At Hiller Bros
Ten years have passed since I made my one and only visit to Hiller Bros, the last barrow-makers in the East End, prior to demolition. Now a new building stands there and no trace remains of the workshop that I documented in these photographs.
For years, I longed to visit Hiller Brothers, the last barrow workshop in the East End, at 64 Squirries St, Bethnal Green, but – until yesterday – I had to content myself with peering through a tiny glass panel in the metal shutter each time I passed to wonder at the piles of old wooden barrows within.
The last of the Hiller Brothers, Bob, left here in 1991 when the workshop was let to tenants who carried on the work of repairing and maintaining barrows. Then, earlier this year, Bob Hiller died and now the building has been sold for demolition and redevelopment. Within a matter of weeks the workshop must be cleared out, which means that I was able to pay a visit at last to view the barrows for sale.
Hiller Brothers began manufacturing and hiring barrows in the eighteen-sixties at 67 James St on the other side of Bethnal Green, moving to these premises in 1942 which they bought from Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists who opened it as their East End office in 1933.
The history of Hiller Brothers is all there to be read in the addresses carved onto the side of the barrows in elegant italic letters. From outside on the street, all that is visible is a non-descript rendered house with a battered door and two squat windows, and a tall metal shutter screening off the adjoining yard. Once you go inside and step down into the workshop, you realise it is a nineteenth century building. From the workshop, a side door leads into the cobbled yard which was once a cowshed, now piled high with dozens of costermongers’ barrows and beyond lies a pile of hundreds of steel-rimmed handmade wooden wheels, each with lettering incised into them.
It is an overwhelming vision, the graveyard of lost barrows in last days of the last barrow-maker in the East End.
Hiller Brothers as it once was
Sad to see the slow demise of the ‘old ways.’ Trade skills lost forever; use it for a day, then throw it away.
Top notch GA. Thank you.
What a crying shame, how nice the old barrows were.
Sadly another bit of history and works of art gone.
Hopefully any that were sold on will be resurrected to life again by there new owners.
Great photos, although sad.
Thank you
Probably the most important invention of mankind — the many wheels should definitely be made available to the relevant exhibitions and transport museums around the world!
Love & Peace
ACHIM
“The past is a foreign country” ……… I hope a few of these barrows were saved and properly restored to remind us of how things were.
As ever, you have introduced me to a long-past world. And thanks to these evocative photos, I can see a cacophony of wonderful debris, I can examine the inscribed letters, I can sense how NECESSARY these wagons were, I can stand in the scattered aisles and imagine the industrious work taking place, I can hear echoes of sawing, drilling, voices.
Take another look at the photo with the old sink. Amidst all of the supplies, tools, tarps, and debris………evidence of humanity. A cup hangs within reach on the wall, a plug-in coffee pot awaits, the mirror tilts forward from above waiting to capture a glance, a grimace, a grin.
Thank you, GA! In today’s world, I am so grateful for the time travel you provide. And the
optimism.
I accept that ‘things move on’ but also feel sad that rich pieces of history are also slowly disappearing. I well remember the road at the back of our flats where a man with a barrow was selling fruit (not much so soon after the war) and vegetables, and once sharing a pomegranate with a school friend which seemed so exotic, albeit a strange fruit to us who’d never seen or eaten one before. And btw, still in touch with that same school friend who I met on our first day at Infant School in 1954 – not bad going eh! I remember another barrow selling fruit & veg on one of the side streets leading off the King’s Road.