Comments on: David O’Mara’s Spitalfields

By: Ros

Ros — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 20:42:49 +0000

yes, great photos with important bits of the story to tell. Thanks to David O’M for taking them so beautifully.

By: gabrielle

gabrielle — Sun, 10 Jul 2016 11:53:37 +0000

Touching to see such hard work going into the restoration of these historic houses and yet taking the time to record and share.

By: Peter Holford

Peter Holford — Sat, 09 Jul 2016 21:12:04 +0000

The standards of health and safety were terrible. I worked for six months on a building site in Manchester back in the 1970s – no hard hats, no first aid box and very lax practices. The 7th photo shows a drill being used in a confined space. I ended up using a jack hammer in a space like that with no protection and no ear defenders. Two of us also emptied a wagon of 5 tons of cement (100 bags) by simply carrying the stuff! Brutally hard and dirty and I didn’t stay for long – I went teaching instead! In the process I took a big cut in pay.

Great photos.

By: Alison Ashfield

Alison Ashfield — Sat, 09 Jul 2016 04:14:48 +0000

A wonderful series of photographs. How I would love to see some captions – which house, when were the renovations were undertaken and the first names of the men pictured…..especially the ones 9 and 10 in the sequence. What was happening in the (?) basement area? I feel the exhaustion of the young man bent over his shovel.

And the black gentleman perched in the window – what was he contemplating? Are his braids grey with age or dust? I feel the latter, as his arms and hands seem young. The inherent dignity and skills of the men who labour to work lifts my spirits this soft Scottish morning.

By: pauline taylor

pauline taylor — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 17:46:30 +0000

My son will sympathise re stripping back the layers on older buildings when renovating them. He is busy working on one of the rooms in our ‘new’ bookshop premises which actually dates back to 1475, later on the inside of the building was given the latest up to date look in 1790, so imagine if you can all the history there, we have discovered a ‘scary’ face beside a window aperture which caused great interest on Open Heritage day last year, and the different colours in the layers of paint is something to behold!

By: Dougie Scott

Dougie Scott — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 17:39:35 +0000

Love the framing of these pictures and glimpses of rarely captured grafting.

By: Shawdian

Shawdian — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 10:01:28 +0000

Excellent captures of work and toil David. I lived and worked in a NT Historic House, and have been inside many renovated Historic buildings some dating back to 17th Century and what most people never really think of is the work and repetative toil that over the many years has gone into making these buildings as we wish to see them, all spick n spam. People like You leave behind only the splenders of your back breaking endeavours and rightly so, but what a shame we never see you. When ever any renovation work took place in the Historic buildings I lived in, I would photograph the ‘before and after’ but must confess not the men who did the work and I note, not one woman did I see doing this type of necessary slog. Each NT property has a history log of all the renovations taken place over the Centuries but not the people who did the work. What a shame those who make these buildings what they are, are like ghosts, never to be seen and never to be heard, but you are there within each of the walls and wooden frames. It is human beings that bring a building to life and within every piece of brick and mortar lies the handy work of ‘a person’, who will leave behind their ghostly presence for as long as that building remains.

By: aubrey

aubrey — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 09:12:06 +0000

Dark, dreadful, dangerous, odoriferous working conditions. A kind of hell!

By: Hilda Kean

Hilda Kean — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 08:12:56 +0000

While I loved these images I am not convinced about the repetition of tasks destroying memory. I can understand that the restoring of one place blurs into another but isn’t the memory of the work is physically remembered in the bodies of the workers? In the same way that dancers / yoga practitioners etc have muscle memory and try to get their bodies to physically remember movements doesn’t this also happen to the workers’ photographed here? The muscles – and the back pain – reflect the past restoration even if this is not specifically cultivated!

By: Caroline Bottomley

Caroline Bottomley — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 07:25:27 +0000

Interesting insights, thanks