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Please keep your eyes open for my old friend George Parrin, the Ice Cream Seller, who is cycling around the East End now and, if you see George, stop him and buy one – and he will tell you his story.

‘I’ve been on a bike since I was two’

I first encountered Ice Cream Seller, George Parrin, coming through Whitechapel Market on his bicycle. Even before I met him, his cry of ‘Lovely ice cream, home made ice cream – stop me and buy one!’ announced his imminent arrival and then I saw his red and white umbrella bobbing through the crowd towards us. George told me that Whitechapel is the best place to sell ice cream in the East End and, observing the looks of delight spreading through the crowd, I witnessed the immediate evidence of this.

Such was the demand on that hot summer afternoon that George had to cycle off to get more supplies, so it was not possible for me to do an interview. Instead, we agreed to meet next day outside the Beigel Bakery on Brick Lane where trade was a little quieter. On arrival, George popped into the bakery and asked if they would like some ice cream and, once he had delivered a cup of vanilla ice, he emerged triumphant with a cup of tea and a salt beef beigel. ‘Fair exchange is no robbery!’ he declared with a hungry grin as he took a bite into his lunch.

“I first came down here with my dad when I was eight years old. He was a strongman and a fighter, known as ‘Kid Parry.’ Twice, he fought Bombardier Billy Wells, the man who struck the gong for Rank Films. Once he beat him and once he was beaten, but then he beat two others who beat Billy, so indirectly my father beat him.

In those days you needed to be an actor or entertainer if you were in the markets.  My dad would tip a sack of sand in the floor and pour liquid carbolic soap all over it. Then he got a piece of rotten meat with flies all over it and dragged it through the sand. The flies would fly away and then he sold the sand by the bag as a fly repellent.

I was born in Hampstead, one of thirteen children. My mum worked all her life to keep us going. She was a market trader, selling all kinds of stuff, and she collected scrap metal, rags, woollens and women’s clothes in an old pram and sold it wholesale. My dad was to and fro with my mum, but he used to come and pick me up sometimes, and I worked with him. When I was nine, just before my dad died, we moved down to Queens Rd, Peckham.

I’ve been on a bike since I was two, and at three years old I had my own three-wheeler. I’ve always been on a bike. On my fifteenth birthday, I left school and started work. At first, I had a job for a couple of months delivering meat around Wandsworth by bicycle for Brushweilers the Butcher, but then I worked for Charles, Greengrocers of Belgravia delivering around Chelsea, and I delivered fruit and vegetables to the Beatles and Mick Jagger.

At sixteen years old, I started selling hot chestnuts outside Earls Court with Tony Calefano, known as ‘Tony Chestnuts.’ I lived in Wandsworth then, so I used to cycle over the river each day. I worked for him for four years and then I made my own chestnut can. In the summer, Tony used to sell ice cream and he was the one that got me into it.

I do enjoy it but it’s hard work. A ten litre tub of ice cream weighs 40lbs and I might carry eight tubs in hot weather plus the weight of the freezer and two batteries. I had thirteen ice cream barrows up the West End but it got so difficult with the police. They were having a purge, so they upset all my barrows and spoilt the ice cream. After that, Margaret Thatcher changed the law and street traders are now the responsibility of the council. The police here in Brick Lane are as sweet as a nut to me.

I bought a pair of crocodiles in the Club Row animal market once. They’re docile as long as you keep them in the water but when they’re out of it they feel vulnerable and they’re dangerous. I can’t remember what I did with mine when they got large. I sell watches sometimes. If anybody wants a watch, I can go and get it for them. In winter, I make jewellery with shells from the beach in Spain, matching earrings with ‘Hello’ and ‘Hola’ carved into them. I’m thinking of opening a pie and mash shop in Spain.

I am happy to give out ice creams to people who haven’t got any money and I only charge pensioners a pound. Whitechapel is best for me. I find the Asian people are very generous when it comes to spending money on their children, so I make a good living off them. They love me and I love them.”

Photographs copyright © Estate of Colin O’Brien

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A number forty bus took me from Aldgate to the House of Dreams and it only took half an hour to arrive at the front door. Once across the threshold, an alternative cosmos of colour and eye-popping surreal fantasy awaits, transporting you far from the London rain.

Perhaps one of the happiest people I have met, Stephen Wright delights to share the strange but joyous world of his personal subconscious, peopled with a universe of outlandish celestial beings – all made tangible within the interior of a modest Victorian terrace.

For this ever-growing endeavour is no random installation, but an endearingly intimate diary of Stephen’s emotional and spiritual life in sculptural form – as he was eager to explain when I dropped by.

“There is no plan – it’s just evolving, like life itself! My house is like a baby that needs constant feeding. It says, ‘Mama, I need more food!’ and I say, ‘Oh, give me a break.’

