Magnificent Apple Strudel kindly baked by Farokh Talati, Head Chef at St John Bread & Wine for the lucky guests on this Sunday’s tour of Whitechapel. Click here to book for Whitechapel tours on Sundays 23rd August, 6th and 23rd September, and 18th October

We are delighted to show these splendid cut paper collages by favourite illustrator Marion Elliot which are the subject of her exhibition MAKING GOOD at Tinsmiths in Ledbury, opening this weekend and running until 4th September. For those of you unable to make the trip to Herefordshire, I publish them here today.

‘While I was working on fabric designs based on mochaware pottery for Phoebe Clive, owner of Tinsmiths, we discussed how we wanted to celebrate traditional crafts. Many of the themes of my collages, such as smocking, come from ideas sparked by my visits to rural museums, agricultural fairs, flower shows and also traditional customs including Lammas Day celebrations. When Phoebe offered me an exhibition to launch the fabric and show a collection of these collages, I was delighted to accept.’  Marion Elliot

At the Block Printers

The production of block-printed fabrics in the British Isles was inspired by hand-printed fabrics imported from Asia. Early blocks were carved from pear or sycamore wood and used to print fabric by hand before the arrival of mechanisation. Interest in hand block-printing was revived by William Morris in the nineteenth century and continued in the twentieth century by designers such as Barron & Larcher, who shared Morris’ interest in natural dyes, and their pupil Enid Marx.

At the Clay Pipe Factory

Clay pipes were made from the middle of the sixteenth century in London and the craft spread rapidly throughout England. Family groups often made pipes together which were formed by pushing white earthenware clay into two-part plaster moulds. Some moulds were ornate and produced highly decorative pipes. The central channel was achieved by feeding an oiled wire through the body of the pipe which met a stopper at the bowl. Clay pipes were cheap and disposable, but they were replaced by wooden pipes in the nineteenth century and cigarettes during the First World War.

The Fair Isle Knitters

Fair Isle knitting comes from a tiny island situated between Orkney and the Shetland Islands, north of Scotland. It is created using double ended needles and knitted in the round, using two colours at a time, with around four colours being used in the whole garment. In this picture two sisters knit sweaters. Their neighbour has been cutting peats and carries them in a traditional handmade kishie woven from straw, dockens and marram grass.

At the Slipware Factory

Popular from the seventeenth century onwards, slipware pottery was decorated by applying contrasting slip, or liquid clay, to unfired clay. This was poured, trailed or brushed onto the surface and could also be scratched away to reveal the colour of the clay beneath by a technique known as sgraffito. There were some very notable English slipware makers, such as Thomas & Ralph Toft, who made pottery with biblical and royal themes.

At the Tinsmiths

Tinware was produced in London from the middle of the seventeenth century.  Unlike blacksmithing, it was a cold metal craft although fire was used to heat tools and solder. Tinsmiths made metal containers and utensils entirely by hand, using tinned steel sheet and wire. They hammered the metal sheets over iron stakes to bend them into shape and ran solder down the joints to seal them. Many tinsmiths, tinkers, were itinerant and returned to their customers to make repairs and patch up holes.

The Smock Maker

Before the invention of elastic, smocking stitches were used to gather fullness in smocks worn by agricultural labourers. This technique offered a bit of ‘give’ across the chest and shoulders, allowing movement when working. Different trades and skills often had distinctive smocking patterns, making the wearers easy to identify.

At the Mochaware Factory

Mochaware was a cheap variety of decorated tankards, bowls and jars in earthenware pottery, featuring bands applied with liquid clay, achieved by turning each piece on a lathe while applying even lines of slip. The most common styles were earthworm, a trailing, wavy design and cats’ eyes, comprising dotted multicolour motifs. Tree-like patterns were achieved by dropping an acidic mocha tea mixture onto the wet slip so that it spread across the surface in a pattern resembling branches.

The Harvest Jug Maker

Harvest jugs are large earthenware pitchers decorated with contrasted slip and embellished with scratched sgraffito designs celebrating fertility, the abundance of nature, royal coats of arms, sailing ships and other traditional motifs. They were employed to serve ale and cider to farm workers at harvest time and at celebrations for the end of the cut, when the crops were safely home. There is a strong tradition of harvest jug making around Bideford and Barnstaple in North Devon with some spectacular examples at the Burton Museum in Bideford.

