A Couple Of Pints With Tony Hall
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Libby Hall remembered the first time she visited a pub with Tony Hall in the nineteen sixties – because it signalled the beginning of their relationship which lasted until his death in 2008. “We’d been working together at a printer in Cowcross St, Clerkenwell, but our romance began in the pub on the night I was leaving,” Libby confided to me, “It was my going-away drinks and I put my arms around Tony in the pub.”
During the late sixties, Tony Hall worked as a newspaper artist in Fleet St for The Evening News and then for The Sun, using his spare time to draw weekly cartoons for The Labour Herald. Yet although he did not see himself as a photographer, Tony took over a thousand photographs that survive as a distinctive testament to his personal vision of life in the East End.
Shift work on Fleet St gave Tony free time in the afternoon that he spent in the pub which was when these photographs, published here for the first time, were taken. “Tony loved East End pubs,” Libby recalled fondly, “He loved the atmosphere. He loved the relationships with the regular customers. If a regular didn’t turn up one night, someone would go round to see if they were alright.”
Tony Hall’s pub pictures record a lost world of the public house as the centre of the community in the nineteen sixties. “On Christmas 1967, I was working as a photographer at the Morning Star and on Christmas Eve I bought an oven-ready turkey at Smithfield Market.” Libby remembered, “After work, Tony and I went into the Metropolitan Tavern, and my turkey was stolen – but before I knew it there had been a whip round and a bigger and better one arrived!”
The former “Laurel Tree” on Brick Lane
Photographs copyright © Estate of Libby Hall
Images Courtesy of the Tony Hall Archive at the Bishopsgate Institute
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The sort of photos that make me remember blokes I knew .
Photos that recall better and friendlier times that we all experienced. And they remind me of something else: I haven’t been to my favourite pub for a GUINNESS for a long time…! 🙂
Love & Peace
ACHIM
Glorious art.
The “Swinging Sixties” writ large.
Breathtakingly beautiful images.
I cry inside with sadness/happiness.
These works summon up something strange in me. I can’t describe. Thank you.
Wednesday for the cup and blurry calender in the pub denote 1968. Could be Pinza, won the Derby, 1953?
All the telling details ! — they pull us into the scene, and we are PART of this tableau, this welcoming culture of friends, this warm encircling environment. No I did not grow up with a pub, or anything similar — but these photos have inoculated me with the feeling of such places. And
people.
As a kid, I often went along to working-class blue-collar saloons, after baseball games where Dad was the Umpire. The scruffy bars, with scattered tables, bar stools, neon signs, jukeboxes, and
joyous uproars were the perfect darkened “cave” following a day of sunshine and sport. A glorious way to experience a classic summer day in small Western Pennsylvania towns on the banks of the Allegheny River. Beers flowed easily (Iron City, preferred) and shots followed.
The picture of ‘The Laurel Tree’ has posters of a boxing event that took place in October 1970.
Peter Cragg featured on these pages once before in the photo portraits of former boxers.
The poster outside ‘The Laurel Tree’ features his fight in October 1970.
Great photos! Lovely looking people as well. I have gotten to know a few of the ‘day drinkers’ at my local. I go there for a take away coffee, which the amazing bar lady prepares with real style and a smile to match. Worthy folks all. The Queenslander; Mary St., Gympie, Ostrallia.