It began as a response to a series of programmes by Jarvis Cocker about ‘Outsider Art.’ When I saw those, I thought, ‘I’ve found my family, I’ve found where I fit in.’ So I visited a lot of Outsider Artists in France, they were mostly elderly, and then I began work on my House of Dreams in 1999/2000.

At first it was purely decorative, but then it became a response to the death of my partner Donald, and when – two years into it – both my parents died, I found that difficult to deal with. So my work changed and it became a way of grieving and dealing with loss – because I didn’t have a family this became my way of life. I want to leave something behind. Since then I met Michael, ten years ago, and he’s been very supportive. It’s important to have someone on your side.

I’m from the North and I found it difficult to put down roots in London, so I live in this safe house behind a high wall with a gate where I feel free to be me. All the objects in my house carry a meaning or memory for me and many are from places I consider sacred, like Cornwall, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid & Amsterdam.

The design has a South American style because I’m in touch with spirits from a former life when I was a grave digger in Oaxaca. I’ve been to Mexico to visit the place where I was born.

I’m always amazed that anybody wants to come to my House of Dreams but I love it. People come round all the time to visit and I’ve made a living out of being me. I get up and I’m me. I’m me everyday!”

Adrian Amos with his son Harry

Anyone who ever goes through Vauxhall cannot fail to notice Brunswick House, the eighteenth century pile that was the former home of the exiled Duke of Brunswick in 1811, still holding firm with dignity despite the incursion of cheap and nasty towers that overwhelm the place these days.

It is the last fragment of old Vauxhall, when this was the location of pleasure gardens and fine country houses with estates stretching down to the river. Here Contributing Photographer Rachel Ferriman and I visited Adrian Amos, the current resident of this Palladian mansion which serves as showroom for London Architectural Salvage & Supply Company (LASSCO) that he founded fifty years ago.

As if Brunswick House were not wonder enough, it is crammed now with precious architectural artefacts enjoying safe harbour until they find new permanent homes. In the seventies, Adrian was a pioneer of recycling who saw a way to rescue and repurpose the fabric of condemned buildings when almost on-one else cared. I found him sitting happily in his magnificent study surrounded by a trove of gleaming antiquities – at the the heart of the empire he has built over the past half century – upon which he presides today with his two sons, George and Harry, the royal family of salvage.

Through all these years, Adrian has acquired stories and knowledge as enthusiastically as he has collected architectural artefacts, making him a wily and charismatic raconteur on the subject of old London with an infinite repertoire of tales – which I discovered when I sat down with him.

“George Amos, my grandfather, had a furniture factory in Bow, Old Ford Rd. It wasn’t really a factory, it was just four brothers who were forced to work for their father. A lot happened between the demise of that business around 1963 and my starting this in 1979.

I was brought up in Colchester surrounded by an awareness of the age of the town and the built environment, so I developed an interest in antiquarian stuff but I also inherited some sort of business acumen or drive from my grandfather, I’m assuming.

It’s very difficult to separate out the cheeky anecdotes that one uses to justify things, but I found in North London, Hampstead particularly, there were skips at one end of the street and stuff going into the skips, being torn out of houses, and within walking distance there’d be someone anxious to acquire these original materials, like sash windows and shutters and what have you. So between the two there was a business to be made, taking things out of skips and selling them to the neighbour ten houses away.

I became part of the antiques trade, that was the closest activity to which you could nail it. On the other hand, it was a lot to do with the scrap metal business too, and what we would now call ‘recycling’. Dan Cruickshank coined the term ‘architectural salvage’ in an article in the Architects Journal. That was 1976. I hung around demi-monde of NW1 and before that I’d been running a joinery shop in Hampstead. I was steeped in my father Sydney Amos’ involvement with cabinet making. When I was a boy, I remember him straightening nails out, he was very economical as a lot of people were in those days. After George Amos & Son closed when the East London furniture industry died, he worked in Covent Garden and Spitalfields Market. So I was given a wide choice of careers because I couldn’t go back into cabinet making.

In the seventies, people were encouraged to simply go in and rescue artefacts from buildings irrespective of title of ownership. It’s radically different today. Sometimes people sell us things and we return them to the owners at a loss. Two of our favourite family of street operators came round with some old panelling in the back of their van one day. I asked them where they got it from, there were only two places it could have come from in East London, one was Sutton House and the other was Walthamstow old village. They said it wasn’t Walthamstow so it had to be Sutton House. At that point you have to be careful what you say because if you say the wrong thing, they take fright and take it away and sell it to some utter scoundrel. So I said, ‘You leave it with us and we’ll let the dust settle.’ Then I got on the phone to the National Trust and they discovered that their contractors had whipped it off the wall because they had no idea of its value or significance. Thus we saw that it went back to them. Virtue emanates from every pore when I tell that story.