The Harvest Loaf Baker

The baker takes the Lammas loaf – made using wheat from the first cut of the new harvest – out of the oven. Behind him is a traditional harvest loaf in the form of a wheatsheaf and above him, corn tokens or dollies made with the last of the old harvest. Lammas Day falls on 1st August, when the new loaf is taken to church and blessed to give thanks for the harvest. The enormous harvest loaf is employed as the centrepiece of harvest festivals throughout the late summer and early autumn.

At the Chair Makers

Making chairs by hand is still widely practised, continuing the tradition of the Arts & Crafts makers such as Ernest Gimson, who was heavily influenced by rural chairmaker Philip Clisset. His company made the original ladder-back, rush-seated chairs – still used at the Art Workers’ Guild – in their workshop in Bosbury near Ledbury, Herefordshire.

The Silk Ribbon Maker

In Spitalfields, silk ribbon weaving was established in the late seventeenth century by Huguenot refugees. Then, from the early eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, silk ribbon weaving became Coventry’s main industry. At one stage around 13,000 hand looms were in operation and half the population of Coventry was associated with the trade. The jacquard loom, shown here, wove several widths at once. An alternative method was to weave the ribbons as a broadcloth, with gaps between, so they could be cut and separated after production.

Preparing for the Flower & Produce Show

Even before the show takes place, there are weeks of anxiety as flowers and vegetables are lovingly tended and fussed over by their growers. Customarily, judgment at flower and produce shows is strict and there are many rules governing display of exhibits which, if disregarded, can result in disqualification.

At the Flower & Produce Show

Agricultural Fairs traditionally take place during the month of August, when farmers bring their champion beasts to compete for glory in the ring. The Flower & Produce Show is a fiercely contested part of the fair, taking place in enormous marquees, where prize vegetables and flowers are displayed alongside jams, pickles, cakes, knitted items  and children’s vegetable sculptures. Other attractions include sheep shearing, horse jumping and dressage, traction engine and tractor rallies, beer tents and very often, fairground rides.

At the Fry Gallery 1

This collage was made in response to Fry’s Popular Delights, an exhibition curated by Mark Hearld & Colin Wilkin at the Fry Gallery in Saffron Walden, featuring items from the collections of the Great Bardfield artists. Here is an image of a house by Tirzah Garwood, a Staffordshir zebra, two Wedgwood pottery mugs by Eric Ravilious and a mochaware mug.

At the Fry Gallery 2

More inspiration from Fry’s Popular Delights, featuring a Wedgwood Elizabeth II coronation mug by Eric Ravilious, a coronation money box, a mochaware mug, a collection of clay pipes and a few other bits from my own collection.

Illustrations copyright © Marion Elliot

Join me for tea and cakes freshly baked to recipe of 1720 served in a 300 year old house. Click here for tickets for next Saturday’s tour of Spitalfields

You only walk in the alleys if you have a strong stomach and stout shoes, if you are willing to ignore the stink and the sinister puddles for the sake of striking out alone from the throng of humanity coursing along Bishopsgate.

This whole place was once characterised by the warren of alleys and yards which laced the streets. And, when the fancy takes me to enter those that remain, it is in thrall to the delusion that maybe I can find a way back through the labyrinth to old Spitalfields. There is part of my mind that wonders if I will ever find my way out again and another part of me that yearns for this outcome, longing to find an alley that is a portal to a parallel world.

Of the alleys that tempt the innocent pedestrian emerging from Liverpool St Station, only Catherine Wheel Alley actually leads anywhere, delivering you by means of a dog-leg to Middlesex St. Stepping beneath the arched entrance and passing under the low ceiling above, you emerge behind the buildings which line the street to discover yourself at the bottom of a well where sunlight descends, bouncing off the ceramic bricks lining the walls. You walk dead straight in the blind faith that a route lies ahead and enter a tiny yard, where you may surprise a guilty smoker enjoying an illicit cigarette.

