The Lavender Fields Of Surrey
I cannot imagine a more relaxing way to enjoy a sunny English summer afternoon than a walk through a field of lavender. Observe the subtle tones of blue, extending like a mist to the horizon and rippling like the surface of the sea as the wind passes over. Inhale the pungent fragrance carried on the breeze. Delight in the orange butterflies dancing over the plants. Spot the pheasants scuttling away and – if you are as lucky as I was – encounter a red fox stalking the game birds through the forest of lavender. What an astonishing colour contrast his glossy russet pelt made as he disappeared into the haze of blue and green plants.
Lavender has been grown on the Surrey Downs for centuries and sold in summer upon the streets of the capital by itinerant traders. The aromatic properties and medicinal applications of lavender have always been appreciated, with each year’s new crop signalling the arrival of summer in London.
The lavender growing tradition in Surrey is kept alive by Mayfield Lavender in Banstead where visitors may stroll through fields of different varieties and then enjoy lavender ice cream or a cream tea with a lavender scone afterwards, before returning home laden with lavender pillows, soap, honey and oil.
Let me confess, I had given up on lavender – it had become the smell most redolent of sanitary cleaning products. But now I have learnt to distinguish between the different varieties and found a preference for a delicately-fragranced English lavender by the name of Folgate, I have rediscovered it again. My entire house is scented with it and the soporific qualities are evident. At the end of that sunny afternoon, when I returned from my excursion to the lavender fields of Surrey, I sat down in my armchair and did not awake again until supper time.
‘Six bunches a penny, sweet lavender!’ is the cry that invites in the street the purchasers of this cheap and pleasant perfume. A considerable quantity of the shrub is sold to the middling-classes of the inhabitants, who are fond of placing lavender among their linen – the scent of which conquers that of the soap used in washing. – William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders, 1804
‘Delight in the orange butterflies dancing over the plants…’
Thomas Rowlandson’s Characteristic Series of the Lower Orders, 1820
‘Six Bunches a-Penny, Sweet Lavender – Six Bunches a-Penny, Sweet Blooming Lavender’ from Luke Clennell’s London Melodies, 1812
‘Spot the pheasants scuttling away…’
From Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Card issued with Grenadier Cigarettes in 1902
WWI veteran selling lavender bags by Julius Mendes Price, 1919
Yardley issued Old English Lavender talcum powder tins from 1913 incorporating Francis Wheatley’s flower seller of 1792
Archive images courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
Mayfield Lavender Farm, 1 Carshalton Rd, Banstead SM7 3JA
You may also like to read about
Misericords At St Katharine’s Precinct
Tutivillus the demon eavesdropping upon two women
I spent a morning on my knees in St Katharine’s Chapel in Limehouse, photographing these rare survivors of fourteenth century sculpture, believed to have been created around 1360 for the medieval St Katharine’s Chapel next to the Tower of London, which was displaced and then demolished for the building of the docks in 1825.
These marvellous carvings evoke a different world and another sensibility, combining the sacred and profane in grotesque and fantastical images that speak across time as emotive and intimate expressions of the human imagination. I am particularly fascinated by the sense of mutability between the human and animal kingdom in these sculptures, manifesting a vision of a mythic universe of infinite strange possibility which was once familiar to our forebears.
Intriguingly, these misericords appear to have been created by the same makers who carved those at Lincoln and Chester cathedrals, and a friary in Coventry.
After a sojourn of over a hundred years in Regent’s Park, the Royal Foundation of St Katharine, originally founded by Queen Matilda in 1147, moved back to the East End to Limehouse in 1948 where it flourishes today, offering an enclave of peace and reflection, sequestered from the traffic roaring along the Highway on one side and Commercial Rd on the other.
Centaur with club and shield
Tutivillus holds the parchment on the Day of Judgement
Owl
Bust of a bearded man in a striped cap with a cape and trailing drapery
Winged beast with a long tail and human head
Dragon
Edward III
Queen Philippa
Bishop’s head
Green man
Bearded man wearing a cap
A former Master of St Katharine’s was Chancellor of the Exchequer
Angel playing the bagpipes
Pelican in her piety with three chicks, supported by a pair of swans
Lion leaping upon the amphisbaena, supported by reptilian monsters
Coiled serpentine monster
Woman riding a beast with a man’s head
Elephant and castle surmounted by a crowned head
Beast with a hooded human head
Miser
Choir stalls with misericords
St Katharine’s Chapel was built in 1951 on the site of St James, Ratcliffe, destroyed in the blitz
Late fifteenth or early sixteen century carving of angel musicians playing a psaltery, a harp and tabor
The Royal Foundation of St Katharine, 2 Butcher Row, Limehouse, E14 8DS
With thanks to the Master of the Royal Foundation of St Katharine for permission to photograph the misericords
If you are interested to visit St Katharine’s Chapel please write to info@rfsk.org.uk
George Parrin, Ice Cream Seller
Please keep your eyes open for my old friend George Parrin, the Ice Cream Seller, who is cycling around the East End now and, if you see George, stop him and buy one – and he will tell you his story.
