Spitalfields Life

Thanks to your magnificent support, we have reached our crowdfunding target to launch THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S TOUR OF SPITALFIELDS. The booking website will go live at the beginning of next month and tours will commence at Easter, running throughout the summer.

I pulled this shirt out of my cupboard this week in advance of the arrival of  spring. If you look closely, you will see the collar is wearing through but this does not diminish my affection for this favoured garment that I have worn for years now, bringing it out just for these few months at the end of winter. Although most of the clothes I own are of undecorated design, there is a gentle lyrical quality about this pattern that appeals to me.

When I wear this shirt with a dark jacket, the colours really sing and I feel am doing my bit in participating in the seasonal change. This contrast of formal clothing with a sprigged shirt can express dignified restraint while at the same time revealing an attachment to flowers, plants, gardens and nature – a contrast that I recognise in my own personality.

I love the conceit of  having violets on my shirt when those in my garden are in flower and I enjoy the subtle tones of all the flowers portrayed, remaining as recognisable species while artfully stylised to make a pattern. The evocation of the natural world in this simple design touches a chord for me and, as with so many things that trigger an emotional response, I discovered that my passion for these floral patterns from Liberty goes back a long way.

When I came across the familiar photograph of my mother Valerie as a child, which you can see below, I did a double-take when I recognised the pattern on the dress. It was a Liberty print, very similar to my spring shirt which I hold in such affection. In that moment, I recalled that my grandmother Katherine bought fabric at Liberty in London and had it made up into dresses for my mother in the  nineteen-thirties. This was a gesture which made such an unforgettable impression on my mother that for her whole life she carried her delight in these cotton dresses, which were so magical to her as a little girl in Somerset. Floral prints fed her innocent imagination, nurtured by ‘Songs of the Flower Fairies’ and performing as one of Titania’s attendants in a school play.

A generation later, I grew up with the received emotion of this memory – a story my mother told me when I was a child. I thought I had forgotten, but I realised it was through an unconscious recollection of the photograph of my mother in the Liberty dress that I was attracted to this flowery shirt, without understanding the origin of my desire at the time.

The story was confirmed when my Uncle Richard moved out of the old house where he and my mother grew up and, in my grandmother’s dressing table, I found a small leather pocket diary from the thirties recording her London trip with the entry, “Stayed at Claridges. Ordered carpet and sideboard at Harvey Nichols and bought materials at Liberty.” My grandmother was the daughter of a diminished aristocratic family who married my grandfather Leslie, a bank manager, and adopted an autocratic manner to ameliorate her loss of status. Consequently, my mother, with admirable resourcefulness, ran away from home at nineteen to escape my bossy grandmother and married my father Peter, who was a professional footballer – an act of social rebellion that my grandmother never forgave.

Nevertheless, the taste I acquired for these old-fashioned designs reflects the fondness my mother carried for that special moment in her childhood which she never forgot, when my grandmother showed maternal kindness to her little daughter in the gift of flowery cotton dresses. An act which came to represent everything about my grandmother that my mother could embrace with unqualified affection, and she encouraged me to remember the best of people too, a prerogative I claim in this instance as the sole living representative of these characters.

Today, I wear my shirt as the sympathetic illustration of a narrative which extends over three generations, culminating in my own existence upon this earth, and as I button my spring shirt, before walking out to celebrate sunshine and a new beginning, I am reminded that I alone carry these emotional stories now, clothing me in the humble affections of my forebears.

The Gentle Author’s mother ‘Valerie’ in the nineteen-thirties

Liberty of London

You may like to read these other stories of The Gentle Author’s family

A Child’s Christmas in Devon

On Sunday Morning

Kathy J Callahan

THANK YOU  to everyone who has already contributed to my crowdfund to launch a COMMUNITY TOURISM PROJECT in Spitalfields as a BETTER ALTERNATIVE to the serial killer tours that monetise misogyny.

We have UNTIL MONDAY to raise the final £2,000 and meet our target, so please spread the word and search down the back of your sofa.

CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT THIS PROJECT

Today it is my pleasure to introduce the work of painter Jonathan Madden

Last Orders at The Still Star

My family had lodgings nearby, above a shop in Aldgate High St during the early twenties, so it is quite conceivable that they frequented this ancient pub. During the early nineteen-hundreds this pub, along with the The Hoop & Grapes nearby, was frequented by many of the slaughtermen and meat porters who worked on Butcher’s Row. I frequently used to drop in on my way home from St Katharine Docks where I worked in the early two-thousands. There has been a pub here since 1820 but it closed its doors finally in 2017, prior to demolition and reconstruction as part of a huge office development on the site.

JONATHAN MADDEN, PUB PAINTER

‘I have lived and worked in and around London for over sixty-five years and, from my early days at art school in the seventies, I was encouraged to keep a sketchbook and record the scene in front of me. I have always enjoyed spending time in a decent pub, although the decline of many of them saddens me more and more as the years pass.

I decided to start painting them in 2015 and these first paintings were from areas around Aldgate, Whitechapel and the Highway, which is where my father’s family and his parents all lived from the late nineteenth century. I wanted to create a connection back to them. Then I expanded my search to Limehouse, Ratcliffe, Wapping and Southwark and wherever I found pubs that were architecturally interesting.

