David Hoffman In Cheshire St Market
Cover price is £35 but you can buy it from Spitalfields Life for £30
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The Gentle Author will be giving an illustrated lecture, showing David Hoffman’s photos and telling the stories behind them on Thursday 7th November 7:30pm at Wanstead Tap, 352 Winchelsea Rd, E7 0AQ
“I was born in the East End, but my upwardly-mobile parents moved away to the green fields of Berkshire and then back to the safe suburbs of South London. By the time I drifted back to Whitechapel as a young man in 1970, I found myself in a world I had never imagined.
I encountered bomb sites still rubble-strewn from the war, smashed windows, empty shops, rubbish-scattered streets and many lost, desperate people wandering aimlessly, often clutching a bottle of cheap cider or meths. Then I was broke, unemployed and clueless, and it was scary to imagine a future amidst this dereliction.
I found a room in a damp, rickety slum in Chicksand St and began to explore, soon discovering the Sunday market in Cheshire St where I picked up a warm coat and a blanket for next to nothing. The market was surreal, with people sitting on the kerb hoping to sell a couple of old shoes and a broken razor. Other stalls were stacked with the debris of house clearance – carpets, furniture, pictures, kitchenware and books – whole lives condensed and piled up for sale.
Yet I found the market inspiring. Unregulated and chaotic, the unifying emotion was of hope bubbling through desperation. Even at the very lowest end of poverty, these people thronging the streets had got up early, pulled together a carrier bag of junk and headed off, sustained by the possibility of seeking a few pounds to get them through the next day or two. No matter how badly things had turned out, they were not giving up. It was this hope-filled resilience that buoyed me up and showed me a way forward.”
David Hoffman
Photographs copyright © David Hoffman
This is a fantastic site with such great content. Please keep up the great work. Thank you.
In my formative years I lived on Patmore Estate, Wandsworth Road one end, Battersea dogs Home and Battersea Power Station the other. The surrounds were Nine Elms, Vauxhall, Kennington, Elephant and Castle, Walworth, Camberwell, Brixton, Streatham, Tooting Bec, Wandsworth and all things central ‘Battersea’ contained within Battersea Park and Clapham Common.
Surrounded most times with bomb-sites, the other most memorable were the street markets one stumbled across here, there and everywhere. Yuppification has deemed many to disappear or be absorbed moved under cover.
Some famous ones of course still spring to mind but it’s the likes of Brick Lane which many may not realise is a collective name for a number of London markets centred on Brick Lane, Cheshire St Market being one of them.
There was no tools such Google Search and Wikipedia [to mention but two] we could reach for to learn of this detail relying on ‘word-of-mouth’ and a ‘listening ear’ to be informed.
What makes these blogs so special is that wonderful mix of descriptive written word backed with amazing photographs of the times; 279 words 1,569 characters backed with 29,000 words in photographic form.
The irony this is all gone .
Sadly, also nearly everyone I knew well .
This leaves an inert loneliness .
The one place left for me to go is a place in Stepney Green .
I remember the market and fly pitchers round there very well, and bought some great stuff ( largely interesting junk! ) over the years. A truly excellent way to spend a Sunday morning . Always got my Dr Martens boots from Blackmans down there too.
I was agreeably surprised that it lasted into the 2000s in more or less the same form, of course there was the inevitable disappointment the last time I visited, after a bit of a gap, to find it’d disappeared without trace, the buildings tarted up and everything “respectable”
The working class selling their pitiful belongings to keep their heads above water. Although places like these were quiet life affirming with not a hint of self pity. Everybody smoking and laughing. Jumble sales I particularly relished as a quality jacket could be found cheaply, probably put in by the wife of a recently deceased gent. Happy days. Great pics, ta.
The more I look at the photographs of the wonderful David Hoffman, the more I realize how much he has captured the human drama of existence in all its facets. I admire his work!
It’s wonderful that his work is now documented in a great book.
Love & Peace
ACHIM
I’m really humbled by the fact people were determined not to give up. Back in 1970 there wasn’t the welfare system that exists now, so people had to budget and find ways of managing. My dad lost his job when the mine he worked in closed, it was Victorian, waterlogged as it was under the sea and very dangerous. He was entitled to claim unemployment benefit for himself and a small supplement for me (I was 9 in 1970). However there was no assistance with things like rent so my mum had to get a part time job cleaning a local school to cover this as my dad was unemployed for 9 months and by then in his 50s. I was entitled to free school meals but my parents were horrified by this, if you couldn’t feed your children however bad your circumstances were it was like being a failure. They grew up in big families with the means test and no NHS treatment and as young adults had to serve their country during WW2.
Whilst I realise and accept a lot of families are struggling, they have a much better safety net now than ever and I sometimes wonder what they would make of generations like my late parents and how they coped.
I remember it much like this. Coming down to London and Whitechapel in the early 70s. Fascinating and a little shocking.