St Mary Stratford Atte Bow Church
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In 1311, the residents of Bow became sick of trudging through the mud each winter to get to the parish church of St Dunstan’s over in Stepney, so they raised money to build a chapel of ease upon a piece of land granted by Edward II ‘in the middle of the King’s Highway.’ Seven hundred years later, it is still there and now the traffic hurtles past on either side, yet in spite of injuries inflicted by time, the ancient chapel retains the tranquillity of another age.
Even as you step through the churchyard gates of St Mary and cast your eyes along the undulating stone path bordered by yews, the hubbub recedes as the fifteenth century tower looms up before you. At this time of year, daisies spangle the grass among the tombs as a reminder of the former rural landscape of Bow that has been overtaken by the metropolis. Partly rebuilt in 1829 after a great storm brought down the tower, new ashlar stone may be easily distinguished from the earlier construction, topped off in the last century by red bricks after the church took a direct hit in World War II.
Once you enter the door, the subtly splayed walls of the nave, the magnificent wooden vaulted roof and the irregular octagonal stone pillars reveal the medieval provenance of the ancient structure which is domestic in proportion and pleasing in its modest vernacular. Escaping the radical alterations which damaged too many old churches, St Mary was restored gently in 1899 by C R Ashbee, who set up his School of Handicrafts in Bow at the end of the nineteenth century. Ashbee inserted twenty-two foot oak beams across the nave at ceiling height to hold the structure together, fitted discreet double-glazing to exclude the sound of iron cartwheels upon the cobbles and added a choir vestry at the rear in understated Arts & Crafts design.
Beneath your feet, previous residents of Bow lie packed together in a vault sealed by a Health Inspector in 1890, now rehydrated by rising water as tributaries of the River Lea flow beneath the shallow foundations. Meanwhile, on the day of my visit, a mother and toddler group played happily upon the floor inches above above the charnel house and laughing children delighted in racing up and down the nave – past the stone font of 1410, replaced in 1624 with a one of more modern design and which lay in the rector’s garden for three hundred years before it was re-instated.
Monuments to members of the wealthy Coborn family loom overhead. One is for Alice who died of smallpox at fifteen years old on her wedding day in 1699 and, challenging it from across the nave, a much more elaborate memorial to her wealthy step-mother Prisca who died two years later – hinting perhaps at long-forgotten family tensions.
Diverting the eye from such distractions, the architecture draws your attention forward and an elaborate Tudor ceiling rewards your gaze in the chancel, where C R Ashbee’s richly-coloured encaustic tiles rival the drama of the celandines in the churchyard outside and a curious post-war Renaissance style window offers whimsical amusement with its concealed animals lurking within the design.
Not overburdened with history, yet laced with myriad stories – St Mary’s was once the parish of Samuel Henshall who saw the potential in patenting the corkscrew before anyone else and of George Lansbury, the pioneering Socialist, whose granddaughter, the actress Angela Lansbury, who came back to honour his centenary recently.
Reflecting the nature of our era, the current focus of work at St Mary’s is the organisation of a food bank to serve the needs of local people, but if Geoffrey Chaucer or Samuel Pepys came through Bow – as they did centuries ago – they would still recognise the chapel of ease of their own times and its lively East End parish, of rich and poor, fish merchants, reformers and entrepreneurs.
The bells of Bow
Oak beam added by C R Ashbee as part of his restoration of 1900 and double-glazing, against the noise of the cartwheels upon the cobbles, which is the oldest example in a church in Britain
Tudor roof in the chancel
Bow’s oldest monument, commemorating Grace Amcott, wife of wealthy ‘ffyshmongr’ 1551
Encaustic tiles of 1900 by C R Ashbee
Iron Flag from the tower discovered among the bomb damage of World War II
East Window with architectural design and concealed animals
Cat from the east window
Parish chest, seventeenth century
Medieval font of 1410, rescued after three hundred years in a garden
C R Ashbee’s choir vestry of 1900
Medieval tower restored in 1829 with ashlar stone and with brick after World War II bomb damage
The statue of Gladstone has his hands daubed with red paint
Bow in 1702
Bow Church seen from the east, early eighteenth century
Bow Church seen from the west, eighteenth century
Bow Church seen from the west, early nineteenth century
1905
C R Ashbee’s drawing of his proposal for the renovation of the church in 1899
St Mary’s Football Team, 1910
St Mary’s Football Team, 1938
Wartime damage
With grateful thanks to Joy Wotton for her kind assistance with this feature
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Eleanor Crow’s East End Fish Shops
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Victoria Fish Bar, Roman Rd (Gone but not forgotten)
I try to eat fresh fish at least once a week and so, as I travel around the East End, I tend to navigate in relation to the fish shops. Illustrator Eleanor Crow shares a similar passion, witnessed by these loving portraits of top destinations for fish, whether jellied eels, fish & chips or fresh on the slab. “These places are a reminder of our river-dependent history,” Eleanor informed me, “I love the look of London’s famous eel shops with their ornate lettering and wooden partitions. Nothing beats having a proper fishmongers’ shop or market stall in the neighbourhood – not only do the shops look good, but these guys really know about fish.”
