Harry The Pencil’s Clerkenwell Sketch Book
When I was visiting Harry The Pencil – also known as Harry Harrison – in Mile End, he showed me this modest little sketchbook that he filled when he was working in Great Sutton St, Clerkenwell, undertaking a single half hour drawing each lunch hour – most are nearby his office but you will spot a few further afield in Soho, Kings Cross, Hatton Garden & Spitalfields.
Drawings copyright © Harry Harrison
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The Latin Market Is Saved
In celebration of the news that the Latin market in Seven Sisters is saved and the redevelopment plans abandoned thanks to the scale of the protest organised by the traders, I publish Sarah Ainslie‘s portraits of the heroic protagonists in this long-running drama.
We take inspiration from this victory for our campaign to Save Brick Lane, by stopping the Truman Brewery’s development proposal for a shopping mall with corporate offices and instead replace it with a community-led masterplan for the entire brewery site.
Fabian Alberto
Saturday nights at the Latin Market above the station in Seven Sisters are legendary, celebrated for the exuberant crowds, the variety of delicious food, the salsa dancing and the live music. This astonishing labyrinth of shops and booths built into a former department store is almost hidden from the street, yet you only have to walk through the frontage to discover yourself in Latin America. Here you can get a meal or a haircut, find a flat or a job, change money, buy fresh food and get your nails done, all under one roof.
Originally set up by small traders of South American origin, it now includes, Africans, Iranians and many others. Here in N15 – London’s most racially diverse postcode – the market is sometimes referred to as the United States of Tottenham. It is open to all and despite the best efforts of developers to close it down for the past fifteen years, a tenacious campaign to save it has ensured that the market flourishes against the odds.
Fabian & Aleyda Alberto Catano Casavid, Restaurant Manantial
Fabian – “I was badly injured in the London bombings of 7/7. A year later I came to this market and met Don Alvaro who said to me, ‘I am selling half of my butcher’s shop, take it and do what you like with it – this will help you overcome your depression and stress.’ So I bought it with my compensation money from the bombing and I started to sell food because I always liked food and I had learnt to be a cook in Colombia. Now I have been here for sixteen years. I still get panic attacks every so often but this business has been a tonic for me. I have now had seven operations but working here distracts me from all that. It is my home! I arrive here at seven in the morning and leave at eight at night. This small restaurant is everything for me.
The market administration were trying to get rid of some the traders so they took away my licence claiming I did not pay my rent. I took them to court and it was established I had paid. Then they claimed they took it away because I did not pay for electricity. I usually paid around £140 a month but then they increased it to £900 a month. I used to pay £70 a month for gas and then they increased that to £400. I have suffered a lot of discrimination from the management. This market is very important because a lot of vulnerable people can find a refuge here. People arrive here from South America without food or anywhere to live but we can solve their problems because we are all family.”
Paula Andrea Alvarez Martinez, Genesis Money Transfer
“I am from a village called Anserna Caldas in Colombia, where I grew up on the family farm that belonged to my father and his father before him. We kept cattle and grew coffee. But the story of my family is tragic because most of those on my father’s side have been assassinated, my uncles, my grandfather and my father. A feud arose with another family and the killings began. I witnessed this violence in my childhood and all these losses became too much for us but nobody wanted to leave. When things got really tough in 1992 my father came to London. He did unskilled labour, cleaning and washing dishes, before returning to Colombia after a year.
At that time, there were a lot of problems with armed guerrillas and they kidnapped my elderly grandmother, but my father confronted them and took her back. He became a hero, featured in newspapers, but from that moment he became a target and the threats began. It was very difficult time for our family. My younger brother was in London and he sought asylum. The day my father was killed, I was away on a school excursion and my cousin’s boyfriend arrived at half past ten. I knew something had happened but I never imagined my father was dead. Our lives changed. We became separated. I was eighteen years old and I went to live with my aunt in Bogota. I worked and studied psychology. After sixteen years, I met my current husband who is British and three years ago I came to London.”
Juan Carlos Alvarez, Don Carlo Restaurant
“I was one of the first traders in this market eighteen years ago. We were looking for a place for the Colombian community. My first business here was the car wash outside, then I sold the car wash and opened a restaurant. Always I have been around this market and my children have grown up in it – both of them are at university now. I am working to pay for their fees.
