Spitalfields Life

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These weeks in May when all the leaves are coming out green and fresh comprise my favourite time of year, and for me it is the true beginning of the year – which makes it the ideal moment to present this chapbook of The Seasons by W S Johnson from 1846 which was brought to my attention by Sian Rees.

Courtesy of McGill Library

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The Juvenile Almanac

The Trade of The Gardener

Darton’s Nursery Songs

The Little Visitors

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Today Griff Rhys Jones outlines the fight to Save Liverpool St Station from bad redevelopment

Liverpool St Station by Edward Bawden

It is my station. I am an Essex boy. I only ever moved just across the river Stour into Suffolk so I could look up towards my home county. (Well, down on it, if I am truthful). But Liverpool St is my own personal cherished gateway to proper London town.

Coming in to Londinium once – with the poor sods who commute daily – just as we entered that crazy, dirty brick-built hinterland of the station approach, (where you ponder those strange tubes on the walls), I spotted a fox. This Fantastic Mr Urban Fleabag was staring at me from an archway. “Look at him,” I blurted loudly, now on my feet, momentarily forgetting that I did not have my infant children alongside me in need of diversion. Not requiring any particular educational instruction, the rest of the carriage stared aghast and glanced at the communication cord. Someone had spoken on the train! And in the middle of the dusty, dark bit.

But, God, that station has grit and purposefulness. Have you seen this dramatic linocut by Edward Bawden? A stark, looming, lovesome place. One of the things that really bothers me about the proposed developer-assault on this storied, workmanlike exemplar of Victorian good sense is the unmitigated tosh Sellars and Network Rail have spewed out to veil their repellent greed.

They claim the station is “creaky”. The station is “not fit for purpose”. They will blend it “seamlessly” into the surrounding streets. On my way to take a butchers at their “consultation”, which was set up only two weeks before their final planning application splatted on to the Corporation’s desk (some consultation), I noticed – in the middle of an evening rush hour – that the only queues for escalators were leading up from the Elizabeth Line, a brand new bit of construction. I do not suppose they are planning to rip that out. Their new street level shopping centre – sorry “concourse” – will be as nicely deserted as the current one leading out towards Broadgate, I am sure. I bought a book that afternoon but – let us face it – nobody will be hurrying to get a Fendi bag before heading back to Billericay for tea.

Liverpool St is simply not the sort of gateway hub they trumpet. Of course, it is busy. The sheds (train not engine) that used to welcome so many from Harwich and were, once upon a time, the immediate destination of Kindertransport, and the continent, now only serve the international glamour of Stansted. That Essex misnomer, “The Stanstead Express”, stops at Harlow, Bishop’s Stortford and all halts in between. If Network Rail are so keen on creating a gateway experience for the international visitor, why do they not improve that service first. I can assure them that any discerning jet-setter flying in on Ryan Air, would prefer to see a careful conservation of the existing Victorian station than any space-age, by-pass-worthy, shopping experience “world class gateway” stuck in its place. Visitors come to see our mythical great Victorian metropolis – of Sherlock Holmes and Charles Dickens – not some polished concrete Westfield.

A recent report from Arup and the LSE has pointed out that the City might never return to its pre-Covid massed-ranks office structure. It is estimated that the numbers will not be back to pre-Covid levels until 2030, even by the most rabid corporate prophets. There is no need for new office space. Any new offices will have to attract new, upmarket executives who – we are told – will value what is available on the ground. That means preserving whatever historic fabric remains, like great Victorian stations.

Network Rail claim they need disabled lifts and new escalators. If they do, there is room to fit them in the airy existing, light filled space. If they need them urgently, then they should do their duty and just put them in, not hide behind false pretences.

Because missing from the entire developer presentation  – in their over-manned little hut opposite a deserted Boots – was the elephant in the room. The giant white elephant that they really want to foist on Bishopsgate. I could see no sensible visualisations of what this devil’s bargain really constitutes. To gain this “free upgrade” to the concourse and some fanciful open air swimming pool in the sky, Network Rail are selling the “airspace” above a grade-II-star listed building. The original Great Eastern Hotel, the historic first major hotel in the City, will simply be subsumed.

The worst lie of all is that they intend to do no harm to heritage buildings when they are building directly on top of a grade-II-star listed historical landmark with 800,000 square metres of office space and sixteen storeys of hotel. They are demolishing the sensitive twentieth century additions which many feel should be listed itself. They are plunging the light-filled station concourse into darkness. The station as it exists would simply become unrecognisable. Lost.