F.Cooke, Broadway Market (Gone but not forgotten)
The Fishery, Stoke Newington High St
George’s Place, Roman Rd (Gone but not forgotten)
G. Kelly, Bethnal Green Rd (Gone but not forgotten)
Mike’s Quality Fish Bar, Essex Rd
Davies & Sons, Hoe St (Gone but not forgotten)
The Fish Plaice, Cambridge Heath Rd (Gone but not forgotten)
Mersin Fish, Morning Lane
Dennis Chippy, Lea Bridge Rd
Kingfisher, Homerton High St
Mersin 2, Lower Clapton Rd
Golden Fish Bar, Farringdon Rd (Gone but not forgotten)
Tubby Isaacs (Gone but not forgotten)
L. Manze, Walthamstow High St (Gone but not forgotten)
Sea Food & Fresh Fish, Chatsworth Rd
G. Kelly, Roman Rd
Steve Hatt, Essex Rd
Jonathan Norris, Victoria Park Rd
Downey Brothers, Globe Town Market Sq (Gone but not forgotten)
Barneys Seafood, Chambers St (Gone but not forgotten)
Billingsgate Market
Illustrations copyright © Eleanor Crow
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Ancient Trees In Richmond Park
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The Royal Oak
The presence of great trees in the city has always been a source of fascination to me as one born in the countryside. I often think of the nineteenth century rural writer Richard Jefferies who, while struggling to make a career in London, took lonely walks in the parks for consolation and once, to ameliorate his home-sickness for the West Country, spontaneously wrapped his arms around a tree. Thus he originated the notion of’ tree-hugging,’ a phrase that is now used to embrace the deep affection which many people feel for trees. It is a tendency I recognise in myself, as I came to realise last week, while prowling around Richmond Park in the frost in search of ancient trees.
Yet I did not have to look very far, since this Royal Park has more than nine hundred oaks which are over five hundred years old – thus qualifying as ‘ancient’ – many of which are over seven hundred years in age. In fact, it is claimed that Richmond Park has more ancient trees than in the whole of France and Germany.
As I came upon more and more of them, the wonder of these tottering specimens filled me with such an accumulating sense of awe and delight that I could not understand how I could be entirely alone in the great empty park, enjoying them all to myself. It seemed incredible to me that the place was not teeming with visitors paying adoring homage to these gnarly old time-travellers, although I was equally grateful for their absence because my pleasure in communing with these ancient oaks was greater for being an intimate, solitary experience.
The ultimate object of my quest was the celebrated Royal Oak at the heart of the park. Since it is not marked on any map, I had no choice but to stop the few people I did meet and ask directions. Yet all of those of whom I enquired simply replied with a shrug and a polite grin, and consequently I could not avoid a certain absurdity in asking my question of unwary visitors while in a park surrounded by ancient trees. Eventually I had no choice but to retreat to a lodge where, after several phone calls among the park wardens, I was offered directions.
Returning to the woodland, I wondered how I might distinguish the wood for trees or rather – in this case – the Royal Oak from its fellows. The low-angled sunshine emerged at intervals from the passing clouds, casting a transient light upon the forest. As I reached the edge of the tree line and the landscape opened up, declining towards Pen Ponds, the clouds separated permitting a shaft of afternoon sunlight to illuminate a tree standing apart from the rest. A massive trunk, twisted and split, testified to seven centuries of growth, while the whirling crown of branches spreading in all directions was a product of more recent time, when the tree was no longer pollarded for the supply of oak staffs. I stood and contemplated its implacable presence in silent awe, confronting the aged monarch among an army of elderly cohorts in a forest of ancient trees. This was the Royal Oak.