When I started it was crazy because some people were using the units for prostitution and drug dealing and nobody else dared enter, yet slowly it got better. I am disappointed because it used to be cleaner and more secure but recently it has been run down by the management. They wanted to turn it into a dump so they could justify knocking it down. They wanted to emphasise the negative. After three o’clock, a lot of parents come with their kids and all of us we look after them. Anyone that arrives from South America, they know this place and we can help them. I work with local schools who bring children to try South American food and they learn about another culture, without even leaving Tottenham.”
Vicky Alvarez Martinez, El Cafetal Services
“I started working here nineteen years ago. The reason was that I was a single mother with a daughter, divorced from my ex-husband. It was so difficult financially for me to work and earn enough to pay the bills. My friend told me that there was a unit to let in the Latin Market but I did not have any money so I went to the bank for a loan. I thought it would suit me because I could take care of my daughter at the same time as working and earning money. When my daughter finished school each day, she would came here and play around in the market.
At first, I brought merchandise from Colombia like silver and Colombian jeans for women. I was also working part-time somewhere else then, so when I finished I picked my daughter up from school and we came and opened up here. We were only three or four traders then but slowly the community started to come and the need of everybody else became our needs. That has been the real achievement – it is not what we sell, it is not what we do it, it is the community we have created. People come here with problems and we understand because we have been through the same struggles. In the beginning, it was the Colombian community and then people from all over Latin America and then people from all over the world. Now it is a market for everybody.”
Ben Sanday Nyerende, Property Services
“I come from Uganda and I have been trading in this market since 2006. I came to Britain in 2002 because there were so many difficulties in my country and circumstances forced me to leave. This village is for everyone and there is a vibrant community here. Everyone is very helpful here and we found it easy to integrate and work with them. It feels a million miles from Africa but it makes a real difference for a person like me who comes from far away, to mix up with these good people. I started up as an estate agent in the market, we manage and rent properties, and I am one of the few that will work with vulnerable people living on benefits. People that other agencies reject, we take them. My customers all come through this market and they are from all parts of the community.
As traders, we used to have a sympathetic management in the market but things changed. The new management drove away our customers and affected our livelihoods, by saying they were going to knock down the building in adverts all over Tottenham. They would not fix anything, they permitted the property to be vandalised. This was their way to drive us out but this building brings everyone together, so many people from different cultural backgrounds. The whole building has free parking but the management gave out parking tickets and drive customers away. They created their own company to make money out of this, pounding us with penalties. I received a parking ticket in the mail for a time when I was not parked here. There was nowhere to buy a ticket but they fined you for not having one. The whole system was scrambled! People were scared and living in a fearful manner, but I was not scared – they will have to take me out of here with a bulldozer.”
Farhad Zarei, City News
“I have been here in this market since 2002, running a general store selling housewares and doing key cutting. I bought the shop which had already been running for twenty-five years. Since then, the market has become busier and my business has grown, so I was able to expand into the next unit two years ago. The South American people have brought a lot of business. It is a very important place for me because I have been here twenty years and all my life is working in this market.”
Corina – “I came to this market fourteen and a half years ago, I had a friend who ran this shop before me, selling clothes. I started bringing her clothes from my country, Romania. I was a single mother with two children and no access to benefits, so I had to do something. My son was seven months and my daughter was three. I got a loan from the bank and imported clothes from Romania to sell in Finsbury Park. But then I met a girl who ran this shop and she brought me here. At first, I used to clean the shop and change the clothes on the mannequins. This way my English improved. Then I bought the business and took it over.
Now I run a beauty parlour and this is how I support myself and my children. I studied to be a beautician twenty-nine years ago in Romania and eight years ago I decided to change from doing something I did not like to this. The certificates I had from Romania were not recognised here because technology has changed the profession. So I started to study again. I thought, “I’m old, I have two children and I have to work, so I cannot study” – but I did, and I won an award for excellence in 2015.”
