We Make An Offer For The Bell Foundry
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The foundry, shuttered and graffitied since 2017
After campaigning for six years, I am delighted to announce that this week The London Bell Foundry made an offer to acquire the former Whitechapel Bell Foundry at market value. The London Bell Foundry is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee, set up with the purpose of operating a bell foundry in Whitechapel, combining traditional bell founding with the use of digital technology.
Although the hotel scheme is now dead, the judgement of the Secretary of State’s Public Inquiry into the future of the foundry in 2020 obligates the owner to ensure foundry activity continues at this site.
We seek to acquire the Grade II* listed buildings as a permanent home for the London Bell Foundry.
We want to open it as a fully-working foundry, re-establishing the world’s most famous bell foundry that operated in Whitechapel for five hundred years from the reign of Elizabeth I to the reign of Elizabeth II.
Our mission is to reinvigorate the art and science of bell founding through a marriage of new and old technology, casting church bells, artists’ bell, ceremonial bells, and bells for all occasions.
We are working with Nigel Taylor, foreman at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry for forty years, alongside artists of international stature and a team of the foremost experts in the technology of casting.
We plan to maximise the educational potential, through apprenticeships for local people and work with schools and colleges in East London.
Our first commission was the Covid Bell in 2021, designed by Grayson Perry in support of our mission, which debuted at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2022. The Covid Bell will tour NHS hospitals, enabling those have been bereaved to toll the bell in remembrance.
The Elizabeth Bell is a forthcoming commission to commemorate seventy years since the coronation of Elizabeth II.
The London Bell Foundry has demonstrated a proven financial model that can ensure the tradition of bell founding continues in this country in perpetuity.
SUPPORTERS
“I fully support the proposal by the London Bell Foundry to establish a working foundry at the historic Whitechapel site. It is tragic that the bell foundry has been shuttered up since 2017. The presence of a rejuvenated modern bell foundry will once again assert Whitechapel as a place of creative innovation and restore the international reputation of the place where Big Ben and the Liberty Bell were made.”
Lutfur Rahman, Mayor of Tower Hamlets
“The Whitechapel Bell Foundry is one of the East End’s most treasured institutions, with a history stretching back to the 16th century. The foundry made Big Ben, America’s Liberty Bell and more locally the Bow Bells. So many people in the community are campaigning to save as much of the original building as possible, and to keep it as a working foundry. I am proud to support the Save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry campaign, and encourage everyone to join in. Together we can save this important feature of East End life.”
Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green & Bow
“The East London Mosque & London Muslim Centre welcomes the proposal from the London Bell Foundry to reestablish a working foundry in Whitechapel. This will provide apprenticeships and work experience in traditional and digital crafts for the local community.”
Sufia Alam, East London Mosque & London Muslim Centre
“The re-established Whitechapel Bell Foundry would add significantly to the creative offer in East London. As the V&A East establishes a substantial presence at Stratford and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and develops particular links with the adjacent boroughs, we would welcome the opportunity to promote the Whitechapel-based art and bell foundry. Combining traditional skills with innovative technology and the offer of apprenticeship and further training in this specialised field will enhance the interpretation of the V&A’s important collection of works of art in bronze. Continuing the centuries-old tradition of bell founding in London with its global outreach will enrich the cultural presence and attract national, regional and international interest.”
Dr Tristram Hunt, Director of Victoria & Albert Museum
“The Whitechapel Bell Foundry is a crucial component of historic Whitechapel. That it has survived for so long on this site, and in such fascinating and evocative buildings, is nothing short of a miracle. Its survival as a working site is vital both for future generations and for Whitechapel.”
Heloise Palin, Spitalfields Historic Buildings Preservation Trust
Learn more at our new THE LONDON BELL FOUNDRY website
Charles Saumarez Smith & Dickon Love will be talking about The London Bell Foundry & London Bells at the Salon for London at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury on Thursday 24th November. Click here for tickets
Grayson Perry’s Covid Bell at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2022 (Photograph © David Parry/Royal Academy of Arts)
You may also like to take a look at
The Whitechapel Bell Foundry Is For Sale
The Fate of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
So Long, Whitechapel Bell Foundry
The Secretary of State steps in
A Letter to the Secretary of State
14 Whitechapel Bell Foundry Poems
Rory Stewart Supports Our Campaign
Hope for The Whitechapel Bell Foundry
Peta Bridle’s London Viewpoints
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Today it is my pleasure to publish Peta Bridle‘s latest drawings
On the 55 Bus
Me and my daughter Daisy took the 55 bus from Old St to Oxford St on a shopping trip. Great views are to be had from the top deck and I like the play of the light on the roof.
