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I decided to take advantage of the October sunshine by enjoying an excursion to Chiswick House. I have to confess that it is thirty years since I visited, in the footsteps of the writer Denton Welch who came here in the thirties with a picnic including a hardboiled egg and a piece of fruitcake. It was a great consolation to encounter these gardens again, like a old friend that has not been changed by the years.

William Kent’s garden was inspired by the paintings of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, and seeing it illuminated by the perfectly crystalline autumn sunlight this week, I could not resist the feeling I was exploring an eternal landscape that was outside time. I half expected to turn a corner of a box hedge and discover Denton with his blanket spread out upon the grass, waiting for me with a picnic for two of hardboiled eggs and fruitcake.

I can think of no better place to lose an afternoon in London than these gardens, why did I take thirty years to go back?

The Doric Column with Venus on the top at the centre of the Rosary

Sculpture of a lioness by Pieter Scheemakers, 1733

The Ionic Temple and Obelisk, 1722

In the Excedra

Herm in the Excedra

A Sphinx beneath the Lebanon Cedar

Classical villa designed by Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington

Designed by Inigo Jones for Beaufort House in Chelsea in 1621, this gateway was acquired by Lord Burlington in 1738 from his friend Hans Sloan

Bust of Caesar Augustus

The Corinthian capitals on the portico were carved by John Boson

Andreas Palladio by by John Michael Rysbrack

Inigo Jones by John Michael Rysbrack

In the Italian Garden

The Conservatory was designed by Samuel Ware and completed in 1813

Geraniums overwintering

The Classic Bridge, attributed to James Wyatt, was built for the 5th Duke of Devonshire in 1774

The Ionic Temple

Bust of Napoleon in the Rustic House designed by Lord Burlington about 1719

The Eye Catcher installed in 1970

The Cascade by William Kent

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At Fulham Palace

Readers may recall that I visited Brunswick House in Vauxhall to interview Adrian Amos, the founder of London Architectural Salvage & Supply Company (LASSCO), earlier this year. It was my pleasure to return later in the summer to write a feature about his secret garret in this astonishing eighteenth-century Palladian mansion, marooned today amidst a forest of towers, for The World of Interiors with photographs by Rachel Ferriman.

Click here to read my feature about Brunswick House in The World of Interiors

Adrian Amos

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Adrian Amos, Architectural Salvage Dealer

With more than seventy of her portraits in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, we are proud to count Lucinda as a Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer.

Self portrait by Lucinda Douglas-Menzies, 1987

Stephen Calloway, Art Historian 1989

Dame Wendy Hiller, Actor 1988

Edward Greenfield, Music Critic 2004

Emma Witter, Artist 2025

Delwar Hussein, Anthropologist 2013

Sandra Esqulant, Landlady of The Golden Heart 2000

Des De Silva, Joiner 2021

Howard Morgan, Artist 1987

Eileen Agar, Painter & Photographer 1987

Sir Ben Okri, Novelist, & Sir Derek Walcott, Poet 2004

Dame Sian Phillips, Actor 2013

Sir Solly Zuckerman, Scientist 1990

Imtiaz Dharker, Poet 2015

Jack ‘Kid’ Berg, Boxer 1988

Marianna Kennedy, Artist 2011

Sir Isaiah Berlin, Philosopher 1988

Photographs copyright © Lucinda Douglas-Menzies

Click here to order a copy of PORTRAITS

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The Drawing Room

As long ago as 1180, the Drapers in the City of London formed a Guild to protect their interests as small traders and help members who fell into distress. The full title of the company was, “The Master and Wardens and Brethren and Sisters of the Guild or Fraternity of  the Blessed Mary the Virgin of the Mystery of the Drapers of the City of London.” More than eight hundred years later, it still exists to administer charitable trusts, inheriting headquarters that have been rebuilt over the centuries upon the site of Thomas Cromwell’s house – taken by Henry VIII after Cromwell’s execution at the Tower in 1540 and sold to the Drapers in 1543.

For years, I walked down Throgmorton Avenue and peered through the railings at the Mulberry trees growing there with out knowing that this tiny enclave of greenery in the heart of the city was the last remnant of Thomas Cromwell’s garden. Consequently, I was fascinated to visit the Drapers’ Hall and explore the chambers of the ancient livery company arranged around a hidden courtyard, following the ground plan of the great medieval hall that once stood upon this site. Until then, I had no idea that these palatial spaces existed, sequestered from the idle passerby.

