At Nichols Bros, Woodturners
Geoff Nichols standing at his father Stanley’s lathe
‘We are the last proper woodturners in London,’ boasts Geoff Nichols of Nichols Bros (Woodturners) Ltd in Walthamstow. It sounds like quite a bold claim, but since I have learned the story of Geoff’s family endeavour stretching back over a century, examined their work and enjoyed a tour of the premises, I am more than happy to endorse Nichols Bros as ‘proper’ woodturners indeed.
An undistinguished single storey building in a side street gives no hint of the wonders within. For eighty years, the Nichols family have been woodturning at this location and proved themselves masters of the art and the craft. Passing through double green doors from the street, you turn directly left and discover yourself in another kingdom, filled with glowing golden timber and lined with wood chips.
In a long low-ceilinged brick room sit venerable lathes surrounded by stacks of new pine and off-cuts, while the walls are adorned with intricate examples of woodturning hanging like stalactites. Geoff Nichols and his trusty partner Harry Morrow have worked here for the past half century, and they step forward to greet you – looking the epitome of master craftsmen in their long blue twill coats.
Yet further delights await your gaze. Widening his eyes in excitement, Geoff leads you into the yard beyond where blue tarpaulins conceal a unique spectacle, accumulated in a series of old sheds. One after the other, he lifts the tarpaulins to reveal rooms filled with a seemingly infinite array of spindles, all meticulously organised by style and disappearing into the gloom like gothic grottos.
‘We have a collection in the region of three thousand different spindles,’ underestimates Geoff proudly, ‘We try to display as many as we can for ease of reference but we have lots more that are stored in boxes too.’
Unquestionably the largest collection in London and perhaps the largest collection in the world, this is – in effect – our national archive of stair spindles. It is a secret museum that tells the story of the growth of the capital in spindles – a cultural asset of the greatest significance and it will not come again. Perhaps most fascinating was the ‘London spindle’ – the most common design in the capital yet also the one with the most variants.
Geoff led me to the tiny cubby hole which serves as the office, where we competed over who should sit upon the only chair in the place, before I plonked myself down upon a trestle and he told me the full story of Nichols Bros.
“My dad Stanley Nichols and his brother Arthur started on this site in Walthamstow in 1949. They were two youngest out of five brothers, the two eldest – there was about a twenty year age difference – already had a woodturning business, Nichols & Nichols, in the Kingsland Rd in Shoreditch which they started before the First World War.
After Stanley and Arthur left school, they went to work for their elder brothers until the Second World War began, then they went off to the forces. After the war, they carried on with their elder brothers for a year or so before they decided to set up their own woodturning business here, Nichols Bros.
I came into it the day I left school at fifteen, that was fifty years ago now in 1969, and Harry joined about four or five years after me. My Uncle Arthur retired about five years after I started, he used to handle the paperwork, so Harry took over from him. I was more involved in the practical side of the business, especially hand woodturning.
We probably had about five or six employees at our peak which was about twenty years ago. Since then the trade has changed quite dramatically because the trend has moved away from wood towards glass and metal. In pubs in the East End, all the glass racks were made of turned wood spindles but that is no longer the case. Once upon a time, we made a lot of mangle rollers but obviously that is work we will never get asked to do again. We used to do a lot of table legs and when I first joined the business all we were really doing was standard lamps.
The furniture industry disappeared in the East End a quarter of a century ago and we are now tied in to the building trade. People spend a lot of money on their properties these days, adding rooms in the loft which needs staircases – newel posts, handrails and spindles. Spindles for staircases is the work we are asked to do now, although we still make the occasional four-poster bed and table legs for the furniture trade which does exist.
A lot of woodturning is imported from China but we cannot try to compete by producing volume, instead we do bespoke woodturning if a customer wants spindles or newel posts matched up. Skill is very important. When I first started working here, we used to get an influx of people asking if there was a job or could they learn the trade, but it seems the younger generation tend to shy away from manual trades today.
My dad was an exceptionally good woodturner, better at some things than me although I think I am better than him at others. You can be the most skilled woodturner in the world but you have to do it within a certain time, because time is money. It is all about earning a living, it is not a hobby. If you turn one spindle by hand, you have then got to be able to replicate it again quickly. Being able to get sharp definition in your work is very important. I can look at any piece of woodturning and tell straight away whether it was made by a highly skilled turner or not.