One day, we got a call to Holy Trinity Church, Finchley Rd, to clear it out before it was demolished. That’s what the business was then, you got called out to places before they were pulled down. We met a chap there who was redundant furnishings officer for the Church of England. ‘Oh jolly good,’ he said, ‘Is this what you do?’ He wasn’t interested in the material, he simply wanted a solution to his problems. He gave me a list of churches that he was keen to see cleared out, pews and all sorts, usually staffed by a single rector who was verging on a nervous breakdown – no congregation. I said, ‘We are going to need a bit of assistance with somewhere to put this stuff.’ So he said, ‘I’ve got this giant church in Shoreditch, St Michael & All Angels. Here’s the key, let yourself in and fill it up with all the bits you are pulling out.’

We were there for forty years. I thought it was too big a prospect for me to handle by myself so I approached Geoff Westland. He was involved in Fine Art transport, so we each used half of the church, a great cavernous unheated place. It gradually filled up and chaps came from the City of London. I suppose they get a bit bored dealing stocks and bonds, they like tangible things. Quite often they’d turn up smoking a cigar after lunch which meant they were in a good mood and they’d see something and get seized with imagination, buying a marble fireplace or a fountain.

We got the job to clear Willesden Cemetery because they had too many marble memorials. So we loaded them up onto the back of our ancient Bedford lorry from 1947 and placed them in the park at the back of the church in Shoreditch where they still are today. The York paving there came from a pepper warehouse near Borough Market. We did the church up piece by piece over the years.

Eventually, we ran out of space because the nature of architectural salvage then was that the supply overwhelmed demand, we had acres of doors that people were pulling out of old houses. So we occupied a yard in Pitfield St on the site of Raymond’s Music Hall where Laurel & Hardy once performed. It was demolished before our eyes, in those days there was a pathological tendency to destroy things and replace them with NCP car parks.

There are thankfully fewer large-scale demolitions these days, although there was a period of facade retentions when we received a glut of decent stuff, floorboards, joinery and other building materials. Today we can drive around London and there isn’t a street without a building that has gone that we were involved with. We have a vast archive of photographs.

Yesterday, I was down in Wapping in Scandrett St, near the Bluecoat School, and I was asked to come there by a Mr Scandrett who has an old yard there, and I thought, ‘That’s remarkable. Here is a true relic, the street is named after the family.’

Twenty years ago, we happening to be passing through Vauxhall and there was a ‘For Sale’ sign outside this place, Brunswick House. It used to be the British Railwaymen’s Staff Association Club, when all the railway lines were cut through Vauxhall they kept it as their club house. The place was due to be disassembled brick by brick and moved to Camberwell so a developer could put a tower on this spot but Historic England said, ‘Over our dead bodies,’ because it is grade II* listed. Instead they got consent for covering the building with enormous advertising hoardings. We came along at the time the developers were getting fed up, we saw that it was for sale and asked, ‘What do you want?’ They gave us quite a reasonable price. After forty years wallowing around in gothic gloom in Shoreditch, we were delighted to be offered a south-facing Palladian mansion.

I couldn’t wished for a better career with my inclinations and upbringing. If you are excited by the aesthetic aspects what could be better than to be surrounded by stuff that fascinates you. Now I live here up on the top floor, it has wonderful light.”

George Amos and family of Bow

George Amos & Son, Old Ford Rd, Bow 1917

Adrian Amos’ first shop in New End Sq, Hampstead

Adrian Amos in his showroom ‘a favourite of the Spitalfields set’

St Michael & All Angels, Shoreditch

Adrian Amos in Shoreditch

St Michael & All Angels

Staff photo by Harry Diamond, 1978 (Adrian Amos is second from left in back row)

Adrian Amos (left) with John Cousans, Shoreditch

The gardens of Brunswick House in Vauxhall no longer extend to the Thames

‘I couldn’t wished for a better career with my inclinations and upbringing’

The framing workshop up in the roof

Brunswick House photographs copyright © Rachel Ferriman

London Architectural Salvage & Supply Company, Brunswick House, 30 Wandsworth Rd, SW8 2LG

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Remembering John Claridge who died on Sunday 24th May aged eighty-one.

Groundsman, E.15 (1965)

“This is the groundsman at the Memorial Ground where I played football aged ten in 1954.”

Some of my favourite people are the shopkeepers and those that do the small trades – who between them have contributed the major part to the identity of the East End over the years. And when I see their old premises redeveloped, I often think in regret, “I wish someone had gone round and taken portraits of these people who carried the spirit of the place.” So you can imagine my delight and gratitude to see this splendid set of photos and discover that during the sixties photographer John Claridge had the insight to take such pictures, exactly as I had hoped.