Cromwell’s mansion was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666, then rebuilt to designs by Edward Jarman in the sixteen seventies and later remodelled in each of the subsequent centuries to arrive at the rambling construction I encountered, which delivers some breathtaking architectural contrasts as you walk from one space to another. Offices occupy the ground floor that give no hint of the grandeur above, unless you step into the courtyard and raise your eyes to peer through the tall windows upon the first storey where the gleam of vast chandeliers reveals lofty painted ceilings. Standing there in the stone yard surrounded by an arcade embellished with heads of the prophets, you might be in Venice or Rome.

A magnificent eighteen nineties staircase by Thomas Graham Jackson, lavishly encrusted with alabaster and red emperor and green chipolina marble, and light by a five thousand piece chandelier, offers a suitable introduction to the wonders at the top, where the grand Dining Room awaits on your left and the even grander Drawing Room on your right. Overlooking the garden, the Dining Room is one of the oldest chambers at the Drapers’ Hall, dating from the seventeenth century yet heavily embellished with coats of arms in the mid-nineteenth century to create a shining firmament overhead, glistening in diffuse chandelier light.

Crossing the landing, you enter the Court Room where Nelson and Wellington face each other from full-length portraits at either end. Lit by tall windows overlooking the courtyard, even the grandeur of this space gives no indication of the vast Livery Hall beyond. In the sepulchral gloom, larger than life-size portraits of British monarchs line up around the walls of this cathedral-like space, where no sound of the city penetrates and the depth of silence hums in your ears. Incredibly, the embellishment in this ornate room was simplified in the eighteen nineties because the original decoration was so elaborate that it prevented the entry of light.

A narrow corridor leading from the hall and overlooking the courtyard holds the company’s succession of charters including Edward III’s Patent of 1364 followed by those granted by James I, Elizabeth I and our own Elizabeth II. Facing the Livery Hall across the courtyard is the Drawing Room, a chamber worthy of any of the royal palaces of Europe. Created by architect Herbert Williams and interior designer John G. Crace, it remains as they left it in 1868, – an exquisitely modulated symphony of gilt panelling and mirrors, glowing golden in the cool northern light.

Over-awed by the majesty of the building and distracted by the collection of old paintings worthy of any museum, I rubbed my bleary eyes when I found myself back in the dusty streets around Liverpool St Station in the grey dusk of the late afternoon, and it caused me to question whether my visit to the Drapers’ Hall had, in fact, been an apparition conjured by a daydream.

Bearded Persians by Henry Pegram flank the Throgmorton St entrance.

Staircase designed by Thomas Graham Jackson in the eighteen nineties.

A five thousand piece chandelier lights the staircase.

Jason and the Golden Fleece, portrayed upon the celiing of the Court Dining Room

Looking from the Drawing Room through to the Dining Room.

The Drawing Room by architect Herbert Williams and interior designer John G. Crace, 1868.

The Drawing Room c. 1920

The Shepherd Boy by Thorwaldsen, 1893.

The Livery Hall, c. 1920

The Livery Hall

The Livery Hall c.1920

The Livery Hall

The Livery Hall, c. 1890

This dial in the Livery Hall indicates the wind direction.

The Courtyard c. 1920

The last remnant of Thomas Cromwell’s garden.

The Garden, c. 1920

Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

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At the Vintners’ Hall

Last City of London tour of the season tomorrow. Click here to book

Commemorating the ninetieth anniversary of the Battle of Cable St

Portrait of Beattie Orwell by Phil Maxwell

It was my delight to accompany photographer Phil Maxwell to visit one hundred and five year old Beattie Orwell (1917-2023) and sit beside her in her cosy flat while she talked to me of her century of existence in this particular corner of the East End.

A magnanimous woman who delighted in the modest joys of life, Beattie was nevertheless a political animal who was proud to be one of the last living veterans of the Battle of Cable St – a formative experience that inspired her with a fiercely egalitarian sense of justice and led to her becoming a councillor in later life, acutely conscious of the rights of the most vulnerable in society.