In woodturning, the trick is you must not pick up any tools and put them down again too many times. You have to do as much as you can with either the chisel or the gouge. When you change tools you are wasting time, so you must be able to do the maximum before you change tools. That is the secret to fast woodturning and to be able to turn nice bead, a fillet or a jug. The ridge around the shaft is called a ‘bead,’ like beading. The ridge between the bead and the shaft of the spindle is called the ‘fillet’ and it gives definition of the bead. The ‘jug’ is the wave profile, like on a jug. Any woodturning you see is beads, fillets, bands, hollows and jugs. That is all woodturning is.
It gives me pleasure to take a square blank and turn it into an artistic shape. You alone know the difficulty in turning it. You can see that you have made something that looks beautiful and will be there for a long time. When you visit old buildings, you appreciate the tremendous work that was involved in the woodturning, especially since they were working on primitive lathes compared to ours.
My children will not be coming into the business. My son works in the City and my daughter has an Estate Agents, so no-one in the family can take it over which is a real shame. I would be open to train someone if they came and asked me. It would be lovely if we could find someone who wanted to start a woodturning business, because over the last seventy years we have collected so many machines and tools which are irreplaceable.“
Geoff as a young man with his father Stanley Nichols
Stanley Nichols working at his lathe
Geoff at work on a barley-sugar twist spindle
Harry Morrow and Geoff Nichols at work at their lathes
Harry Morrow
The yard where the collection of more than three thousand spindles are kept
Some of the collection
Geoff Nichols
Multiple variants of the ‘London spindle’ – a distinctive style which evolved during the nineteenth century with the expansion of the capital
Nichols Bros (Woodturning) Ltd, 2A Milton Rd, Walthamstow, E17 4SR
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The Metropolitan Machinists’ Company
Since the first lockdown I have eschewed public transport and become a committed cyclist, so I was delighted to discover this 1896 catalogue for The Metropolitan Machinists’ Co, yet another of the lost trades of Bishopsgate, reproduced courtesy of the Bishopsgate Institute
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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My Winter Bulbs
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‘No enemy but winter and rough weather…’ As You Like It
Every year at this low ebb of the season, I cultivate bulbs and winter-flowering plants in my collection of old pots from the market and arrange them upon the oak dresser, to observe their growth at close quarters and thereby gain solace and inspiration until my garden shows any convincing signs of new life.
Each morning, I drag myself from bed – coughing and wheezing from winter chills – and stumble to the dresser in my pyjamas like one in a holy order paying due reverence to an altar. When the grey gloom of morning feels unremitting, the musky scent of hyacinth or the delicate fragrance of the cyclamen is a tonic to my system, tangible evidence that the season of green leaves and abundant flowers will return. When plant life is scarce, my flowers in pots acquire a magical allure for me, an enchanted quality confirmed by the speed of their growth in the warmth of the house, and I delight to have this collection of diverse varieties in dishes to wonder at, as if each one were a unique specimen from an exotic land.
And once they have flowered, I place these plants in a cold corner of the house until I can replant them in the garden. As a consequence, my clumps of Hellebores and Snowdrops are expanding every year and thus I get to enjoy my plants at least twice over – at first on the dresser and in subsequent years growing in my garden.
Staffordshire figure of Orlando from As You Like It
More Furniture Trade Cards Of Old London
Last chance to support our JANUARY BOOK SALE which ends on Sunday. We only have nine titles left in the warehouse and some are on the brink of going out of print, so you can assist us clear the shelves by buying copies at half price to complete your collection, or as gifts for family and friends.
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Since I published a selection of furniture trade cards that might have been found in the secret drawer of a hypothetical cabinet in the eighteenth century, it is my pleasure to show this further selection discovered stashed behind a plate on the top shelf of a hypothetical alcove.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Furniture Trade Cards of Old London
More Trade Cards of Old London
Yet More Trade Cards of Old London
Even More Trade Cards of Old London
The Fogs Of Old London
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Londoners are advised to avoid physical activity outside today due to high levels of air pollution
St. Martin, Ludgate with St. Paul’s Cathedral, c. 1900
At this time of year, when dusk gathers in the mid-afternoon, a certain fog drifts into my brain and the city itself grows mutable as the looming buildings outside my window merge into a dark labyrinth of shadows beyond. Yet this is as nothing compared with the smog of old London, when a million coal fires polluted the atmosphere with clouds of filthy black smoke carrying noxious fumes, infections and respiratory diseases. In old London, the city resounded with a symphony of fog horns on the river and thousands of people coughing up their lungs in the street.
