Antony Cairns’ Small Shops
Meet me next Sunday on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral and we will spend the afternoon walking eastward together through the square mile to explore the wonders and the wickedness of the ancient City of London.
Click here to book for my next City of London walk on Sunday 4th June
Today I present Antony Cairns’ ethereal portfolio of small shops, created using nineteenth century Vandyke Brown process, and evoking those commercial premises which exist as receptacles of collective memory for the communities they served.
The first picture is of The Handy Shop, Tony’s first local shop when growing up in Plaistow, and the last picture is W.F.Arber & Co Ltd in Roman Rd, of which my friend Gary Arber was the proprietor.
The Handy Shop, Ruskin Ave, E12
M.J. Evans, Warren St, W1
Unknown shop, Mile End, E1
Unknown shop, Bonsor St, SE5
Unknown shops, unknown street
Unknown shop, Copenhagen St N.1
Unknown shops, Morning Lane, E8
Unknown shop, Oswin St, SE11
Unknown shops, Hackney Rd, E2
Fishmonger, Commercial Rd, E1
Unknown shop, St Pancras Way, NW5
Printworks, Blackfriars Rd, SE1
Gari’s, Northwold Rd, N16
George Harvey, Bougourd Chemist & Droys, Rochester Row, SW1
Gricks Jellied Eels, Rosebery Ave, Manor Park, E12
Arber & Co Ltd, 459 Roman Rd, E3
Photographs copyright © Antony Cairns
You may also like to take a look at
and these other photographs of shops
Great to see Evans in Warren St – it had great blue tiles on the exterior. It was a Welsh family run dairy and I shopped there regularly.
What a sad repertoire, however ‘Printworks, Blackfriars Rd, SE1’ would not have been a printworks, but the office of the then NATSOPA trade union [National Society of Operative Printers and Assistants]