In spite of her physical frailty, Beattie’s moral courage granted her an astonishing monumental presence as a human being. To speak with Beattie was to encounter another, kinder world.

“I am Jewish and both my parents were East Enders, born here. My father’s parents came over from Russia. On my mother’s side, her parents were born here but her grandfather was born in Holland. So I am a bit of a mixture!

My father Israel worked as a porter at the Spitalfields Market and my mother Julia was a cigar maker at Godfrey & Phillips in Commercial St. I grew up in Brunswick Buildings in Goulston St, until I got bombed out. It was horrible, we had a little scullery, too small to swing a cat. My mother had one bedroom and, the three children, we slept in a put-you-up. I had two sisters Rebecca & Esther. Rebecca was the eldest, she very clever at dressmaking. When she was fifteen, she could make a dress. We needed her because my father died when he was forty-four, he had three strokes and died in Vallance Rd Hospital. I was only thirteen. He used to take me everywhere, he was marvellous. He took to me to the West End to visit my aunt, she was an old lady with a parrot and lived on Bewick St. We used to have a laugh with the parrot.

We moved to City Corporation flats in Stoney Lane and I went to Gravel Lane School. It was lovely school, they taught us housewifery. We had a little flat in the school and we used to clean it out, then go shopping in Petticoat Lane to buy ingredients to make a dinner, imagining we were married. The boys used to do woodwork and learnt to make stools and things like that. I loved that school. When I was twelve it closed and I went to the Jewish Free School in Bell Lane. It  was very strict and religious. When the teacher wanted us to be quiet, she’d say, ‘I’m waiting!’ It was good, I enjoyed my school life.

I left when I was fourteen and I went to work right away, dressmaking in Alie St. I used to lay out material. I do not know why but I must have heavy fingers, I could not manage the silk. It used to fall out of my hands. I only lasted a week before I left, I could not stand it. Then I went to work with my sister at Lottereys in Whitechapel opposite the Rivoli Picture Palace, they used to make uniforms for solders. I went into tailoring, men’s trousers, putting the buttons on with a machine. We worked long hours and it was hard work. By the time I got married I was earning two pounds and ten shillings a week. I never earned big money. I worked all the way through the war. I gave all the money to my mother and she gave me a shilling back. I used to walk up to the West End. It was threepence on the trolley bus.

I was nineteen in 1936. I was there with all the crowds at the Battle of Cable St. I am Jewish and I knew we must fight the fascists. They were anti-semitic, so I felt I had to do it. I was not frightened because there were so many people there. If I was on my own I might have been frightened, but I never saw so many people. You could not imagine. Dockers, Scottish and Irish people were there. It was a marvellous atmosphere. I was standing on the corner of Leman St outside a shop called ‘Critts’ and everyone was shouting ‘ They shall not pass!’ I was with my friend and we stood there a long time, hours. So from there we walked down to Cable St where we saw the lorry turned over. I never saw the big fighting that happened in Aldgate because I was not down there, but I saw them fighting in Cable St near this turned over lorry. From there, we walked down to Royal Mint St, where the blackshirts were. They were standing in a line waiting for Oswald Mosley to come. So I said to my friend, ‘We’d better get away from here.’

We went back through Cable St to the place where we started. From there, the news came through ‘They’re not passing.’ We all marched past the place where Fascists had their headquarters  – they threw flour over us, shouting – to Victoria Park where we had a big meeting with thousands of people. I had never seen anything like it in my life and I used to go to all the meetings. I never went dancing. My mother used to say, ‘I don’t know where I got you from!’ because I was only interested in politics. I am the only one like this in the whole family. I still know everything that is going on.

I used to go to Communist Party socials in Swedenborg Sq, off Cable St, and – being young – I used to enjoy it. Then I joined the Labour Party, the Labour League of Youth it was called. We used to go on rambles. It was lovely. We went to Southend once. I always used to march to Hyde Park on May Day and carry one of the ropes of our banner. I met my husband John in Victoria Park when I was with the Young Communists League, although I was not a member. They had a Sports Day and my husband was running for St Mary Atte Bowe because he was a Catholic. I met him and we went to a Labour Party dance. We got married in 1939.