The Royal Oak is over seven hundred years old
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Jeffrey Johnson’s Favourite Pubs
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Hoop & Grapes, Aldgate (Dentures Repaired)
One day Jeffrey Johnson walked into the Bishopsgate Institute, deposited a stack of his splendid photographs with Archivist Stefan Dickers and left without another word. We can only conclude that these fond pictures from the seventies and eighties record the enigmatic Jeffrey’s favourite pubs. Some are familiar, but for the locations of the others – some of which are long gone – I call upon the superior experience of my readers.
Sir Walter Scott, Broadway Market
Knave of Clubs, Bethnal Green Rd
Dericote St, Broadway Market
Crown & Woolpack, St John St, Clerkenwell
Horn Tavern, Knightrider St, City of London (now known as The Centrepage)
Unknown pub
The Queen’s Head, City of London
The Queen’s Head, City of London
Unknown pub
Unknown pub
Old Bell Tavern, St Pancras
Magpie & Stump, Old Bailey
The Mackworth Arms, Commercial Rd
Green Man
Green Man
Marquis of Anglesey, Ashmill St
The Crooked Billet
The Bull’s Head (Landlords fight to save City pub)
The White Horse
The Olde Wine Shades, City of London
The Crispin, Finsbury Avenue
The Blue Posts, West India Dock Rd, Limehouse (Plasterer’s Required – Call at Back Door)
The Ticket Porter, Arthur St, City of London
Weavers Arms
Photographs copyright © Jeffrey Johnson
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The Language Of Tailors
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Mohammed Abdul Mannan at Needlepoint in Barnet Grove by Sarah Ainslie
BABY – The stuffed pad of cloth that the tailor works his cloth on.
BALLOON, TO HAVE A – To have no money coming in at the end of the week.
BANGER – A piece of wood with a handle used to draw steam out of the material during ironing.
BOARD – Tailor’s work bench.
BOOT? , CAN YOU SPARE THE – Can you give ma loan? Dating from the time that all tailors used to sit cross-legged at the bench. The tailor would record a loan by chalking it up on the sole of his boot.
BUNCE – A perk of the trade. Mungo is one type of tailor’s bunce.
CODGER – A tailor who does up old suits.
CRIB – Larger scraps of cloth, saved from a length of cloth alloted for a job. The crib can be used to make a skirt or a pair of trousers. Another example of a tailor’s bunce.
DEAD – A job is dead when it’s been paid for already. So there is no more money coming in from it and it is as well to get it off your hands quickly.
DOCTOR – An alteration tailor – a separate trade in most houses.
DOLLY – A roll of material, wetted, and used as a sponge to dampen the cloth.
DRAG, IN THE– Late with a job of work.
DRUMMERS – Trouser makers. A term of contempt used by jacket makers to describe trouser makers because there is said to be less skill in making a pair of trousers. Trouser makers are also given the more contemptuous name of FOUR SEAMS & A RUB OF SOAP.
DUCK SHOVING – An East End expression, meaning making the stitches too big. The West End equivalent is SKIPPING IT.
GOOSE IRON – Hand iron, which used to be heated upon a gas flame.
INCH STICK – Wooden ruler.
KICKING – Looking for another job. If dissatisfied, a tailor might go out looking for another job during the lunch break.
A KILL – A job that is no good at all and cannot be resold. eg If burnt with an iron.
KIPPER – Female tailor’s assistant, called kippers because they always worked in pairs. This was for their own safety – a kind of chaperone system – so that one could protect the other if the tailor made advances.
MANGLE – Sewing machine. Old machine that worked on a treadle looked like mangles.
MUNGO – Cloth cuttings. These belong to the tailor and he can make a few pennies by selling them to a rag merchant.
ON THE COD – Gone for a drink.
ON THE LOG – Piecework. As in most trades, tailors are paid according to the amount of work they turn out. The work is logged up against the tailor’s name in the book.
A PORK – A job that customer rejects but which can be sold to someone else.
PT, RUBBING IN A – Fitting in a private job eg making yourself a pair of trousers during the lunch break. This practice os allowed in most work rooms provided th tailors are discreet about it, and do it in their own time.
SCHMUTTER, BIT OF OLD – Jewish expression for a piece of poor cloth.
SHEARS – Tailor’s scissors.
SKIFFLE – A fast job that a customer wants in a hurry.
SMALL SEAMS – A warning expression to a fellow tailor that the person you are talking about is coming into the room.
SOFT SEW – A cloth that is easy to work with eg tweed.
TWEED MERCHANT – A tailor who does the easy work. A term of contempt for a poor workman, because tweed being soft and rough is easier to work with than other cloths.
