How Raymond’s Shop became Leila’s Shop

The top photograph of 15 Calvert Avenue is believed to have been taken one Sunday in 1902 around the time Prince Edward and Princess Alexandra came to open the Boundary Estate, and I snapped the lower photograph last December, more than a century later. One day, Joan Rose visited Leila’s Cafe next door at 17 Calvert Avenue and brought out the old photograph (which she always carries in her purse) to show Leila McAlister, explaining that the little boy standing in the doorway was her father. A copy now hangs proudly in Leila’s Shop, and served as the inspiration for our escapade last year when a class from Virginia Rd School in Arnold Circus turned out to assist and we stopped the traffic to take the new picture.

Joan (unmarried name Raymond) told me that her father Alfred was born in 1896 and is approximately six years old in the picture. The woman beside him in the doorway is Phoebe Raymond his mother, Joan’s grandmother, and the man on the left is his father, Joan’s grandfather Albert Alfred Raymond (known as Alf), the first proprietor of the newly built shop. They all lived in the flat up above and you can see their songbird in the cage, a cock linnet.

Phoebe has her smart apron with frills and everyone is wearing their Sunday best – remarkably for the time, everyone has good quality boots. I like the sacks with “Spitalfields” printed on them, indicating produce from the fruit and vegetable market half a mile away, and the porters’ baskets which Leila still uses today. You can see the awning has been taken up to permit enough light for the photograph and then it has rained. We had the same problem with the weather, but were blessed with a few hours between a sleet shower and a blizzard to snatch our picture.

Joan Rose told me she believes her family are of French Huguenot origin and the original surname was Raymond de Foir, which means the people you see in the old photograph are probably descended from the Huguenot immigrants that came here in the eighteenth century. What touched me most was to learn from Joan that Alfred her father (pictured here eternally six years old in his Sunday best on the threshold of his father’s shop), went off to fight in the First World War and, aged twenty-two, was there at the battle of the Somme when so many died, but returned to run the shop in Calvert Avenue carrying on his father’s business in the same premises until his death in 1966. Joan grew up here and attended both Virginia Rd School and Rochelle School on either side of Arnold Circus. Although she now lives in West London, she remains involved with her old neighbourhood today as Honorary Patron of the Friends of Arnold Circus and cut the cake on the day of the celebration of the centenary of the bandstand.

I am very grateful to Leila McAlister and to Robert Bradshaw, manager of Leila’s Shop (pictured on the left of the new photograph in the same spot as his predecessor a century ago), for kindly organising the picture last Winter and also to the school pupils for participating with such enthusiasm (their teacher stands in the shop doorway). Leila and Robert handed out chocolate brownies and tangerines on the pavement after the photograph was taken and a spontaneous Christmas party ensued, demonstrating that the exuberant energy of children remains a constant across the span of history defined by these two pictures.

You may like to read these other stories about Joan Rose:

Joan Rose at Leila’s Shop

Joan Rose at Gardner’s Market Sundriesmen

Joan Rose at Arnold Circus

Alf & Phoebe Raymond, Joan’s grandparents outside their shop in 1900.

Joan Rose presides over the cutting of  the cake at the celebration of the centenary of the Arnold Circus bandstand last Summer.