CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION

Playground shelter with mosaic by Hackney Mosaic Project

‘Please help the Hackney Mosaic Project retain a work space in Hackney Downs. We have been there for over twelve years and have become rooted in the local community. We recruit volunteers from the local area and create mosaics for local estates as well as making the much loved portraits of local dogs.

The Council now want to turn the building into a large cafe with a small community space for hire by the hour which we have been told is not suitable for our Project. Plans were presented for a Public Consultation earlier this year and there was overwhelming support to keep the Mosaic Project in the building along with a smaller cafe.

Nonetheless less we understand that the Council are persisting with the original plan and have not suggested any alternative home for the Mosaic Project.

The Council still need to get planning permission for the change of use and we want to be able to present this petition to demonstrate the wide support we have. If you would like to help us continuing to help vulnerable and isolated adults as well as embellishing Hackney with widely admired art works please sign our petition.’ 

TESSA HUNKIN

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION

The mosaic artists

Click here to buy a copy of Tessa Hunkin’s Hackney Mosaic Project

Click here to book

Today we preview the annual Pearly Kings & Queens’ Harvest Festival, gathering in Guildhall Yard this Sunday 20th September at 1:30pm followed by a service at St Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside

On the last Sunday afternoon in September, the Pearly Kings & Queens come together from every borough of  London and gather in the square outside the Guildhall in the City of London for a lively celebration to mark the changing of the seasons.

On my visit, there was Maypole dancing and Morris Dancing, there was a pipe band and a marching band, there were mayors and dignitaries in red robes and gold chains, there were people from Rochester in Dickensian costume, there were donkeys with carts and veteran cars, and there was even an old hobby horse leaping around –  yet all these idiosyncratic elements successfully blended to create an event with its own strange poetry. In fact, the participants outnumbered the audience and a curiously small town atmosphere prevailed, allowing the proud Pearlies to mingle with their fans, and enjoy an afternoon of high-spirited chit-chat and getting their pictures snapped.

I delighted in the multiplicity of designs that the Pearlies had contrived for their outfits, each creating their own identity expressed through ingenious patterns of pearl buttons, and on this bright afternoon of early autumn they made a fine spectacle, sparkling in the last rays of September sunshine. My host was the admirable Doreen Golding, Pearly Queen of the Old Kent Rd & Bow Bells, who spent the whole year organising the event. And I was especially impressed with her persuasive abilities in cajoled all the mayors into a spot of maypole dancing, because it was a heartening sight to see a team of these dignified senior gentlemen in their regalia prancing around like eleven year olds and enjoying it quite unselfconsciously too.

In the melee, I had the pleasure to grapple with George Major, the Pearly King of Peckham (crowned in 1958), and his grandson Daniel, the Pearly Prince, sporting an exceptionally pearly hat that is a century old. George is an irrepressibly flamboyant character who taught me the Cockney salute, and then took the opportunity of his celebrity to steal cheeky kisses from ladies in the crowd, causing more than a few shrieks and blushes. As the oldest surviving member of one of the only three surviving original pearly families, he enjoys the swaggering distinction of being the senior Pearly in London, taking it as licence to behave like a mischievous schoolboy. Nearby I met Matthew (Daniels’s father) – a Pearly by marriage not birth, he revealed apologetically – who confessed he sewed the six thousand buttons on George’s jacket while watching Match of the Day.

Fortunately, the Lambeth Walk had been enacted all round the Guildhall Yard and all the photo opportunities were exhausted before the gentle rain set in. And by then it was time to form a parade to process down the road to St Mary-le-Bow for the annual Harvest Festival. A distinguished man in a red tail coat with an umbrella led the procession through the drizzle, followed by a pipe band setting an auspicious tone for the impressive spectacle of the Pearlies en masse, some in veteran cars and others leading donkeys pulling carts with their offerings for the Harvest Festival. St Mary-le-Bow is a church of special significance for Pearlies because it is the home of the famous Bow Bells that called Dick Whittington back to London from Highgate Hill, and you need to be born within earshot of these to call yourself a true Cockney.

The black and white chequerboard marble floor of the church was the perfect complement to the pearly suits, now that they were massed together in delirious effect. Everyone was happy to huddle in the warmth and dry out, and there were so many people crammed together in the church in such an array of colourful and bizarre costumes of diverse styles, that as one of the few people not in some form of fancy dress, I felt I was the odd one out. But we were as one, singing “All Things Bring and Beautiful” together. Prayers were said, speeches were given and the priest reminded us of the Pearlies’ origins among the costermongers in the poverty of nineteenth century London. We stood in reverent silence for the sake of history and then a Pearly cap was passed around in aid of the Whitechapel Mission.