UMSIES – A name to describe someone who is in the room whom you are talking about but you do not want them to know it. Even if they hear, there is an element of doubt who you are referring to.
Chris Georgiou, Tailor, Gray’s Inn Rd, by Colin O’Brien
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie & Estate of Colin O’Brien
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The Gentle Author’s Tour Of The City Of London
Last winter, I created THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S TOUR OF THE CITY OF LONDON in collaboration with Barbican Arts Centre. Join me for this walk on Easter Monday April 10th at 2pm, meeting on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral and walking eastward through the square mile.
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Often when I set out for a walk from Spitalfields, my footsteps lead me to the crossroads outside the Bank of England , at the place where Richard Jefferies – a writer whose work has been an enduring inspiration – once stood. Like me, Jefferies also came to the city from the countryside and his response to London was one of awe and fascination.
Whenever I feel lost in the metropolis, Richard Jefferies’ writing is always a consolation, granting a liberating perspective upon the all-compassing turmoil of urban life and, in spite of the changes in the city, his observations resonate as powerfully today as they did when he wrote them. This excerpt from The Story of My Heart (1883), the autobiography of his inner life, describes the sight that met Richard Jefferies’ eyes when he stood upon that spot at the crossroads in the City of London.
“There is a place in front of the Royal Exchange where the wide pavement reaches out like a promontory. It is in the shape of a triangle with a rounded apex. A stream of traffic runs on either side, and other streets send their currents down into the open space before it. Like the spokes of a wheel converging streams of human life flow into this agitated pool. Horses and carriages, carts, vans, omnibuses, cabs, every kind of conveyance cross each other’s course in every possible direction.
Twisting in and out by the wheels and under the horses’ heads, working a devious way, men and women of all conditions wind a path over. They fill the interstices between the carriages and blacken the surface, till the vans almost float on human beings. Now the streams slacken, and now they rush again, but never cease, dark waves are always rolling down the incline opposite, waves swell out from the side rivers, all London converges into this focus. There is an indistinguishable noise, it is not clatter, hum, or roar, it is not resolvable, made up of a thousand thousand footsteps, from a thousand hoofs, a thousand wheels, of haste, and shuffle, and quick movements, and ponderous loads, no attention can resolve it into a fixed sound.
Blue carts and yellow omnibuses, varnished carriages and brown vans, green omnibuses and red cabs, pale loads of yellow straw, rusty-red iron clunking on pointless carts, high white wool-packs, grey horses, bay horses, black teams, sunlight sparkling on brass harness, gleaming from carriage panels, jingle, jingle, jingle! An intermixed and intertangled, ceaselessly changing jingle, too, of colour, flecks of colour champed, as it were, like bits in the horses’ teeth, frothed and strewn about, and a surface always of dark-dressed people winding like the curves on fast-flowing water. This is the vortex and whirlpool, the centre of human life today on the earth. Now the tide rises and now it sinks, but the flow of these rivers always continues. Here it seethes and whirls, not for an hour only, but for all present time, hour by hour, day by day, year by year.
All these men and women that pass through are driven on by the push of accumulated circumstances, they cannot stay, they must go, their necks are in the slave’s ring, they are beaten like seaweed against the solid walls of fact. In ancient times, Xerxes, the king of kings, looking down upon his myriads, wept to think that in a hundred years not one of them would be left. Where will be these millions of today in a hundred years? But, further than that, let us ask – Where then will be the sum and outcome of their labour? If they wither away like summer grass, will not at least a result be left which those of a hundred years hence may be the better for? No, not one jot! There will not be any sum or outcome or result of this ceaseless labour and movement, it vanishes in the moment that it is done, and in a hundred years nothing will be there, for nothing is there now. There will be no more sum or result than accumulates from the motion of a revolving cowl on a housetop.
I used to come and stand near the apex of the promontory of pavement which juts out towards the pool of life, I still go there to ponder. London convinced me of my own thought. That thought has always been with me, and always grows wider.”
Richard Jefferies (1848-1887)
Archive photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Spitalfields In Kodachrome
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READ THE ASTONISHINGLY GOOD REVIEWS
Photographer Philip Marriage took these pictures on 11th July 1984
Crispin St
Widegate St
White’s Row
Artillery Passage
Brushfield St
Artillery Passage
Brushfield St
Fashion St
Widegate St
Artillery Passage
Gun St
Brushfield St
Gun St
Brushfield St
Parliament Court
Leyden St
Fort St
Commercial St
Brushfield St
Photographs copyright © Philip Marriage
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