“Can I get through?” asked a lone woman I encountered, approaching from the opposite direction with a disarming lack of wariness. I stood against the wall in the yard here to consider the confluence of buildings that intersect in elaborate ways overhead and, to my surprise, a door opened in the wall behind me and an Eastern European woman asked me to step aside as she hauled out two sack of rubbish before disappearing again. From this yard, a narrow street leads uneventfully to Middlesex St – the drama of the alley diminished once the destination is apparent.

Perhaps most people avoid these empty alleys for fear of what they might discover? Individuals engaged in lewd activity or relieving bodily functions, or injecting pharmaceuticals, or threatening violence, or robbery, or worse? Yet every corner of every alley has a film camera gazing down, removing the possibility of any truly clandestine activity.

The lack of space in these passages demands that people acknowledge each other and the code of mutual disregard which prevails in the street cannot hold. This is the true magnetism of alleys, as escape routes from the hegemony of the crowd. The spatial disorientation, leaving street sounds behind you, as you enter an ambiguous architectural maze is a welcome respite. You can turn in the alley and look back to the people on the pavement, and you discover you have become invisible – they no longer see you.

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Click here to book for The Gentle Author’s tours

In 1930, basketmaker and artist Henry Silk sits alone in his sparsely furnished room in Rounton Rd in Bow surrounded by few personal possessions. He glances in the mirror and realises that he is no longer young. Yet the pair of medals from the Great War laid on the table remind him how lucky he is to be alive.

He wakes in the camp bed in the early morning and the empty green room is flooded with light as dawn rises over the rooftops of the East End and washing flaps on the line. Weaving baskets suits a contemplative nature and, when Henry returns from the kitchen with a cup of tea, he sits at the table with the pink cloth and studies the objects upon the surface in the morning sunlight.

The forms and colours of these familiar things fascinate him. His pipe, his purse and his pocket knife that he carried for years are as commonplace to him as his own hands. Each day, Henry paints a picture to catalogue his personal possessions, comprising the modest landscape of his existence. It is a whole life in a handful of paintings.

Henry Silk and his sister

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The Whitechapel Mount in 1801. Was the Mount an ancient burial mound? Was it where all the leylines converge in East London? Visit the site of the Whitechapel Mount on my new tour and discover the mystery of the Mount. Tickets are available on Sundays 23rd August, 6th and 23rd September, and 18th October. Tour includes tea and apple strudel at the Whitechapel Gallery. Click here to book

Between 2012-2014, photographer Colin O’Brien documented Whitechapel, recording the changes delivered by the Olympics and the building of the Elizabeth Line. A decade later the transformation has only accelerated.

Photographs copyright Estate of Colin O’Brien

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Colin O’Brien at the Whitechapel Mission

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Click here to book for The Gentle Author’s Tours

Impending gloom at the Mansion House, c. 1910

Given the relentless heatwave, I think the only prudent course of action is to withdraw into one of the drawing rooms of old London and close the curtains. A meagre ray of sunlight has filtered through the drapes, highlighting the dust upon the armoire. Stretch out upon the chaise longue, I shall take the sofa where I shall open my copy of War & Peace while my cat will settle upon the fauteuil.

These glass slides once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute reveal glimpses into the lavish drawing rooms occupied by those at the pinnacle of power in old London, and I can only wonder what the East Enders of a century ago thought when exposed to these strange visions of another world.

State Room Chelsea Royal Hospital, c. 1920

Drawing Room at Lindsay House, Chelsea, former home of the Moravians, 1912

Hall at Fulham Palace, c. 1920

White Drawing Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Dining Room at Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Christians’ Sitting Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Prince Consort’s Writing Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Throne Room at St James’ Palace, c.1910

Prince Consort’s Music Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Prince Consort’s Tapestry Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Empress Eugiene’s Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Bow Saloon, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Prince Consort’s Writing Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Prince Consort’s Music Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Queen Victoria’s Dolls’ House, Kensington Palace, c. 1910