Coming out of the church, there was a chill in the air. The day that began with Summery sunshine was closing with Autumnal rain. Pearlies scattered down Cheapside and through the empty City streets for another year, back to their respective corners of London. Satisfied that they had celebrated summer’s harvest, the Pearlies were going home to light fires, cook hot dinners and turn their minds towards the wintry delights of the coming season, including sewing yet more pearl buttons on their suits during Match of the Day.

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The Bow Bells

It was my pleasure to cycle down to the Cinema Museum in Lambeth recently and meet one of the founders, Martin Humphries, to write a feature for The World of Interiors about the campaign to buy the former workhouse where Charlie Chaplin was confined as a child.

Click here to read my feature about the Cinema Museum at The World of Interiors

Click here to support the campaign to save the Cinema Museum

The Cinema Museum is contained in the former Lambeth Workhouse where Charlie Chaplin was confined as a child

Cinema Museum, 2 Dugard Way, Renfrew Rd, London SE11.

Only two more Whitechapel tours remaining on Sunday 20th September and Sunday 18th October. Tours include tea and freshly baked apple strudel at the Whitechapel Gallery. Click here to book

I was passing Abbott & Holder, picture dealers in Museum St, on Thursday when I spied this splendid set of Thomas Rowlandson’s Cries of London from 1799 for sale in the window and – as I stood gazing – Tom Edwards, the proprietor, came out to say ‘hello’. For more than fifteen years I have been publishing sets of Cries of London in these pages but I had never seen this one before, so Tom agreed to let me show them to you here. With Rowlandson there is always more going on than first meets the eye and careful study of the background often reveals a wry commentary.

‘Buy a Trap, a Rat Trap, Buy My Trap’

‘Hot Cross Bunns, Two A Penny Bunns’

‘Do you want any Brick Dust?’

Brick dust was used for polishing pewter

‘All a growing, a growing, here’s Flowers for you’

‘Last dying speech and Confession’

‘Water Cress, come by my Water Cress’

The female water cress sellers from Shoreditch were celebrated fir their independence of spirit.

‘Old Cloaths any old Cloaths’

Old clothes men wearing multiple hats were first drawn my Marcellus Laroon in 1687  and persisted within living memory in London.

‘Buy my Goose, my fat Goose’

Images reproduced courtesy of Abbott & Holder

Click here to buy a signed copy of the CRIES OF LONDON

Tickets available for The Gentle Author’s Tour of Spitalfields this Saturday 12th September. Click here to book

Gun St, Spitalfields

John Allin (1934-1991) took to painting while serving a six month prison sentence for receiving some stolen shirts and achieved considerable success in the sixties and seventies with his vivid intricate pictures recalling the East End of his childhood. There is a dreamlike quality to these visions in sharp focus of an emotionalised cityscape, created at a time when the Jewish people were leaving to seek better housing in the suburbs and their culture was fading from those streets which had once been its home.

Returning from National Service in the Merchant Navy, Allin worked in the parks department planting trees, later as a swimming pool attendant and then as a long distance lorry driver – all before his conviction and imprisonment. After discovering his artistic talent, he devoted himself to painting and won attention with his first exhibition in 1969 at the Portal Gallery, specialising in primitive and outsider art. In 1974, he collaborated with Arnold Wesker on a book of reminiscence, “Say Goodbye: You may never see them again” in which he reveals an equivocation about the East End. “I saw it as a place where people lived, earned their living, grew up, moved on … they had dignity … I like painting the past with dignity…” he said in an interview with Wesker, “but what they’ve done to the East End is diabolical! They’ve scuppered it, built and built and torn down and torn out and took lots of identity away and made it into just a concrete nothing… But people go on, don’t they? Eating their eels and giving their custom where they’ve always given their custom … Funny how people can go on and take anything and everything.”

Like Joe Orton in the theatre, Allin’s reputation as an ex-con fuelled his reputation in newspapers and on television but he found there was a price to pay, as he revealed to Wesker, “You know how I started painting don’t you? In prison! Well, when I come out the kids at school give my kid a rough time … the silly bloody journalists didn’t help. ‘Jail-bird becomes painter!’ You’d’ve thought I’d done God knows what … I mean the neighbours used to say things like ‘Look at ‘im! Jail-bird and he’s on telly! Ought to be sent back inside the nick!’ I was the oddity in the district, the lazy fat bastard that paints. Give me a half a chance and I’d move mate.” In fact, Allin joined Gerry Cottle’s Circus, touring as a handyman to create another book, “John Allin’s Circus Life” in 1982.

