At Grenson’s Shoe Factory
“In the flesh, The Gentle Author is an even better storyteller, a magician of social history, who not only brings the past alive but reanimates the present.” Thank you to Patrick Barkham for his wonderful review of my tours in the August issue of The Oldie.
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Starting in 1866, a shoe factor by the name of William Green came regularly from Northamptonshire up to the City of London to get orders and then take them back to Rushden where, in 1874, he opened his first factory as William Green & Son, founding the company we know today as Grenson.
Since Grenson have a shop in Spitalfields nowadays, I set out to follow William Green’s footsteps back to where it all started. In his time – and until quite recently – Northamptonshire was renowned as the centre of the British shoe industry. Yet although those days are gone, the red brick Grenson factory, turreted at one end, still stands majestic among the little terraced streets at the heart of Rushden, just as it did when William Green opened it in 1895.
The appealingly named Roger Tuffnail, pattern cutter, was my guide –“My grandparents were blacksmiths,” he explained by way of introducing himself,“and I always understood the surname originated from that.” I could not help admiring Roger’s venerable brogues, cut from his own patterns. “Because I work in a shoe factory, I do not polish my shoes,” he confessed with a blush and a shy smile in response to my compliment. In fact, Roger is a key employee at the Grenson factory where he has worked since 1981.“I cut the patterns that make the uppers of the shoe, creating the style from a drawing,” he explained.
“I just naturally do it,” Roger added – just in case I should get an inkling how skillful he is – opening an old ledger full of drawings of shoes as he cast his mind back, “I was seventeen when I joined the shoe trade – in the clicking department.” Minutes later, we stood in the clicking department where foreman Robert Taylor – who knows a trick or two with a knife – revealed that this name derives from the sound the blade makes when you pull it out from thick leather, once you have finished cutting round the patterns.
Here at the centre of the old factory, intoxicated by the smell of new leather, I took a moment to appreciate this extraordinary industrial structure, designed to admit Northern light from rows of windows in the roof, creating an interior space almost ecclesiastical in its luminosity. Ancient photographs, ledgers, racks for time cards and most importantly old machines – well-maintained and working as well as ever – attest to more than century of shoemaking within these walls.
Nearby, a bevy of local ladies manned sewing machines and other cunning devices, joining pieces of the uppers together and punching those wonderful patterns that characterise the brogues which are a speciality here. This is known as the closing department. On the floor below, these uppers are moulded around the last and attached to the sole using the famous Goodyear Welting process. Sewing a strip of leather around the upper to join it to the sole makes it more waterproof and permits the option of removing the entire sole in years to come which means the shoe can be refurbished almost endlessly. This takes place in the lasting and making department. Once the heel is attached, the “making” of the shoe is complete and then after careful finishing, trimming, stamping, waxing and buffing, it arrives in the boot room where Sharon Morris fits the laces and Mavis Glen gives it a good polish. The whole process has taken three weeks to make as beautiful a pair of shoes as you could wish, in the traditional manner.
Yet this magnificent factory is not, as you might assume, some arcane endeavour quietly fading into obsolescence, like so many of the other Northamptonshire shoe factories that have gone forever. Instead, Grenson is enjoying a renaissance. Breaking his customary reserve, Roger turned positively declamatory to assure me “The future is very good for us.”
Today, he works very closely with new proprietor Tim Little to create shoes he describes as “traditional footwear with a little bit of a twist – a livelier look,” and the result has been that Grenson shoes have become popular with a whole new generation of younger customers, alongside those who have always bought their classic English styles.
“We were the first to bring out platform shoes for men in the seventies,” Roger reminded me, just in case I had assumed he was complete fogey. In fact, the current evolution of Grenson has been achieved through more subtle means, retaining the integrity of Roger’s classic shoe patterns while introducing different colours and soles to make them contemporary.
From his modest office on the top floor, Tim Little is evangelical to uphold the Grenson tradition and make it relevant in the twenty-first century. “There’d be no point, if I didn’t love English shoes and the way they have evolved,” he confided to me, committed to keep William Green’s business alive in Rushden, and to be selling shoes in London where his predecessor took orders a hundred and fifty years ago.