Ari – “I learnt to be a barber in the Dominican Republic and I came to London via Madrid. I have been cutting men’s hair in my sister’s shop in this market for six years and built the business up. I get on with my customers very well and I enjoy cutting hair and barbering. This market is an important meeting place for Latinos.”
Fernando – “In 2004, I started here with a small grocery shop but now I have a butcher, a baker, a cafe and I sell Colombian spirits. We have special events at the weekend, people come to dance and sing. It is a family event, people bring their children and everybody dances. This market is very important for our community because it is the only one of its kind in this country. It is a meeting point for people from Latin America and Africa. I want to stay here but I do not know what will happen to us in the future, they were saying we may have to move to another location. Nothing is clear.”
Nixon and Dago, baker and butcher
Catherine – “Me and my husband, we opened this shop here six years ago selling Colombian groceries. This is how we make our living. I run the business and order all the stock from a distributor in Spain. I want to extend the range of products that I sell and I hope to open a tapas bar one day.”
Pablo – “I came here eight years ago when I had the opportunity to buy this cafe, before that I sublet half a unit from the Colombian bakery. I never had a mother to take care of me, I learnt to cook for myself out of necessity when I was eight years old. We were four brothers and sisters without a mother or a father, and I was working at nine years old shining shoes and selling cigarettes in the street in Colombia. At thirteen, I emigrated to Venezuela and then to Spain. Now I am here in London. The majority of my customers are Latin Americans, they work hard supporting their families by doing cleaning.”
Pablo with his son Christopher and Ana
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
At The Lutheran Church
The Altar and Pulpit at St George’s German Lutheran Church, Alie St
In Aldgate, caught between the thunder of the traffic down Leman St and the roar of the construction on Goodman’s Fields sits a modest church with an unremarkable exterior. Yet this quiet building contains an important story, the forgotten history of the German people in the East End.
Dating from 1762, St George’s German Lutheran Church is Britain’s oldest surviving German church and once you step through the door, you find yourself in a peaceful space with a distinctive aesthetic and character that is unlike any other in London.
The austere lines of the interior emphasise the elegant, rather squat proportion of the architecture and the strong geometry of the box pews and galleries is ameliorated by unexpected curves and fine details. In fact, architect Joel Johnson was a carpenter by trade which may account for the domestic scale and the visual dominance of the intricately conceived internal wooden structure. Later iron windows of 1812, with their original glass in primary tones of red and blue, bring a surprising sense of modernity to the church and, even on a December afternoon, succeed in dispelling the gathering gloom.
This was once the heart of London’s sugar-baking industry and, from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, Germans brought their particular expertise to this volatile and dangerous trade, which required heating vast pans of sugar with an alarming tendency to combust or even explode. Such was the heat and sticky atmosphere that sugar-bakers worked naked, thus avoiding getting their clothes stuck to their bodies and, no doubt, experiencing the epilatory qualities of sugar.
Reflecting tensions in common with other immigrant communities through the centuries, there was discord over the issue of whether English or the language of the homeland should be spoken in church and, by implication, whether integration or separatism was preferable – this controversy led to a riot in the church on December 3rd 1767.
As the German community grew, the church became full to overcrowding – with the congregation swollen by six hundred German emigrants abandoned on their way to South Carolina in 1764. Many parishioners were forced to stand at the back and thieves capitalised upon the chaotic conditions in which, in 1789, the audience was described in the church records as eating “apples, oranges and nuts as in a theatre,” while the building itself became, “a place of Assignation for Persons of all descriptions, a receptacle for Pickpockets, and obtained the name St George’s Playhouse.”
Today the church feels like an empty theatre, maintained in good order as if the audience had just left. Even as late as 1855, the Vestry record reported that “the Elders and Wardens of the Church consist almost exclusively of the Boilers, Engineers and superior workers in the Sugar Refineries,” yet by the eighteen-eighties the number of refineries in the vicinity had dwindled from thirty to three and the surrounding streets had descended into poverty. Even up to 1914, at one hundred and thirty souls, St Georges had the largest German congregation in Britain. But the outbreak of the First World War led to the internment of the male parishioners and the expulsion of the females – many of whom spoke only English and thought of themselves as British.