Holland House, c. 1910

Lord Mayor’s Room, Mansion House, c.1910

Drawing Room, Goldsmiths Hall, c. 1920

Drawing Room, Armourers’ Hall, c. 1920

Small Hall at Cordwainers’ Hall, 1920

Drawing Room, Goldsmiths’ Hall, 1920

Drawing Room, Salters’ Hall, c. 1910

Drawing Room, Mercers’ Hall,  1920

Drawing Room, Devonshire House, c. 1910

Ballroom  at Devonshire House, c. 1910

Drawing Room, Whitehall Gardens, 1913

Prince Consort’s Dressing Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Belgian Suite Bedroom, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Prince Consort’s Study, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Bow Saloon, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Throne Room, Buckingham Palace, c. 1910

Vestry of St Lawrence Jewry, c. 1920

Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

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The Nights of Old London

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Click to book for The Gentle Author’s Tours

You enter the park by the Thames and go through a gate in a high wall to find yourself in a beautiful vegetable garden with an elaborate Tudor gate. Beyond the Tudor gate lies Fulham Palace, presenting an implacable classically-proportioned facade across a wide expanse of lawn bordered by tall old trees. You dare to walk across the grass and sneak around to the back of the stately home where you discover a massive Tudor gateway with ancient doors, leading to a courtyard with a fountain dancing and a grand entrance where Queen Elizabeth I once walked in. It was only a short walk from the tube but already you are in another world.

For over a thousand years the Bishops of London lived here until 1975 when it was handed over to the public. But even when Bishop Waldhere (693-c.705) acquired Fulham Manor around the year 700, it was just the most recent dwelling upon a site beside the Thames that had already been in constant habitation since Neolithic times. Our own St Dunstan, who built the first church in Stepney in 952, became Bishop of London in 957 and lived here. By 1392, a document recorded the great ditch that enclosed the thirty-six acres of Britain’s largest medieval moated dwelling.

Time has accreted innumerable layers and the visitor encounters a rich palimpsest of history, here at one of London’s earliest powerhouses. You stand in the Tudor courtyard admiring its rich diamond-patterned brickwork and the lofty tower entrance, all girded with a fragrant border of lavender at this time of year. Behind this sits the Georgian extension, presenting another face to the wide lawn. Yet even this addition evolved from Palladian in 1752 to Strawberry Hill Gothick in 1766, before losing its fanciful crenellations and towers devised by Stiff Leadbetter to arrive at a piously austere elevation, which it maintains to this day, in 1818.

Among the ecclesiastical incumbents were a number of botanically-inclined bishops whose legacy lives on in the grounds, manifest in noteworthy trees and the restored glasshouses where exotic fruits were grown for presentation to the monarch. In the sixteenth century, Bishop Grindal (1559-1570) sent grapes annually to Elizabeth I, and “The vines at Fulham were of that goodness and perfection beyond others” wrote John Strype. As Head of the Church in the American Colonies, Bishop Henry Compton (1675-1753), sent missionaries to collect seeds and cuttings and, in his thirty-eight tenure, he cultivated a greater variety of trees and shrubs than had previously been seen in any garden in England – including the first magnolia in Europe.

At this time of year, the walled garden proposes the focus of popular attention with its lush vegetable beds interwoven with cosmos, nasturtiums, sweet peas and french marigolds. A magnificent wisteria of more than a century’s growth shelters an intricate knot garden facing a curved glasshouse, following the line of a mellow old wall, where cucumber, melons and tomatoes and aubergines are ripening.

The place is a sheer wonder and a rare peaceful green refuge at the heart of the city – and everyone can visit for free .

Cucumbers in the glasshouse

Melon in the glasshouse

Five hundred year old Holme Oak

Coachman’s House by William Butterfield

Lodge House in the Gothick style believed to have been designed by Lady Hooley c. 1815

Tudor buildings in the foreground with nineteenth century additions towards the rear.