Beech Garden, Barbican
This is a quiet residential area in the City of London with its concrete architecture and tower blocks, beautiful lake and gardens. When I went to sit down on a step I fell off backwards into the flowerbed and then had ants crawling over my legs whilst I was drawing. Yet it was worth it for the composition and the view.
Brushfield St, Spitalfields
A view along Brushfield St with a terrace of Georgian buildings, the original Gun Pub on the corner of Gun St and the glass towers of the City looming in the background.
Raven Row & Artillery Lane, Spitalfields
This is the view over Raven Row & Artillery Lane from the White’s Row car park which is now demolished.
The Emirates Air Line
This is a cable car which crossed the Thames between the Greenwich Peninsula and the Royal Docks, reaching a height of ninety metres. The ascent was terrifying as I am not very good with heights but, once high up in the air, the views are spectacular. I also had my son’s arm to hang on to which helped. The crossing is quite gentle unless the wind catches the cabin causing it to sway.
St Augustine’s Tower, Hackney
When you climb St Augustine’s Tower there are wonderful views to be had across Hackney towards the City. A bus turns on to Mare St which is busy with shoppers and a lone beggar sits under the bridge.
London Bridge Station & The Shard
For my exhibition at Southwark Cathedral, I was given special permission to go to the top of the tower. At the time the Shard was still under construction and London Bridge Station was being rebuilt. From such a height, people walking up Tooley St appear ant-like and the toy traffic moves slowly.
Borough Market from Southwark Cathedral Tower
This is a favourite view from the top of Southwark Cathedral Tower. Looking south, trains pass in front and behind the market roof with a jumble of architecture receding into the distance. To the west you overlook the streets of Southwark, while to the north London Bridge spans the Thames, and to the east sits the Shard and London Bridge Station.
St Paul’s Cathedral from Tate Modern
I visited the Tate Modern on a wet and miserable day, and sat on the floor in front of a gallery window, watching people cross the Millennium Bridge to St Paul’s. Music playing on a loop, combined with the dimness of the gallery and the outside gloom made it difficult to draw, so I completed my sketch at home.
Trinity Buoy, Leamouth
I visited Trinity Buoy on a bright and breezy spring day to make a sketch looking towards the Millennium Dome. In the background, an Uber boat pulled into the pontoon.
Wardrobe Place, City of London
This is a secret little courtyard close to St Paul’s Cathedral. The shade of the trees was welcome as it was a very hot day. An occasional breeze sent a flurry of small leaves to the ground and in the distance bellringing practice began.
Waterloo Station
A good viewpoint over Waterloo Station from the balcony with the station clock directly in front of me. I sketched the ironwork and roof structure first, then added people from random snaps taken on my phone.
Greenwich Park
I sat on a hillside in Greenwich Park in the shade of oak trees, looking towards the National Maritime Museum and the Canary Wharf towers. A blob of ink fell off my brush in front of a dog I had drawn, resembling a ball, so I just left it there.
Acorns from Greenwich Park
Some acorns I picked up from where I had sketched.
Drawings copyright © Peta Bridle
You may also like to take a look at
Peta Bridle’s East End Sketchbook
Peta Bridle’s Riverside Sketchbook
Peta Bridle’s Gravesend Sketchbook
Peta Bridle’s City of London Sketchbook
Women Of Hackney At Work
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Terrie Alderton, Bus Driver
Complementing Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie’s new exhibition Women Of Bethnal Green at Work which opens today at Oxford House, Bethnal Green, here is an earlier series of Sarah’s portraits.
Sarah took these portraits in Hackney between 1990 and 1991 as a commission for Hackney Museum. “I was aware there were a lot of women in the workplace but mostly in behind the scenes roles,” Sarah explained to me, “I wanted to give them visibly and also show the variety of work that women were doing.”