In the thirties, the bell tower was demolished upon the instructions of the District Surveyor, thus robbing the facade of its most distinctive feature. Pastor Julius Reiger, an associate of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a leading opponent of the Nazis, turned the church into a relief centre offering shelter for German and Jewish refugees during World War II, and the congregation continued until 1996 when there only twenty left.
St George’s is now under the care of the Historic Chapels Trust and opens regularly for concerts and lectures, standing in perpetuity as a remembrance of more than two centuries of the East End’s lost German community.
The classically-patterned linoleum is a rare survival from 1855
The arms of George III, King of England & Elector of Hanover
The principal founder of the church, Diederick Beckman
The Infant School was built in 1859 as gift from the son of Goethe’s publisher, W. H. Göschen
Names of benefactors carved into bricks above the vestry entrance.
St Georges German Lutheran Church, c. 1920
The bell turret with weathervane before demolition in 1934
The original eighteenth century weathervane of St George & the Dragon that was retrieved from ebay
St George’s German Lutheran Church, 55 Alie Street, E1 8EB
A Tourist In Whitechapel
Let us search the recesses of our memories to recall those distant days when London was frequented by tourists from overseas. I discovered this comic pamphlet of 1859 in the Bishopsgate Institute which gives a fictional account of the experiences of a French tourist in Whitechapel yet permits us a rare glimpse of East End street life in that era too.
Monsieur Theophile Jean Baptiste Schmidt was a great observer of human nature. He was a great traveller too, for he had been across the Atlantic. But he had never been to London, so to London he determined to come.
When he arrived at London Bridge, to which he came in his Boulogne steamboat, he was met by his friend and countryman, Monsieur Hippolyte Lilly, who had resided some years in the city and knew all about its ways. Now Monsieur Lilly was a bit of a wag, so he determined to play Monsieur Schmidt a practical joke. Instead of taking his friend to the West End of London, when he landed, he led him to Whitechapel, and lodged him in a small public house called the Pig & Whistle.
“Baptiste, my friend,” said Hippolyte, “The English are a very strange people and you must not offend them – if they ask you for anything, you must give it at once.”
The Lost Child
No sooner therefore were the friends in Whitechapel, than they sallied out to see London. The stranger was very much astonished at the throng of people and vehicles, and they had not gone far before they saw a little crowd assembled on the pathway, so they at once stopped to see what was going on. Looking over the shoulders of a couple of young ladies they discovered a little child being questioned by a policeman.
“What is the matter?” asked Hippolyte. “Child lost,” replied the policeman. “Better give the man a shilling,” said Hippolyte to his friend. Baptiste therefore put his hand in his pocket and drew out a long silk purse, and taking from it a franc presented it to the policeman, who received it with a nod and a knowing wink.
The Benefits of a Long Purse
The action of the foreigner was not lost upon the crowd, and in a few minutes the friends found themselves surrounded by eager applicants. A little boy with a broom tumbled head over heels for their diversion, a Jew offered them a knife with twenty blades. an Indian begged them to buy a tract, a cabman wished to have the honour of drinking their healths, a boy offered them apples at three a penny, a woman with a child in her arms asked them to treat her to glass of gin, a man with a board requested them to fit themselves with a suit of clothes and a little girl wished to sell them a string of onions. To all of these people Monsieur Baptiste gave some piece of money, so that he was soon a very popular character. The policeman, however, cleared the way and they walked on.
The Conductors of the London Press
Presently they came to the outside of a newspaper dealers, where they saw a crowd of boys and men, laughing, talking, and playing. “These are the conductors of the London Press,” said Hippolyte.
The Disputed Fare
Soon afterwards they witnessed, and took part in, a dispute between a gentleman with a great moustache, a policeman, and a cab driver assisted by a variety of little boys. Baptiste soon settled the dispute by giving the cabman a shilling.
The Great Market
“I will now take you to the Great Market,” said Hippolyte, leading him through the dense crowd assembled round the butchers’ shambles in Whitechapel.
Monsieur Baptiste wondered very much at all he saw, thought the flaming gaslight, streaming over the heads of the people, “a very fine sight,” allowed himself to be pushed and hustled to and fro in the throng with perfect good humour, and was not in the least offended when one stall keeper offered him five bundles of firewood for a penny, or when another recommended him to invest sixpence in the purchase of a dog collar, or when a third – stroking his upper lip – politely asked him whether she should show him the way to the half-penny shaving shop.