Looking at these glass slides of a century ago, once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute, the fogs and smogs of old London take on quite another meaning. They manifest the proverbial mythic “mists of time,” the miasma wherein is lost all of human history, save the sketchy outline that some idle writer or other jotted down. Just as gauzes at the pantomime conjure the romance of fairyland, the hazes in these pictures filter and soften the images as if they were faded memories, receding into the past.
The closer I examine these views, the more I wonder whether the fog is, in some cases, an apparition called forth by the photographic process itself – the result of a smeary lens or grime on the glass plate, or simply an accident of exposure. Even so, this photographic fogging is no less evocative of old London than the actual meteorological phenomenon. As long as there is atmosphere, the pictures are irresistibly atmospheric. And old London is a city eternally swathed in mist.
St Paul’s Cathedral from the north-west, c. 1920
Pump at Bedford Row, 1911
Cenotaph, 1919
Upper Thames view, c. 1920
Greenwich Hospital from the Park, c. 1920
City roadworks, 1910
Looking north across the City of London, c. 1920
Old General Post Office, c. 1910
View eastwards from St Paul’s, c. 1910
Hertford House, c. 1910
New River Head, c. 1910
The Running Footman public house, c. 1900
Unidentified building, c 1910
Church Row, Hampstead, c. 1910
Danish Ambassador’s residence, Wellclose Square, Wapping c. 1910
Church of All Hallows, London Wall, c. 1890
Drapers’ Almshouses, Bromley Street, c. 1910
Battersea Bridge, c. 1910
32 Smith Grove, Highgate, in the snow, 1906
Unknown public building, c. 1910
Training ship at Greenwich, c. 1910
Flooded moat at the Tower of London, c. 1910
The Woodman, 1900
Bangor St, North Kensington, c. 1910
Terrace of the Houses of Parliament, c.1910
Statue of Boudicca on Westminster Bridge, c. 1910
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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A New Future For The Custom House
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The Custom House by Augustus Pugin & Thomas Rowlandson, 1805
You will recall that last year a planning application was submitted to the City of London to convert the Custom House into a boutique hotel and destroy much of the historic interior. I am delighted to report that – thanks in no small part to letters of objection submitted you, the readers of Spitalfields Life – this plan was rejected.
After receiving around one hundred letters of objection, the committee responded by rejecting the hotel scheme unanimously. How different from Tower Hamlets Council, where over 7000 objections to the Truman Brewery shopping mall were casually brushed aside.
The future of the Custom House is now to be decided by Public Inquiry in February at which The Georgian Group will put forward their scheme which proposes restoring the building and opening the major spaces including the Long Room for cultural use with full public access.
The offices, which comprise the largest surviving suites of Georgian offices in existence, would be restored and employed for start-ups and small enterprises as part of the City of London’s inclusivity and diversity programme. In this way, the building can be where the City’s future is created, by opening the door to those who have previously been excluded. When you consider that the Custom House was where all the loot came into this country for centuries, such a repurposing is an appropriate step towards a just outcome.
Click on The Georgian Group’s scheme below to enlarge and read more.
Click on this to enlarge
Click on this to enlarge
HELP SAVE THE CUSTOM HOUSE FOR LONDONERS
To save the Custom House as a public building, we need you to write to the Inspector who is holding the Public Inquiry.
Send your email as soon as possible to Alison.Dyson@planninginspectorate.gov.uk
Quote reference APP/K5030/W/21/3281630
Make it clear that you object to the proposed hotel plan and explain in your own words why you support The Georgian Group’s scheme.
Custom House by Robert Smirke, 1825, with elements by David Laing, 1817
For years, I was unaware of the nature of this enormous austere building which presents an implacable front of Portland stone to the Thames between the Tower of London and old Billingsgate Market. Once I understood its purpose, then its commanding position over the Pool of London became evident.
For more than seven hundred years, the Custom House was where all cargoes passing through the Port of London were declared and duties paid, as well as serving as a passport office for migrants, registering upon arrival and departure. Perhaps no building is as central to our history as a seafaring nation than the Custom House. In recent years, we have come to re-evaluate the morality of the creation of Empire and the wealth it delivered. London was the financial capital of the system of slavery and the centre of the sugar trade, and the Custom House was part of this.
The evolution of the Custom House through the centuries follows the growth of Britain’s status as a trading nation, which makes this a pertinent moment to reflect upon the history of the building and the legacy it embodies.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the epic Long Room – claimed to be the longest in Europe – at the heart of the Custom House was renowned as a wonder in its own right. Londoners came to observe the variety of races of traders from across the globe who attended to fulfil their obligations in the form of tariffs and taxes.
