Comments on: Passmore Edwards in the East End

By: Theresa

Theresa — Sat, 04 Sep 2021 23:29:46 +0000

What an informative article. I grew up going to limehouse library, every Saturday in the 70’s. I never realised until now that it was a passmore Edwards building. I have such fond memories of reading every book in the famous five series, my passion for reading is still strong. I grew up for some years in Roman Road, Bow so revisited the library recently, still in use, as is Plaistow. The Plashet or East Ham library is no longer in use and derelict, but what beautiful buildings they all are and rightly protected as grade 2 buildings.
I wondered why some of the building did not have Passmore’s name on them, now I know.
Let’s hope that they continue to be useful as spaces for creativity and growth. It’s quite touching to know, without realising then, that Passmore legacy has directly impacted my life.

By: Judith Martin

Judith Martin — Tue, 12 Dec 2017 17:50:09 +0000

Carnegie, now there was a conflicted character. Philanthropic with his libraries etc. but the most vile and unpleasant employer. Whatever the story is of Passmore Edwards wanting his name over his buildings, it pales in comparison with Carnegie’s behaviour. Jim Thatcher, casting aspersions – now why is that name familiar?

By: Erik Gilbert

Erik Gilbert — Sun, 28 Feb 2016 07:39:18 +0000

In the mid 1980’s, a friend, Alan Brazier, installed a sculpture at the Pitfield Street Library. This sculpture was given to the library as a loan. Alan passed away last year, and his estate is trying to locate the work. Since the library closed, the sculpture has been missing. If anyone knows the whereabouts of this sculpture, please get in touch. The sculpture is pictured here.

http://alanbrazier.com/reclining_figure.html

erik@duchamp.tv

By: SIMON DIABLE

SIMON DIABLE — Wed, 25 Nov 2015 15:06:35 +0000

I worked in the Whitechapel Library for a couple of years as a teenager in the 80’s, it was my Saturday job and as well as providing a huge selection of books it hosted performers in the children’s library every Saturday and was a welcome resting place for the old boys often waiting to get back into digs later in the day at the Sally Army hostel down the road. I was told never to wake them especially the ones who had come in to sober up!

By: jenny baudin

jenny baudin — Sat, 26 Apr 2014 21:03:29 +0000

Have just re-discovered the “Passmore Edwards” and/or Library legacy through visiting the South London Art Gallery, and being reminded of the Passmore Edwards. I started my “adult” and life of “further education” in Forest Gate/Stratford and North East London Poly. not University of East London. I still remember the Passmore Edwards Library in Stratford, which rang a bell when I visited the South London Art Gallery, Peckham, recently, for the first time – a “breath of fresh-air” almost a “jewel”

By: Adele Schlazer Lester

Adele Schlazer Lester — Sun, 28 Jul 2013 14:14:25 +0000

I literally “grew up” in the Whitechapel Library. One of my earliest visions as you walked in was the public reading room where mostly Eastern European immigrants read newspapers (probably months outdated) from their homelands. I recently visited a newly built library in South Florida, USA and was gratified to see so many people still using such a facility. Although the building is modern and gleaming, seeing young and old clutching bags of checked-out books brought me back to the days when I couldn’t get home fast enough to open that first, musty-smelling book.

By: Dr Michael Seed

Dr Michael Seed — Fri, 21 Jun 2013 09:49:13 +0000

Many of here at the University are interested to learn more of the history of the Stratford Passmore Edwards Museum. One thing many of us at Straford are wondering is how the front entrance, now called ‘The Dome’, was used. There is some folklore that dissection demonstrations were held there…

I would be grateful for any information regarding this.

Dr Michael Seed, FSB
Reader
School of Health, Sport and Bioscience
University of East London

By: Geraldine Moyle

Geraldine Moyle — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 10:16:11 +0000

I was delighted to come across this item ~ not least because it alerted me to your enthralling website, Gentle Reader. As a 50s/60s child in Shepherd’s Bush, I was a devoted user of the Passmore Edwards library on the Uxbridge Road, & have still vivid memories of the cushions in the bay window of its children’s section. When I qualified for a ticket to use the adult section in my barely teens, that was a momentous occasion ~ & probably, with hindsight, a factor in my becoming an academic (albeit in California many years later). What I didn’t know then was that my benefactor ~ for he was surely that ~ like my father, was a Cornishman: an additional gracenote.
I was distressed to read elsewhere that the library I’d lived in so much had been decommissioned, though gratified to discover that The Bush Theater was now its tenant: a different portal to imagination & creativity & wonder, but a portal to those indispensable values nevertheless. I hope John Passmore Edwards would think so, too.

By: Jon

Jon — Thu, 07 Feb 2013 12:21:05 +0000

I live in the old Hoxton Library on Pitfield Street, up in the roof. It’s a beautiful building, full of quirks. Our attic room is partly a turret, for example – pretty special for cramped London. The original stone lobby also remains intact, complete with a staircase large enough to ride a horse up. Every day I think how lucky I am to live there, so it’s nice to know a bit more about the guy behind it.

By: Gary

Gary — Wed, 06 Feb 2013 18:06:43 +0000

I visited the Stratford Museum not long before it was absorbed into the university, it had many very good nature exhibits. There were a line of small cases displaying various creatures, the last one labelled “the most dangerous animal in the world” contained a mirror.
Gary