When John went back ten years later to the pitch near West Ham Station where he played football as a child, he found the groundsman was just as he remembered, with his cardigan and tie, and he took the photograph you see above. There is a dignified modesty to this fine portrait – a quality shared by all of those published here – expressed through a relaxed demeanour.

These subjects present themselves to John’s lens as emotionally open yet retaining possession of themselves, and this translates into a vital relationship with the viewer. To each of these people, John was one of their own kind and they were comfortable being photographed by him. And, thanks to the humanity of John’s vision, we have the privilege to become party to this intimacy today.

Kosher Butcher, E2 (1962) – “The chicken was none too happy!”

Brewery, Spitalfields (1964) Clocking in at the Truman Brewery, Brick Lane.

Lady with Gumball Machine, Spitalfields (1967) – “She came out of her kiosk and asked, ‘Will you photograph me with my gumball machine?'”

Saveloy Stall, Spitalfields (1967) – “It was a cold day, so I had two hot dogs.”

Whitechapel Bell Foundry, E1 (1982) Established in 1598, where the Liberty Bell and Big Ben were cast.

Rag & Bone Man, E13 (1961) – “Down my street in Plaistow, there were not many cars about – all you could hear was the clip-clop of the horse on the wet road.”

Shoe Repairs Closed Saturday, Spitalfields (1969) – “I asked, ‘Why are you open on Saturday?’ He replied, ‘I was just busy.'”

Spice, E1 (1976) – “Taken at a spice warehouse in Wapping.  The smells were fantastic, you could smell it down the street.”

Portrait, Spitalfields (1966) – “This is a group portrait of friends outside of their shop. The two brothers who ran the shop, the lady who worked round the corner and the guy who worked in the back.”

Anglo Pak Muslim Butcher, E2 (1962)

Butchers, Spitalfields (1966) -“I had just finished taking a picture next door, when this lady came out with a joint of meat and asked me to take her photograph with it.”

Fishmongers, E1 (1966) Early morning, unloading fish from Grimsby.

Beigel Baker, E2 (1967) -“After a party at about four or five in the morning, we used to end up at Rinkoff’s in Vallance Rd for smoked salmon beigels.”

Newsagent, Spitalfields (1966) -“I said, ‘Shame about Walt Disney dying, can I take your picture next to it?’ and he said, ‘Alright.'”

Selling Shoes, Spitafields (1963) – “My dad used to tell me what his dad told him, ‘If you’ve got a good pair of shoes, you own the world.'”

Strudel, E2 (1962) – “You’ll like this, boy!’ I had just taken a photograph outside this lady’s shop. I said, ‘I think your window looks beautiful.’ and she asked me in for a slice of apple strudel. It was fantastic!  But she would not accept any money, it was a gift. She said, ‘You took a picture of my shop.'”

Number 92, Spitalfields (1964)

Tubby Isaac’s, Spitalfields (1982) – “Aaahhh Tubby’s, where I’ve had many a fine eel.”

Junkyard Dog, E16 (1982) – “I was climbing over the wall into this junkyard.  All was quiet, when I noticed this pair of forbidding eyes – then I made my exit.”

Photographs copyright © John Claridge

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Signs, Posters, Typography & Graphics

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Remembering John Claridge who died on Sunday 24th May aged eighty-one. In 2012, John & I visited the monthly meetings of London Ex-Boxers Association to take portraits of the members. Coming from a family of boxers and being an ex-boxer himself, John possesses a natural empathy with these spirited men who were once the fiercest of opponents but are now the closest of friends.

Johnny Barnham (First fight 1950 – last fight 1955)

Ron Whittham (First fight 1950 – last fight 1961)

Joey Khan (First fight 1950 – last fight 1955)

Dynamo Colin Dunne (First fight 1993 – last fight 2003)

Peter Cragg (First fight 1966 – last fight 1970)

Sylvester Mittee (First fight 1977 – last fight 1988)

Ronnie Smith (First fight 1956 – last fight 1966)

Sammy McCarthy (First fight 1946 – last fight 1957)

Billy Graydon (First fight 1949 – last fight 1960)

Ron Cooper (First fight 1944 – last fight 1953)

Dave Cooper (First fight 1966 – last fight 1972)

Paul Fairweather, Committee Member of London Ex-Boxers ( fought in 1965)

Photographs copyright © John Claridge

Take a look at the entire series

John Claridge’s Boxers (Round One)

John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Two)

John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Three)

John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Four)

John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Five)

John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Six)

John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Seven)

John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Eight)

John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Nine)

John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Ten)

John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Eleven)

John Claridge’s Boxers (Round Twelve)

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Remembering John Claridge who died last Sunday aged eighty-one

John Claridge first visited the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1982 to photograph the life of Britain’s oldest manufacturing company, founded in 1570. He returned in 2016, just before it closed, to take another set of pictures. Remarkably, little changed in the intervening years.

