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Now that Whitechapel Station has been completely rebuilt and the new Elizabeth Line is fully operational, few remember how it used to be half a century ago but photographer Philip Cunningham recorded the vanished streets and yards that once occupied this lost corner

Winthrop St

“I first started taking photographs of Winthrop St and Woods Buildings in Whitechapel in the mid-seventies. I remember the first time I went to Winthrop St on a cold frosty morning with a bright blue sky. A woman came out of one of the houses and asked what I was doing. ‘Photographing the streets,’ I said. ‘You’d better hurry up they’re coming down!’ she replied. She was right, within a few months they were gone.

‘Comprehensive Development’ was the only philosophy pursued by the London County Council and Greater London Council for rebuilding London after the war. Their planners complained that too much pre-war building was left, making comprehensive planning really difficult. Yet it would not have taken much imagination to have incorporated streets like these within any new development, creating a richer and more diverse urban landscape.

Even Mile End Place, where I lived in my grandfather’s house, was designated for demolition in 1968 to become a car park for Queen Mary College. Fortunately, the council did not have enough money to build flats for us to be decanted into so our street was saved.”

Winthrop St

Durward St School was built in 1876 and eventually restored by the Spitalfields Trust in 1990

Winthrop St

Winthrop St

Winthrop St

Winthrop St

Woods Buildings looking towards Whitechapel Market

“Woods Buildings was a subject I photographed over and over, it always held that feeling for me of Dickens’ London. To the left, as you approached the arch under the buildings, was a urinal and when I climbed the wall to take a look, it appeared to be for public use but had been bricked up. It must have been quite intimidating to pass through that passage at night.”

‘We live here, it’s not a toilet’

Entrance to Woods Buildings in Whitechapel Market

“By 1984, the land opposite Woods Buildings on the north side comprised a combination of wasteland and sheds where a boot fair would be held every Sunday. It was licensed by the Council and very popular. One Sunday, I observed a group of Romanians selling secondhand clothes just outside the compound which did not go down well with the gatekeepers as they had not paid a fee. There followed a quite violent fracas, although fortunately no one was seriously hurt and only a little blood spilt. I felt sorry for the children, it must have been frightening for them. Those were desperate days!”

Durward St

Photographs copyright © Philip Cunningham

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Philip Cunningham’s East End Portraits

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Philip Cunningham at Mile End Place

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Years ago, I became enraptured by a hundred-year-old collection of four thousand lantern slides. They were once used for educational lectures by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute in Spitalfields. When Stefan Dickers became archivist there, he discovered the slides in dusty old boxes – abandoned and forgotten since they became obselete. Yet over the last decade, it has become apparent that these slides, which were ignored for so long, are one of the greatest treasures in the collection.

When I was first offered the opportunity of publishing these lantern slides which have been unseen for generations, I was overwhelmed by the number of pictures and did not know where to start. The first to catch my fancy were the ancient signs and symbols, dating from an era before street numbering located addresses and lettered signs advertised trades to Londoners.

Before long, I grew spellbound by the slide collection because, alongside the famous landmarks and grand occasions of state, there were pictures of forgotten corners and of ordinary people going about their business. It was a delight to discover hundreds of images of things that people do not usually photograph and I was charmed to realise that the anonymous photographers of the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society were as interested in pubs as they were in churches.

The more I studied the glass slides, the more joy I found in these arcane pictures, since every one contained the rich potential of hidden stories, seducing the imagination to flights of fancy regarding the ever-interesting subject of Old London. Once I had published The Signs of Old London, I realised there were many other such sets to be found among the slides, as a result of the systematic recording of London which underscored the original project by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, a hundred years ago.

I do not chose not to clean them up or remove imperfections and dirt, or standardise the colour to black or a uniform sepia, either. Instead, I cherish the subtle variations of hues present in these slides and savour the beautiful colour contrasts between them, when laid side by side. There is a melancholic poetry in these shabby images, in which their damage and their imperfections speak of their history, and I have come to glory in the patina and murk.