Rachel Brice has been here ten years and Jane Norman thirty-two years.
Lainie Alcock has been here fourteen years.
Robert Taylor, Clicking Room Foreman, has worked at Grenson since 1969.
Peter Neagle in the lasting room.
Dave Alcock ( Lainey’s husband) has worked here thirteen years.
Sharon Morris and Mavis Glen in the boot room.
Roger Tuffnail, pattern cutter
Roger shows an old Grenson pattern book.
Archive photographs copyright © Grenson
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Schrodinger Wants To Recruit Me
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Schrodinger on the dresser, where he is not allowed
My cat Schrodinger wants to recruit me. After careful observation, he has decided that I am worthy of the highest feline honour. He believes I possess the necessary qualities and he is confident I could fulfil the role. He wants to me to become a cat.
I first received the summons a few weeks ago, though initially I did not understand the nature of the calling. During the balmy weather, Schrodinger has moved out of the house, forsaking his favourite spots indoors to doze all day in the deep shadow beneath the periwinkles in the corner of the garden. He has recently discovered his voice and now enters the house at dawn, crying aloud to herald the sun rising.
I assumed he sought to be fed, yet I would not grant such a request at an unsociable hour lest I encourage him to wake me regularly. So we confronted each other in the living room, me standing blocking his path with my back to the kitchen. To my surprise, he turned away towards the front door. He wanted me to follow him into the garden and I complied the first time, just to check there was no predator causing him alarm. There was none. So I returned to bed, leaving him standing disappointed in the garden.
He knows I like to sit quietly for hours while writing and am prone to frequent naps, both undeniably feline characteristics. Now the summer is here, Schrodinger wants me to share his outdoor life. He envisages us both dozing in the shade of the periwinkles by day and having adventures, running together through the dark undergrowth at night – just as Dick Turpin and Tom King did in Epping Forest.
I am flattered by Schrodinger’s invitation to feline vagabondage, even if I must decline. Yet he persists. When I ignore his calling at sunrise, he leaps onto the bed and rubs his spine against my shin as a gesture of affection and camaraderie.
Through these remaining weeks of warm weather, we shall discover which of us will prevail. In the eternal present tense of Schrodinger’s existence it will always be summer, yet I know that the autumn will surely come, the temperature will drop and the rain will fall.
Although Schrodinger is blissfully unaware, already I foresee that he will return to his indoor existence then. Come winter, if he wants to recruit me to sit quietly and join him in fireside naps, sharing his domestic life of feline leisure, I shall be happy to oblige.
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Swan Upping On The Thames
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Since before records began, Swan Upping has taken place on the River Thames in the third week of July – chosen as the ideal moment to make a census of the swans, while the cob (as the male swan is known) is moulting and flightless, and before the cygnets of Spring take flight at the end of Summer. This ancient custom stems from a world when the ownership and husbandry of swans was a matter of consequence, and they were prized as roasting birds for special occasions.
Rights to the swans were granted as privileges by the sovereign and the annual Swan Upping was the opportunity to mark the bills of cygnets with a pattern of lines that indicated their provenance. It is a rare practice from medieval times that has survived into the modern era and I have always been keen to see it for myself – as a vision of an earlier world when the inter-relationship of man and beast was central to society and the handling of our fellow creatures was a important skill.
So it was my good fortune to join the Swan Uppers of the Worshipful Company of Vintners’ for a day on the river from Cookham to Marlow, just one leg of their seventy-nine mile course from Sunbury to Abingdon over five days. The Vintners Company were granted their charter in 1363 and a document of 1509 records the payment of four shillings to James the under-swanherd “for upping the Master’s swans” at the time of the “great frost” – which means the Vintners have been Swan Upping for at least five hundred years.
Swan Upping would have once been a familiar sight in London itself, but the embankment of the Thames makes it an unsympathetic place for breeding swans these days and so the Swan Uppers have moved upriver. Apart from the Crown, today only the Dyers’ and Vintners’ Companies retain the ownership of swans on the Thames and each year they both send a team of Swan Uppers to join Her Majesty’s Swan Keeper for a week in pursuit of their quarry.
