Malcolm Tremain’s Spitalfields
Jonathan Pryce will read my short story ‘On Christmas Day’ at the launch at Burley Fisher Books in Haggerston tonight Thursday 23rd November at 6:30pm.
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In 1981, when Malcolm Tremain was working as a Telephone Engineer in Moorgate, he bought an Olympus 0M1 and set out to explore his fascination with Spitalfields.
‘I used to come over and wander round whenever I felt like it,’ he admitted to me, ‘I never thought I was making a record, I just wanted to take interesting photographs.’ Malcolm’s pictures of Spitalfields in the early eighties capture a curious moment of stasis and neglect before the neighbourhood changed forever.
Passage from Allen Gardens to Brick Lane – ‘I asked this boy if I could take his picture and he said, ‘yes.’ When I looked at the photograph afterwards, I realised he had one buckle missing from his shoe.’
Spital Sq, entrance to former Central Foundation School now Galvin Restaurant
In Spital Sq
In Brune St
In Toynbee St
Corner of Grey Eagle St & Quaker St
In Quaker St
Off Quaker St
Outside Brick Lane Mosque – ‘People dumped stuff everywhere in those days’
In Puma Court
Corner of Wilkes St & Princelet St
In Wilkes St
Outside the Jewish Soup Kitchen in Brune St
Outside the night shelter in Crispin St – ‘He was shuffling his feet, completely out of it’
In Crispin St
In Bell Lane
In Parliament Court
In Artillery Passage
In Artillery Passage
In Middlesex St – ‘note the squint letter ‘N’ in ‘salvation”
In Bishopsgate
In Bishopsgate
Petticoat Lane Market
In Wentworth St
In Wentworth St
In Wentworth St
In Wentworth St
In Wentworth St
In Fort St
In Allen Gardens
In Pedley St
In Pedley St
In Pedley St – ‘Good horse manure available – Help yourself – No charge’
At Pedley St Bridge
In Sun St Passage at the back of Liverpool St – ‘Note spelling ‘NATOINE FORANT”
In Sun St Passage
Photographs copyright © Malcolm Tremain
You may also like to take a look at
David Hoffman at Fieldgate Mansions
Philip Marriage’s Spitalfields
It is significant that social history is recorded by those who, probably, at the time, didn’t realise how important their photographs would become. They capture real people and places, as they actually were. My Dad worked all around the East End in the 1950s and 60s. He told me so many different stories of people, places and events that stuck in his mind. He loved to talk to people and was saddened how a tragedy could push somebody into the death spiral of alcoholism, homelessness and despair. Poverty was everywhere and even we “just got by”. Famously, one year, we only received Christmas presents because Dad won a few quid on the football pools.
I started going back to places he and Mum knew about twenty years ago. My dad couldn’t believe how much the area had changed since he worked there, especially when I showed him photos of Spitalfields Market. “Well I never!” He would say. I suppose for him, it was unthinkable that the area would ever become gentrified.
Thank you Malcolm and the GA for showcasing these important photographs.
It saddens me to see how much dereliction there was back then, yet we think of the 80s as modern.