Sixteenth century gate with original oak doors

The courtyard entrance

Chapel by William Butterfield

Tudor gables

All Saints, Fulham seen from the walled garden

Freshly harvested carrots and vegetable marrows

Ancient yews preside at All Saints Fulham

Click here to book for The Gentle Author’s Tours

Viscountess Boudicca

Ten years ago today, on August 3rd 2016, Viscountess Boudicca was decanted from her council flat in Bethnal Green to Uttoxeter. Last week, she paid a rare visit to London, her first in seven years, en route to visit her mother in Braintree. We met at the Bishopsgate Institute and it provided the opportunity for Viscountess to give me an account of her Uttoxeter years. Regrettably, she has encountered a similar level of grief there on account of her difference – harassment from neighbours exacerbated by lack of sympathy or any support from the authorities –  just as in Bethnal Green. Yet throughout it all she retains an heroic level of moral courage and resilience, thanks in no small part to her colourful private life involving Guy Fawkes, Henry VIII and Erik Hosebonde.

“The trouble with Uttoxeter is that I gave notice to quit a month after I arrived, September 2016, and the woman from the council said, ‘I knew that we made a terrible mistake. We had another of ‘your kind’ and we had problems with them.’ So I said, ‘Why the hell did you force me up here?’ but then she said, ‘Tower Hamlets won’t reverse the decision.’

The problem was that all my neighbours, they came round about seven o’clock one night with a petition. They said, ‘We want you to go.’ The reason that they gave was that ‘You’re a raving pouf! We don’t like your type. You’ve come into our town and taken our place’. They were bigoted country bumpkins. So I said, ‘You can send me back to London if you’ll pay for it. I’m not going to be intimidated by you.’ Then I got all the hate notes and, if I go into a shop, they make sure I am the last to be served.

One bloke who lived opposite didn’t have any money, he was waiting for Universal Credit. He said, ‘I’m starving, my friends won’t help me.’ I said, ‘I thought you country people stick together.’ But they said, ‘Why should we help him?’ So I thought, goodness, everything about this place gets on my wick.

I cooked him dinner for a month until one day as he arrived, when they was all outside, I asked him, ‘How’s it going?’ and he said, ‘Mind your own business, you pouf or I’ll kill you.’ Then they all laughed, they thought it was highly funny. So I said, ‘I didn’t see you lot helping him.’ This is how it’s been going on. It has never been a home and it never can be because of what they do.

But I have my ghosts who come and see me. As you know, when we went to the Tower of London in 2016, I met Guy Fawkes and he said, ‘I’ve missed you, where have you been?’ Previously in the January of  2014, I had visited Hampton Court. I felt I needed to go there because Henry VIII’s face appeared to me in the bathroom mirror. He normally appears as a skeleton with a hood wrapped round him but I saw him in the flesh. After that he visited regularly and made me sign paperwork to confirm that our vows had been renewed.

Henry is the kind of person who will do something and think later, it’s hit first and regret it after, but we get on extremely well. He has his moods and starts like everyone else, and when the neighbours are playing up he has made himself known. When I had my Tarot cards read, I discovered that I was Henry’s third wife, Jane Seymour. I gave birth to Edward VI but our happiness was short-lived because I died sixteen days afterwards. He thinks of me now like an old pair of slippers, comfortable.

Two days after I arrived in Uttoxeter, he appeared. Guy Fawkes was the resident ghost and he was already there, but Henry decided he would come too. The problem was that including my three husbands, Henry, Guy and Erik (My first husband), I have eight in total. At first, they hated the sight of each other but I spend time with them all and when I die they will come with me. It’s like I am a passport to another world. Henry is stuck between the two worlds at the moment because the women whose heads he chopped off put a curse on him.

In the year 873, I married Erik Hosebonde in a pagan wedding in February. I grew up with him in Sweden. After we married, we used to come to England on raids to Norfolk. We did reconnaissance in 874. The longship would drop us off and we would spend a week surveying the area and making sure there were no rocks along the coastline. They would come at night to raid the Anglo-Saxon stronghold, looting and burning so the souls of those they killed would not return. My first life ended on the 6th May 878.

Since I left London, I have learnt to mistrust people because of their behaviour but, because I have my ghosts, I feel that I am on the outside of life and occasionally I have these out of the body experiences. I lie on the floor and I see my body drift away and it usually goes off to Hampton Court with Henry. The neighbours in Uttoxeter are either throwing stones or telling me to go and die. There’s so much hatred towards me. If it wasn’t for the ghosts I would have ended it. They give me strength. Henry, Guy and Erik are all hot-headed, and they’ll say, ‘Stick two fingers up to them.’