We managed to get a flat in the same building as my mother, at the top of the stairs. They were private flats and I remember standing outside with a banner saying, ‘Don’t pay no rent!’ because the owners would not do the flats up. They did not look after us, it was horrible thing for us to have to do but it worked. I laugh now when I think about it. I was always brave. I am brave now.

We got bombed out of those flats while my husband was in the army. I had a baby so they sent me to Oxford where my husband was based with the York & Lancasters. We had a six-roomed house for a pound a week. My mother and sister came with me and they looked after my baby while I went to work in munitions. I was a postwoman too and I used to get up at four in the morning and walk over Magdalen Bridge.

I came back to the East End to try to get a flat here and I got caught in one of the air raids, but I knew this was where I had to live. My mother used to get under the stairs in Wentworth St when there was a raid and put a baby’s pot on her head. The war was terrible.

They sent my husband to Ikley Moor and it was too cold for him, so we came back for good. I managed to get two horrible little side rooms in Stoney Lane, sharing a kitchen between four and a toilet between two. I had no fridge, just a wooden box with chicken wire on the front. I used to go the Lane and buy two-pennorth of ice and put the butter in there. I had to buy food fresh everyday. There was a black market trade in fruit. These flats had been built for the police but the police would not have them, so they let them out to other people. All the flats were named after royalty, we were in Queens Buildings. I watched them building new flats in Cambridge Heath Rd but, before I could get one of them, I was offered a lot of horrible flats. Yet when I got there we were overcrowded, until we got a three bedroom flat at last, because I had two girls and a boy. I lived sixty-seven years there.

My husband never earned much money so I had to carry on working. He had twenty-two shillings a week pension from the army. He did all kinds of things and then got a job in the Orient Tea Warehouse. In 1966, when he was going to be Mayor of Bethnal Green and they would not give him time off, he went up to the Hackney Town Hall and got a job in the Town Clerk’s Office. He was always good at writing, he had lovely hand writing.

I became a councillor and I loved it. Our council was the best council, they were best to the old people. We used to go and visit all the old people’s homes. I never told them I was coming because I used to try and catch them out. We checked the quality of food and how clean it was. I organised dinners in York Hall for all the old people and trips to Eastbourne, but it has all been done away with – they do nothing now.

I was a councillor for ten years from 1972 until 1982. I had to fight to get the seat but I always loved old people, my husband was the same. He was known as the ‘Singing Mayor’ because he used to sing in all the old people’s homes. From when I was forty-two, I used to go round old people’s homes on Friday nights and I still do it. We have dinners together, turkey, roast potatoes and sausages, with trifle for afters.”

Beattie Orwell (1917-2023)

Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell

Police disperse anti-fascist protestors at the Battle of Cable St, 4th October 1936

Commemorating the ninetieth anniversary of the Battle of Cable St, Solidarity on the Streets an exhibition documenting East Enders’ enduring resistance to racism and fascism opens today at Four Corners in Bethnal Green and runs until 31st October, Wednesday-Saturday 11am-6pm.

Policemen arrest a protestor at the Battle of Cable St, 4th October 1936. Courtesy Topical Press Agency/ Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Protestors stand by a barricade with the slogans ‘Remember Olympia’ and ‘They Shall Not Pass,’ Battle of Cable St, 1936. Courtesy People’s History Museum

Fascist leader Oswald Mosley inspects his blackshirts in Royal Mint St prior to the Battle of Cable St, 4th October 1936. Courtesy Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Protesters on the barricade in Cable St, 4th October 1936. Courtesy People’s History Museum

Policemen arrest a protester in Royal Mint St, 4th October 1936. Photography by Planet News Ltd. Courtesy People’s History Museum

Moseley supporter in East London, 1976. Photograph copyright Paul Trevor

March after the racist murder of Altab Ali with banner designed by Dan Jones, Whitechapel, 14th May 1978. Tom Learmonth. Courtesy Four Corners/Bengali Photo Archive

Procession behind the hearse of Altab Ali, 14th May 1978. Photograph copyright Paul Trevor

Demonstration by the Anti-Racist Committee of Asians in East London. Centre: Mala Sen, right: Chomok Ali Noor, to right and behind: Islam Uddin. Commercial Rd, June 1976. Photograph copyright Paul Trevor