‘It was like walking through a time portal,’ John told me. ‘There was a very tactile feeling about the place, where craftsmanship held sway, and my pictures pay testament to that feeling.’

A decade after it closed, the developers have abandoned their ludicrous plan to convert the foundry to a bell-themed boutique hotel and today it hosts property guardians while sinking into decay and acquiring graffiti. Meanwhile the London Bell Foundry continues its campaign to buy the building and reopen it as a working foundry.

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Remembering John Claridge who died on Sunday aged eighty-one

THE DRINK, E14 1964

John Claridge claimed he was not a drinker, but I was not entirely convinced once I saw this magnificent set of beer-soaked pictures that he lined up on the bar, exploring aspects of the culture of drinking and pubs in the East End. “I used to go along with my mum and dad, and sit outside with a cream soda and an arrowroot biscuit,” John assured me, recalling his first childhood trips to the pub,”…but they might let you have a drop of brown ale.”

Within living memory, the East End was filled with breweries and there were pubs on almost every corner. These beloved palaces of intoxication were vibrant centres for community life, tiled on the outside and panelled on the inside, and offering plentiful opportunities for refreshment and socialising. Consequently, the brewing industry thrived here for centuries, inspiring extremes of joy and grief among its customers. While Thomas Buxton of Truman, Hanbury & Buxton in Spitalfields used the proceeds of brewing to become a prime mover in the abolition of slavery, conversely William Booth was motivated by the evils of alcohol to form the Salvation Army in Whitechapel to further the cause of temperance.

“When I was fifteen, we’d go around the back and the largest one in the group would go up to the bar and get the beers,” John remembered fondly, “We used to go out every weekend, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. We’d all have our suits on and go down to the Puddings or the Beggars, the Deuragon, the Punchbowl, the Aberdeen, the Iron Bridge Tavern or the Bridge House.” Looking at these pictures makes me wish I had been there too.

Yet the culture of drinking thrives in the East End today, with hordes of young people coming every weekend from far and wide to pack the bars of Brick Lane and Shoreditch, in one non-stop extended party that lasts from Friday evening until Sunday night, and stretches from the former Truman Brewery up as far as Dalston.

Thanks to John’s sobriety, we can enjoy a photographic pub crawl through the alcoholic haze of the East End in the last century – when the entertainment was homegrown, the customers were local, smoking and dogs were permitted, and all ages mixed together for a night out. Cheers, everybody!

A SMOKE, E1 1982. – “There was a relaxed atmosphere where you could walk in and talk to anybody.”

THE CONVERSATION, E1 1982. – “Who is he speaking to?”

DARTBOARD, E17 1982. -“I used to be a darts player, just average not particularly good.”

SINGING,  E1 1962. -“She’d just come out of the pub…”

THE MEETING, E14, 1982. -“You don’t know what’s going on. There’s a big flash car parked there. Are they doing a piece of business?”

SLEEP, E1 1976. – “They used to club together and get a bottle of VP wine from the off-licence, and mix it with methylated spirits.”

BEERS, E1 1964. – “This is Dickensian. You wonder who’s going to step from that door. Is it the beginning of a story?”

ROUND THE BACK, E3 1963.

DOG, E1 1963. -“Just sitting there while his master went to get another pint of beer.”

EX-ALCHOHOLIC, E1 1982. – “He lived in Booth House and seemed very content that he had pulled himself out of it.”

LIVE MUSIC, E16 1982. -“It was a cold winter’s day and raining, but I had to get this picture. Live music and dancing in a vast expanse of nothing?”

THE BEEHIVE, E14 1964. – “She never stopped giggling and laughing.”

THE SMILE, E2 1962. -“He said, ‘Would you like me to smile?’ He was probably not long for this world, but he was very happy.”

IN THE BAR, E14  1964. -“I’d just got engaged to my first wife and she was one of my ex-mother-in-law’s friends. Full of life!”

THROUGH THE GLASS, E1 1982. -“I think the guy was standing at the cigarette machine.”

THE CALL, E16 1982. -“Terry Lawless’ boxing gym was above this pub. It looks as if everything is collapsing and cracking, and the shadows look like blood pouring from above.”

WHITE SWAN, E14 1982

LIGHT ALE, 1976 -“Four cans of light ale and he was completely out of it.”

CLOSED DOWN, Brick Lane 1982.

Photographs copyright © John Claridge

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Remembering John Claridge who died on Sunday aged eighty-one

Ross Bakeries, Quaker St, 1966

I am grateful to John Claridge for his prescience in taking these photographs because if I could travel back to the East End of sixty years ago this is exactly what I should like to see – the local shops and the faces of the shopkeepers.