I have had so many horrendous times but I treat people as I would like to be treated because I believe that if I treat people fairly, and not prejudge them, then they might do the same to me.”

Viscountess Boudicca with Henry VIII and Edward VI at Hampton Court

Viscountess Boudicca and Henry VIII at the supermarket

Henry VIII and Viscountess Boudicca at the television studio recording Henry’s Christmas message

Erik Hosebonde and Viscountess Boudicca in the ninth century

Erik Hosebonde and Viscountess Boudicca arrive by longship in Norfolk by night with Erik’s twin brother in the background

Follow Viscountess Boudicca on Instagram @fawkesboudicca

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Tickets available on Sunday 23rd August & in September. Click here to book

Tutivillus the demon eavesdropping upon two women

I spent a morning on my knees in St Katharine’s Chapel in Limehouse, photographing these rare survivors of fourteenth century sculpture, believed to have been created around 1360 for the medieval St Katharine’s Chapel next to the Tower of London, which was displaced and then demolished for the building of the docks in 1825.

These marvellous carvings evoke a different world and another sensibility, combining the sacred and profane in grotesque and fantastical images that speak across time as emotive and intimate expressions of the human imagination. I am particularly fascinated by the sense of mutability between the human and animal kingdom in these sculptures, manifesting a vision of a mythic universe of infinite strange possibility which was once familiar to our forebears.

Intriguingly, these misericords appear to have been created by the same makers who carved those at Lincoln and Chester cathedrals, and a friary in Coventry.

After a sojourn of over a hundred years in Regent’s Park, the Royal Foundation of St Katharine, originally founded by Queen Matilda in 1147, moved back to the East End to Limehouse in 1948 where it flourishes today, offering an enclave of peace and reflection, sequestered from the traffic roaring along the Highway on one side and Commercial Rd on the other.

Centaur with club and shield

Tutivillus holds the parchment on the Day of Judgement

Owl

Bust of a bearded man in a striped cap with a cape and trailing drapery

Winged beast with a long tail and human head

Dragon

Edward III

Queen Philippa

Bishop’s head

Green man

Bearded man wearing a cap

A former Master of St Katharine’s was Chancellor of the Exchequer

Angel playing the bagpipes

Pelican in her piety with three chicks, supported by a pair of swans

Lion leaping upon the amphisbaena, supported by reptilian monsters

Coiled serpentine monster

Woman riding a beast with a man’s head

Elephant and castle surmounted by a crowned head

Beast with a hooded human head

Miser

Choir stalls with misericords

St Katharine’s Chapel was built in 1951 on the site of St James, Ratcliffe, destroyed in the blitz

Late fifteenth or early sixteen century carving of angel musicians playing a psaltery, a harp and tabor

The Royal Foundation of St Katharine, 2 Butcher Row, Limehouse, E14 8DS

With thanks to the Master of the Royal Foundation of St Katharine for permission to photograph the misericords

If you are interested to visit St Katharine’s Chapel please write to info@rfsk.org.uk

At Marks & Co, 84 Charing Cross Rd

After I left college and came to London, I rented a small windowless room in a basement off the Portobello Rd and I spent a lot of time trudging the streets. I believed the city was mine and I used to plan my walks of exploration around the capital by visiting all the old bookshops. They were such havens of peace from the clamour of the streets that I wished I could retreat from the world and move into one, setting up a hidden bedroom to sleep between the shelves and read all day in secret.

Frustrated by my pitiful lack of income, it was not long before I began carrying boxes of my textbooks to bookshops in the Charing Cross Rd and swapping them for a few banknotes that would give me a night at the theatre or some other treat. I recall the wrench of guilt when I first sold books off my shelves but I found I was more than compensated by the joy of the experiences that were granted to me in exchange.

Inevitably, I soon began acquiring more books that I discovered in these shops and, on occasion, making deals that gave me a little cash and a single volume from the shelves in return for a box of my own books. In this way, I obtained some early Hogarth Press titles and a first edition of To The Lighthouse with a sticker in the back revealing that it had been bought new at Shakespeare & Co in Paris. How I would like to have been there in 1927 to make that purchase myself.