Anti-racist demonstration with Barbara Beese and her son Darcus Howe, June 1976. Photograph copyright Paul Trevor

Anti-racist sit down protest to stop the National Front selling their papers at the top of Brick Lane, 16th July 1978. Aloke Biswas speaks through a megaphone, Patrick Kodikara stands on his left, Abdul Monnan holds a cup, Shams Uddin sits with arms raised and Dan Jones is clapping. Photograph copyright Paul Trevor

Police clash with teachers from Daneford School who were picketing the Inner London Education Authority to demand anti-racist action in their school, October 1985. Photograph by Lloyd Gee. Courtesy Four Corners/Bengali Photo Archive

Students and teachers from Daneford School march up Holloway Rd demanding anti-racist action in their school, November 1985. Photograph by Lloyd Gee. Courtesy Four Corners/Bengali Photo Archive

Reception for anti-apartheid activists Adelaide Tambo and Winnie Mandela at Daneford School, Bethnal Green, 1990, including Julie Begum, Jennifer Fear, Abdul Rob, Maya Alexander and Anne Knox.  Courtesy Four Corners/Bengali Photo Archive

Women Unite Against Racism protest outside London Borough of Tower Hamlets town hall against the British National Party, 1993. From left: Rhea, Jill, Amina, Ahea, Julie Begum, Georgie Wemyss and Danielle. Courtesy Four Corners/Bengali Photo Archive

I am proud to publish these excerpts from THE OXFORD SAUSAGE by a graduate of my writing course. The author set out to write a spicy mix of Oxford stories from a house once belonging to a city sausage maker.

Follow THE OXFORD SAUSAGE

I am taking bookings for the next writing course, HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ on February 6th & 7th. Come to Spitalfields and spend a winter weekend with me in an eighteenth century weaver’s house in Fournier St, enjoy delicious lunches and eat cakes baked to historic recipes, and learn how to write your own blog.

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Saint Frideswide hiding from pursuit in a pigsty

Of Saints & Sanitaryware

I have come early to Christ Church to avoid the crowds and check out some alarming new intelligence. Something that I thought – as I make my way under Tom Gate and across the vast main quadrangle of the college where thirteen of our prime ministers were educated – could not possibly be true. For it is rumoured that within one of its most prized stained glass windows, created by the Pre-Raphaelite artist Edward Burne-Jones and dedicated to St Frideswide the patron saint of Oxford, is secreted a modern lavatory. I want to see this for myself.

I am greeted by a man who with his long black robes and grey beard, looks exactly as you might imagine an Old Testament prophet. He introduces himself as Bede, as in the Venerable Bede, the Anglo Saxon scholar who lived at roughly the same time at St Frideswide. I thought this a good omen. It turns out he was so christened after he was born on the same day as the feast of his namesake (May 25th). He is between shifts and offers to tell me all about the lavatory in question. I feel blessed.

The Frideswide Window is on the east side of the Latin chapel. Made up of sixteen panels it tells the story of Frideswide, a Saxon princess brought up in a convent who decides to devote herself to God and become a nun herself. However she is expected to marry and when Algar, the King of Mercia turns up to claim her hand by force, she makes her escape by boat and hides in a pigsty. Catching wind of her return to Oxford to see her father, Didan, King Algar races back to the city but when he tries to enter he is blinded by a thunderbolt. Frideswide feels sorry for him and prays for his sight to be restored, which by a miracle it is and he agrees to leave her be. A healing spring appears in Binsey and Frideswide sets up a priory just inside the city walls on the site of Christ Church. There are archaeological remains of a seventh century graveyard here so there is almost certainly some truth to the latter part of the story.

Looking up at the window with Bede, as the morning sun transfers a luminosity and vibrancy to the colours, it is hard not to feel moved. The detail is exquisite, ducks chaperone their babies, pigs jostle for position in a crowded sty, King Algar’s men crouch behind hedges, the folds and patterns on the gowns of Fridewide’s nurses surrounding the saint as she lies dying are beautifully applied. And that is when I see it with my own eyes in the very last of the story panels. Seat up, handle and flush pipe behind, curtain drawn back, a lavatory for all to see. The height far too low for the washstand some claim it to be. Definitely a toilet. And what is more it is pink!