Why stop there? Let us sell the “airspace” over Leadenhall, or St Paul’s, or the Houses of Parliament while we are at it. It is a rotten, unnecessary, deplorable precedent. A grovelling puff in the Times Business pages recently reported that “some campaigners” were “worried” but the developers say “no harm” would come to the sheds. Bollocks. All heritage bodies are very worried. I have never seen such a meeting of the families. The Twentieth Century Society. The Georgian Group, The Victorian Society, Historic Buildings and Places, The Spitalfields Trust, The Betjeman Society, Historic England and a huge list of others have conjoined in appalled horror at this proposed opportunistic excrescence. There is a unity of outrage.

I hope we can gather and flash-mob the existing station before we march to make our feelings known. I hope we can get Michael Gove to call this one in. Nothing is inevitable here. They were stopped from doing the same to Waverley Station in Edinburgh and they must be stopped here. The ancient City of London and its number one historic railway station deserve a lot better.

Click here to sign the petition to SAVE LIVERPOOL ST STATION

The developers’ visualisation of their proposed redevelopment of Liverpool St Station with a sixteen storey tower plonked on top of the grade II star listed Great Eastern Hotel

Click here to read The Gentle Author’s article about the redevelopment of Liverpool St Station in Apollo Magazine

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The little wooden midshipman outside Solomon Gillis’ chandlery, 157 Leadenhall St

Even though most of the signs of old London were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666, a few created just after that date survive today in the City – anachronisms affixed to modern buildings, as if they were Penny Blacks stuck onto Jiffy padded envelopes. Yet in the Bishopsgate Institute archive, I found plenty of atmospheric pictures of curious stone plaques which lasted into the era of photography, only to be destroyed by the blitz and subsequent redevelopment.

It was Charles I who gave people the right to hang out signs as they pleased, when once they were restricted to innkeepers – “for the better finding out such citizens’ dwellings, shops, pubs or occupations, without impediment, molestation, or interruption to their heirs or successors.” An elaborate language of symbols quickly grew in the common understanding, such as a dragon for an apothecary, a sugar loaf for a grocer, a wheatsheaf for a baker, a frying pan for a confectioner, and – as still seen in Spitalfields today – a spool for a silk weaver.

As time went by, the meanings of the signs became more complex and arcane as shops changed ownership but retained the signs as identifiers of the buildings. James Maddox, the coffin maker at St Olaves had the symbol of three coffins and a sugarloaf, the sugarloaf because it was a former grocers and three coffins as his personal device. Opposite St Dunstan’s in Fleet St, a sign of three squirrels first put up by Henry Pinkley the goldsmith in 1649, was appropriated by the bankers who moved in afterwards, and this symbol of the three squirrels continued to be used by the National Westminster Bank until the mid-twentieth century.

Lombard St was once famed for its array of magnificent signs, and eighteenth century prints show quaint symbols hung upon elaborate wrought iron brackets outside every single premises in Cornhill and Cheapside. Anticipating our modern concern with brands and logos, these devices suited the city before streets were numbered and when many of the populace did not read. But during heavy weather and in strong wind, these monstrous signs creaked and groaned – and, in 1718, a huge sign in Bride St collapsed killing four people and taking part of the shop front with it. Such was the severity of the problem of the forest of hanging signs crowding the streets of London, that a commission was appointed in 1762 to take them all down and fix them onto the shopfronts – thereby creating the modern notion of the fascia sign declaring the identity of the premises.

“The Commissioners are empowered to take down and remove all signs and emblems, used to denote the trade, occupation or calling – any sign posts, sign boards, sign irons, balconies, penthouses, show boards, spouts and gutters projecting into the streets etc, and all other encroachments and projections whatsoever in the said cities and liberties – and cause the same, or such parts thereof as they think fit to be affixed or placed on the front of the houses, shops, alehouses or buildings to which they belong.”

Street numbers were only in partial use at the beginning of the eighteenth century, becoming widespread by the end of the century as a standardised system to identify properties. Although many were reluctant to give up the language of signs and symbols, by the middle of the nineteenth century, the signs were commonly replaced by the familiar pattern of a board with signwriting above the shopwindow. Most of the decorative signs to found in the City of London today are pastiches created a hundred years ago as nostalgic tributes to a bygone age, though two favourites of mine are the golden owl on the House of Fraser, facing South over London Bridge, and the figure of Atlas holding up the globe on the exterior of Barclays in Cheapside.

Just three signs remain in common usage, the barbers’ pole (with its bloody red and white stripe recalling when barbers were also surgeons),  the chemists’ pestle and mortar, and the pawnbrokers’ three balls – originally blue, they turned gold in the early nineteenth century and are said to be based upon the crest of the Dukes of Medici, itself derived from coins taken by Crusaders from Byzantium.

At the sign of the Fox in Lombard St.

At the sign of the Three Kings in Lombard St.

At the sign of the Half Moon in Holywell St, off the Strand.

A physician.

A locksmith.

At the sign of the Lamb & Flag

The grasshopper, symbol of industry and personal emblem of Sir Thomas Gresham who founded the Royal Exchange, is to be found all over the City of London even today.

