At Beppe’s Cafe
Guest writer Julia Harrison celebrates Beppe’s Cafe in Smithfield, accompanied with photographs by Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie
Daniella Papini
One of my favourite morning walks takes me down Cloth Fair through St Bartholomew’s Churchyard, past the memorial to Sir William Wallace on the wall of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, and across Smithfield to Beppe’s Cafe for breakfast.
The first time I visited, I was drawn by the board outside describing a fine selection of cooked breakfasts and mixed grills. I was struck by the energy inside – bacon frying, coffee brewing, and the nostalgic sound of Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello which made me feel very at home.
Behind the counter, Daniella Papini presides over an array of hams, cheeses and fresh produce ready to be made into ciabattas and salads for the lunchtime rush. There were postcards from across the world stuck to the fridge, family photographs, and – most intriguing of all – large sepia photographs in the far corner by my table, showing earlier generations. Clearly, this was a family business and I immediately wanted to know more.
On my next visit, I was distracted from my book by the steady arrival of builders in hard hats, ready for their cooked breakfasts, together with businessmen and women ordering sandwiches and takeaway coffees, and – in one case – a dog walker whose bulldog could not believe his luck when he was given a handful of treats. A break in the flow allowed owner Daniella to come across and tell me about the cafe and its history.
Pointing to a large photograph beside us on the wall of a tall, thin, well-dressed young man, she explained that this was her grandfather Giuseppe Papini – know as Beppe – who came over from a village near Lucca in 1911 and started the cafe with his wife in 1932. ‘That’s why this cafe is called Beppe’s’.
I could hardly begin my plate of scrambled eggs, I was so gripped by the stories Daniella told me, starting with her grandmother who came from the next village in Italy to her future husband.
‘My husband comes from the same village, so we go back there all the time. (His family, not mine – my parents were born here).
My grandmother was on the train with her future mother in law and she was starving and her future mother in law had a big loaf of bread and she asked her for a bit of bread and she said no it’s for my son, and she eventually married that son by some strange stroke of luck when she got to London.’
Daniella and Sergio, who barely moved from his station behind a huge frying pan and grill, are cousins. Pointing to a photograph behind me, of two smiling boys Daniella explains, ‘The two little boys up the top there – the one on the left is my father and the one on the right is my cousin Sergio’s father’ and I know in that instant that here is a family story that deserves to be told. Daniella recounts her father’s terror when a bomb fell on Smithfield Market.
‘My father remembers running through the market – the nurses coming out of St Barts with aprons soaked in blood.
He and his brother were at school at St Peter’s Italian Church on the Clerkenwell Road, and they were crying as they were running because until they got around the corner they didn’t know if the cafe was still standing.’
There is something very moving about observing Daniella and Sergio at work behind the counter, knowing that the cafe has seen three generations of their family.
‘During the Second World War my grandfather got interned on the Isle of Man so his wife was left to run it with her daughter – during the air raids – his daughter was ten years older than my dad so she was a bit more responsible.’
Turning to another photograph Daniella continues, ‘that’s my Uncle (the oldest) and the little one is my dad. They got evacuated to Wootton Bassett but they got split up and my dad was only five – he went to the nicest family in the world but his brother got sent to a terrible family – my dad wouldn’t stop crying so they put them together – she used all their rations, they didn’t have sheets on the bed, so when his sister went down she said look, you’re coming back to London, we will all die together, because you are not getting fed.’
I ask Daniella about the early days of the cafe, assuming – in my ignorance – that they would have been cooking Italian meals. She explains,
‘My cousin and I worked in the cafe on Saturdays when we were young. It wasn’t like now, there was no Italian influence – it wouldn’t have been possible. People wouldn’t have had anything like that. They had to adapt – it was corned beef and ham and and what they could get. It’s different now – we have brought in those influences.
My parents were a bit of both (Italian and English). Everyone expected my dad to speak with an Italian accent and he had this Cockney accent. I know my mum was embarrassed to take anyone home because they wouldn’t have known the food she was eating – it was all so different.
I can’t imagine how they ran the cafe on rations … where did they get the supplies from? I don’t know how they managed. They were part of the Italian community based near the church – they all stuck together. Some of their friends had cafes so they would help each other out.’