Nor did he doubt for a moment what his friend told him was true when he was informed that this was the principal market for the supply of London with fresh meat. At last however, he expressed a desire to get out of the hot, unwholesome throng of poor people, which became every moment more dense, more noisy, and more bewildering.
The English Aristocracy
“Let us have one little glass of wine,” said Hippolyte, and forthwith they found themselves in the centre of a throng in a low gin shop.
The space in front of the counter was crowded with people of the poorest sort – an Irish labourer, in a smock frock and trousers tied below the knee with a hay band, was treating a miserable-looking woman to a glass of gin – a poor, half-starved girl was trying to persuade her tipsy father to go home, while another child was staggering under the weight of a baby on one arm and a gin bottle under the other – a miserable hag of a woman was crying ballads in a cracked voice – while a dirty-faced man was selling shrimps and pickled eels from a basket on his arm – and a Whitechapel dandy was joking with the smart barmaid – whose master stood at the door of his private parlour and smoked his cigar with the air of a lord.
A very hot, disagreeable odour filled the place, so that Monsieur Baptiste was obliged he must go home to his hotel. But just before he reached the door of the gin shop, he turned to his friend and asked, “What sort of people are these?”
“These are the aristocracy of England,” said Hippolyte. “These?” exclaimed Baptiste, beginning to see his friend’s joke, “then take me to see the poor.”
How many other places the friends visited that evening, how many jokes Hippolyte played upon Baptiste, and how many other shillings the foreigner spent on his first day in London, I cannot tell you. But I know that he laughed a good deal at the idea of seeing the wrong end of London first.
“Nevertheless, ” Baptiste exclaimed the next morning, “London is a very fine, great, big wonderful city.”
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Victoria Park Model Steam Boat Club
Spitalfields Life contributing photographer, Lucinda Douglas-Menzies became fascinated by the Victoria Park Model Steam Boat Club while out walking in the park. Over successive Sundays, her interest grew as she went back to watch the regattas, meet the members and learn the story of the oldest model boat club in the world, founded in 1904. Her photographic essay records the life of this society of gentle enthusiasts, many of whom have been making and racing boats on this lake for generations, updating the designs and means of propulsion for their intricate craft in accordance with the evolution of maritime vessels over more than a century. Starting on Easter Sunday, the club holds as many as seventeen regattas annually.
“Meet you at ten o’clock Sunday morning at the boating lake!” was the eager response of Norman Lara, the chairman, when Lucinda rang to enquire about his club. “On the morning I arrived, a group of about a dozen model boat enthusiasts were already settled in chairs by the water’s edge with a variety of handmade boats on display.” explained Lucinda, who was treated to a tour of the clubhouse by Norman. “We are very lucky, one of the few clubs to have this. Tower Hamlets are very good to us, they keep the weeds down in the lake and last year we were given a loo.” he said, adding dryly, “It only took a hundred years to get one.”
Meanwhile, the members had pulled on their waders and were preparing their vessels at the water’s edge, before launching them onto the sparkling lake. Here Norman introduced Lucinda to Keith Reynolds, the club secretary, who outlined the specific classes of model boat racing with the precision of an authority, “There are five categories of “straight running” boats. These include functional, scale boats (fishing boats, cabin cruisers, etc), scale ships (warships, cruise boats, liners,merchant ships, liners, merchant ships – boats on which you could sustain life for more than seven days), metre boats (with strict rules of engine size and length) and – we had to create a special category for this one – called “the wedge,” basically a boat made of three pieces of wood with no keel, ideal for children to start on.” In confirmation of this, as Lucinda looked around, she saw children accompanied by their parents and grandparents, each generation with their boats of varying sophistication and period design, according to their owners’ experience and age.
Readers of Model Engineering Magazine were informed in 1907 that “the Victoria Park Model Steam Boat Club were performing on a Saturday afternoon before an enormous public of small boys who asked, ‘What’s it go by mister?'” It is a question that passersby still ask today, now that additional racing classes have been introduced for radio controlled boats with petrol engines and even hydroplanes.