In the Inns of Court

At Eltham Palace

At Euston Station

The Anchor at Bankside

Crocodiles at the Natural History Museum

Reading Room at the British Museum

Chelsea Pensioner

In Fleet St

In Fleet St

St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell

Between the inner & outer dome of St Paul’s

Along the Embankment

The Old Dick Whittington, Clothfair, Smithfield

Firemen take a tea break

Lightermen on the Thames

Flood in Water St, Tower of London

The White Tower, London’s oldest building

Glass slides courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute

Take a look at these sets of the glass slides of Old London

The Signs of Old London

The Markets of Old London

The Pubs of Old London

A few places are available for my course HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ on February 6th & 7th. Come to Spitalfields and spend a weekend with me in an eighteenth century weaver’s house in Fournier St, enjoy delicious lunches from Richard Fuest, eat cakes baked to historic recipes by Townhouse and learn how to write your own blog. Click here for details

Dennis Gents Hair Stylist, note the razor blade sign

Ron’s Gents Hairdressers, Three Colts Lane, Bethnal Green, is still there but has changed from ‘Hairdresser’ to ‘Barber.’

His & Hers, ‘Executive Mood’ and ‘Avant Garde Mood’ hairstyles offered

June’s Ladies Hair Stylist. STE was the code for Stepney Green, letters were replaced by numbers around 1966.

Dave & Syd Strong, Gent’s Hairdresser

Gent’s Hairdresser moving into Ladies’ Hairdressing

Gent’s Hair Stylist, Puma Court, Spitalfields, run by Kyriacos Cleovoulou from 1962 until 2005.

Apples, Hair Stylist

Peter, Individual Gents Hair Stylist

The Saloon, customers peering out from the left of the window

Gentlemen’s Hairdressing Salon, Carter Lane, City of London

Mario’s Men’s Hairstylist

Hairdresser at 10 Laystall Street, Clerkenwell, with a plaque commemorating Giuseppe Mazzini as ‘the apostle of modern democracy inspired young Italy with the ideal of independence, unity and regeneration of his country.’

The Pleasant Gent’s Hairdresser is still going in Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell

Photographs copyright © A London Inheritance

Follow A LONDON INHERITANCE, A Private History of a Public City

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HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ: 6th & 7th February 2027

This course will examine the essential questions which need to be addressed if you wish to write a blog that people will want to read.

“Like those writers in fourteenth century Florence who discovered the sonnet but did not quite know what to do with it, we are presented with the new literary medium of the blog – which has quickly become omnipresent, with many millions writing online. For my own part, I respect this nascent literary form by seeking to explore its own unique qualities and potential.” – The Gentle Author

COURSE STRUCTURE

1. How to find a voice – When you write, who are you writing to and what is your relationship with the reader?
2. How to find a subject – Why is it necessary to write and what do you have to tell?
3. How to find the form – What is the ideal manifestation of your material and how can a good structure give you momentum?
4. The relationship of pictures and words – Which comes first, the pictures or the words? Creating a dynamic relationship between your text and images.
5. How to write a pen portrait – Drawing on The Gentle Author’s experience, different strategies in transforming a conversation into an effective written evocation of a personality.
6. What a blog can do – A consideration of how telling stories on the internet can affect the temporal world.

SALIENT DETAILS

The course will be held at 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields on 6-7th February, running from 10am-5pm on Saturday and 11am-5pm on Sunday.

Lunch will be catered by Richard Fuest and tea, coffee & cakes by the Townhouse are included within the course fee of £350.

Email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book a place on the course.