Loretta Leitch, Electrician
Rosemary More, Architect
Fontanelle Alleyne, Environmental Health Officer
Hackney Registrar of Births, Marriages & Deaths
Jenny Amos, Heating & Ventilation Engineer
Carol Straker, Dancer
Annie Johns, Sculptor
Sue Hopkins, Doctor at Lawson Practice Baby Clinic
Lilly Claridge, Age Concern Charity Shop Manager
Karen Francis & Carolyn Donovan, Dustwomen
Helen Graham, Street Sweeper
Denise Martin, Truck Driver
Judy Benoit, Studio Manager
Luz Hollingsworth, Fire Fighter
Diane Abbott, Member of Parliament
Dionne Allacker, Joanne Gillard, Winnifred John, Clothing Warehouse Supervisors
Lanette Edwards, Machinist
Nora Fenn, Buttonholist
Jane Harris, Carpenter
Eileen Lake, Chaplain at Homerton Hospital
Dr Costeloe, Homerton Hospital
Ivy Harris & E Vidal, Cleaners at Homerton Hospital
Sister Ferris Aagee, Homerton Hospital
Joan Lewis, Homerton Hospital
Sister Sally Bowcock
Valerie Cruz, Catering Assistant
K Lewis, Traffic Warden
Gerrie Harris, Acupuncturist
WPC Helen Taylor
Mary, Counter Assistant at Ridley’s Beigel Bakery
Mandy McLoughlin & Angela Kent, Faulkners Fish & Chip Restaurant
Terrie Tan, Driver at Lady Cabs
Maureen McLoughlin, Supervisor at Riversdale Laundrette
Anna Sousa, Hairdresser at Shampers
Jane Reeves, Councillor
Carolin Ambler, Zoo Keeper
Mrs Sherman, Dentist
Eileen Fisher, Police Domestic Violence Unit
Yvonne McKenzie, Jacqui Olliffe & Dirinai Harley, Supervisors at Oranges & Lemons Day Nursery
Jessica James, Active Birth Teacher
Di England, Supervisor at Free Form Arts
Sally Theakston, Chaplain, St John’s Hackney
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Photographs courtesy Hackney Museum
Women Of Bethnal Green At Work
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Merle Curtis, Sultana Begum, Armagan Middlemast & Husna Begum, Tower Hamlets Food Bank
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie‘s exhibition opens tomorrow November 10th and runs until March 31st 2023 at Oxford House, Bethnal Green
“Women of Bethnal Green at Work has emerged from a collaboration with some of the amazing women in the area and celebrates the rich variety of the work they do. The generosity of these women who welcomed me into their working lives to photograph them is a testament to their indomitable spirit. Searching and finding women to take part has been an adventure and I am grateful to all those who helped by passing on names and ideas. I have encountered a range of work across launderettes, the Underground, café kitchens, care homes, food banks, the fire service, funeral directors, the Post Office, freelance electricians, artists, seamstresses and many more unsung women who sustain and bind together the special community of Bethnal Green with their warmth, labour and friendship”.
Sarah Ainslie
Afa Simpson, Painter, Decorator & Clown
Donna Wood, Postwoman, Royal Mail
Claire Carmelo, Customer Service Assistant, Bethnal Green Station
Kelly Wood, Carer, Silk Court Care Home
Kellyan Saunders, Manager, Oxfam Shop
Lucinda Rogers, Artist
Maria & Anna Pellicci, E Pellicci
Nafisa & Marlene, Newmans’ Stationery
Rachel Hippolyte, Education Manager, Spitalfields City Farm
Anita Patel, Tesco
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Lew Lessen, Barber
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It is my pleasure to publish this interview and series of photographs, comprising a portrait of Lew Lessen who opened his barber’s shop in Shacklewell Lane in 1932, undertaken by Neil Martinson more than forty years ago. “He was a gentle and modest man who was proud of his trade,” Neil admitted to me.
Neil is currently selling prints from his photography exhibition at Two More Years until next Saturday 13th November to raise money for Hackney Food Bank. Click here to find out more
“The craft of barbering is a most honourable profession – even royalty take their hats off to us. I was apprenticed to a barber. My Dad signed an agreement for me to learn the trade for two years at a shop in Southampton St, which is now Conway St. The hours were long. We were open from 8am to 8pm every day with one hour for lunch, and we opened until 9pm on Saturdays. On Sundays we worked from 9am to 2pm and on Mondays from 8am to 1pm.
