Tony Hall’s East End Panoramas
In the sixties, Tony Hall bought a Horizont camera of Russian manufacture that was designed for taking panoramic photographs and he used it to take these magnificent pictures of East End streets, published today for the first time. Originally trained as a painter, Tony Hall became a newspaper artist in Fleet St and pursued photography in the afternoons between shifts.
“He’d always been passionate about wide-angle lenses, it was his landscape painter’s background – he had a painter’s eye,” Libby Hall, Tony’s wife revealed to me, “When he was sixteen, his paintings were accepted for the Royal Academy but he wanted to do something different, so he gave it up in favour of commercial art and photography.”
The Horizont camera had a lens that rotated in sync with the shutter to create a panoramic view, but they were unreliable and, when the lens became out of sync with the shutter, patches of light and dark appeared on the image. Tony bought three cameras in the hope of getting one to work consistently and in the end he gave up, yet by then he had achieved this bravura series of pictures which emphasise the linear qualities of the cityscape to dramatic effect.
“Tony loved tools of all sorts and he always said that if you had the tool you could work out how to use it,” Libby recalled, “He was very frustrated by the Horizont, but he was very pleased when it worked.”
It is the special nature of Tony Hall’s photographic vision that he saw the human beauty within an architectural environment which others sought to condemn and, half a century later, his epic panoramas show us the East End of the nineteen sixties as we never saw it before.
Click on any of the photographs below to enlarge and enjoy the full panoramic effect.
Corner of Middleton Rd & Haggerston Rd
Haggerston Rd
Old Montague St & Black Lion Yard
Old Montague St
Hessel St
Corner of Lyal Rd & Stanfield Rd
Corner of Lyal Rd & Stanfield Rd
Bridge House, Tredegar Rd
Sclater St
Leopold Buildings, Columbia Rd
Pearson St & Appleby St
Corner of Well St & Holcroft Rd
Hackney Rd
St Leonards Rd
St Leonards Rd
Photographs copyright © Libby Hall
Images Courtesy of the Tony Hall Archive at the Bishopsgate Institute
Libby Hall & I would be delighted if any readers can assist in identifying the locations and subjects of Tony Hall’s photographs.
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The photograph of the corner of Middleton Road and Haggerston Road was taken from a position just to the right of Nicholas Borden’s vantage point for his fine painting of Middleton Road. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2013/01/20/nicholas-borden-artist/
I felt a frisson of recognition when I first saw Borden’s panoramic paintings – they are so like Tony’s photographs in the same shape.
I know Tony would have very much enjoyed Borden’s paintings.
Gosh these are good. They’re like an incredible time machine…
No. 346 is the junction of Well Street and Holcroft Road in Hackney. I love playing this game!
No. 1230 is the corner of Lyal Road and Stanfield Road in Bow. No. 1231 is taken from the interior of the shop.
These panoramas are fascinating. The Russian Horizont camera may have had its faults but it offered a different dimension for the photographer’s eye as Tony Hall has so ably demonstrated. You can almost walk into the photo of Old Montague Street or the Stores at No 62 with the letter-box outside. Curiously – like the paintings of Elwin Hawthorne – most of these panoramas are almost devoid of people.
Wow, fantastic photos, a real pleasure to see them, thank you.
Philip Marriage (himself such a fine photographer of long-gone Spitalfields) has mentioned most of the images being almost devoid of people.
Ah those were the days of ‘full employment’ – and Tony’s days off were on weekdays.
I used to love the sounds of those weekdays if I was home for some reason – perhaps with a cold. The sounds of women and young children in gardens, women hanging out washing, women talking in the street on their way to or from the shops, dogs barking, the road sweeper, the postman… Weekday sounds were totally different from weekend sounds, and they would remind me of the sounds of life when I was a pre-school child. Sounds that I found to be very similar whether in America, Britain, or the rest of Europe.
So nice of Libby to put Tony’s images into this archive for all to see. Tony recorded the East End and his subjects with great compassion.
These Horizont images are great and also, the wide angle photos shot on his much loved Practica Spr TL with a 24mm Flektogon lens; touches of Bill Brant’s eye in his work .
Tony was a dear friend who introduced and taught me Photography in the 1970’s. I am still working as a professional photographer today, thanks to a unique artist and a great man.