Although he was the first British recipient of the international Prix Suisse de Peinture Naive award in 1979, the categorisation of Outsider or Primitive artist is no longer adequate to apply to John Allin. More than twenty years after his death, his charismatic paintings deserve to be recognised as sophisticated works which communicate an entire social world through an unapologetically personal and emotionally charged visual vocabulary.

Spitalfields Market, Brushfield St.

Great Synagogue, Brick Lane.

Jewish Soup Kitchen, Brune St.

Christ Church School, Brick Lane.

Heneage St and Brick Lane.

Rothschild Dwellings, Spitalfields.

Whitechapel Rd.

Christ Church Park, Commmercial St.

Wentworth St.

Fashion St with gramophone man in the foreground..

Churchill Walk.

Young Communist League rally, corner of Brick Lane and Old Montague St.

Hessel St.

Snow Scene.

Anti-Fascist Rally at Gardiners’ Corner, 1936.

Cole’s Chicken Shop, Cobb St.

Factory Workers

Paintings copyright © Estate of John Allin

Tickets are available for my tour of Whitechapel this Sunday and for Spitalfields on Saturday 12th September. Click here to book for The Gentle Author’s Tours

They say it is the oldest road in Britain, maybe the oldest in Europe. Starting from the highest navigable point of the Thames in prehistoric times, the Ridgeway follows the hilltops to arrive at Salisbury Plain where once wild cattle and horses roamed. When the valleys were forested and impenetrable, the Ridgeway offered a natural route over the downland and into the heart of this island. Centuries of cattle driving wore a trackway that curved across the hillside, traversing the contours of the landscape and unravelling like a ribbon towards the horizon.

Over thousands of years, the Ridgeway became a trading route extending from coast to coast, as far as Lyme Regis in the west and the Wash in the east, with fortresses and monuments along the way. Yet once the valleys became accessible it was defunct, replaced by the Icknield Way – a lower level path that skirted the foot of the hills – and there are burial mounds which traverse the Ridgeway dated to 2000BC, indicating that the highway was no longer in use by then.

In fact, this obsolescence preserved the Ridgeway because it was never incorporated into the modern road network and remains a green path to this day where anyone can set out and walk in the footsteps of our earliest predecessors in this land.

A few years have passed since my last excursion along the Ridgeway. Leaving Spitalfields early and taking the hour’s rail journey to Goring & Streatley from Paddington, I was ascending the hill from the river by eleven and onto the upland by midday. In this section, the flinty path of the Ridgeway is bordered with deep hedges of hawthorn, blackthorn and hazel, giving way to the open downland rich with the pink and blue flowers of late summer, knapweed, scabious and harebells.

A quarter of a century had passed since I first passed this way and yet nothing had changed up there. It is the same huge sky and expansive grassy plain undulating into the distance with barely a building in sight. This landscape dwarfs the human figure, inducing a sense of exhilaration at the dramatic effects of light and cloud, sending patterns travelling fast across the vast grassy wind-blown hills. When I first began to write and London grew claustrophobic, I often undertook this walk through the different seasons of the year. I discovered that the sheer exertion of walking all day, buffeted upon the hilltops and sometimes marching doggedly through driving rain, never failed to clear my mind.

As a consequence, the shape of the journey is graven into memory even though, returning eighteen years since my last visit, the landscape was greater than I had fashioned it in recollection. And this is the quality that fascinates me about such epic terrain, which the mind cannot satisfactorily contain and thus each return offers a renewed acquaintance of wonder at the scale and majesty of the natural world.

In those days, I was in thrall to endurance walking and I would continue until I could go no further, either because of exhaustion or nightfall. This vast elevated downland landscape encouraged such excessive behaviour, leading me on and on along the empty path to discover what lay over the brow and engendering a giddy sense of falling forward, walking through the sky – as if you might take flight. I walked until I thought I could walk no more and then I carried on walking until walking became automatic, like breathing. In this state my body was propelled forward of its own volition and my mind was free.