I learned the trade as I went on. I used to practice shaving with an old razor on a bottle – lather the bottle as if it was a chin (a very pointed chin) and shave it off. There was a lot of shaving in those days. Men used to come in regularly for their shave. They would have their own shaving mugs numbered. A man would come in and say ‘My mug is number 20.’ I’d fetch it down and lather him.
A barber’s shop was like a club in those days. People would sit and talk for hours. Some customers would come in almost every day, just for a chat. One customer I always remember was Prince Monolulu, the famous tipster, with his cry of ‘I’ve got a horse.’ His head was full of small bumps, probably fibroid growths, but his frizzy hair covered it, so that it wasn’t noticeable to the naked eye. He asked me whether I would take away a bet for him to the local street bookmaker. He wanted two shillings each way double on two horses, and he told me he didn’t want the bookmaker to know that it was his bet. Well, naturally, getting such ‘inside information’ from such a source was too good to be missed. So not only myself, but my boss, and I also prevailed upon my Dad, who was not a betting man, to join us in the bet. Needless to say both horses finished well down the field.
I’ve seen many changes here, both in the neighbourhood and in hairstyles. It used to be just a matter of short back and sides, with the occasional Boston. A Boston means the hair is cut at the back in a line, instead of gradually tapered out. Then Bostons were short, but now they are long. Before the war, of course, people wanted the sleek look. They wanted their hair slicked down. I would have men come in and want their hair brushed like Ronald Coleman’s or Raymond Navarro’s, both of whom had the patent leather look about them.
The other change has nothing to do with haircutting or shaving. The role of the barber used not to be tonsorial skills. On occasions he would become the confidant, Father Confessor, mentor and advisor of his customers, especially in sexual matters. Sexual knowledge is nowadays everybody’s right, particularly for the younger generation. But before World War Two sexual ignorance among the young was fairly high. I remember being asked for and giving advice on the functions and duties of a bridegroom. I’ve given quite a lot of advice over the years. Many were the secrets told to me in confidence of men, and their maritial and extra-marital experience, and in confidence they remained. What was more, the barber’s was the only place you could get contraceptives in those days.
Over the years I have given service to many unusual customers. There was one man who had a serious operation on this throat, with the result that one of the arteries of his throat was covered by a very thin skin, that was more red in colour than the surrounding area. He could not shave himself for fear of cutting into this thin skin and causing the artery to bleed. He warned me to be careful not to cut the thin skin as it would have been impossible for me to stop the bleeding, and he would have to go to hospital. I shaved this man three times every week, and never once did I cut his skin.
There was one aspect of my profession that always gave me a great deal of personal satisfaction, even if it did not bring me much financial reward. This was whenever it was required of me to go out and give service to customers who could not make the journey to my shop, through illness or disability. I could not leave the shop during working hours, so it meant that after closing the shop, tidying the salon, having my evening meal, then changing to go out, it was after 8pm before I left home to do this service. My charges were always very reasonable, it sometimes meant I was away from home on these evenings for up to one and half hours, and was only a few shillings in pocket. But I never minded this, as I felt it was my small contribution towards helping people who were very unfortunate.”
Lew Lessen outside the barber’s shop in Shacklewell Lane that he opened in 1932
Photographs copyright © Neil Martinson
(This interview was originally published by Centreprise as part of Working Lives, Vol 2 1945-77)
You may also like to read about
Aaron Biber, London’s Oldest Barber
Remembering Gerald Marks
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Gerald Marks (1921-2018)
As an exhibition opens at Abbot & Holder, running until 26th November, Doreen Fletcher remembers the painter Gerald Marks to whom she was married between 1981-83.
Doreen will be in conversation with Tom Edwards at Abbot & Holder, discussing her ex-husband’s paintings on November 23rd at 6pm. Email gallery@abbottandholder.co.uk to book a ticket.
Gerald was born in Hampstead in 1921 as the only child of a middle-class liberal Jewish couple. His father was a gentle mild-mannered man who was too generous to succeed in his profession as sales representative for high-end fancy goods such as Bohemian crystal. He was always referred to by Gerald’s mum as “Poor Ferdy- a nice man but no good with money.” Liz one of Gerald’s ex-girlfriend’s told me he enjoyed having a glass of whisky with her and pinching her bottom.