All these neighbourhoods, due to their proximity to London’s Docks, were traditionally working class. The pubs were focal points for their community, warm, mostly welcoming and often splendrous, and their demise was acutely felt. Regretfully we have lost far too many, they stand on corners like memorials now, mournful but with a quiet dignity, often covered in tags and flyposters, their life and soul dissipated.”

Jonathan Madden

The Prince of Wales, Grove Rd

The Prince of Wales on Grove Road was one of the first pubs I painted back in 2016. I isolated it from the surrounding buildings and added a stormy sky. Called the Prince of Prussia until the outbreak of WW1, it has a chequered past. In 2002, a murder was committed by the landlord which did not help its reputation and it closed in 2005. It was popular in the late nineties as a stopping place before heading off to Benjys nightclub in the Mile End Rd. I believe it is now a burger bar.

The Albion, Albion St

I painted this pub 2018, along with another in Albion St called The Little Crown. These mock Tudor pubs are often derided architecturally but I really like them. There are many decent examples around London, mainly in the outer suburbs near Underground stations. There is currently a fight from locals to save The Albion from a developer.

The Lord Napier, Hackney Wick

This was a commission and when I began the painting in 2019 it had probably been the most graffitied and most photographed pub after it pulled its last ‘official’ pint back in 1996. My client was a music producer who used to run club nights there and had good memories and affection for it. But after squatters, parties and countless raves, I am pleased to say it has now reinvented itself and is a very popular local called The Lord Napier Star.

The Star in the East, Reborn

This was in a sorry state a few years ago but is a wonderful example of Moorish influenced Victorian splendour on the Commercial Rd, an architectural gem. I am pleased to say after many incarnations, closures and re-openings it was given a new lease of life in 2019 by The Old Spot Pub Company. It is truly magnificent and I just had to paint it. I began it in mid-2021 and completed it in time to reproduce it as a Christmas card, which I thought fitting.

The Albion

There are so many Albions, I did consider producing a series of them from around the country. This abandoned pub was in a sorry state of repair when I visited Lauriston Rd back in 2018. I drew some preliminary sketches on site and from these produced an initial painting which was completed in 2019. However I was not happy with the result so during 2020, prompted by the pandemic, I decided take a different approach. I placed the pub in a new and different landscape in which I included rising water levels and a low setting sun. The graffiti on the building was how I saw 2020.

The Black Horse, Stepney

Although there are many repurposed pubs lining the Whitechapel and Mile End roads, many are easy to ignore. Nearly all are mid-to-late-nineteeth-century and this one is Grade 2 listed. Most have been converted to betting shops, fast food outlets or clothing shops. I wanted to pick one to record in paint, so I chose The Black Horse which has good proportions. It is opposite Stepney Green station and has had many incarnations, including as a gay bar before finally closing its doors in 2009.

The Royal Duke

I have walked past this pub many times and always wanted to record it. It is on the busy Commercial Rd and has been derelict for many years. It was built in 1879 and finally stopped serving beer in 1995. It then was repurposed as The Royal Duke Superstore, a supermarket, that has now closed. It has some lovely cream plaster detailing and a stone corner-splay. Owned by Trumans’ Brewery, as were many in this area, it is identified by the brewery’s signature dark green tiling on the entire ground floor.

The Rising Sun

This was commissioned in 2020 by a friend whose family used to live in the area around Upper Norwood. I explored the ghost pubs of the area and found this neat little building standing on its own on Spa Hill. I love its symmetry and its pleasant setting backing on to a small park.

The Anchor & Hope, E14

This old pub caught my attention because it stood defiant amongst the towers of steel and glass in Canary Wharf. Like a few in the area it was a local pub and very popular during the London Marathon. Unfortunately, this was not enough to save it and it closed in 2011. An successful application was made for change of use and since 2018, it has been used as a fitness centre. It is now barely recognisable as a former pub.

The Thames after the Great Flood

Known as the Rose & Crown until a fire in 1986, the Campaign for Real Ale’s South-East London Pub Guide from two years later records the Thames as being “a large single bar with aquarium,” adding “The ex-docker ghost who haunted the cellar has extended his range to the rest of the pub.” This picture is set fifty years in the future. The River Thames has flooded and a group of walkers have chanced upon the abandoned building. Its composition is loosely based on ‘Landscape with Aeneas at Delos’ by Claude Lorrain, the master of light. Canary Wharf is on the distant shore and nature has begun to spread its arms around the pub.

The Old Rose, Ratcliff Highway

I have strong family connections with the surrounding area, so felt compelled to paint this pub. Its location is on the once notorious and dangerous ‘Ratcliff Highway’, a very lively place in the nineteenth Century as a gathering place for sailors and dock labourers. From 1986 it became popular with journalists from News International when Rupert Murdoch moved his printing presses to ‘Fortress Wapping.’ Today it stands semi-derelict, with an endless stream of heavy traffic thundering past, where its primary function is to support a huge illuminated advertising hoarding on its west wall.

Paintings copyright © Jonathan Madden

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