“I used to go to the shops with my mum every Saturday morning, and she’d meet people she knew and they’d be chatting for maybe an hour, so I’d go off and meet other kids and we’d be playing on a bombsite – it was a strange education!” John told me, neatly illustrating how these small shops were integral to the fabric of society in his childhood.”People had a pride in what they were selling or what they were doing” he recalled,”You’d go into these places and they’d all smell different. They all had their distinct character, it was wonderful.”

Although generations of the family were dockers, John’s father warned him that the London Docks were in terminal decline and he sought a career elsewhere. Consequently, even as a youth, John realised that a whole way of life was going to be swept away in the changes which were coming to the East End. And this foresight inspired John to photograph the familiar culture of small shops and shopkeepers that he held in such affection. “Even then I had the feeling that things were going to be overrun, without regard to what those in that society wanted.” he confirmed to me with regret.

As the remaining small shopkeepers now join the East End Trades Guild to fight for their survival, in the face of escalating rents and the incursion of chain stores, John Claridge’s poignant images are a salient reminder of the venerable tradition of local shops here that we cannot afford to lose.

Shop in Spitalfields, 1964.

C & K Grocers, Spitalfields, 1982 – “From the floor to the roof, the shop was stocked full of everything you could imagine.”

Cobbler, Spitalfields, 1969.

Flo’s Stores, Spitalfields, 1962 – “All the shops were individual then. Somebody painted the typography themselves here and it’s brilliant.”

Fruit & Veg, Bethnal Green 1961 – “I’d been to a party and it was five o’clock in the morning, but she was open.”

W.Wernick, Spitalfields, 1962.

Fishmonger, Spitalfields, 1965.

Corner Shop, Spitalfields, 1961 – “The kid’s just got his stuff for his mum and he’s walking back.”

At W.Wernick Poulterers, Spitalfields, 1962 – “She’s got her hat, her cup of tea and her flask. There was no refrigeration but it was chilly.”

Fiorella Shoes, E2, 1966 – “There’s only four pairs of shoes in the window. How could they measure shoes to fit, when they couldn’t even fit the words in the window? The man next door said to me, ‘Would you like me to step back out of the picture?’ I said, ‘No, I’d really like you to be in the picture.”

Bertha, Spitalfields, 1982 – “Everything is closing down but you can still have a wedding! She’s been jilted at the altar and she’s just waiting now.”

Bakers, Spitalfields, 1959 – “There’s only three buns and a cake in the window.”

Jacques Wolff, E13 1960 – “His name was probably Jack Fox and he changed it to Jacques Wolff.”

Waltons, E13 1960 – “They just sold cheap shoes, but you could get a nice Italian pair knocked off from the docks at a good price.”

Churchman’s, Spitalfields, 1968 – “Anything you wanted from cigarettes to headache pills.”

White, Spitalfields 1967 – “I saw these three kids and photographed them, it was only afterwards I saw the name White.”

The Door, E2 1960.

The Window, E16  1982 – “Just a little dress shop, selling bits and pieces. The clothes could have been from almost any era.”

Victor, E14 1968 – “There’s no cars on the road, the place was empty, but there was a flower shop on the corner and it was always full of flowers.”

Photographs copyright © John Claridge

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Remembering John Claridge who died on Sunday aged eighty-one.

In Silvertown, 1964

These atmospheric photographs of the Thames by John Claridge offer a poignant vision of the working river that was once a defining element of the East End. Within living memory, the busiest port in the world was here yet today barely a trace of it remains. And John’s pictures, mostly taken when he was a mere kid photographer, capture the last glimmers of the living docks. “My dad’s friends were saying that the docks were going down, so I was aware of that and I just wanted to grab hold of it,” John told me.

“As a child, from my bedroom in Plaistow, I could see the lights of the docks at night and I used to go to sleep listening to the sound of the horns on the Thames whenever there was fog, which was quite often. You could smell the river if the wind was blowing in the right direction. A lot of the men in my family worked down the docks. My father took me down to the dock gate when he worked for the New Zealand Shipping Company and I used to go out with my camera at weekends, or any spare time I had, to take pictures. I went out to see what was going on, I reacted to what was there and, if I saw something, I photographed it. It was instinctive, I never thought I was documenting. I had a need to take pictures, it was as natural as breathing.”

John’s photographs convey the epic nature of the docks where once thousands worked to unload vast ships bringing cargos from distant continents, a collective endeavour upon a grand scale. Yet these are personal pictures and, for this reason John has included few people, even if their presence is always tangible. “You can put yourself and your emotions into the photograph if there’s nobody in it,” he confided to me, “These pictures were for myself. I was interested in the quality of the light which was magnificent. Because of the bends of the river, you got it coming in all directions and in each place it was different.”