But whatever is it doing in the portrait of Anglo Saxon England when the best that could be hoped for was a hole in the ground?

The window was made by Burne-Jones in 1859, the year after ‘the Great Stink’ when the hot weather in London exacerbated the smell of human waste in the river Thames to unbearable levels. In late 1857 Burne-Jones himself fell ill, probably malaria caused by insanitary conditions. Maybe what he is saying in this picture designed so soon after, is that had Frideswide been supplied with access to more hygienic conditions, a modern toilet for example, she might had survived the fever that killed her?

Bede, however thinks that there are more prosaic reasons for its inclusion. The WC is product placement, he argues, in recognition of the window’s financial investors, who were porcelain manufacturers!  I can see the link between the purity of a saint and the purity of clean water is one that would have appealed to the Victorians.

The death of St Frideswide with a pink flushing toilet in the background

Mulberries at Balliol College

A Jar Of Jam From James I

I had scrawled the word mulberries across the pages of my calendar for the first week of August. It was to remind me that this was the short window of time that these delicious knobbly clusters more muscular than a blackberry, sweeter than a raspberry, fully ripen and fall from the tree. For I wanted to make jam. Not any old jam mind.  A conserve created from the darkened crop of an ancient black mulberry tree. Planted in the gardens of Balliol College over 400 years ago and still bearing fruit.

Lying prostrate in a flowerbed, its trunk gnarled, its branches propped, this is one of the very few mulberries that have survived from the thousands of saplings imported from Europe in 1609 by King James I. He’d wanted to create a domestic silk industry, instead of buying the stuff from abroad at vast expense. And as the leaves of the mulberry were the silk moth caterpillar’s only food, he persuaded rich landowners to plant them on their estates. Some Oxford and Cambridge colleges also bought into the idea and he planted hundreds in the grounds of his Royal Palaces at Greenwich and St James Park. Our National Collection of Mulberries is still held at Buckingham Palace. He even appointed a Keeper of the King’s Silkworms.

There are lots of suggestions as to why the project failed. Some say it was because James I imported the wrong kind of mulberry. For it is the white mulberry (morus alba), not the black mulberry (morus nigra) we have here at Balliol, that is native to East Asia and has been nurtured as food for silkworms in China for over four millennia. And it was the white mulberry that was planted by James’ great rival Henry IV of France in the Tuileries gardens of the Louvre, that created the raw materials to manufacture what became known as ‘woven wind’. The most likely explanation is that both were delivered but only the black survived. And so it was that the hardy black mulberry triumphed and trees are still found in country houses and Oxford colleges.

Though I am sorry that King James never secured a thriving silk trade I am grateful to him for today’s harvest. Soon my hands are bloodied from their seeping juices – they are not called blood fruit for nothing – my lips a ruby red. And carrying them carefully home I boil them up in the pan with a little sugar and lemon (they are low in pectin so you will need something to thicken) and I have enough to make a jar full. It is a dark burgundy colour, sweet, pippy and delicious on toast. Like the season, it disappeared all too quickly. I must write myself a note in the calendar for next year, this time pick more mulberries.

This photograph was taken in 1913 of three Balliol students including Aldous Huxley sitting under the mulberry tree. Courtesy of Balliol College Archive

Yesterday, I cycled over Tower Bridge to join the happy throng at Surrey Docks Farm in Rotherhithe where Tessa Hunkin’s Hackney Mosaic Project have installed three new mosaics. More than fifty people were involved in the creation of these mosaics, which took many months,  and all their initials are included in the borders.

Tessa explained to me that the inspiration came from medieval Italian floor mosaics which illustrate agricultural tasks through the seasons. When she showed her designs to the volunteers at the farm, they insisted that ‘mucking out’ be included since this is what they spend most of their time doing. Spot the ferret in a hammock, the farm’s pet brown rabbit and guinea pigs too.

Meanwhile, in the last twenty-four hours more than 1400 people have signed the petition to SAVE HACKNEY MOSAIC PROJECT. The existence of the Project is under threat as Hackney Council are proposing converting the mosaic workshop on Hackney Downs into a cafe and displacing the Project. If you have not already done so, please sign the petition and spread the word.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN THE PETITION

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

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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