His mother’s family had been wealthy, owning a carriage company in Maida Vale, but they fell on hard times when cars replaced horse-drawn vehicles at the beginning of the century. Orphaned at an early age and losing her brother in 1918 to the First World War, his mother found herself living alone in a hotel in Bayswater and struggling to earn a living as a milliner when she met Gerald’s father.
After Gerald came along, the family bought an attractive Edwardian villa in Westcliffe-on-Sea where they employed a maid and a nanny. This was normal at the time but what was unusual was that Mary continued to work, travelling to Paris and leaving Gerald in the care of his indulgent nanny. Unfortunately, this way of life ceased abruptly when Gerald was four and refused either to eat cucumber sandwiches or go to the toilet when instructed. He announced proudly that “Nanny lets me do what I want.” This domestic crisis led to nanny’s swift exit and end of Mary’s professional life.
Gerald enjoyed a carefree childhood, attending a minor public school locally. He excelled at cricket and art, and was interested in Left wing politics from a very early age. At fourteen, he exhibited at the Nationwide Children’s Royal Academy at the Guildhall, showing a drawing of an unemployed man. The image was published in the Daily Express on March 27th 1936. Gerald admitted that his political education was “the Spanish Civil War, the Depression, the rise of Fascism and mass unemployment. This was when I became a Marxist.”
Between 1938 and 1941, Gerald attended Central School of Art in London and then Northampton, where the school transferred once war was declared. Talented, popular and exceedingly good-looking, these were happy years judging by the photographs, when he made many life-long friends. Gerald joined the Communist Party in 1941 and was observed selling copies of the ‘Daily Worker’ on the streets of Northampton and thereafter monitored closely by MI5 throughout the war and perhaps beyond.
He was conscripted into the RAF’s photographic unit as a non-combative private, happily for Gerald’s survival because it was difficult to imagine him wielding a gun. Stationed in Harrogate and then Aberystwyth, Gerald was unpopular among the officers for his political stance and middle-class accent. Consequently, he was frequently given latrine duties and penalised for minor offences such as not making his bed properly. During the liberation of Europe, Gerald’s unit marched to Brussels, photographing the devastation along the way.
After the war, he received ex-serviceman’s grant to continue at Central, rejecting the Royal College as too elitist. He was taught by John Minton, Bernard Meninsky and Claude Rogers, and became involved in the Artists’ International Association Group at the Leicester Gallery, noted as an artist of great facility and potential. By the late forties, Gerald was renting a room at 13 Queens Gardens in Bayswater – a building that was to become his home and studio for the rest of his life. In 1952, he took over the top floor and, through the following decades, shared his much-loved space with a lot of young people. Gerald’s flat contained so many stories, drama, laughter and not a few tears. It could never be described as a placid environment to dwell in.
During the fifties, Gerald developed a growing reputation as a figurative painter and taught in art schools. But ,as his personal style evolved, his work was met with disapproval by the Communist Party. Gerald’s paintings of scaffolding and building workers fell short of the sentimental and naturalistic demands of Social Realism at that time. He confessed this led to his decision to quit the Communist Party, as well as the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1956.
In the sixties Gerald learned to drive, and drove with great panache until the age of eighty-six, inspiring fear and consternation amongst his passengers, many of whom only travelled with him once. He began wearing suits with bow ties, clamping an ornately-carved pipe between his teeth and his paintings became abstract, first unveiled in his solo show at the Drian Galleries in 1962.
Like his father, Gerald was no good with money and got into debt, forcing him in 1961 to take a full-time post at Croydon College of Art that lasted twenty-five years and which he believed ‘did for him’ as an artist. For twelve years, he painted very little, getting very involved in setting up teachers’ workshops and Saturday schools for young people, and he was almost fired for taking the part of the students in the 1968 lockout.
During the early seventies, Gerald started to work again on small abstract pieces and, in 1974, made the life-changing decision to buy a ruin with a tree growing through it in a remote mountainous valley in the Cevennes. He employing a team of art students, led by a fire-eater from Glasgow, who did a magnificent job constructing a roof of chestnut beams.
After Gerald retired in 1986, he spent months at a time in ‘L’Atelier’ as he called it, producing some of his best work. He had a solo show at Faroe Road Studios in 1988, culminating in a much-acclaimed exhibition at the William Jackson Galleries in 1991, entitled the ‘Madeleine Series’ – inspired by his relationship with an acclaimed violinist who spent time with him in France.