One day’s walk brings you to Uffington and the famous White Horse, carved into the chalk of the downland. Placed perfectly upon the crest of a ridge within a vast fold of the hills, this sparsely drawn Neolithic figure looks out across the arable farmland of Oxfordshire beyond and can be seen for great distances. A mystery now, a representation that may once have been a symbol for a people lost in time, it retains a primeval charisma, and there is such an intensity of delight to reach this figure at the end of a day’s walking. Breathless and weary of limbs, I stumbled over the hill to sit there alone upon the back of the hundred foot White Horse at dusk, before descending to the village of Bishopstone for the night. There, at Prebendal Farm, Jo Selbourne offers a generous welcome and, as well as the usual bed and breakfast, will show you the exquisitely smoothed ceremonial Neolithic axe head found upon the farm.

The second day’s walk leads through the earthen ramparts of Liddington Hill and Barbary Castle, and on either side of the path the fields are punctuated by clumps of trees indicating the myriad ancient burial mounds scattered upon this bare Wiltshire scenery. It is a more expansive land than the fields of Berkshire where I began my journey, here the interventions made in ancient times still hold their own and the evidence of the modernity is sparser. As I made the final descent from the hill towards Avebury, a village within a massive earthwork and stone circle which was the culmination of my journey, I could not resist the feeling that it was all there for me and I had earned it by walking along the old path which for thousands of years had brought people to arrive at this enigmatic location of pilgrimage.

In two days upon the hilltops I had only passed a dozen lone walkers, and now the crowds, the coach parties, the shops and the traffic were a startling sight to behold. And so I knew my journey had fulfilled its purpose – to reacquaint me freshly with the familiar world and restore a sense of proportion. My feet were sore and my face was flushed by the sun. In Berkshire, the ripe fields of corn were standing, in Oxfordshire, they were being harvested and, in Wiltshire, I saw the stubble being ploughed in. It had been a walk to arrive at the end of the summer. It had been a walk through time along the oldest road.

Goring Mill

“Join it at Streatley, the point where it crosses the Thames, at once it strikes you out and away from the habitable world in a splendid purposeful manner, running along the highest ridge of the downs.” Kenneth Grahame, 1898

A ninety-two year old man told me this year is the worst harvest he could remember. “It doesn’t want to come in the barn,” he lamented.

At East Illsley

“A broad green track runs for many a long mile across the downs, now following the ridges, now winding past at the foot of a grassy slope, then stretching away through cornfield and fallow.” Richard Jefferies, 1879

“A rough way, now wide, now narrow, among the hazel, brier and nettle. Sometimes there was an ash in the hedge and once a line of spindly elms followed it round in a curve.” Edward Thomas, 1910

On White Horse Hill

“The White Horse is, I believe, the earliest hill drawing we have in England. It is a piece of design, in another category from the other chalk figures, for it has the lineaments of a work of art. The horse, which is more of a dragon than a horse, is cut on the top of the down’s crest, so that it can only be seen completely from the air, or at a long view, from the surrounding country – but it was precisely this aspect of the Horse design that I found so significant.” Paul Nash, 1938

The Neolithic axe head found at Prebendal Farm, photo by Rob Selbourne.

At Bishopstone

At Barbary Castle

“The origin of the track goes back into the dimmest antiquity: there is evidence that it was a military road when the fierce Dane carried fire and slaughter inland, leaving his nailed bark in the creeks of the rivers, and before that when the Saxons pushed up from the sea. The eagles of old Rome were, perhaps, borne along it and yet earlier the chariots of the Britons may have used it – traces of all have been found: so that for fifteen centuries this track of primitive peoples has maintained its existence through the strange changes of the times, til now in the season the cumbrous steam ploughing engines jolt and strain and pant over the uneven turf.” Richard Jefferies, 1879

Since the man suspected of making crop circles died, his protege has adopted a different style of design.

At Avebury

At Avebury

Click here to book for The Gentle Author’s Tours

Today I publish a selection from Peta Bridle’s exhibition London Day by Day which opens tomorrow, September 3rd, at Southwark Cathedral and runs until 14th October. The show takes its title from Geoffrey Fletcher’s former weekly newspaper column as a tribute to the peripatetic artist who inspired Peta’s own travels with a sketchbook in the capital.

At Turnips, Borough Market

‘The beautiful and diverse mushroom varieties on display at Turnips, the greengrocers under the railway arches, resemble a vast edible work of art. At the heart of the Borough Market, where trains rumble overhead, Turnips are celebrated for their spectacular epic displays of pristine specimens of the best fruit and vegetables of the season.’