At the sign of Three Squirrels in Fleet St.

At the sign of the Bull & Mouth in Aldgate.

This was the symbol of the Cutlers.

Child’s bank at the sign of the Marigold in Temple Bar.

In Ely Place, off Hatton Garden – this mitre came from an episcopal palace and was set into the wall of a public house.

The maid of the Mercer’s company is still to be seen in Corbet Court off Gracechurch St.

An old sign that remains in situ outside St Paul’s tube station.“When ye have sought the Citty round, yet still this is the highest ground. August 27th 1698”

“- an old sign affixed to a modern building, like a Penny Black stuck onto a Jiffy padded envelope.”

Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

Click here to book for my Spitalfields walk next Saturday and beyond

Rupert Thomas former editor of The World of Interiors and now curator of MAKING HISTORY: THE CERAMIC WORK OF SIMON PETTET introduces the exhibition which runs until 4th June at Dennis Severs’ House

Tulipière by Simon Pettet

18 Folgate Street is an amazing survival – and a unique fantasy. It was built in 1724 but the powerful atmosphere of its interior was created by Dennis Severs, a charismatic Californian who rescued it from almost certain destruction in 1979.

Dennis restored the house with characteristic theatricality, employing unlikely materials to finish the job as quickly as possible. So not everything here is what it seems. He also devised a family of Huguenot weavers – the Jervises – who had built the property and who continued to “live” alongside him in rooms lit by candles and heated by real fires.

Paying guests would hear, though never see, this family on the guided house tours he offered. Atmosphere mattered far more to Dennis than slavish accuracy and his tours were choreographed to leave visitors feeling palpably as if they had stepped back 250 years. Every possible effect was employed in the immersive drama, including accurate contents in the chamber pots. “You either see it or you don’t,” he told visitors before they were admitted.

When Simon Pettet walked through the door one night in 1983 he saw “it” immediately and was smitten. They had met at the gay nightclub Heaven: Simon was eighteen and starting a ceramics degree at Camberwell School of Art & Design, Dennis was in his thirties and tirelessly working on the home they would share for almost a decade. The encounter changed their lives forever. If the house is Dennis’ vision, the role Simon played in making that vision a reality cannot be underestimated.

Simon was born in 1965 and grew up in Orpington with his parents Ken and Marion, and his older brother Stewart. If school was a chore, he excelled at Camberwell and graduated with a First. But it was Dennis, the house and life in Spitalfields that allowed his work to take flight. Inspired by 18th-century blue-and-white tin-glaze pottery, or delftware, he began to make objects that would have been used in grand dwellings such as 18 Folgate Street when they were new. He was instinctively able to capture the spirit of authentic Delft pottery and with a flick of his brush conjure works that are rooted in the past but feel entirely of their own time. To give credence to Dennis’ fictional family, he inscribed some pieces with the name Jervis.

Remarkably, all the works in the exhibition were produced in less than ten years. Simon was diagnosed HIV positive in 1984, at a point when the condition’s outcome was inevitable. He was nineteen. His was one of the earliest cases in the UK (the first was identified in December 1981). Yet despite the prejudice and injustice then surrounding Aids, Simon remained optimistically steadfast and never stopped working or trying out new forms and glazes. It is as if his status acted as an incentive. To the end, he wanted to be known as a Potter as opposed to an Artist, a choice that reflects his modesty but in no way diminishes the brilliant originality of what he achieved. He died on 26th December 1993, less than a month before his twenty-ninth birthday. His service took place at Christ Church Spitalfields, Nicholas Hawksmoor’s imposing masterpiece.

Generously, the Jervis family has gone on holiday for the duration of the exhibition so their rooms can be given over to the things Simon made. This is his first retrospective and it includes objects kindly loaned by private individuals alongside pieces he made specifically for Dennis that remain in the house. But the Jervises are still here in spirit, as is Dennis – you might even hear his voice, as the intermittent audio of horses’ hooves and a tolling bell was made by him and used on his own tours. We have interwoven it with some of Simon’s favourite songs from the period. And of course Simon is here too: you’ll see the room in which he lived, the kitchen where he and Dennis made toast on the range, and his exceptional work. The ceramics he created remain as witty, elegant and joyously individual as the day they emerged from the kiln.

Shaving bowl in the Smoking Room

Mr Jervis’s barber’s bowl, made by Simon in 1990. In the eighteenth century, customers would hold these bowls, with indent to their neck, as the barber mixed water and soap into a lather. Soap balls were not produced in England until after 1685, when Huguenot refugee soap-boilers arrived from Paris. Bowls were often decorated with representations of relevant equipment – in this case scissors, comb, sponge etc – but lancets could also appear, as barbers also operated as surgeons.