When Geoffrey Chaucer worked as Comptroller of the Customs of Wools, Skins and Tanned Hides in the Custom House, constructed by John Churchman in 1382, duties had formerly been collected since 1203 at Wool Quay just to the east. Tudor expansionism was reflected in an enlarged Custom House of 1559, destroyed a century later by the Great Fire.
Afterwards, the rebuilding of the Custom House was the first priority and it was Christopher Wren who established the pattern of the central Long Room surrounded by smaller offices, which has been maintained in the subsequent buildings each larger than the one before. It is a template that has been replicated in Custom Houses around the world.
Wren’s Custom House was destroyed by fire in 1717, initiating a series of ill-fated replacements that suffered multiple calamities. The next Custom House, designed by Thomas Ripley, caught fire in 1814, resulting in an explosion of gunpowder and spirits that dispersed paperwork as far as the Hackney Marshes. Simultaneously, the unfinished replacement, designed by David Laing, foundered when builder John Peto died unexpectedly leaving the project with insufficient financial backing.
Within two years of completion, Laing’s new Custom House developed structural problems, revealed when the ceiling of the Long Room partially collapsed in 1824. Canny architect Robert Smirke advised occupants to move out of the Long Room two days before it fell down and undertook an investigation which exposed shoddy workmanship and unstable riverfront foundations done on the cheap.
Unsurprisingly, Smirke was employed to rebuild and repair the Custom House, and he replaced the entire central section containing the Long Room in 1825. It is Smirke’s sober sensibility that prevails today, incorporating Laing’s east and west wings into an authoritative frontage of uniformity with an institutional restraint in embellishment and a spare, sombre proportion throughout.
For decades, the Custom House has been inaccessible to the public which explains why a building of such central significance has become relatively unnoticed, yet it is publicly-owned. The obvious precedents of Somerset House and Tate Modern demonstrate how the Custom House could be put successfully to public use again.
Christopher Wren’s Custom House
“The Custom House, in the uppermost of which is a magnificent room running the whole length of the building. On this spot is a busy concourse of nations who pay their tribute towards the support of Great Britain. In front of this building, ships of three hundred and fifty tons burthen can lie and discharge their cargoes.” From The Microcosm of London by Augustus Pugin & Thomas Rowlandson 1805 (Image courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
David Laing’s Custom House, 1817
Plan of Laing’s Custom House
“Between London Bridge and the Tower, and – separating it from the Thames – a broad quay that was for long almost the only riverside walk in London open to the public, is the Custom House. Five earlier buildings on the same site were destroyed by fire, and the present structure was erected in 1814-17, the fine facade being designed by Sir R. Smirke. Some 2,000 officials are employed at the Custom House, and in its famous Long Room alone -190 ft by 66 ft – eighty clerks are habitually engaged. This is not surprising, for the trade of the Port of London is by far the greatest of any port in the world. The building, which is entered from Lower Thames St, contains an interesting Smuggling Museum.”
From The Queen’s London: a Pictorial & Descriptive Record of the Streets, Buildings, Parks & Scenery of the Great Metropolis, 1896
Custom House c. 1910 (Image courtesy LAMAS Collection, Bishopsgate Institute)
Boundaries of the parishes of All Hallows by the Tower and St Dunstan in the East, marked on the river wall which was designed by John Rennie, 1819
The Lower Thames St frontage with the main entrance
The Custom House as it appeared before the Great Fire by Wenceslas Hollar, 1647
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Peta Bridle’s East End Sketchbook
Please support our JANUARY BOOK SALE. We only have nine titles left in the warehouse and some are on the brink of going out of print, so you can assist us clear the shelves by buying copies at half price to complete your collection, or as gifts for family and friends.
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Every few months, Peta Bridle sends me a collection of her sketches and here are some of the latest
View Over Spitalfields
During Open House weekend I was granted this magnificent view. Far below, a man leans against a bollard in Puma Court while, to the right, the rooftops of Fournier St meet Brick Lane Mosque and the former Warner Bell Foundry chimney. At the end of Puma Court is Wilkes St with chimney stacks and weaver’s lofts, while to the left, someone is crossing Princelet St. In the distance, Spitalfields’ old terraces recede to meet the tower blocks of Whitechapel.
Fleur De Lis Alley
With its three tottering lampposts, this ancient paved alley once linked Shoreditch High St and Blossom St in Norton Folgate. I wandered round here photographing the black-bricked Victorian warehouses and cobbled streets before the redevelopment, but now all I have are my old photos to remind me.