Southwark Cathedral Society of Bellringers

I was fortunate enough to be allowed to visit with my sketchbook to watch bell ringing practice at the cathedral. I discovered that the ancient tower has twelve bells and whilst the bells are being rung the walls shake ever so slightly.

View over Tower Bridge, Southwark

‘This is my elevated view over Tower Bridge from Butler’s Wharf, looking across the Thames to the City beyond. You can see pedestrians walk along the busy Thames path in Potters Field below and in the distance sits Norman Foster’s City Hall, strategically placed to face the Tower of London on the north bank, the former home of the Greater London Assembly and Mayor of London.’

Forgotten Streams, City of London

‘This beautiful bronze sculpture traces the path of the river Walbrook that once flowed from Shoreditch through the City of London. I enjoyed the contrast of ancient lost river in the foreground with the grand City buildings in the background, while in between the three workmen eat their lunches.

Looking East Over Spitalfields

‘Far below, a man leans against a bollard in Puma Court while, to the right, the rooftops of Fournier St meet Brick Lane Mosque and the former Warner Bell Foundry chimney beyond. At the end of Puma Court is Wilkes St with chimney stacks and weavers’ lofts, while to the left a lone figure walks down Princelet St towards Brick Lane. In the distance, Spitalfields’ old terraces meet the towers of Whitechapel.’

Rodney Archer’s Window Sill, Spitalfields

‘Celebrated aesthete Rodney Archer moved to Fournier St in 1984 and lived in his old beautiful house until his death in 2015. I visited his home only once, but I had the pleasure of meeting Rodney and drawing these plants on the window sill.’

St Andrew Undershaft, St Mary Axe

‘St Andrew’s was built in 1532 on the site of an earlier twelfth century church and its name refers to the tall maypole nearby. The church survived the Great Fire and the Blitz only to be hemmed in by huge towers today including the glittering bulk of the Gherkin which looms overhead, offering a powerful contrast of old and new, tightly packed together. The first historian of London, John Stow, is buried in the church and every three years a memorial service is held when a new quill placed in the hand of his figure upon his monument.’

Word On The Water, Regent’s Canal

‘This is a floating bookshop housed inside a twenties’ Dutch barge near Granary Sq at King’s Cross. New and used books are displayed for sale on shelves, both up on deck and below. Inside there are comfortable sofas where you can sit and read while viewing ducks swimming past at eye level. When I sat on the towpath to make this drawing, a trumpeter played jazz up on deck.’

Ragged School Museum, Mile End

‘This is the view from across the Regent’s Canal. The school was opened by Dr Barnardo in 1877 to provide education for children in Mile End and is now a museum, showing to visitors the reality of Victorian life for the poor. I took my son to visit and on the wall was a collection of photographs of pupils from the nineteenth century, one of whom was a young girl with Downs syndrome. My son has this condition and he thought it was a picture of him so I explained to him it was a little girl who lived a long time ago who had once attended the school.’

Coal Drops Yard, King’s Cross

‘Coal Drops Yard was once the goods yard storing coal arriving from the north by rail, but in 2018 the place was transformed with old buildings repurposed into shops and restaurants, new homes built within the gasometers and the warehouses converted into a home for Central St Martin’s College of Art. Regent’s Canal winds around the side of the yard, separating it from the station and the nature reserve to the west.’

Alexandra Palace Boating Lake

‘The boating lake at Alexandra Park in North London was created in the 1870s by damming a stream that ran down the western boundary of the park. Filled with novelty pedal boats, the lake was intended to evoke a Venetian carnival. It gained national media attention in 1992 when rumour spread of a massive, four-foot-long pike inhabiting the waters and allegedly swallowing ducks whole.’

Nelson Dry Dock, Rotherhithe

‘To reach Nelson Dry Dock involves walking through thick soft mud. Engineers Mills & Knight Ltd Ship Repairs is painted in bold red capital letters around the yellow wrought iron gate. The dock closed in 1968 and now sits within a hotel complex but you only get this view from the foreshore or the water when you are up to your ankles in mud.’

St Augustine’s Tower, Hackney

‘This is the oldest building Hackney, built by the Knights Templar in 1292. When you climb to the top of St Augustine’s Tower there are wonderful views across Hackney towards the City. Far below, I saw a bus turning on to Mare St which is always busy with shoppers and a beggar sheltering under the railway bridge.’