As I leave Beppe’s Cafe, a customer next to me at the counter turns to me and says, ‘there aren’t many places like this left: I always come here when I’m in the area’.
Heading back across Smithfield Market towards home, I think about the wealth of family history which is held within the cafe’s walls, and am glad that Daniella is there to tell her father’s stories – tales of love and war which resonate with us today, and form a link across the generations.
Sergio Papini
The serious business of breakfast at Beppe’s
Happy customers
Banknotes brought by customers from across the world
Daniella greets customers
Giuseppe Papini (Beppe) 1894-1962, standing outside the cafe he founded in 1932
Georgia Papini at the cafe
Giuseppe and Georgia Papini
From left, Carlo (Sergio’s father), Georgia (Giuseppe’s wife), Tony, (Daniella’s father), Giuseppe and Bruna (Carlo’s and Tony’s sister who helped keep the cafe going during the difficult war years when their father was interned) photographed by Boris Bennett
Tony and Carlo Papini
Daniella’s father Tony Papini with the plane that he flew in the fifties during his National Service
Account book from the fifties
Sergio and Daniella with Daniella’s father Tony on his ninetieth birthday
Daniella and her cousin Sergio
New photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Beppe’s Cafe, 23 West Smithfield, EC1A 9HY. Mondays to Fridays, 6:30am- 2pm
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New Threat Of Demolition For Whitechapel’s Theatrical Terrace
3-13 Vallance Rd
It was an early success for the nascent East End Preservation Society in 2014 when this old terrace in Whitechapel, comprising the last fragment of the nineteenth century Pavilion Theatre complex, was saved from demolition.
In response to the number of objections received then, Tower Hamlets Council withdrew their application for demolition in order to explore new options. How disappointing to learn ten years later that the council are now considering a new application for demolition, despite the acknowledged importance of these buildings which sit within the Whitechapel Market Conservation Area.
Please write now to object to the proposed demolition of Whitechapel’s Theatrical Terrace.
Quote Planning Application PA/23/02117/NC and be sure to label your comment as an OBJECTION. You can object from anywhere in the world but you must include a postal address.
Send an email to
development.control@towerhamlets.gov.uk
or a letter to
Planning, Housing and Regeneration
Tower Hamlets Town Hall
160 Whitechapel Road
London
E1 1BJ
Through all the changes in Whitechapel since World War II, this distinctive Victorian terrace has miraculously survived and the exoticism of its architecture with such a strange mixture of styles fascinates me – as it does many others for whom the terrace is also a landmark in this corner of the East End, where so few old buildings remain to tell the story of what once was here.
In fact, I realised these tatty shopfronts and ornate facades have always spoken to me, even before I discovered the nature of the story they were telling. The florid decoration was no whim upon the part of the architect but reflected their association and direct proximity to the adjoining Pavilion Theatre which opened here early in the nineteenth century, at first presenting nautical dramas to an audience from the docks and later becoming a Yiddish theatre to serve the Jewish population in Whitechapel.
Commanding the southern extremity of Vallance Rd, this terrace is almost the last fragment to remind us of the history of one of the East End’s most ancient thoroughfares, linking Bethnal Green and Whitechapel. Built in 1855, the vast and forbidding Whitechapel Union Workhouse once stood a few hundred yards north. In common with most of the nineteenth century buildings in this corner of what was known as Mile End New Town, it has long gone – swept away during the decades following the last war, leaving the streetscape fragmented today. Old Montague St, leading west to Commercial St and formerly the heart of the Jewish commerce in the East End, was entirely demolished.
Even Whitechapel Rd, which retains good sweeps of historic buildings, suffered major post-war casualties, including a fine eighteenth century terrace west of the London Hospital that was demolished in the seventies. Yet there was one building of great importance of which the loss went seemingly unnoticed -The Pavilion Theatre, a favourite resort for East Enders for nearly one hundred and fifty years before it was demolished in 1961.
The New Royal Pavilion Theatre opened in 1827 at the corner of Whitechapel Rd and Baker’s Row (now Vallance Rd) with a production of The Genii of the Thames, initiating its famous nautical-themed productions, pitched at the the maritime community. In 1856, the theatre burnt down and its replacement opened in 1858, boasting a capacity of three-thousand-seven-hundred, which was a thousand more than Covent Garden and included the largest pit in London theatre, where two thousand people could be comfortably accommodated.
