Name The Landmarks Of Jewish Spitalfields
Following the success of his Map of Huguenot Spitalfields a couple of years ago, Cartographer Extraodinaire Adam Dant is currently at work on a MAP OF JEWISH SPITALFIELDS and we need your help to compile it.
Click to enlarge Adam Dant’s work-in-progress
Spitalfields was once known as ‘Little Jerusalem’ but today only fragmentary evidence remains of the thriving Jewish community who moved out in the twentieth century. Yet Jewish Spitalfields still exists in living memory and we need you, the readers, to nominate the public landmarks – the synagogues, schools, theatres, cinemas, pubs, shops, restaurants, markets, clubs, housing and more – that defined this lost world, so they can be included on the map.
Please list your suggestions as comments below or you can write to Adam Dant directly at atelierdant@gmail.com . The deadline for submissions is 7th January 2019.
Adam’s Dant’s map takes the form of a mythical placemat from Bloom’s Restaurant in Whitechapel.
Photograph of Bloom’s in Whitechapel High St taken in the seventies by Ron McCormick
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Adam Dant’s MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND is a mighty monograph collecting together all your favourite works by Spitalfields Life‘s Contributing Cartographer in a beautiful big hardback book.
Including a map of London riots, the locations of early coffee houses and a colourful depiction of slang through the centuries, Adam Dant’s vision of city life and our prevailing obsessions with money, power and the pursuit of pleasure may genuinely be described as ‘Hogarthian.’
Unparalleled in his draughtsmanship and inventiveness, Adam Dant explores the byways of London’s cultural history in his ingenious drawings, annotated with erudite commentary and offering hours of fascination for the curious.
The book includes an extensive interview with Adam Dant by The Gentle Author.
Adam Dant’s limited edition prints are available to purchase through TAG Fine Arts
The Bloom’s placemat is a great idea!
How about the Whitechapel Public Library at 77 High Street E1 7QX? It was a refuge (and unofficial college) for Isaac Rosenberg and has a blue plaque for him.
In ‘the Lane’ – Petticoat Lane, the herring woman sitting next to her huge barrel of schmaltz herrings.
Lovely idea.. but I guess a tablecloth-seized map would be needed to accommodate most of the EastEnd Jews’ contribution to history and culture..
A few suggestions:
people, mainly artists..
David Bomberg and the ‘Whitechapel boys’ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bomberg
Abram Games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abram_Games
Wolf Mankowitz https://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-wolf-mankowitz-1158253.html
Lionel Bart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lionel_Bart
Isaiah Berlin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaiah_Berlin
Basil Bernstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Bernstein
Institutions and Places..
Great Garden Street (Greatorex St) synagogue, Jewish luncheon Club
Boys and girls clubs (including Oxford and St Georges)
REALLY old Jewish cemeteries
..and not forgetting the Krays!
Best for salt beef and ludkers new greens,with little bit chicken pate on the side, not forgetting the chicken soup to start,cured cold sore throats,and the like, always made me laugh the waiters in Blooms,always flogging something to you,as useful for cheap Cuban Cigars, my weakness at the time. Next door to Blooms was the best men’s wear shop for Swiss Shirts,makers name was Reisto??? I think, then further down,a shoe shop,that sold Bally Chelsea boots for men,a must in the 60s,after Stans of Battersea folded. There was onther Jewish salt beep shop further along from there,but it never conspaired to BLOOMS, even took my dying Father a sandwich from there,at his request too Barthomews Hostpital,along with eels from Tubby Isacc eels stall near by, just thought name of shirt shop was Davies,men’s wear. Happy new Year
How about the Soup Kitchen for the Jewish Poor, 17-19 Brune Street. Details from Jewish Heritage in England by Sharman Kadish
The Kosher Luncheon Club at the Morris Kasler Hall on the corner of Old Montague Street and Greatorex Street absolutely deserves a mention.
This was a wonderful spot for lunch as splendid as it was inexpensive. Generous portions served by its happy crew of perfect bubbas, always pressing a little more onto your plate. One of the best unknown Jewish restaurants in London.
It closed in 1992 after what was reported as a racist arson attack.