Once, I opened a two volume copy of Tristram Shandy and realised it was an eighteenth century edition rebound in nineteenth century bindings, which accounted for the low price of eighteen pounds. Yet even this sum was beyond my means at the time. So I took the pair of volumes and concealed them at the back of the shelf hidden behind the other books and vowed to return.

More than six months later, I earned an advance for a piece of writing and – to my delight when I came back – I discovered the books were still there where I had hidden them. No question about the price was raised at the desk and I have those eighteenth century volumes of Tristram Shandy with me today. Copies of a favourite book, rendered more precious by the way I obtained them and now a souvenir of those dusty old secondhand bookshops that were once my landmarks to navigate around the city.

Frank Hollings of Cloth Fair, established 1892

E. Joseph of Charing Cross Rd, established 1885

Mr Maggs of Maggs Brothers of Berkeley Sq, established 1855

Marks & Co of Charing Cross Rd, established 1904

Harold T. Storey of Cecil Court, established 1928

Henry Sotheran of Sackville St, established 1760

Andrew Block of Barter St, established 1911

Louis W. Bondy of Little Russell St, established 1946

H.M. Fletcher, Cecil Court

Harold Mortlake, Cecil Court

Francis Edwards of Marylebone High St, founded 1855

Stanley Smith of Marchmont St, established 1935

Suckling & Co of Cecil Court, established 1889

Images from The London Bookshop, published by the Private Libraries Association, 1971

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Simon Chambers at the entrance to the ‘jungle’

Next time you walk through Spitalfields, stop at the junction of Princelet St and Wilkes St. Stand with your back to Brick Lane and look closely at the house on the right hand corner. You may be surprised to learn that buried beneath 1 Princelet St is – or rather once was – a ‘jungle.’

Let me take you back to the early nineties when Spitalfields was a place of abandoned buildings, bustling warehouses and overcrowded factories. There was no house on the corner of Princelet St and Wilkes St. It was literally a bomb site and piled with rubbish at least ten feet high, forever threatening to topple over onto passersby. A neighbour, Charlie Brandt who lived at 13 Wilkes St, overlooking the corner, built a fence out of timber and corrugated sheets, yet still the rubbish accumulated.

A plan to clear the rubbish and make a garden upon this site emerged. Like many things, no single person suggested the idea yet organically it came together. The plan was discussed between neighbours and, slowly, things began to happen. History had become piled up in front of us, so we set ourselves the challenge of making a new start.

It took five skips over a period of several months to clear the rubbish from the site. At the very top were plastic shopping bags of domestic refuse, chair legs and glass. Amongst these were syringes, balls of aluminium foil and used condoms. Then followed waste from nearby garment factories, rusty sewing machines and bags of shredded leather and cloth. Underneath it all, rubble and concrete from the Georgian building that had once stood there.

In 1993, I was a shy, introverted thirteen year old. I spent much of my time with the family cat Sheba and thought swearing was one of the worst things a person could do. I dreamt about being a ballet dancer and I did secret and exclusive performances for my siblings in my bedroom. I rarely left the house except to go to the Whitechapel Library to borrow Nancy Drew novels.

Whilst helping clear the site, I met youth workers, teachers, unemployed people, restaurant waiters, a storyteller, single parents, factory workers, a prostitute and other kids. These were the people who lived and worked in the surounding streets, with personalities and histories of kinds I had never encountered before.

Recently, I spoke with Simon Chambers who squatted 3 Princelet St, about what he remembers from that time. I met Simon just before the ‘jungle’ begun and, over the proceeding years, he became my oldest friend. “We had to clean out the space because rats were coming into the house and we asked the council several times to do it, because it was their land, but they refused. So we decided to do something about it ourselves,” he told me.

When the last of the skips was full, I remember all of us standing in the empty space, confident about what we had done but quite unsure as to where we were headed. Yet before long the ‘jungle’ began to take shape. I do not know where the name came from. Maybe it was a reference to the amount of rubbish or, possibly, an over-estimation of what we were going to create?