‘The Great National Theatre of the Metropolis’ – as it was announced – boasted a wide repertoire including Shakespeare, opera (it became the East London Opera House in 1860) and, of course, pantomime. It gained a reputation for the unpretentious nature of its patrons, with one critic remarking “there is a no foolish pride amongst Pavilion audiences, or, as far as we could see, any of those stupid social distinctions which divide the sympathies of other auditoriums.”
In 1874, the Pavilion was reconstructed to the designs of Jethro T. Robinson, a notable theatre architect who designed two other East End theatres. both of which are now lost – the Grecian Theatre in Shoreditch and the Albion in Poplar, that was oriental in style. It was this rebuilding of the Pavilion which included the construction of a new terrace on Baker’s Row with interwoven Moorish arches evoking the Alhambra. The theatrical design of these buildings, with decorated parapets, panels and window surrounds, and the integration of side entrances to the theatre suggest the authorship or influence of J. T. Robinson himself.
In its later years, the Pavilion became one of the leading theatres in London, offering Yiddish drama, but as tastes changed and the Jewish people began to leave, the audience declined until it closed for good in 1934. In ‘East End Entertainment’ (1954) A. E. Wilson recalls a final visit to the old theatre before it closed.
“Once during the Yiddish period I visited the theatre. What I saw was all shabbiness, gloom and decay. The half-empty theatre was cold and dreary. The gold had faded and the velvet had moulted. Dust and grime were everywhere. And behind the scenes it was desolation indeed. The dirty stage seemed as vast as the desert and as lonely. I realised that there was no future for the Pavilion, that nothing could restore its fortunes, that its day was over.”
The decline of the Pavilion had been slow and painful. After the theatre closed in the thirties, it was simply left to decay after plans to transform it into a ‘super cinema’ failed to materialise. Bomb damage in the war and a fire meant that when a team from the London County Council’s Historic Buildings Division went to record the building in 1961, they found only a shell of monumental grandeur. After the theatre was finally demolished in 1961, the northern end of the terrace was also demolished leaving just number 13 (the former Weavers Arms Pub) and the battered row that has survived to this day.
In the spirit of high theatrical farce, the Council’s consultant wrote of these buildings in Vallance Rd in the 2013 Heritage Report, accompanying the former application for demolition, that ‘… [they] do not contribute to the character or appearance of the Conservation Area,’ directly contradicting the Council’s earlier Conservation Area Appraisal of the area in 2009 which outlined the following priority for action – “Encourage sympathetic redevelopment of gap sites west of Vallance Rd and secure restoration of 3-11 Vallance Rd.”
In 2014, a new proposal was rendered by local conservation practice Jonathan Freegard Architects, commissioned by the Spitalfields Trust, which retains the terrace as part of a mixed-use scheme delivering housing, retail and office space. This remains the best option for these buildings.
5 & 7 Vallance Rd, showing decorative window surrounds and parapet (Alex Pink)
9 & 11 Vallance Rd. With its decorative central panel, number 9 leads through to a courtyard where the theatre’s carpentry workshop once stood (Alex Pink)
3 Vallance Rd with original shopfront (Alex Pink)
Looking north over Vallance Rd (left) and Hemming St (right), 1957 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Whitechapel Union Workhouse in Vallance Rd, at junction with Fulbourne St, 1913 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Whitechapel Union Workhouse, Vallance Rd 1913 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Corner of Vallance Rd and Hereford St, 1965 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Bricklayers Arms, Vallance Rd and Sale St, 1938 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Old Montague St and Black Lion Yard, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Old Montague St and Kings Arms Court, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Old Montague St looking east with Pauline House under construction, 1962 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
The first Royal Pavilion Theatre in Whitechapel, 1856 (East London Theatre Archive)
Playbill 1867, nautical drama was a speciality at the Pavilion (East London Theatre Archive)
Playbill 1854 (East London Theatre Archive)
Playbill 1835 – note reference to gallery entrance in Baker’s Row (Vallance Rd) (East London Theatre Archive)
Playbill 1856 (East London Theatre Archive)
Playbill 1833 (East London Theatre Archive)
Playbill 1851 (East London Theatre Archive)
The Great National Theatre of the Metropolis’ – the rebuilt Pavilion, 1858
Plan of the Pavilion in eighteen-seventies showing how the houses in Baker’s Row (Vallance Rd) are integrated into the theatre
The Pavilion as a Yiddish theatre in the thirties
Pavilion Theatre facade on Whitechapel Rd, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Auditorium of Pavilion Theatre, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Pit and stage at Pavilion Theatre, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Fly tower of Pavilion Theatre, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Back wall of the Pavilion Theatre, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
17-29 Vallance Rd, showing the large scene doors entrance and gallery entrance beyond, all integrated into the terrace, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Sketch of the elevation of the Oriental Theatre, Poplar High St, by Jethro T. Robinson, 1873 – note usage of the arch-within-an-arch motif as seen in the Vallance Rd terrace
First sketch by Tim Whittaker of the Spitalfields Trust, proposing courtyard housing behind the terrace which reflects the local vernacular of Whitechapel
Proposal by Jonathan Freegard Architects for restoration of the terrace with a new yard at rear
South-westerly view of proposal by Jonathan Freegard Architects
Rear view of proposal by Jonathan Freegard Architects
Recent photographs of Vallance Rd Terrace © Alex Pink.