It was a heart-stopping moment when I saw the Swan Uppers for the first time, coming round the bend in the river, pulling swiftly upon their oars and with coloured flags flying, as their wooden skiffs slid across the surface of the water toward me. Attended by a flotilla of vessels and with a great backdrop of willow framing the dark water surrounding them, it was as if they had materialized from a dream. Yet as soon as I shook hands with the Swan Uppers at The Ferry in Cookham, I discovered they were men of this world, hardy, practical and experienced on the water. All but one made their living by working on the Thames as captains of pleasure boats and barges – and the one exception was a trader at the Billingsgate Fish Market.
There were seven in each of the teams, consisting of six rowers spread over two boats, and a Swan Marker. Some had begun on the water at seven or eight years old as coxswain, most had distinguished careers as competitive rowers as high as Olympic level, and all had won their Doggett’s coat and badge, earning the right to call themselves Watermen. But I would call them Rivermen, and they were the first of this proud breed that I had met, with weathered skin and eager brightly-coloured eyes, men who had spent their lives on the Thames and were experts in the culture and the nature of the river.
They were a tight knit crew – almost a family – with two pairs of brothers and a pair of cousins among them, but they welcomed me to their lunch table where, in between hungry mouthfuls, Bobby Prentice, the foreman of the uppers, told me tales of his attempts to row the Atlantic Ocean, which succeeded on the third try. “I felt I had to go back and do it,” he confessed to me, shaking his head in determination, “But, the third time, I couldn’t even tell my wife until I was on my way.” Bobby’s brother Paul told me he was apprenticed to his father, as a lighterman on the Thames at fifteen, and Roger Spencer revealed that after a night’s trading at Billingsgate, there was nothing he liked so much as to snatch an hour’s rowing on the river before going home for an hour’s nap. After such admissions, I realised that rowing up the river to count swans was a modest recreation for these noble gentlemen.
There is a certain strategy that is adopted when swans with cygnets are spotted by the uppers. The pattern of the “swan voyage” is well established, of rowing until the cry of “Aaall up!” is given by the first to spot a family of swans, instructing the crews to lift their oars and halt the boats. They move in to surround the swans and then, with expert swiftness, the birds are caught and their feet are tethered. Where once the bills were marked, now the cygnets are ringed. Then they are weighed and their health is checked, and any that need treatment are removed to a swan sanctuary. Today, the purpose of the operation is conservation, to ensure well being of the birds and keep close eye upon their numbers – which have been increasing on the Thames since the lead fishing weights that were lethal to swans were banned, rising from just seven pairs between London and Henley in 1985 to twenty-eight pairs upon this stretch today.
Swan Upping is a popular spectator sport as, all along the route, local people turn out to line the banks. In these river communities of the upper Thames, it has been witnessed for generations, marking the climax of Summer when children are allowed out of school in their last week before the holidays to watch the annual ritual.
Travelling up river from Cookham, between banks heavy with deep green foliage and fields of tall golden corn, it was a sublime way to pass a Summer’s afternoon. Yet before long, we passed through the lock to arrive in Marlow where the Mayor welcomed us by distributing tickets that we could redeem for pints of beer at the Two Brewers. It was timely gesture because – as you can imagine – after a day’s rowing up the Thames, the Swan Uppers had a mighty thirst.
Martin Spencer, Swan Marker
Foreman of the Uppers, Bobby Prentice
The Swan Uppers of the Worshipful Company of Vintners, 2011
The Swan Uppers of 1900
The Swan Uppers of the nineteen twenties.
In the nineteen thirties.
The Swan Uppers of the nineteen forties.
In the nineteen fifties.
Archive photographs copyright © Vintners’ Company
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Gadsdons Of Brushfield St
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Peter Gadsdon
If you look carefully, can you decipher the words “H.Gadsdon & Sons Established 1835” on this wall in Crispin St ? This feint sign – painted out a generation ago yet still just legible if you know what you are looking for – constitutes the last visible evidence in Spitalfields of the five generations of Gadsdons who lived and worked here over three centuries as silk dyers, coach platers and ironmongers. It was pointed out to me by Peter Gadsdon, who came back to see how life has been ticking over in the old neighbourhood since his last relative departed, more than half a century ago.