“We have around sixty members,” continued Keith enthusiastically, “but we could with some more, as a lot don’t sail their boats any longer, they just enjoy turning up for a chat. It’s quiet today, but you should come back next Sunday to our steam rally when the bank will be thick with owners who bring their boats from all over. Some are so big they run on lawn mower engines!”
It was an invitation that Lucinda could not resist and she was rewarded with a spectacle revealing more of the finer points of model boat racing. She discovered that “straight running,” which Keith had referred to, is when one person launches a boat with a fixed rudder along a course (usually sixty yards long) where another waits at the scoring gates to catch the vessel. The closer to a straight course your boat can follow, the more points you win, defined by a series of gates around a central white gate, which scores a bull’s-eye of ten points if you can sail your boat through it. On either side of the white gate are red, yellow and orange gates each with a diminishing score, because the point of the competition is to discover whose boat can follow the truest course.
Witnessing this contest, Lucinda realised that – just like still water concealing deep currents – as well as having extraordinary patience to construct these beautiful working models, the members of the boat club also possess fiercely competitive natures. This is the paradox of sailing model boats, which appears such a lyrical pastime undertaken in the peace and quiet of the boating lake, yet when so much investment of work and ingenuity is at stake (not to mention hierarchies of individual experience and different generations in competition), it can easily transform into a drama that is as intense as any sport has to offer.
Lucinda’s eloquent pictures capture this subtle theatre adroitly, of a social group with a shared purpose and similar concerns, both mutually supportive and mutually competitive, who all share a love of the magic of launching their boats upon the lake on Sundays in Summer. It is an activity that conjures a relaxed atmosphere – as, for over a century, walkers have paused at the lakeside to chat in the sunshine, watching as boats are put through their paces on the water and scrutinising the detail of vessels laid upon the shore, before continuing on their way.
Photographs copyright © Lucinda Douglas-Menzies
At Embassy Electrical Supplies
Mehmet Murat
It comes as no surprise to learn that at Embassy Electrical Supplies in Clerkenwell, you can buy lightbulbs, fuses and cables, but rather more unexpected to discover that, while you are picking up your electrical hardware, you can also purchase olive oil, strings of chili peppers and pomegranate molasses courtesy of the Murat family groves in Cyprus and Turkey.
At certain fashionable restaurants nearby, “Electrical Shop Olives” are a popular feature on the menu, sending customers scurrying along to the Murats’ premises next morning to purchase their own personal supply of these fabled delicacies that have won acclaim in the global media and acquired a legendary allure among culinary enthusiasts.
How did such a thing come about, that a Clerkenwell electrical shop should be celebrated for olive oil? Mehmet Murat is the qualified electrician and gastronomic mastermind behind this singular endeavour. I found him sitting behind his desk at the rear of the shop, serving customers from his desk and fulfilling their demands whether electrical or culinary, or both, with equal largesse.
“I am an electrician by trade,” he assured me, just in case the fragrance of wild sage or seductive mixed aromas of his Mediterranean produce stacked upon the shelves might encourage me to think otherwise.
“I arrived in this country from Cyprus in 1955. My father came a few years earlier, and he got a job and a flat before he sent for us. In Cyprus, he was a barber and, according to our custom, that meant he was also a dentist. But he got a job as an agent travelling around Cyprus buying donkeys for Dr Kucuk, the leader of the Turkish Cypriots at that time – the donkeys were exported and sold to the British Army in Egypt. What he did with the money he earned was to buy plots of land around the village of Louroujina, where I was born, and plant olive saplings. He and my mother took care of them for the first year and after that they took care of themselves. Once they came to the UK, they asked relatives to watch over the groves. They used to send us a couple of containers of olive oil for our own use each year and sold the rest to the co-operative who sold it to Italians who repackaged it and sold it as Italian oil.
I trained as an electrician when I left school and I started off working for C.J. Bartley & Co in Old St. I left there and became self-employed, wiring Wimpy Bars, Golden Egg Restaurants and Mecca Bingo Halls. I was on call twenty-four hours and did electrical work for Faye Dunaway, the King of Jordan’s sister and Bill Oddie, among others. Then I bought this shop in 1979 and opened up in 1982 selling electrical supplies.