As a youngster, John was able to get everywhere, creeping through side alleys, climbing over walls, even setting out in a tiny inflatable dinghy on the river, but sometimes, he would just walk right in through the main entrance.”I’d go through the dock gate,” he confessed, “It was much more of an innocent time – I should have got a pass, but I’d just say, ‘I’m doing photographs’ and they’d say, ‘On you go.’ As a kid you could get anywhere.” If you observe the shifting point of view in these pictures, you can see that some are taken from the Thames beach, some from John’s dinghy at water level while others are taken looking down from walls and bridges, where he had climbed up.

The majestic image above was taken in the dawn light in Silvertown in 1964, when John climbed onto the dock wall to photograph the huge cargo ship that had just arrived, and waited for the sun to rise before he took his picture. As a consequence, the vessel filling the background looks like a phantom fading in the first light of day. There is an equally fascinating distinction between the foreground and background in the photograph below, also taken over the dock wall in Silvertown in 1964. The ships in the background appear ethereal as if they were a mirage too, about to vanish. In John’s vision, the docks are haunted by their own disappearance, and the incandescent dreamlike ambiance of his pictures – often taken through fog or mist rising from the river – places them in a pictorial tradition of the Thames which includes Whistler and Turner.

Yet beyond their breathtaking quality as photography, John Claridge’s elegiac photographs of the Thames are special because they are taken by one who grew up with the river and knew the culture of the docks intimately. As he admitted to me, speaking of the river and his relationship with it, “It’s not something you discover, it’s always been there – it’s part of you who you are.”

“I climbed over the dock wall to take this picture in New Canning Town. You never expect it to go and then all of a sudden it’s gone.” 1964

Old warehouses in Silvertown, 1982.

Dock wall, Isle of Dogs, 1982.

In Poplar, at the very end of the docks, 1982. “You can see how quiet it is.”

1962, a crane driver takes a break for a fag in Silvertown.

From the river, 1962

Inside the docks in Canning Town, 1968.”As soon as the containers moved down to Tilbury, you saw it winding down.”

Near Stratford, from road bridge with the canal in the foregound, 1960.

Limehouse, 1972.

At water level, Wapping, 1964.

A lighter in Wapping, 1963

Warehouses in Wapping, 1965

In a tributary at Canning Town, 1962

Near St Katherine Dock, 1960. “It was all open then, you could walk around.”

Chemical works near Bow, 1965.

Looking into the dock from a bridge, Silvertown, 1982. “There may have been some manufacturing left but the dockland was dead.”

Winter light downriver, 1982

Near Silvertown, with one of the bridges across the dock in the background, 1966.

A lighter in Wapping, 1961.

Photographs copyright © John Claridge

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Remembering photographer John Claridge who died on Sunday aged eighty-one. In 2016, over lunch at The French House in Dean St, John told his story to The Gentle Author (Extract from the introduction to East End).

Len & Doll Claridge, 1964

“I was an only child so I asked my mum, ‘Will I have a sister or a brother?’ but she said ‘You’re enough.’ I was never quite sure if that was a compliment.

My father went to sea when he was thirteen and he was invited to go on the Scott expedition. He was a bare-knuckle fighter in the East End and sold booze in the States in the thirties during Prohibition. But my mum, she stayed a machinist most of her life in the Roman Road, Bow. On school holidays I used to go in the van, delivering shirts around the East End. By the time I was growing up, my father had stopped going to sea and was working down the docks as a rigger, testing the cranes and that type of stuff. When he took me down there, it was sheer wonderment.

I used to get up with my dad, before he went down the docks at five o’clock in the morning and I did my paper round. We got up an hour early so we so could talk over a bit of toast and a cup of tea, and he would tell me stories about the sea. That was my education in wonderment. I really wanted to go to sea and see the world, but I did it through people sending me around the world to take photographs, so that ambition was fulfilled in another way.

I used to go to the shops with my mum every Saturday morning, and she would meet people she knew and they would be chatting for maybe an hour, while I went off and played on a bomb site. We would go into these shops and markets and they all smelled different. They each had their distinctive character, it was wonderful. People had a pride in what they were selling or what they were doing.

As a child, from my bedroom in Plaistow, I could see the lights of the docks at night and I used to go to sleep listening to the sound of the horns on the Thames whenever there was fog, which was quite often. You could smell the river if the wind was blowing in the right direction. A lot of the men in my family worked down the docks. When my father worked for the New Zealand Shipping Company, he took me down to the dock gate and onto the wharves – and I used to go out with my camera at weekends, or any spare time I had, to take pictures. I went out to see what was going on, I reacted to what was there and, if I saw something, I photographed it. It was instinctive, I never thought I was documenting. I had a need to take pictures, it was as natural as breathing.

Bomb sites were my playground and I was very aware of the war because a lot of my family were in it, and they showed me the medals they came back with. At that age, what you understand is limited but you are aware. We had rationing yet people had faith that things were going to get better. The only luxury would be something that was knocked off from the docks, be it a lump of liver or a bit of cake or whatever. I remember the end of food rationing, we got more bananas.