John Claridge’s East End Shops
Ross Bakeries, Quaker St, 1966
“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 small shopkeepers fight for their survival, in the face of escalating rents, business rates 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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At Glamis Adventure Playground
Guest Writer Jonathan Moules describes his visit to a much-loved Shadwell institution, accompanied with pictures by Contributing Photographer Rachel Ferriman
It is Friday night on a scrap of land where a Victorian children’s hospital once stood but was demolished in the sixties. Children as young as six are gathered in one corner. They have been using knives to strip bark off sticks and have lit a fire. Across the site a group of teenage boys kick a ball around, bouncing it off an abandoned shipping container.
In other communities this kind of behaviour would be shocking to local residents, worried about children out on the streets, getting caught up in gangs and mixing with strangers that could be a bad influence. But not in Shadwell. These kids are out at their adventure playground.
The site is on Glamis Rd, named after the Scottish castle in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, pronounced GLARMS. But to people in Shadwell, it is GLAM-ISS, pronounced the East End way.
The site first opened its gates to nearby young people in need of space to play in 1969, six years after the children’s hospital had been demolished, joining a network of adventure playgrounds that were set up by the London County Council.
In an age when ‘health and safety’ rules are believed to have destroyed much risk taking in daily life, Glamis remains wonderfully old school in its embrace of invented games, physical activities like rope swings and learning through working alongside other children.
The ethos among the staff is to enable play rather than structure it, whether that be children making treehouse dens, rope swing tournaments or just chasing each other around the site.
Involvement is the watchword, so even new building works are shaped by the views of the young people who attend. And though each structure is built by specialist playground construction teams, the children lend a hand in the completion stages with tools and paint to brighten up the finished product. It should be stressed that all of this is done under the auspices of a team, trained in the specific techniques of such playwork.
‘I’m dangerous,’ says twelve-year-old Dylan, proving the point by booting a football he and some friends are kicking around high into the air. It sails up and over the playground fence. Fortunately, Emma, one the managers responsible for the weekday evening and Saturday sessions, is on hand to prevent the boy’s bravado becoming reality. She goes out to collect the ball from the street, ensuring no one else is run over collecting it, and then reminding Dylan to keep it down in future. He and his mates are soon once again lost in their game.
Raph is with a group by the firepit, beaming with pride at having stripped some wood that is cooking in a cannister in the middle of the flames to make charcoal. It is a session that has been led by Natterjacks, an outdoor pursuits charity that partners with Glamis to run fire workshops on Friday nights.
‘My favourite thing is making fire,’ Raph says. ‘But I like football too. We moved here from Arsenal when I was very young, but they’re rubbish. I support Manchester United.’
Raph has persuaded his parents to hire out Glamis for his upcoming tenth birthday party. There is a sense that this is his special place, and he wants to introduce some of his school friends who have yet to discover it. ‘We don’t really have a garden at home, so this is where I can come to play. It’s exciting and fun,’ Raph enthuses.