Working from the starting point of a family tree in an old bible and, by writing to every Gadsdon in the telephone directory, Peter Gadsdon has worked conscientiously, reconstructing the history of his ancestors. “I wouldn’t say they lived in poverty, but some of the streets they inhabited – where Liverpool St Station is today – were classified as slums, and learning about their lives has made realise how lucky I am,” he admitted to me.
The return of descendants of former residents is a regular and welcome occurrence in Spitalfields. Commonly, I am the one to greet them and often they speak so vividly and with such knowledge that it feels – as it does in Peter’s case – as if they are the actual embodiments of their forebears returning from the past.
“I have always had an interest in the East End since I visited Club Row, Brick Lane and Petticoat Lane when I was a teenager. And although I knew that my father was born in Hoxton, I did not know about the connection with Spitalfields until I started to research my family history.
Henry, my great, great, great grandfather was born in City of London in 1774 and baptised in All Hallows, Lombard St. His father, also Henry, was a framework knitter who had three children and found it “difficult to maintain and educate them without assistance.” So he applied to have his son admitted to Christ’s Hospital charity school in Newgate St in the City of London, where young Henry was accepted. Christ’s Hospital was known as the Blue Coat School and his first year was at their preparatory school based in Hertford before progressing to the senior school in Newgate St where he stayed until his fourteenth birthday
On leaving in 1790, the charity school paid for Henry’s five year apprenticeship as a silk dyer at the cost of five pounds and then he set up his own business in Spitalfields, the centre of the silk industry. The first date we know for his business is 1805 in Holden’s Triennial Directory at 26 Paternoster Row, now known as Brushfield St. On a map from 1799, Brushfield St is shown divided in two – from Bishopsgate to Crispin St was named Union St, and from Crispin St to Christ Church was Paternoster Row. In the eighteen twenties, Henry formed a partnership with a Richard Harmer, listed as Gadsdon & Harmer, dyers, scowerers and calenders in Pigots 1828/1829 Directory.
The next we learn of Henry is in the Old Bailey records when a coat is stolen from his business premises in 1830. On retirement, he moved across the Thames to Deptford and his first wife Elizabeth, née Harvey, passed away shortly afterwards. The custom in those days was commonly to return the body to the parish where they had lived and she was buried in Christ Church, Spitalfields, where eight of her nine children had been baptised and one infant was buried.
In 1839, little more than a year later, Henry married for a second time to Charlotte Benskin and moved out to the hamlet of Hatcham, New Cross. He died in 1849 and is buried in Nunhead Cemetery nearby.
Of Henry’s children two of his sons followed him to Christ’s Hospital School and on the application it states “A wife and eight children, one already at Christ’s, six under the age of fourteen years old, income under one hundred pounds per annum.” They were supported at the school by the Skinners’ Livery Guild of which Henry was a member. Another of his sons followed Henry into the silk dying trade, but by now the silk industry in Spitalfields was in its last throes.
Henry had a younger brother, Richard, who also had a business in Union St. Richard trained as a coachplater, making ironmongery for horse drawn carriages. A description from an encyclopaedia of Carriage Driving is as follows – “His job was to make such parts of the carriage as the door handles. He also prepared metal furniture for the harness. The average wage in the first half of the eighteen hundreds, for a plater, was thirty shillings a week.” Another brother, George. was also a coachplater who lived in nearby Gun St and I would assume that he worked with Richard when he set up his business in the early eighteen hundreds.
Advertisements show that they sold American wheels for carriages, and varnishes, japan and colours for the carriage trade. As the years progressed, they also moved into the motor car business and an advert from the turn of the century announces Gadsdons selling foot warmers suitable for both carriages and motor cars. Today, there is still a premises with the Gadsdon name on it in Spitalfields at number 49 Crispin St, though I am not sure if this is the carriage firm or if it is another part of the extended family. In 1926, a new Gadsdon premises of four storeys was built at the corner of Brushfield St and Duke St.