Another amazing set of pictures, thanks so much Libby. Tony’s photo’s have become my favourite subject on Spitalfields Life and I look forward to seeing more. My Dad grew up in Haggerston and I can’t wait to show him these. Thanks again, wonderful memories.
No. 1227 is Hackney Road up by Teesdale Street. The street scene has changed beyond recognition but you can just see the railway bridge at Cambridge Heath Road in the distance.
These are brilliant, Libby. Thanks for making them availble to us. I lived in the area for 20 years until 1992 and I’d be particularly interested if anyone can identify 203 and 204.
Fabulous photographs. But compare Tony’s photo of the corner of Appleby and Pearson Street with what it looks like today and cry………..
I’m fairly sure that 495 is at the junction with Black Lion Yard. I lived halfway down on the right ’71-’73. It was a street of jewellers’ shops with a little bunch of dope dealers at the far end. A great shame that LBTH smashed it up.
My immigrant grand parents lived in a rat infested “flat” in Old Montague Street and I can clearly remember the squalor of place whenever I visited them in the mid-fifties. My grandfather worked as a furniture carpenter but lost his sight towards the end of his life. I think my grandmother stayed in those rooms to bring up my mother and her five siblings.
According to the barely-visible street sign and the placement in the series, 208 seems to be another part of St Leonard’s Road.
Great Pictures! Thank you for posting them.
– The two pictures above “Corner of Well St & Holcroft Rd” (with the very narrow house in the middle) are of the junction between Bushberry Road and Benn street, off Kenworthy Road in Homerton. The narrow house has now been “improved” with a “classical” balustrade, which you can see from the slip road onto the A12.
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4SVEA_enGB388GB388&q=bushberry+road
– In the picture of with the imp car in the foreground, do I see the spire of St Leonard’s Shoreditch in the distance?
As always, very good photographs.
these are so wonderful. the haggerston road leading up to my estate which is nearly demolished. and i love, too, the people trying to locate the locations of the photos taken – it is almost possible to have GPS imprint locators on digital ones now….xA
The corner shop in photo no. 204 is my old house at 35 Bushberry Road. The photo is taken at the junction of Benn Street and Bushberry Road E9.
The image with the barges is taken next to the River Lea and Limehouse Cut. The cooling towers in the background is in Canning Town which was called West Ham Generating Station. Demolished in the late 1970’s.
On the left is the former gasworks.
Lesley I was looking at my IPad and came across the photos of spiralfields .com and noticed two photos, corner of Lyal and Stanfield rd Bow. The shop in question was owned by my parents 29 Lyal rd it was a grocery/ dairy My father and brother did the milk run. I was born in 1940 so didn’t remember much during the war, but we had our own air raid shelter in Stanfield st opposite the shop, I now live in Australia ,since 1964 , made a visit to Lyal rd in 1998 and the shop was owned by the Gov/ council with a few people working there. The shop opposite called Maxwells was a dry cleaner shop. Thank you for the photos Yours. Iwan morgan Brisbane Aust
La fotografia de Hessel street es de Old Montague street. Saludos desde La Coruña, una enamorada de Whitechapel.
Picture 204, corner shop of bushberry road and benn street. Incredible!! I lived at No.15 from a baby till 13 years old, so from 71 till 84. The shop was boarded up when I grew up there. Did hear some interesting information about the houses in bushberry road. Apparently around the turn of the century, there were some very sick/dying people living in a few houses along
there and nurses/midwives used to come and tend to the sick. My father told me years later that on 2 occassions had seen a ghostly figure of a nurse sitting at the end of my bed when I was just a nipper. I don’t really believe thatsort of stuff but would love to find out more information about the street and inhabitants, I also used to go to St.Dominics School just around the corner. And do my Guying leading up to bornfire night outside Wick Fisheries in the 70s. Play in the Green at the bottom of the road. Thanks for this photo, and the memories.
Viewing these wonderful images, 23 June 2022, what amazes me most is the total lack of any litter in the streets!!! It is almost as if Tony must have followed the street cleaners’ vehicles on their rounds! Yet in a few photos, Market and wasteland rubbish is definitely there! Quite surreal…and magical. Thank you G.A.