Hodge the Cathedral Cat, Southwark Cathedral

‘Here is the magnificent Hodge the Cat, mouser-in-chief and resident feline at the cathedral. He has lodged himself into the wicker basket intended for service sheets. Hodge was a stray, rescued from the streets of south-east London and taken to a cat sanctuary where he was adopted by the cathedral on December 6th, which is St. Nicholas’s day when traditionally gifts are exchanged. Southwark Cathedral is a welcoming place to visit and you might even catch a glimpse of a small black and white cat whilst there…’

Drawings copyright © Peta Bridle

Peta Bridle’s London Day By Day is at Southwark Cathedral, London Bridge, SE1 9DA, until 14th October

You may also like to take a look at

Peta Bridle’s Gravesend Sketchbook

Peta Bridle’s New Etchings

Peta Bridle’s Latest Drypoint Etchings

Peta Bridle River Etchings

Seventeen years ago this week, I began to publish a daily post in these pages. In this year’s annual report I have both good news and bad news, as you will read below. One concerns the fate of the Truman Brewery while the other is the announcement of Sarah Ainslie’s WOMEN AT WORK.

TRUMAN BREWERY

I regret to report that the Secretary of State has approved redevelopment of the Truman Brewery into a corporate plaza and data centre as the outcome of the Public Inquiry last autumn overseen by Government Inspector Paul Griffiths. I did not have a good feeling about this since he also oversaw the Public Inquiry into the Whitechapel Bell Foundry that decided in favour of a bell-themed boutique hotel. The pitiful disappointment is that Tower Hamlets Council created a Community Masterplan for the site to deliver 350 homes for local people as opposed to the Brewery proposal which includes only six social homes. This Masterplan could have been enforced by the Inspector but instead it was discounted. The Save Brick Lane campaign and Spitalfields Trust are now considering a legal challenge.

WOMEN AT WORK

Thanks to the support of you – the readers of Spitalfields Life – who contributed to our crowdfund in the spring, our plan to publish a handsome hardback monograph of Sarah Ainslie’s East End portraits WOMEN AT WORK has come to fruition.

Publication will be accompanied by an exhibition of Sarah’s portraits at Four Corners photography gallery in Bethnal Green, opening in November then touring through 2027 to two other venues in East London and the Alcove women’s library in Rhode Island.

You can help publication by preordering now and we will post you a copy signed by Sarah Ainslie at the beginning of November in advance of publication on 5th November. Additionally, we are including a complimentary copy of Journal of a Man Unknown (cover price £10) with all pre-orders in the United Kingdom.

CLICK HERE TO PRE-ORDER ‘WOMEN AT WORK’ AND GET A FREE COPY OF ‘JOURNAL OF A MAN UNKNOWN’

I cannot ignore the thought that the contradiction between these two pieces of news reflects the nature of our times. The Brewery decision reveals a government in thrall to big money and big tech in the quest for growth at any cost, despite the objections of more than 7000 people.

By contrast, Sarah Ainslie’s crowdfunded book celebrates the women whose work is often unrecognised, whether in factories, working from home or caring for the vulnerable – tradeswomen, community organisers, garment workers, faith leaders, artists, firefighters, shopkeepers, transport workers, cleaners and NHS staff, and all who sustain and bind together our communities with their warmth, labour and fellowship.

I am so proud to be the publisher of WOMEN AT WORK which speaks to this moment with defiant joy.

With such thoughts in mind, thus ends another year in the pages of Spitalfields Life.

I am your loyal servant

The Gentle Author

Spitalfields,

28th August 2026

CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR SIGNED COPY AND GET A FREE COPY OF ‘JOURNAL OF A MAN UNKNOWN’

We are including a complimentary copy of Gillian Tindall’s novel Journal of a Man Unknown with all preorders in the United Kingdom

Tickets available for The Gentle Author’s Tour Of Spitalfields this Saturday and for The Gentle Author’s Tour Of The City Of London on Bank Holiday Monday. Click here to book for all The Gentle Author’s tours.

Charles Pertwee of Baddeley Brothers, the longest established specialist printers and envelope makers in the City of London & the East End, lent me his copy of John Southward’s ‘Dictionary of Typography’ from 1875, which lists all the relevant terminology. Today, I have selected some of my favourite entries – as much for their arcane poetry as for the education of my readers.

ABRIDGEMENT – An epitome of a book, made by omitting the less important matter.

ADVERSARIA – Commonplace books: a miscellaneous collection of notes remarks and extracts.