Most of Richard’s offspring went into the business of coachplating and saddle-making. One of his grandchildren was fearful of being buried alive – no doubt influenced by sensationalist press reports of the time – starting his will with “In the first place, I direct that my medical attendant at the time of my decease shall sever my jugular vein as soon as he is of opinion that I have ceased to exist, so that there may be an absolute certainty as to my death having taken place.”
My direct Gadsdon ancestors lived in the area in nearby Bishopsgate up and into the nineteen hundreds. When my grandfather, in the third year of his upholstery apprenticeship, married his pregnant wife in Christ Church, Spitalfields they did not use the usual family church of St Botolph’s in the City. So did they marry in Christ Church to avoid prying eyes? He started his own upholstery business in Hoxton and, in 1907, he moved to the expanding hamlet of Highams Park, near Chingford. Living just down the road to the station, he was able to travel to Liverpool St Station to his business each day.”
Peter Gadson would be delighted to hear from anyone connected to his family and you can contact him direct at pgadsdon@yahoo.co.uk
Christ’s Hospital where Henry Gadsdon, Peter’s great, great, great grandfather was a pupil at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The entry in Christ’s Hospital register recording the admission of Henry Gadsdon’s son George of Spitalfields in 1820.
From the Old Bailey records, recording the theft of Henry Gadsdon’s coat in Spitalfields in 1830
This map of Spitalfields by John Horwood (1794-99) shows the street we know as Brushfield St divided in two and named Union St and Paternoster Row.
Plans for the construction of Gadsdons on the corner of Brushfield St and Duke St in 1926.
A Gadsdon’s drill at the Museum of East Anglian Life
Wholesale Coach Ironmongers, C & B Gadsdon, 11 Brushfield St, London E1.
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From Andy Strowman’s Album
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Andy Strowman, poet of Stepney, sent me these photos and the stories which accompany them.
Uncle Dave
Uncle Dave came to visit us from time to time. Maybe my mum knew in advance, it was like having royalty come to see you.
One time he came over during his work lunchtime and my mum made him something to eat, like chicken soup. I told him I was going back his way, so we went together to Whitechapel Station. He was just about to get off at Aldgate East Station when I announced that I was going for a job interview.
“Shush!” he said,” Someone will get there before you!’
“Before you go in, take your raincoat off and fold it neatly draped over your arm.”
I got the job! It was only washing up, but Uncle Dave gave me the confidence.
Another time, when Uncle Dave and I had not long left the synagogue on the holiest night of the year, the Jewish New Year, in Hebrew Rosh Hashonah, a drunk man approached us, and his stormy face and mad rolling eyes made me, a boy of about eight, very frightened.
Uncle Dave pointed upwards at the night sky with its dazzling stars like a Van Gogh painting and uttered, “Look! Look up there!” As the drunk man searched the sky, Uncle Dave pulled my arm and we escaped.
When seventeen, that came in very handy in rescuing me from peril.
Bar Mitzvah
My mum and dad were so excited, they hired caterers to come to our poor house in Milward St. I had never seem so much food and drink for our family and guests in my life. Before the event, the synagogue service and all the family guests, the news was published in the Jewish Chronicle.
My mum was frantic, it was a lot of stress. My grandfather who lived in Boston, Massachusetts, and was originally from Ukraine came over for the bar mitzvah.
My friend and I sat on the stairs while all the grown-ups drank and talk. So much noise, it was like a wood-machining factory.
Uncle Jack
I like to remember the happy stories associated with him, like meeting my two young sons with giant Cadbury’s dairy milk bars. His generosity, such as when my mum was in hospital in Epsom, one of the patients needed their trousers mended and my uncle volunteered to do it, and brought them back to him.
His generosity was amplified by my friend Alan. Both were compulsive gamblers. After visiting the racecourse, Alan got off at Charing Cross main line station, a woman approached him and asked him for money. She said she was in a desperate state, so he gave her generously and she wanted to repay him.
One sunny day, Alan was sitting on a bench in Soho when this same woman came and repaid him.
Auntie Tina
Mental health can be a cruel teacher. Sadly, both my mum, Auntie Tina (Uncle Jack’s wife), Uncle Barney, and myself, have all had our share of it. Some can be attributed to circumstances, others to inherent cause but Auntie Tina had both.