Liverpool St Station
Pigeons swoop from one end of the roof of Liverpool St Station to the other as if in a giant aviary. From my position on a raised walkway, I could observe the continuous rush of running feet, bicycle wheels, pushchairs, wheelchairs and suitcases crossing the concourse beneath. This station is like a glass cathedral supported by decorative ironwork and flooded with light.
Three Pots On A Sill In Fournier St
I met Rodney Archer only once when he had a sale at his home of art, antiques and collectables, where I bought a small paper pattern for silk weaving. Now I regret not asking if I could visit to make an etching of his beautiful house. After he died, I returned but the atmosphere was sombre, so just I took a photograph of these flowerpots on the sill overlooking the garden. As I took my pictures, one of Rodney’s cat sat on the stair and pawed my hair clip through the bannisters, wanting attention, so I stopped what I was doing and gave him a stroke.
The Society For The Protection Of Ancient Buildings
This is the last Georgian house in Spital Sq which was once lined with fine mansions built by silk merchants. It was the attractive contrast of the blue railings and shutters against the red painted doorway that caught my eye.
Wilkes St
Two trips were required to render these beautiful terraces. I pencilled them in on one day and returned another to ink in my sketch.
The Still & Star, Aldgate
I took shelter under the arch of Little Somerset St when it started to rain but a few drops splashed onto my picture and I had to retreat further. Many passersby stopped to talk to me about this historic pub and its pitiful fate. Hoardings surround the development site and I was surprised to see the pub still standing, so I took the opportunity to make this sketch before its demolition.
The Whitechapel Bell Foundry
I sat with my back to a large lamppost facing the long foundry wall to make this sketch. Many locals stopped to express their disappointment and sadness that the foundry has closed and the resultant loss to the community. Currently the building is occupied by property guardians and, after the pandemic, I wonder if the threatened redevelopment into a boutique hotel will ever go ahead.
Brussel Sprouts & Cabbages, Spitalfields City Farm
An occasional East London Line train rattled past beyond the fence as I was drawing. After I finished, one of the gardeners kindly showed me around, pointing out what was growing and how to cook it. Even though the brussel sprouts have not yet appeared, there was already an abundance of green leaves in the cabbage patch.
The Vegetable Patch, Spitalfields City Farm
Over the summer I made many visits to the farm as it offered such a lovely environment for drawing. On my first visit, I made this sketch overlooking the vegetable beds with the pigsty in the background. That day, there was a party of school children in the yurt, mums and dads exploring with their babies and toddlers, with the sound of chickens, ducks and sheep in the background.
Bella The Cat, Spitalfields City Farm
In the poly-tunnel, there were chard, courgettes, sunflowers, cucumbers supported on string and sticks, and a hefty kodu dangling on the left. Although summer rain drummed on the roof, I was quite dry inside. Some school children took shelter briefly too, followed by Bella the farm cat, who sat staring out of the doorway, waiting for the shower to pass. I took the opportunity to include her in my picture but, when I looked again, she had disappeared.
Chard, Spring Cabbage & Sunflowers, Spitalfields City Farm
On each visit, the scenery changes at the farm, with plants sprouting profusely, accelerated by alternating bouts of rain and sunshine. Plastic bottles rattled gently on top of the canes amongst the greenery, while – on this day – a group of gardeners were busy digging and harvesting.
Arnold Circus
An unusually mild day in October granted ideal conditions to visit Arnold Circus, as leaves from the plane trees were falling and the wind was sending them skittering around the pathways. The bandstand sits on top of a circular mound, which was made from the demolition pile of former slum housing, when the area was cleared to build the red brick council dwellings that surround the gardens today.
The Master’s House, St. Katharine’s Precinct, Limehouse
I found a shady corner of the garden to sketch, when the lawns were dappled in shade and a few people sat outside enjoying the tranquillity. Yet, above the noise of birdsong, I could hear background traffic and the Docklands Light Railway trains. A robin perched on a chair next to me to observe what I was doing, and a very peaceful and enjoyable day was spent at St Katharine’s Precinct.
Paul Gardner, Gardner’s Bags, Leyton
Paul’s family ran a bag and market sundries shop in Spitalfields for one hundred and fifty years. Just before the pandemic, he moved out to a new shop in Leyton and it was a pleasure to visit him there. Plastic bags on strings hang like bunting overhead and rolls of fluorescent stickers are stacked up on the old wooden counter. Paul stands with a large set of green scales in front of him with his old greengrocers’ fruit and vegetable signs displayed behind him. He has made use of all his available wall space to create a gallery of the many artworks that have been done celebrating Gardner’s Bags.
Drawings copyright © Peta Bridle
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