APPRENTICE – An apprentice is a person described in law books as a species of servant, and so called from the French verb apprendre – to learn – because he is bound by indenture to serve a master for a certain term, receiving in return for his services instruction in his masters’s trade, profession or art.

BASTARD TITLE –  The short or condensed title preceding full title of the work.

BATTER – Any injury to the face of the type sufficient to prevent it showing clearly in printing.

BEARD OF A LETTER – The outer-angle of the square shoulder of the shank, which reaches almost to the face of the letter, and is commonly scraped off by the Founders, serving to leave a white square between the lower face of the type and the top part of any ascending letter which happen to come in the line following.

BIENVENUE – An obsolete term by which was meant formerly the fee paid on admittance to a ‘Chapel.’

BODKIN – A pointing steel instrument used in correcting, to pick wrong or imperfect letters out of a page.

BOTCHED – Carelessly or badly-done work.

BOTTLE-ARSED – Type that is wider at the bottom than the top.

BOTTLE-NECKED – Type that is thicker at the top than the bottom.

CANDLESTICK – In former times, when Compositors worked at night by the light of candles, they used a candlestick loaded at the base to keep it steady. A few offices use candlesticks at the present day.

CASSIE-PAPER – Imperfect paper, the outside quires of a ream.

CHAFF – Too frequently heard in the printing office, when one Compositor teases another, as regards his work, habits, disposition etc

CHOKED – Type filled up with dirt.

COVENTRY – When a workman does not conform to the rules of the ‘Chapel,’ he is sent to Coventry. That is, on no consideration, is any person allowed to speak with him, apart from business matters, until he pays his dues.

DEAD HORSE – When a Compositor has drawn more money on account than he has actually earned, he is said to be ‘horsing it’ and until he has done enough work in the next week to cover the amount withdrawn, he is said to be working a ‘dead horse.’

DEVIL – is the term applied to the printer’s boy who does the drudgery work of a print office.

DONKEY – Compositors were at one period thus styled by Pressmen in retaliation for being called pigs by them.

EIGHTEENMO – A sheet of paper folded into eighteen leaves, making thirty-six pages.

FAT-FACE LETTER – Letter with a broad face and thick stem.

FLOOR PIE – Type that has been dropped upon the floor during the operations of composition or distribution.

FLY – The man or boy who takes off the sheet from the tympan as the Pressman turns it up.

FORTY-EIGHTMO – A sheet of paper folded into forty-eight leaves or ninety-six pages.

FUDGE – To execute work without the proper materials, or finish it in a bungling or unworkmanlike manner.

GOOD COLOUR – When a sheet is printed neither too dark or too light.

GULL – To tear the point holes in a sheet of paper while printing.

HELL – The place where the broken and battered type goes to.

JERRY – A peculiar noise rendered by Compositors and Pressmen when one of their companions renders themselves ridiculous in any way.

LAYING-ON-BOY – The boy who feeds the sheets into the machine.

LEAN-FACE – A letter of slender proportions, compared with its height.

LIGHT-FACES – Varieties of face in which the lines are unusually thin.

LUG – When the roller adheres closely to the inking table and the type, through its being green and soft, it is said to ‘lug.’

MACKLE – An imperfection in the printed sheets, part of the impression appears double.

MONK – A botch of ink on a printed sheet, arising from insufficient distribution of the ink over the rollers.

MULLER – A sort of pestle, used for spreading ink on the ink table.

NEWS-HOUSE – A printing office in which newspapers only are printed. This term is used to distinguish from book and job houses.

OCTAVO – A sheet of paper folded so as to make eight leaves or sixteen pages.

ON ITS FEET – When a letter stands perfectly upright, it is said to be ‘on its feet.’

PEEL – A wooden instrument shaped like a letter ‘T’ used for hanging up sheets on the poles.

PENNY-A-LINER – A reporter for the Press who is not engaged on the staff, but sends in his matter upon approbation.

PIE – A mass of letters disarranged and in confusion.

PIG – A Pressman was formerly called so by Compositors.

PIGEON HOLES – Unusually wide spaces between words, caused by the carelessness or want of taste of the workman.

PRESS GOES EASY – When the run of the press is light and the pull is easy.

QUIRE – A quire of paper for all usual purposes consists of twenty-four sheets.

RAT-HOUSE – A printing office where the rules of the printers’ trade unions are not conformed to.

SCORPERS – Instruments used by Engravers to clear away the larger portions of wood not drawn upon.