I think it is fair to say that Gerald’s three driving passions were women, art and politics in interchangeable order of importance. In 2003, he declared in an interview “Women seem to like my friendship.” They adored him but were also infuriated by him, yet even in his final months in hospital he enjoyed a significant number of female visitors.
I entered Gerald’s life in 1976 just as he was starting to exhibit again, first with the London Group then winning an Arts Council major purchase award in 1980.
I lived with Gerald for seven years and was married to him for the last two of those years. When I eventually left after some spectacular scenes, one of which included me scattering a packet of Daz over him, he said to a neighbour “How could she leave me? She knows I don’t speak French.”
Wartime London, Olympia from Kensington High St, 1940
Wartime London Refugees, 1941
London Nocturne I, Queens Gardens, Bayswater, c.1948
London Nocturne II, c.1948
Still life, c.1948
Still life, 1952
Bayswater Scaffolding II, c.1955
London Scaffolding I, 1956
Bayswater Scaffolding III, 1956
Construction Site Abstraction I, 1950s
Paintings copyright © Estate of Gerald Marks
In Bishopsgate, 1838
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Before anyone ever dreamed of Google’s Street Views, there were Tallis’s London Street Views of the eighteen thirties, “to assist strangers visiting the Metropolis through all its mazes without a guide.” John Tallis created the precedent for a map which included pictures of all the buildings as a visual aid, commissioning the unfortunately named artist Charles Bigot to do the drawings and writer William Gaspey to create the accompanying text. Tallis had his imitators, evidenced by this beautiful set of anonymous watercolours of every single facade in Bishopsgate, Spitalfields, dated to 1838 and preserved in the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute.
There is an infantile obsessive quality to these extraordinary paintings that drew my attention when I first came upon them, the degree of control and attention to detail in creating such perfect representations of the world is awe-inspiring. While there is a touching amateurism to the quality of the brushwork and lettering that recalls folk or outsider art, I cannot deny the attraction of the desire to record every facet of the world – because there is a strange reassurance to be gained from looking at these weird yet neat little pictures.
Although these views of Bishopsgate advertise their veracity by recording every single brick, I cannot believe it actually looked like this because the buildings are uniformly clean and well maintained, lacking any wear and tear. In contrast to the distorted chaotic nature of Google Street Views that record our contemporary cityscapes, there is a comic flatness in these drawings that are more reminiscent of street scenes in toy theatres and the houses you find on model railway layouts, tempting me to paste them onto matchboxes and create my own personal Bishopsgate.
Neat, tidy and eminently respectable, the early nineteenth century society envisioned by these innocuous facades is that of Adam Smith’s “nation of shopkeepers,” family businesses like that of Timothy Marr, the linen draper who opened up half a mile away upon the Ratcliffe Highway in 1808 and came to such a terrible end in 1811.
Yet although Bishopsgate itself is unrecognisably altered from the time of these drawings, the proportion of the buildings, providing a shop on the ground floor, with family accommodation and sometimes workshops above, is still familiar in Spitalfields today. And the two stocks of brick used, red brick and the London yellow brick remain the predominant colours over one hundred and fifty years later.
Sir Paul Pindar’s House, illustrated in the penultimate plate, is the lone survivor from the time before the Fire of London when Spitalfields was a suburb where aristocrats had their country residences. Today the frontage can be viewed at the Victoria & Albert Museum where it was moved in 1890.
Named Ermine St by the Romans, for centuries Bishopsgate was the major approach to the City of London from the north leading straight down to London Bridge, and the saddler & harness makers and coach builders present in the street reflect the nature of this location as a point of arrival and departure.
There are some age-old trades recorded in these pictures that survived in Spitalfields until recent times, upholsters, umbrella makers and leatherworkers, while the straw hat makers, cutlers, dyers, tallow sellers and corn dealers went long ago. Yet we still have plenty of hairdressers today, though I feel the lack of a fishmonger sorely. Let me admit, my favourite business here is Mr Waterworth, the plumber. He could become a credible addition to a set of Happy Families, along with all his little squirts.
You can see the frontage of Sir Paul Pindar’s House today at the Victoria & Albert Museum.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