There is danger here, not for the children but for the future of adventure playgrounds themselves and the freedom they provide to inner city children, such as Dylan and Raph.
A 2022 study by Play England found that fifteen per cent of the 147 adventure playground sites in operation just fifteen years earlier were now no longer there.
Many were local authority run, killed off by austerity cuts begun in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But even those that survive remain at risk due to health and safety concerns and a downplaying by the government of play as an essential part of the developmental process, according to Play England.
Glamis is clearly loved but it is run by an independent charity with limited means and survives through the generosity of individual donors, grants from organisations like the National Lottery and BBC Children in Need and revenue from special events like Raph’s birthday party and school visits. Resources are limited and fundraising has become notably harder since the pandemic.
The local community is one of London’s most diverse, whether you measure that by income, ethnicity, age or class, and Glamis is where it mixes. But the need is acutely great among its young people. Shadwell has the dubious honour of containing the highest level of child deprivation not just in London, or England, but the whole of the UK.
Stuart from Natterjack Outdoors leads fire-building, whittling, and marshmallow toasting
Photographs copyright © Rachel Ferriman
Please click here to support Glamis Adventure Playground and discover different ways to help Glamis remain a vital local resource for the next fifty years and beyond
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Kyriacos Hadjikyriacou, Pleater
Kyri demonstrates a pattern for a circular pleat
In a remote corner of Tottenham, in the midst of an industrial estate, sandwiched between a kosher butcher and a panel beater, Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I found Rosamanda Pleaters. We dipped our heads and stepped through a low door to enter a crowded factory. As our eyes accustomed to the gloom, we peered into the depths where lines of machines filled the space, appearing to recede into the infinite distance. We expected a horde of ghostly workers shrouded in cobwebs, but on closer examination the machines were all idle.
Yet, in a pool of bright light, one man worked alone, wrestling cloth, cardboard, sticks and string, subjecting them to his will with expert control. This was the legendary pleater Kyriacos Hadjikyriacou, universally known as Kyri. He removed a piece of silk from between a pair of cardboard patterns that were folded into an intricate design which they imparted to the cloth, as delicate as a butterfly wing and as richly coloured as the plumage of an exotic bird. We were entranced.
The magic of pleating is to take diaphanous fabric and give it volume and structure through a geometric series of creases. These pleats move, amplifying the gesture and motion of the wearer in unexpected and sensuous ways. This is the spell that pleating can impart to clothes. Kyri is the grand master of it.
He has contrived hundreds of unique designs for pleats, spending months conjuring his intricate notions. Pleating is his imaginative world. ‘This one is stars on one side and squares on the other,’ he explained unrolling an elaborately folded piece of cardboard that quivered as if it had a life of its own. ‘I call it ‘Crown Pleat,” he confided to me in a proud conspiratorial whisper. ‘I have never used it yet.’ Kyri finds inspiration for new designs in pantiles, scallop shells and hieroglyphics.
All day the phone rings and breathless fashion assistants arrive from London’s top designers – Christopher Kane, Alexander McQueen, Jasper Conran, among others so fancy we are not permitted to mention – bringing lengths of cloth for Kyri to work his transformative wizardry upon.
A tall slim man with pale grey hair and straggling white moustache set off by his mediterranean colouring, Kyri cuts a handsome figure. Of philosophical nature, he is untroubled by the endless to and fro, delighting in the attention and maintaining a confident equanimity throughout. He may serve the capricious world of fashion, but his is the realm of geometry and chemistry. Cardboard, sticks and string are his tools, and steam is the alchemical essence that enables him to work his sorcery upon the cloth, subjecting it to his desire.
“As a pleater, you are always learning. Even after forty-three years of pleating, I am learning. It is not just a question of mastering three or five styles, you have to use your imagination. You have know engineering and about how machines work, you have to know geometry to understand how the patterns function, you have to know chemistry to predict how the material will react.
There’s a lot of things you have to know to be a pleater. It’s a talent. I create new things everyday. I design my own patterns. If I see something I like, I work how it is done and I design my own version. At the beginning, I used to come in every Saturday just to experiment with styles. I tried different ways to use the machines to find new styles. I have two hundred different designs of my own.