Neighbours donated soil, plants, bits of wood and tools. We built a wall using cobble stones that we found and Simon made benches out of railway sleepers. “In those days, people would dump all sorts of things that we could pick up. I found a great big door in Liverpool St that had been chucked out when a building was being cleared. We used this for a fence and then painted the wood with engine oil because we thought it would stop it rotting,” he recalled.

After the initial euphoria, we held meetings to discuss what we wanted out of the ‘jungle.’ It was a cultivated place where everyone had a voice and everyone was listened to. Over time, participating in these conversations changed me from the person I had been.

We discussed what to do about the massive buddleia with its lilac flowers that had grown amongst the rubbish. With my newly-developed sense of confidence, I led the charge to cut it down. I wanted the jungle to represent something new, a break from what it had been, but Simon argued that the buddleia should stay, that it had grown while the site had been abandoned and had its story to tell – plus it attracted loads of butterflies. So the buddleia stayed and I did not spend too much time agonising over it, because there were plenty of other things going on.

We organised parties that spilled out onto the street. One autumn, we led a lantern procession from the jungle to the Spitalfields City Farm and performed our interpretation of the Guy Fawkes story. We even considered the possibility of doing an alternative version of the Ripper tours that were becoming popular then, with the idea of inviting tour groups into our jungle.

Sets of keys were necessary to get in through the fence. My younger brother Ali, who was also involved in creating the jungle, remembers the keys circulated in such a way that they were always available from one of the neighbours whenever they were needed. He used to go and chill with his friends in the jungle.

The jungle thrived, becoming the centre of the community. A tree was planted and a fishpond dug out. There were treasure hunts at Easter and fireworks at New Year. Ali and Simon remember the bonfires, when we cooked food together and sang.

Over time, there were differences of opinion about who the jungle was for, and when and how it could be used. Some neighbours were concerned that the jungle was being used by ‘unwholesome’ people and the keys were finding their way into the hands of those we did not know, and stolen car radios were turning up amongst the bushes. There was fear that the jungle might become similar to its adjacent plot, also a bomb-site, that was cleared and turned into a car park, where junkies took heroin and prostitutes brought tricks. Yet others said that they did not mind how the jungle was utilised as long as people were respectful of the place.

Such are my memories of the impressions which that time and place left in my mind. With hindsight, the jungle and the discussions it generated seem quaint compared to the monumental changes that were occurring around us. Towards the end of the jungle, in the late nineties, ruined and derelict houses became scarce in Spitalfields as they were bought up by the well-heeled, who fashioned them into the homes they imagined them to once have been.

In my mind, it was around this time that the presence of estate agents became pervasive, though they had stalked these streets for longer than I was conscious of. Our neighbours were changing. Tempted by wads of money, many were moving out. Sweatshop workers were kicked out. My friend Simon, who had lived in Princelet St for many years, was forced to leave too.

Many of the buildings were replaced and occupied by people whom we did not know and whom we rarely saw, who led an altogether different sort of life. A developer came knocking on the doors of the jungle too. No one I spoke with remembered precisely when this happened or the details of it, but the land was sold and the jungle was demolished along with everything it stood for.

I was not around to see this happen. By then, I had become a fully blown teenager, interested in other things. I made new friends with new excitements that took me away from the jungle. I turned my back on it, blotting it out of my memory in order to make room for the next phase of my life. My brother Ali cannot remember the changes either. “One day it was the jungle and next a house had been built on top of it,” he said to me.

Only years later when the streets around it had irrevocably changed, the ‘jungle’ and its existence came back to me, and I realised that the restless roots below 1 Princelet St grew from a different time, of different ideals, sensibilities and possibilities.

Delwar (in blue) assists neighbours in clearing the ‘jungle’

Iqbal Hussain and pal

Charlie Brandt (resident of 7 Wilkes St with helpers)

In the centre, Simon Chambers with Ali Hussain on his shoulders and Iqbal Hussain in front, Halima Hussain to the left, surrounded by neighbours in 1993

Simon Chambers & Ali Hussain stand on the corner of Princelet St today

Simon & Ali with Ali’s daughter and niece

The corner of Princelet St & Wilkes St today where once there was a ‘jungle’

New portraits © Sarah Ainslie

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