In 2002, when my father died, I decided I was going to bring all the olive oil over from Louroujina and bottle it all myself, which I still do. But when we started getting write-ups and it was chosen as the best olive oil by New York Magazine, I realised we had good olive oil. We produce it as we would for our own table. There is no other secret, except I bottle it myself – bottling plants will reheat and dilute it.
If you were to come to the village where I was born. you could ask any shopkeeper to put aside oil for your family use from his crop. I don’t see any difference, selling it here in my electrical shop in Clerkenwell. It makes sense because if I were to open up a shop selling just oil, I’d be losing money. The electrical business is still my bread and butter income, but many of the workshops that were my customers have moved out and the Congestion Charge took away more than half my business.
Now I have bought a forty-five acre farm in Turkey. It produces a thousand tons of lemons in a good year, plus pomegranate molasses, sweet paprika, candied walnuts and chili flakes. We go out and forage wild sage, wild oregano, wild St John’s wort and wild caper shoots. My wife is there at the moment with her brother who looks after the farm, and her other brother looks after the groves in Cyprus.”
Then Mehmet poured a little of his precious pale golden olive oil from a green glass bottle into a beaker and handed it to me, with instructions. The name of his farm, Murat Du Carta, was on the label beneath a picture of his mother and father. He explained I was to sip the oil, and then hold it in my mouth as it warmed to experience the full flavour, before swallowing it. The deliciously pure oil was light and flowery, yet left no aftertaste on the palate. I picked up a handful of the wild sage to inhale the evocative scent of a Mediterranean meadow, and Mehmet made me up a bag containing two bottles of olive oil, truffle-infused oil, marinated olives, cured olives, chili flakes and frankincense to carry home to Spitalfields.
We left the darkness of the tiny shop, with its electrical supplies neatly arranged upon the left and its food supplies tidily stacked upon the right. A passing cyclist came in to borrow a wrench and the atmosphere was that of a friendly village store. Outside on the pavement, in the sunshine, we joined Mark Page who forages truffles for Mehmet, and Mehmet’s son Murat (known as Mo). “I do the markets and I run the shop, and I like to eat,” he confessed to me with a wink.
Carter, the electrical shop cat
From left to right, Mark Page (who forages truffles), Murat Murat (known as Mo) and Mehmet Murat.
Embassy Electrical Supplies, 76 Compton St, Clerkenwell, EC1V 0BN
At London Trimmings
Moosa, Ashraf & Ebrahim Loonat
If you ever wondered where the Pearly Kings & Queens get the pearl buttons for their magnificent outfits, I can disclose that London Trimmings – the celebrated family business run by the three Loonat brothers in the Cambridge Heath Rd – is the place they favour. And with good reason, as I discovered when I went round to investigate yesterday, because this shop has a mind-boggling selection of wonderful stuff at competitive prices.
Zips and buttons and buckles and threads and tapes and ribbons and snap fasteners and elastic and eyelets and cords and braids and marking chalk and pins, and a whole lot of other coloured and sparkly things, comprise the biggest magpie’s nest on the planet. Now I shall no longer go to fancy West End stores to buy taffeta ribbon to tie up my gifts and pay several pounds for just a couple of metres – not since I discovered that here in Whitechapel you can get a whole reel for five quid and choose from every colour of the rainbow too.
With his lively dark brown eyes and personable nature, Moosa Loonat was my expert guide to this haberdashery labyrinth. He took me on a tour starting in the trade orders department which occupies one of London Trimmings’ two premises in this fine red brick nineteenth century terrace of shops, built by the brewery that once stood across the road. Translucent glass windows might discourage the casual customer, but in fact everyone is welcome in this extraordinary store which feels more like a warehouse than a shop.
Once we had trawled through the crowded aisles here and in the basement, with Moosa pulling out all imaginable kinds of zips and buckles and toggles to explain the stories behind each and every one, he assured me with a proprietorial grin, “I know where everything is, because if you pay for it you know.” I surmise that Moosa said this because while everything has its place at London Trimmings, the overall effect might be described as organised chaos of the most charismatic kind.