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

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

Click here to book for my tours

Petticoat Lane

Photographer Charles Chusseau-Flaviens came to London from Paris and took these pictures, reproduced courtesy of George Eastman House, before the First World War – mostly likely in 1911. This date is suggested by his photograph of the proclamation of the coronation of George V which took place in that year. Very little is known of Chusseau-Flaviens except he founded one of the world’s first picture agencies, located at 46 Rue Bayen,  and he operated through the last decade of the nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth century. Although their origin is an enigma, Chusseau-Flaviens’ photographs of London and especially of Petticoat Lane constitute a rare and precious vision of a lost world.

Petticoat Lane

Sandys Row with Frying Pan Alley to the right

Proclamation of the coronation of George V, 1911

Crossing sweeper in the West End

Policeman on the beat in Oxford Circus, Regent St

Beating the bounds for the Tower of London, Trinity Sq

Boats on the Round Pond, Kensington Gardens

Suffragette in Trafalgar Sq

Photographs courtesy George Eastman House

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Dennis Anthony’s Petticoat Lane

C A Mathew’s Spitalfields

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The door to Parliament

Look at all the doors where the dead people walked in and out. These are the doors of old London. Some are inviting you in and some are shutting you out. Doors that lead to power and doors that lead to prison. Doors that lead to the parlour, doors that lead to the palace, and doors that lead to prayer.

These are the doors that I found among hundreds of glass slides once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, many more than a century old, and housed today at the Bishopsgate Institute.

Looking at life through a doorway, we are all either on the way in or on the way out. Like the door to your childhood home that got sold long ago, each one pictured here is evidence of the transient nature of existence, reminding you that you cannot go back through the portal of time.

Yet there is a powerful enigma conjured by these murky pictures of old doors, most of which will never open again. Like the pauper or the lost soul condemned to wander the streets, we cannot enter to learn what lies behind these doors of old London. But a closed door is an invitation to the imagination and we can wonder and dream, entering those hidden spaces in our fancy.

London has always been a city of doors, inviting both the curiosity and the suspicion of the passerby. In each street, there is a constant anticipation of people popping out, regurgitated onto the street by the building, and the glimpse to be snatched of the interior before the door closes again.

I cannot resist the notion that every door contains a mystery and all I need is a skeleton key. Then we can set out to explore as we please, going in one door and out another, until we have passed through all the doors of old London.

The entrance to the Carpenters’ Hall

The doors of Lambeth Palace

Door in the cloisters in Westminster Abbey

The door to the chamber of Little Ease at the Tower of London.

In St Benet’s Church, Paul’s Wharf.

Back door of 33 Mark Lane

Back door to Lancaster House.

In Crutched Friars.

14 Cavendish Sq.

The door to 10 Downing St

39a Devonshire St.

The door to the House of Lords

Wren doorway, Kensington Palace.

The door to Westminster Abbey

St Dunstan’s in the West

The entrance to Christ Church, Greyfriars.

The door to St Bartholomew’s, Smithfield

Temple Church

The Watchhouse, St Sepulcre’s, Smithfield.

Door by Inigo Jones at St Helen’s Bishopsgate.

Prior Bolton’s Door at St Bartholomew the Great.

At the Tower of London

Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

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Detective Constable Tassell of the City of London Police Serious Fraud Squad magically escorts us forty-three years back in time and onto the roof of Britannic House in Ropemaker St to enjoy the view

“In the summer of 1983, I was part of the City of London Serious Fraud Squad, operating from Wood St Police Station. A friend and ex-colleague of mine became head of security at British Petroleum in Britannic House, Ropemaker St and he invited me to photograph the views of London from the rooftop, so I took the opportunity. I went along one June morning and took my pictures.

Britannic House was the first building in the City of London to be taller than St Paul’s Cathedral and remained the tallest until the NatWest Tower was built in 1976.  It is now known as City Point – since BP moved out some years ago – and has been refurbished with extra storeys, so it is even taller.” – Lew Tassell

Looking towards Christ Church, Spitalfields

Looking northeast towards the Bishopsgate Goodsyard with Bethnal Green beyond

Looking east to Old Broad St and Liverpool St Station with Spitalfields beyond.