When I was eleven, I started boxing at school. South West Ham Tech in Canning Town was an all-boys school and it was mandatory for all the kids to get into the ring. It was a big old gym and they were big on sport, but my mum did not want me to do it because she did not want me to spoil my face. All the family were boxing, and they said, ‘You should do it because you have the ability to do it,’ and I quite enjoyed it actually. It was good fun. If you met someone you had been in a ring with, you always bought them a drink or they bought you a drink. I had reasonable success but I have small hands. I have got my mum’s hands not my dad’s hands.

One day when I was eight or nine, I was at at fair on Wanstead Flats and there was this stall, throwing rings for prizes, and I wanted this plastic camera. I did not know why I wanted it, except I wanted to capture everything and take the memories back with me. You know, I already understood that if you have a camera, you can take it all back with you. But I did not win it. Instead, I did a paper round, saved up and bought an Ilford Sportsman. I do not really know why I needed a camera and I needed to take pictures. Photography was a natural language to me. I developed them myself which I thought was pretty cool. I got a little catalogue that said put developer in there and this in there and wash it in there. We only had an outside toilet, so at night, that was where I developed all my film. It was not difficult. It was magic.

I left school at fifteen and I went down to the West Ham Labour Exchange. There was this lovely bloke, a nice man. He said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I’m going to be a photographer and take pictures’ and I expected him to say, ‘Yeah, that’s really good.’ Instead he said, ‘It’s not that easy,’ so I replied ‘Yes it is, you just take photographs.’ ‘Ok,’ he said, ‘there’s a job up the West End, but you won’t get it, let me tell you now – you won’t get it.’ This was for an assistant in a photographic department at an advertising agency. He said, ‘They’re interviewing people with qualifications from universities and colleges, and you’re too young but I’m going to send you anyway, so you can see how these things work.’ That sounded all right to me. I wore a black four-button herringbone suit, a tab-collar shirt, a knitted tie and winkle-pickers – I thought I looked the business. How could I possibly fail?

It was at McCann Erickson and when I walked into the reception, there were about four, five or six blokes sitting around waiting. Obviously they were lot older than I was, they had tweed jackets with leather patches on the elbows. I said ‘All right?’ and they totally blanked me. They had never seen style before. The interview was with Eddie Brown who had been a Captain in the Scottish Highlanders and had come up the hard way. I was the last person to be interviewed and when I walked in, he did not say anything, he just looked at me. He did not know what to say, so he asked, ‘What film do you use?’

I said, ‘I won’t use anything else but HPS and FP3, I think it’s the best around’. And he said, ‘So do I – you can have the job.’ I said, ‘Oh, the other thing is I take pictures.’ I had brought with me some small prints of the Thames and views of the East End that I had made at home on an old enlarger. Those posh boys had qualifications and no pictures, but I had pictures and no qualifications, so I got the job – that was it. And I loved every moment of it.

First of all, I started by mixing up the chemicals and doing general stuff in the darkroom, but very quickly I was asked to do some printing. Before long, I was getting art directors coming down and asking me to do their prints. Later, I made prints for for Jeanloup Sieff, Don McCullin and Saul Leiter, when I was still only seventeen. I remember Saul Leiter asked, ‘Can you do something with this?’ The film looked like someone had processed it in tomato sauce, so I worked on it to see what I could get out of it and, when I had finished, he was very pleased with it.

At McCann Erickson, I met Robert Brownjohn – who everyone knew as ‘BJ.’ He had just come over from New York. He was a brilliant designer who had worked with Moholy-Nagy and became famous for doing the title sequences for ‘From Russia With Love’ and ‘Goldfinger.’ I always remember BJ in an Ivy League jacket and buttoned-down shirt. He would come to the Photographic Department and ask, ‘Hey kid, hey kid, can you experiment with this?’ BJ introduced me to a different way of looking. We would look at pieces of type and everyday objects together, considering them as design in their own right. He taught me to appreciate their abstract quality by having me look at a face or a hand as a piece of sculpture, and lighting it accordingly. BJ opened my eyes and then he said, ‘Kid, you’re gonna have an exhibition whether you like it or not.’ I was sixteen then.

The show was in McCann’s gallery and the subject was the East End. What surprised me was the response. People really thought a lot of the pictures. Dennis Bailey, Art Director of Town Magazine said, ‘There’s shades of Walker Evans.’ I did not know who the fuck Walker Evans was, so I thought, ‘Is this a compliment or is he taking the piss?’ But then I saw Walker Evans’ work and it is some of the most beautiful photography you are ever going to see – in my opinion – ever.”

The house in Plaistow where John Claridge grew up

John Claridge (right)  with his mate Keith Horton (left), 1961

John Claridge takes a photograph in Spitalfields, 1964

Photographs copyright © John Claridge