward Williams, a monumental mason and poet better known by his bardic name Iolo Morganwg, who founded the Gorsedd community of Welsh bards here on Primrose Hill in June 1792. He claimed he was reviving an ancient rite, citing John Tollund who in 1716 summoned the surviving druids by trumpet to come together and form a Universal Bond.
Consequently, the Druids began their observance by gathering to honour their predecessor at Morganwg’s memorial plaque on the viewing platform at the top of the hill, where they corralled bewildered tourists and passing dog walkers into a circle to recite his Gorsedd prayer in an English translation. From here, the Druids processed to the deep shade of the nearby sacred grove of hawthorn where biscuits and soft drinks were laid upon a tablecloth with a bunch of wild flowers and some curious wooden utensils.
Following at Jay the Tailor’s shoulder as we strode across the long grass, I could not resist asking about the origin of his staff of hawthorn intertwined with ivy. “It was before I became a Druid, when I was losing my Christian faith,” he confessed to me, “I was attending a County Fair and a stick maker who had Second Sight offered to make it for me for fifteen pounds.” Before I could ask more, we arrived in the grove and it was time to get the ritual organised. Everyone was as polite and good humoured as at a Sunday school picnic.
A photocopied order of service was distributed, we formed a circle, and it was necessary to select a Modron to stand in the west, a Mabon to stand in the north, a Thurifer to stand in the east and a Celebrant to stand in the South. Once we all had practised chanting our Greek vowels while processing clockwise, Jay the Tailor rapped his staff firmly on the ground and we were off. A narrow wooden branch – known as the knife that cannot cut – was passed around and we each introduced ourselves.
In spite of the apparent exoticism of the event and the groups of passersby stopping in their tracks to gaze in disbelief, there was a certain innocent familiarity about the proceedings – which celebrated nature, the changing season and the spirit of the place. In the era of the French and the American Revolutions, Iolo Morganwr declared Freedom of Thought, Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Association. Notions that retain strong resonance to this day.
Once the ritual wound up, we had exchanged kisses of peace Druid-style and everyone ate a biscuit with a gulp of apple juice, I was able to ask Jay the Tailor more questions.“I lost my Christian faith because I studied Theology and I found it difficult to believe Jesus was anything other than a human being, even though I do feel he was a very important guide and I had a personal experience of Jesus when I met Him on the steps of Oxford Town Hall,” he admitted, leaving me searching for a response.
“When I was fourteen, I went up Cader Idris at Midsummer and spent all night and the next day there, and the next night I had a vision of Our Lady of Mists & Sheep,” he continued helpfully,“but that just added to my confusion.” I nodded sagely in response.“I came to Druids through geometry, through studying the heavens and recognising there is an order of things,” he explained to me, “mainly because I am a tailor and a pattern cutter, so I understand sacred geometry.” By now, the other Druids were packing up, disposing of the litter from the picnic in the park bins and heading eagerly towards the pub.
I have such a fond memory of that afternoon Colin O’Brien and I enjoyed among the druids on Primrose Hill.
“Do not tell the priest of our plight for he would call it a sin, but we have been out in the woods all night, a-conjuring the Summer in!” – Rudyard Kipling
Sun worshippers on Primrose Hill
Memorial to Iolo Morganwg who initiated the ritual on Primrose Hill in 1792
Peter Barker, Thurifer – “I felt I was a pagan for many years. I always liked gods and goddesses, and the annual festivals are part of my life and you meet a lot of good people.”
Maureen – “I’m a Druid, a member of O.B.O.D. (the Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids), and I’ve done all three grades”
Sarah Louise Smith – “I’m training to be a druid with O.B.O.D. at present”
Simeon Posner, Astrologer – “It helps my soul to mature, seeing the life cycle and participating in it”
John Leopold – “I have pagan inclinations”
Jay the Tailor, Druid of Wormwood Scrubs
Iolo Morgamwg (Edward Williams) Poet & Monumental Mason, 1747-1826
Photographs copyright © Estate of Colin O’Brien
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Inside Spitalfields’ Oldest Building
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I wonder if those who work in the corporate financial industries in Bishop’s Sq today ever cast their eyes down to the cavernous medieval Charnel House of c. 1320 beneath their feet, once used to store the dis-articulated bones of many thousands of those who died here of the Great Famine in the thirteenth century.
Inspector of Ancient Monuments, Jane Siddell, believes starving people flooded into London from Essex seeking food after successive crop failures and reached the Priory of St Mary Spital where they died of hunger and were buried here. It was a dark vision of apocalyptic proportions on such a bright day, yet I held it in in mind yesterday as we descended beneath the contemporary building to the stone chapel below.
At first, you notice the knapped flints set into the wall as a decorative device, like those at Southwark Cathedral and St Bartholomew the Great. London does not have its own stone and Jane pointed out the different varieties within the masonry and their origins, indicating that this building was a sophisticated and expensive piece of construction subsidised by wealthy benefactors. A line of small windows admitted light and air to the Charnel House below, and low walls that contain them survive which would once have extended up to the full height of the chapel.
When you stand down in the cool of the Charnel House, several metres below modern ground level, and survey the neatly-faced stone walls and the finely-carved buttresses, it is not difficult to complete the vault over your head and imagine the chapel above. Behind you are the footings of the steps that led down and there is an immediate sense of familiarity conveyed by the human proportion and architectural detailing, as if you had just descended the staircase into it.
This entire space would once have been packed with bones, in particular skulls and leg bones – which we recognise in the symbol of the skull & crossbones – the essential parts to be preserved so that the dead might be able to walk and talk when they were resurrected on Judgement Day. Yet they were rudely expelled and disposed of piecemeal at the Reformation when the Priory of St Mary Spital was dissolved in 1540.
Brick work and the remains of a beaten earth floor indicate that the Charnel House may have become a storeroom and basement kitchen for a dwelling above in the sixteenth century. Later, it was filled with rubble from the Fire of London and levelled-off as houses were built across Spitalfields in the eighteenth century. Thus the Charnel House lay forgotten and undisturbed as a rare survival of fourteenth century architecture, until 1999 when it was unexpectedly discovered by the builders constructing the current office block. Yet it might have been lost then if the developers had not – showing unexpected grace – reconfigured their building in order to let it stand.
Around the site lie stray pieces of masonry individually marked by the masons – essential if they were to receive the correct payment from their labours. Thus our oldest building bears witness to the human paradox of economic reality, which has always co-existed uneasily with a belief in the spiritual world, since it was a yearning for redemption in the afterlife that inspired the benefactors who paid for this chapel in Spitalfields more than seven centuries ago
The exterior walls are decorated with knapped flints, faced in Kentish Ragstone upon a base of Caen Stone with use of green Reigate Stone for corner stones
Window bricked up in the sixteenth century
Inside the Charnel House once packed with bones
Twelfth century denticulated Romanesque buttress brought from an earlier building and installed in the Charnel House c.1320 – traces of red and black paint were discovered upon this.
Fine facing stonework within the Charnel House
Fourteenth century masons’ marks
The Charnel House is to be seen in the foreground of this illustration from the fifteen-fifties
The Charnel House during excavations
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Receipts From Old Whitechapel
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It is my delight to publish these old Whitechapel letterheads and receipts from Philip Mernick‘s astonishing ephemera collection. Many are remarkable for the beauty of their typographic design as well as revealing the wide range of industry and commerce.
Speigelhalters were in Whitechapel from 1928 until 1988
Gardiner’s Corner was a familiar landmark in East End for generations
This was the family business of the artist Nathaniel Kornbluth
All letterheads and receipts courtesy of Philip Mernick
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