Yet, as we explored, Moosa told me the story of the business and I learned there was even more going on here than you can see on the crowded shelves of this extraordinary emporium.
“The shop was started by my father Yousuf Loonat and his partner Aziz Matcheswala in 1971 at the corner of Whitechapel High St and New Rd. My dad came to this country from Gujurat just after the war. He went to Bradford where all the mills were and he worked his way down to Leicester, and from Leicester to London. He told me, at first, he worked in a factory manufacturing street lights and, in Leicester, he went into the food trade and then he got into the textile trade.
At eight years old, I used to go and help count out buttons for my father. Every single holiday, he’d say, “I’ve got lots of work for you.” In 1987, when I was seventeen years old, my father and his partner split, so he gave me a choice – “Either go to university or join the family business – but if you don’t, I’ll sell it.” I took the opportunity and I’m happy that I did. That choice was offered to my brothers too and we realised that if we didn’t all club together, we would lose it. Now every brother runs a different department.
In 1985, we had a fire and lost everything – a couple of hundred thousand pounds of stock and we only had thirty thousand pounds insurance. It was an arson attack. I remember it clearly, it was a dramatic time for the family and my dad was really upset. All our suppliers helped us, they put a freeze on what we owed them until we could repay it and allowed us a new credit account. They contributed to fitting out this new shop in the Cambridge Heath Rd too, they even paid for the sign.
It was busy in the old days, everything was sold by the box then, we had four or five vans in the road and we wouldn’t even entertain student customers. Fifteen years ago, every shop in Brick Lane had a factory above it. In this immediate neighbourhood, we had a thousand customers, now we have a hundred here. We supply the leather trade, the bag trade, the garment trade, the jacket trade, the dry-cleaning and alteration trade, and the shoe repair trade. We cater to students who buy one button and to designers like Mulberry, Hussein Chayalan, Vivienne Westwood and Alexander McQueen, and to High St stores like Top Man and River Island. During London Fashion Week, we had forty people in the shop all wanting to be served first.
Our main speciality is zips, you can buy one for 5p up to £20. We have two hundred different styles and each comes in several sizes. Other suppliers only stock up to No 5, but we have No 6, No 7, No 8, No 9, and No 10 -we even have No 4. We have double-ended zips, fluorescent zips, invisible zips, plastic zips, pocket zips, copper zips, aluminium zips, steel zips, nickel zips, satin zips and waterproof zips.
One customer comes from Ireland, an eighty-five year old man, he comes over every month with a suitcase, packs it up and is gone. Another customer comes regularly from Iceland, she spends two days in here to see what’s new. We had one tailor, he sent back an empty box of 1,044 pins he bought twenty-five years previously, saying “I’d like another one but this is the last I will need because I am over seventy.” Sometimes, people ring from New Zealand to buy press fasteners for the covers on on open-top vintage cars. Kanye West came in twice before we recognised who he was, he came in four or five times altogether, choosing trimmings. He spent a couple of hours each time and had a cup of tea.
I arrive at eight-thirty and I work until seven each day. I do an eleven hour shift. I could choose not to come because I’ve got the staff, but I’m a workaholic. We don’t open at weekends but I still come in on Saturdays to catch up. One day I could be serving customers at the counter, the next day unloading a container and the next out on the road to visit customers. It’s never the same. It’s not a mundane, everything the same, day-in-day-out job. We’ve had my father, me and my nephews all in here at once – three generations working in the same place. Some of the staff have been here thirty years and all the youngsters who came to work here straight from school have stayed.
We run a tight ship financially. The last to get paid will be me and my brothers. We only get our wages if the money’s there but if it’s not, we don’t take it.”
Moosa Loonat – “The last to get paid will be me and my brothers. We only get our wages if the money’s there but if it’s not, we don’t take it.”
Teresa Brace, Manager of Haberdashery – “It’s a lot tidier on my side of the shop!”
Moosa – “As you can see, we’re short of space…”
Ebrahim Loonat
Shirley Mayhew, Accounts Department – in the trimmings business since 1980.
“the biggest magpie’s nest on the planet”
London Trimmings, 26-28 Cambridge Heath Rd, London E1 5QH.