How about marking the Tenterground? This was the home for hundreds of poor Dutch Jews (many from Amsterdam) who arrived in Spitalfields from the 1850s before the mass influx of Jews from eastern Europe. The Tenterground streets they lived in, behind Spitalfields Market, were Shepherd Street and Tenter Street along with the four streets running between them: Butler Street, Freeman Street, Palmer Street and Tilley Street, now all gone. Stephen Barry
The park is at the junction of Roman Road and Cambridge Heath Road. We kids called the place Itchy Park. I Never knew why though! It had/has a wonderful library where I idled away my mis-spent youth.
1. Ruth Campbel: Good suggestions, but some (e.g. Isaiah Berlin) not connected to East End. Selig Brodetsky, Dr. Bronowski etc should be there. I will take a longer look at this, as it is a great project; but the text is difficult to read. I also wish Adam Dant did not use that awful kitsch.y typeface, which also has unpleasant associations with its use b.y the Nazis.
David Bomberg, artist:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/0449010X.1987.10703750
Isaac Rosenberg, WW1 poet and artist: https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/blue-plaques/isaac-rosenberg/
Petticoat Lane/Middlesex St market.
Joseph Malin and the ‘invention’ of fish and chips.
Yiddish theatre sites, especially Jacob Adler’s theatre on what is today called Princelet St: https://londonist.com/2015/10/london-s-lost-yiddish-theatre
Keith Bowler’s commemorative metal coal hole covers are a reference point e.g. the one on Princelet St:
https://spitalfieldslife.com/2010/10/08/the-roundels-of-spitalfields/
Former synagogue now the Jamme Masjid mosque on the corner of Brick Lane and Fournier St. ‘Umbra sumus’ inscription on sundial from original use as a Huguenot chapel.
Wolf Mankowitz, Lionel Bart (Begleiter), Sir Arnold Wesker.
Reputed lair of Ikey Solomon’s (model for Dickens’s Fagin): http://fiveminutehistory.com/the-remarkable-story-of-the-real-fagin-from-charles-dickens-oliver-twist/?cn-reloaded=1
The Christian missionary plaques in the vestibule of Christ Church Spitalfields, esp. former Jew, Rev. Henry Aaron Stone: https://www.jewisheastend.com/christchurch.html
Site of Elfes monumental masons on Brick Lane: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elfes_Monumental_Masons_in_Brick_Lane_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1594652.jpg
Site of Jewish Daily Post newspaper, 88 Whitechapel High St: https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/jewish-newspaper
Kenny Hunter’s sculpture ‘I goat’ on Brushfield St that references refugees, the Jewish religious concept of the scapegoat, non-conformity, the local market etc: http://www.urban75.org/blog/its-a-goat-on-a-pile-of-boxes-in-spitalfields-london/
This is a better link for Ikey Solomons’ connections with the East Endhttp://mentalfloss.com/article/71454/real-life-criminal-who-inspired-charles-dickens
Perhaps show Frying Pan Alley (runs between Bell Lane and Sandys Row) as well as the Tenterground?
Glad to see that my great-great grandfather Samuel Montagu makes the cut!
Agree with Paul Shaviv about the type-face; kitschy, hard to read and unpleasant associations…
We opened our City office at 41 Artillery Lane, in 1987, anticipating the close of the fruit market and the expansion of the City eastwards.
Our Grade II Listed Building had been built in the 1780’s and was refurbished in the 1980’s with a new steel frame to hold it up. Notwithstanding the floors all sloped markedly and all of our furniture had to have wedges made. A small internal courtyard of about 3 square yards had been glazed over to form what we thought was one of the earliest atria in London. Shortly after we bought, a client told us that their family had run a dairy – Samuel Stores there, keeping a cow in the yard.
We held fortnightly board meetings starting at 6 p.m. and as we left, usually at about 8, the fruit trucks from the continent would be arriving and with them, the prostitutes standing on the corners, to “service” them.
Great article. This link goes to a documentary made by Georgia Brown and including Lionel Bart in the late 60’s and captures the East End as it then was, focussing in her formative years where she grew up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7uW7koB7pw