Hand pleating is done by placing the cloth between two paper patterns, known as ‘pleating crafts.’ They are made of a special paper that is water resistant and does not get wet. You open the craft, stretch the two papers and lay down the material, sandwiched between the two papers. Then you tie them tight and put them in the steam.
The easiest fabric for pleating is polyester. It holds the pleats well, you can even put it in a washing machine. In hand-pleating, you use only steam but in machine-pleating you use the heat of the machine and steam too, so it is more powerful and will resist washing. I have all these machines. One can do fifteen hundred different styles, another is a fancy one that do a couple of thousand different styles.
I don’t need to advertise, people come and find me, and they keep coming back. I tell them,’If you need me, you find me!’ If I make something, it has to be of the standard that I would like to buy – which means it is good to give to a customer.
My work is perfect pleating. It is rare. There are some patterns, I am the only person in England who can do them. Other pleaters do standard pleats and they think that’s everything but it is not. It can take six months to design a pattern. I might start work on it at Christmas and finish in June. I did not know how to do it, but slowly I work it out. I enjoy pleating because I am always creating things. When I started, I didn’t know anything about this.
I have an Msc in Agriculture. I finished my studies in Athens in 1975 and, because of the war in which Turkey invaded Cyprus, I came to England as a refugee. I married my wife Eleni and in the beginning I worked in a knitting factory, Sharon Fabrics in Holloway. After they closed down, I worked at a water plant, analysing water in Crews Hill in Enfield for bacteria. But somebody told me to push a wheelbarrow and I didn’t like it so I left.
After that, I was asked to work for a pleater in Hackney and that was how I started. In 1980, me and two other people, we opened a knitting factory in Clerkenwell near Smithfield Market. My wife worked in Holborn as a bookkeeper then. She asked me, ‘How much does it cost to set up a pleating factory? I told her, ‘Maybe two or three thousand pounds.’ So that’s what we did, we started in business together and we employed two boys. Eighteen months later, we had a fire and all the others left but I carried on.
I have been here in this workshop in Tottenham for twenty-six years. I had a pleater who passed away before my wife eighteen months ago, so I am on my own. There’s just me now but in the past I used to have seven pleaters working for me. All these machines I have are from factories that closed and nobody else wants them There is no business any more for volume. All the High St shops manufacture in the Far East, my business is just with designers now.
I used to work on Sundays, I arrived at eight o’clock every morning and worked until seven. Now I arrive at nine o’clock and work until five, just weekdays. I will carry on as long as I can. I said to my children, ‘I am not going to retire because – for me – if somebody retires they are waiting for death.’ It’s true! If you put your car outside for six months and don’t use it, the tyres and battery go flat. The human being is like that I think.”
Kyri lays a pattern on the table
Kyri has over two hundred patterns for pleating that he has designed
Kyri shows off a favourite pleating pattern
‘I call this ‘Crown Pleat”
‘Craft pleats’ ready for use
Kyri places weights upon the patterns to make sure the fabric is tightly sandwiched
Kyri removes the weights once the pattern is compressed
Kyri rolls the patterns to squeeze the fabric into the form of the patterns
Kyri places the patterns between two splints
Kyri ties the splints together
Kyri concertinas the patterns as tight as possible between the splints
The completed ‘pleating craft’ is ready for the steam oven
Kyri’s steam ovens where the pleats are baked
Kyri shows off his pleating machine
Last minute maintenance to the steamer
A pleated silk shirt ready to be steamed flat
Kyri the pleater
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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Elwin Hawthorne, Artist
Trinity Almshouses, Mile End Rd, 1935
Elwin Hawthorne (1905–54) was the nephew of the artist Henry Silk, with whom the family of six shared a small house in Rounton Road, Bow. When Elwin left school at the age of fourteen he worked as an errand boy, yet he developed an interest in painting. He worked in the bedroom he shared with his two brothers, even though his mother declared she “expected something better for him than to spend so much time on artwork.”
Evening art classes brought Elwin under the influence of John Cooper, who recognised his talent and included fourteen pictures by the young artist in the East London Art Club exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1928, which led to two paintings being hung in the Tate.
In the Daily Mail, Elwin confessed “One is under a handicap working in a cottage without any sort of studio conditions, but I have tried to interpret the sort of life I understand.” Fellow artist, Cecil Osborne was the first to suggest that the ‘Sunday morning look’ of sparsely populated streets imparted a surreal atmosphere to Elwin’s paintings, yet he was always uneasy with figures.