SHEEP’S FOOT – An iron hammer with a claw end, used by Pressmen.

‘SHIP – A colloquial abbreviation of companionship.

SHOE – An old slipper is hung at the end of the frame so that the Compositor, when he comes across a broken or battered letter, may put it there.

SLUG – An American name for what we call a ‘clump.’

SQUABBLE – Lines of matter twisted out of their proper positions with letters running into wrong lines etc.

STIGMATYPY –  Printing with points, the arrangement of points of various thicknesses to create a picture.

WAYZGOOSE – An annual festivity celebrated in most large offices.

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William Caslon, Letter Founder

At the Caslon Foundry

Magnificent strudel kindly baked with the sweet new Rosette apples of the season by Head Chef, Farokh Talati of St John Bread & Wine, for this Sunday’s tour of Whitechapel.

Click here to book your ticket for THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S TOUR OF WHITECHAPEL this Sunday 23rd August at 2pm

In Weavers’ Fields

Who can resist the appeal of the path worn solely by footsteps? I was never convinced by John Bunyan’s pilgrim who believed salvation lay in sticking exclusively to the straight path – detours and byways always held greater attraction for me. My experience of life has been that there is more to be discovered by stepping from the tarmac and meandering off down the dusty track, and so I delight in the possibility of liberation offered by these paths which appear year after year, in complete disregard to those official routes laid out by the parks department.

It is commonly believed that the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard invented the notion of “desire paths” (lignes de désir) to describe these pathways eroded by footfall in his book “The Poetics of Space,” in 1958, although, just like the mysterious provenance of these paths themselves, this origin is questioned by others. What is certain is that the green spaces of the East End are scored with them at this time of year. Sometimes, it is because people would rather cut a corner than walk around a right angle, at other times it is because walkers lack patience with elegantly contrived curved paths when they would prefer to walk in a straight line and occasionally it is because there is simply no other path leading where they want to go.

Resisting any suggestion that these paths are by their nature subversive to authority or indicative of moral decline, I prefer to appreciate them as evidence of  human accommodation, coming into existence where the given paths fail and the multitude of walkers reveal the footpath which best takes them where they need to go. Yet landscape architects and the parks department refuse to be cowed by the collective authority of those who vote with their feet and, from time to time, little fences appear in a vain attempt to redirect pedestrians back on the straight and narrow.

I find a beauty in these desire paths which are expressions of collective will and serve as indicators of the memory of repeated human actions inscribed upon the landscape. They recur like an annual ritual, reiterated over and over like a popular rhyme, and asserting ownership of the space by those who walk across it every day. It would be an indication of the loss of independent thought if desire paths were no longer created and everyone chose to conform to the allotted pathways instead.

You only have to look at a map of the East End to see that former desire paths have been incorporated into the modern road network. The curved line of Broadway Market joins up with Columbia Rd cutting a swathe through the grid of streets, along an ancient drover’s track herding the cattle from London Fields down towards Smithfield Market, and the aptly named Fieldgate St indicates the beginning of what was once a footpath over the fields down to St Dunstan’s when it was the parish church for the whole of Tower Hamlets.

Each desire path tells a story, whether of those who cut a corner hurrying for the tube through Museum Gardens or of those who walk parallel to the tarmac for fear of being hit by cyclists in London Fields or of the strange compromise enacted in Whitechapel Waste where an attempt has been made to incorporate desire paths into the landscape design. I am told that in Denmark landscape architects and planners go out after newly-fallen snow to trace the routes of pedestrians as an indicator of where the paths should be. Yet I do not believe that desire paths are a problem which can be solved because desire paths are not a problem, they are a heartening reminder of the irreducible nature of the human spirit that can never be contained and will always be wandering.

The parting of the ways in Museum Gardens.

The allure of the path through the trees.

In Bethnal Green, hungry for literature, residents cut across the rose bed to get to the library.

A cheeky little short cut.

An inviting avenue of plane trees in Weavers’ Fields.

A detour in Florida St.

A byway in Bethnal Green.

Legitimised by mowing in Allen Gardens, Spitalfields.

A pointless intervention in Shadwell.

Which path would you choose?

Over the hills and faraway in Stepney.

The triumph of common sense in Stepney Green.

Half-hearted appropriation by landscape architects on Whitechapel Waste.

A mystery in London Fields.

A dog-eared corner in Stepney.

The beginning of something in Bethnal Green.