Car park at Old Broad St Station where the Broadgate Estate is today

Looking east along Liverpool St towards Bishopgate and Dewhurst’s Butchers

Looking southeast to Finsbury Circus and the City of London

Looking southeast across the City of London towards Tower Bridge

Looking southwest along London Wall with St Paul’s Cathedral

The dome of St Paul’s with Westminster and Big Ben

Looking west towards Old Bailey and Trafalgar Sq

Looking northwest towards the Post Office Tower with the Barbican to the right

Looking northwest across Clerkenwell with St Pancras Station in the distance

Looking north to Whitecross St Market

Looking down onto the Barbican

St Giles Cripplegate

Looking down from the top of Britannic House

Looking down on Silk St

City of London mounted police in Fore St

Photographs copyright © Lew Tassell

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A Walk Around The Docks With Lew Tassell

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

In the sixties and seventies when these pictures were taken, every street corner in the East End that was not occupied by a pub was home to a shop offering groceries and general supplies to the residents of the immediate vicinity. The owners of these small shops took on mythic status as all-seeing custodians of local information, offering a counterpoint to the pub as a community meeting place for the exchange of everybody’s business. Shopkeepers were party to the smallest vacillations in the domestic economy of their customers and it was essential for children to curry their good favour if the regular chore of going to fetch a packet of butter or a tin of custard, or any other domestic essential, might be ameliorated by the possibility of reward in the form of sweets, whether  there was any change left over or not.

Yet, even in the time these photographs were taken, the small shops were in decline and Tony Hall knew he was capturing the end of a culture, erased by the rise of the chain-stores and the supermarkets. To the aficionado of small shops there are some prize examples here – of businesses that survived beyond their time, receptacles of a certain modest history of shopkeepers. It was a noble history of those who created lives for themselves by working long hours serving the needs of their customers. It was a familiar history of shopkeepers who made a living but not a fortune. Above all, it was a proud history of those who delighted in shopkeeping.

Photographs copyright © Estate of Libby Hall

Images courtesy of the Tony Hall Collection at the Bishopsgate Institute

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

There is little traffic on the road, children are at play, housewives linger in doorways, old men doze outside the library and, in the distance, a rag and bone man’s cart clatters down the street. This is the East End in the afternoon, as photographed by newspaper artist Tony Hall in the nineteen sixties while wandering with his camera in the quiet hours between shifts on The Evening News in Fleet St.

“Tony cared very much about the sense of community here.” Libby Hall, Tony’s wife, recalled, “He loved the warmth of the East End. And when he photographed buildings it was always for the human element, not just the aesthetic.”

Contemplating Tony’s clear-eyed photos – half a century after they were taken – raises questions about the changes enacted upon the East End in the intervening years. Most obviously, the loss of the pubs and corner shops which Tony portrayed with such affection in pictures that remind us of the importance of these meeting places, drawing people into a close relationship with their immediate environment.

“He photographed the pubs and little shops that he knew were on the edge of disappearing,” Libby Hall confirmed for me, ‘He loved the history of the East End, the Victorian overlap, and the sense that it was the last of Dickens’ London.”

In 1972, Tony Hall left The Evening News and with his new job came a new shift pattern which did not grant him afternoons off – thus drawing his East End photographic odyssey to a close. Yet for one who did not consider himself a photographer, Tony Hall’s opus comprises a tender vision of breathtaking clarity, constructed with purpose and insight as a social record. Speaking of her late husband, Libby Hall emphasises the prescience that lay behind Tony’s wanderings with his camera in the afternoon. “He knew what he was photographing and he recognised the significance of it.” she admitted.

These beautiful streetscapes are a selection of pictures from the legacy of approximately one thousand photographs by Tony Hall held in the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute.

Three Colts Lane

Gunthorpe St

Ridley Rd Market

Stepney Green

Photographs copyright © Libby Hall

Images Courtesy of the Tony Hall Archive at the Bishopsgate Institute

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