Elwin’s surname acquired an ‘e’ at the Whitechapel Gallery and, when he took part in the East London Group show at the Lefevre Galleries, his attempt to correct this drew short shrift from one of the directors, who insisted “For goodness sake, don’t change it now!” Previously, Elwin painted on cleaning cloths that he bought at Woolworths for sixpence but income from sales permitted him to spend money on better paints and canvas.
After meeting Walter Sickert, Elwin signed up for weekly art classes for £20 a year at the grand old man’s studio in Highbury Fields. This led to him becoming Sickert’s studio assistant, squaring up images onto canvas and even laying the colours on in some cases. Elwin’s work for Sickert mirrored his own practice of basing paintings upon photographs squared up onto canvas.
In 1930, Elwin signed a contract with the Lefevre for a monthly retainer of eight pounds. Thus, in his mid-twenties, Elwin Hawthorne with an ‘e’ became the first of the East London Group to call himself a professional artist. His debut solo show in 1934 coincided with one by Vanessa Bell with a foreword by Virginia Woolf in the catalogue. Largely, the comparison was to Elwin’s advantage, as the Sunday Referee wrote, “Mrs Woolf ’s mystical flutings on the theme of her sister’s paintings simply bewilder,” while proposing, “In Mr Elwin Hawthorne, we have an outstanding, possibly great artist in the making.”
Elwin’s apogee came when one of his paintings was hung in the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1933. The outcome of this success was that Elwin was able to marry fellow artist, Lilian Leahy, and move to a comfortable suburban house in Dagenham in 1937.
The Second World War ended Elwin’s exhibiting career. He worked for Air Raid Precautions and St John’s Ambulance but, after dragging injured children from an Anderson Shelter that had been bombed and performing a leg amputation, he could no longer continue. Conscripted into the army, Elwin was quickly released as being temperamentally unsuited.
After the war, Lefevre refused to renew Elwin’s contract, suggesting he take a job instead. So he became a wages clerk at Plessey in Dagenham, leaving at seven-thirty each morning and then teaching art in schools part-time, returning home at eleven each night. Before long, Elwin began to suffer from headaches and doubt the value of his work as a painter.
In 1953, he used his painting Almshouses, Mile End Road as a shelf in the coal bunker. After his death, Lilian rescued Elwin’s painting, filling in the screw holes with wood filler and painting over the damage.
Cumberland Market, 1931 (Private collection)
Grove Park Rd W4, 1935 (Private collection)
Whipps Cross, 1933 (Gabriel Summers)
The Mitford Castle, 1931 (Private collection)
Bow Rd, 1931
Victoria Memorial Buckingham Palace, 1938 (Private collection)
Demolition of Bow Brewery, 1931 (Private collection)
The Guardian Angels, 1931 (Louise Kosman, Edinburgh
Ilfracombe, c.1931 (Private collection) – discovered rolled up in the coal bunker
Elwin Hawthorne with his painting of the Bryant & May Factory, 1929
Walter and Harold Steggles, Lilian and Elwin Hawthorne (right), c.1937 (Walter Steggles Bequest)
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First Signs Of Life
First Snowdrops in Wapping
Even now, in the depths of Winter, there is plant life stirring. As I travelled around the East End over the past week in the wet and cold, I kept my eyes open for new life and was rewarded for my quest by the precious discoveries that you see here. Fulfilling my need for assurance that we are advancing in our passage through the year, each plant offers undeniable evidence that, although there may be months of winter yet to come, I can look forward to the spring that will arrive before too long.
Hellebores in Shoreditch
Catkins in Bethnal Green
Catkins in Weavers’ Fields
Quince flowers in Spitalfields
Cherry blossom in Museum Gardens
Netteswell House is the oldest dwelling in Bethnal Green
Aconites in King Edward VII Memorial Park in Limehouse
Cherry Blossom near Columbia Rd
Hellebores in Spitalfields
Spring greens at Spitalfields City Farm
The gherkin and the artichoke
Cherry blossom in Itchy Park
Soft fruit cuttings at Spitalfields City Farm
Seedlings at Spitalfields City Farm
Cherry blossom at Christ Church
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