Living in a high rise block of flats with disturbing neighbours nearby, being spat at in the lift, social isolation, can only lead to one thing. Her life was shorted much like Uncle Barney’s was.
Tina had come from Lisbon and had known more graceful days. The epiphany of lack of caring support and people hardly knowing neighbours, the ultimate question being, “Who could you ask among them if you have a serious problem?”
Reg & Valerie Parrish
Reg entered Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as part of the liberating forces. After what he saw there, all the dead bodies and Jewish people looking like skeletons, he vowed never to have any children and bring them into this world. Reg kept his word.
His sister, I believe her name was Valerie, was a member of ENSA, that entertained army troops during the war. She said, “We often ran the same risk as the soldiers in the war, and were caught up in shooting and bombing raids.”
Mum & Dad
My mum and dad were among the black cab taxi drivers who took children to the seaside for the day. These were children from care homes. In their case, the children were from Norwood Jewish care home.
The taxis were festooned with balloons and travelled as a long convoy to the seaside. There they had a good time – the children were fed and no doubt got an ice cream! I must admit to being jealous as going to the seaside was such a rare treat. To this day, the event still takes place by London taxi drivers. The Norwood home is I believe now closed though.
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David Johnson’s Cafes
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Fredson’s Cafe, Alie St
David Johnson took these magnificent photographs of cafes in Kodachrome around 1980, published here for the first time today.
“When I lived in East London, I started this project to photograph some classic cafes, mainly in the East End – but also elsewhere as I came across them in my travels. I think it was the sign-writing and eclectic typography which were the main attractions. I realised that they were not going to be around much longer. Many were run by Italian families who started up in the post-war period. Annoyingly, I did not make a note of the locations – so if you can help, please leave a comment.”
David Johnson
Aeron Cafe
Bridge Cafe
Corner Parlour
Alfredo’s Cafe, Islington
Sign at Alfredo’s Cafe
Flock-In
Gee’s Cafe
George’s Cafe, Whitechapel
The Happy Fillet
Jim’s Cafe, Islington
Jubilee Cafe
Moon & Sixpence Cafe
Norman’s Nosh Bar
Norman’s Nosh Bar
Phyllis’s Cafe
Silvio Cafe
The Ninety Eight
The Village Rest
Viking Cafe
Magno Cafe
Leslie’s Cafe
Crawford Cafe
Cafe
Empire Cafe
Photographs copyright © David Johnson
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David Johnson’s East End
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Liverpool St Station
Shall we take a tour around the East End in the early eighties in the company of David Johnson, courtesy of his wonderful Kodachrome images published here for the first time?
“My interest in London’s history goes back to the late sixties, when as a teenager I would take the train from Oxford and then, using a Red Bus Rover ticket and a copy of Geoffrey Fletcher’s The London Nobody Knows, discover some of the most interesting and off-beat parts of the capital. In 1977, seeking a job after graduating and with a strong interest in photography, I ended up in London selling cameras in Tottenham Court Rd. I first explored the old wharves and docklands before they disappeared and then, after moving to Dalston, the East End. Derelict buildings, faded signs, architecture on a human scale are all things which I liked to photograph then – and still do today.”
David Johnson
Liverpool St Station
Liverpool St Station
Liverpool St Station
Artillery Lane
Brushfield St
Christ Church Spitalfields
Fashion St
Spitalfields barber
Hanbury St
Brick Lane
Homeless men in Spitalfields
The City from Spitalfields
Whitechapel Market
Wapping Police Station
Wapping
St Paul’s School, Wellclose Sq
Wapping High St
River Plate Wharf
Wapping
Wapping Pier Head
The Gun, Isle of Dogs
The Black Horse, Limehouse
Grove Place, Hackney
Empress Coaches, Hackney
Regent’s Canal
Cat & Mutton Bridge
Broadway Market
Broadway Market
George Tallet, Fishmonger, Hackney
Carr’s Pet Stores, Hackney
Trederwen Rd, Hackney
Photographs copyright © David Johnson