‘I’ve been on a bike since I was two’
I first encountered Ice Cream Seller, George Parrin, coming through Whitechapel Market on his bicycle. Even before I met him, his cry of ‘Lovely ice cream, home made ice cream – stop me and buy one!’ announced his imminent arrival and then I saw his red and white umbrella bobbing through the crowd towards us. George told me that Whitechapel is the best place to sell ice cream in the East End and, observing the looks of delight spreading through the crowd, I witnessed the immediate evidence of this.
Such was the demand on that hot summer afternoon that George had to cycle off to get more supplies, so it was not possible for me to do an interview. Instead, we agreed to meet next day outside the Beigel Bakery on Brick Lane where trade was a little quieter. On arrival, George popped into the bakery and asked if they would like some ice cream and, once he had delivered a cup of vanilla ice, he emerged triumphant with a cup of tea and a salt beef beigel. ‘Fair exchange is no robbery!’ he declared with a hungry grin as he took a bite into his lunch.
“I first came down here with my dad when I was eight years old. He was a strongman and a fighter, known as ‘Kid Parry.’ Twice, he fought Bombardier Billy Wells, the man who struck the gong for Rank Films. Once he beat him and once he was beaten, but then he beat two others who beat Billy, so indirectly my father beat him.
In those days you needed to be an actor or entertainer if you were in the markets. My dad would tip a sack of sand in the floor and pour liquid carbolic soap all over it. Then he got a piece of rotten meat with flies all over it and dragged it through the sand. The flies would fly away and then he sold the sand by the bag as a fly repellent.
I was born in Hampstead, one of thirteen children. My mum worked all her life to keep us going. She was a market trader, selling all kinds of stuff, and she collected scrap metal, rags, woollens and women’s clothes in an old pram and sold it wholesale. My dad was to and fro with my mum, but he used to come and pick me up sometimes, and I worked with him. When I was nine, just before my dad died, we moved down to Queens Rd, Peckham.
I’ve been on a bike since I was two, and at three years old I had my own three-wheeler. I’ve always been on a bike. On my fifteenth birthday, I left school and started work. At first, I had a job for a couple of months delivering meat around Wandsworth by bicycle for Brushweilers the Butcher, but then I worked for Charles, Greengrocers of Belgravia delivering around Chelsea, and I delivered fruit and vegetables to the Beatles and Mick Jagger.
At sixteen years old, I started selling hot chestnuts outside Earls Court with Tony Calefano, known as ‘Tony Chestnuts.’ I lived in Wandsworth then, so I used to cycle over the river each day. I worked for him for four years and then I made my own chestnut can. In the summer, Tony used to sell ice cream and he was the one that got me into it.
I do enjoy it but it’s hard work. A ten litre tub of ice cream weighs 40lbs and I might carry eight tubs in hot weather plus the weight of the freezer and two batteries. I had thirteen ice cream barrows up the West End but it got so difficult with the police. They were having a purge, so they upset all my barrows and spoilt the ice cream. After that, Margaret Thatcher changed the law and street traders are now the responsibility of the council. The police here in Brick Lane are as sweet as a nut to me.
I bought a pair of crocodiles in the Club Row animal market once. They’re docile as long as you keep them in the water but when they’re out of it they feel vulnerable and they’re dangerous. I can’t remember what I did with mine when they got large. I sell watches sometimes. If anybody wants a watch, I can go and get it for them. In winter, I make jewellery with shells from the beach in Spain, matching earrings with ‘Hello’ and ‘Hola’ carved into them. I’m thinking of opening a pie and mash shop in Spain.
I am happy to give out ice creams to people who haven’t got any money and I only charge pensioners a pound. Whitechapel is best for me. I find the Asian people are very generous when it comes to spending money on their children, so I make a good living off them. They love me and I love them.”
Photographs copyright © Estate of Colin O’Brien
You might also like to read about
Matyas Selmeczi, Silhouette Artist
The City Churches Of Old London
Discover the wonders of the City of London Churches in the company of celebrity guides (including Spitalfields’ own Dan Cruickshank) this Thursday 10th June. Click here for details.
St. Michael, Cornhill, 1912
As shabby old residents that have survived from another age, the churches speak eloquently of an earlier world when the City of London was densely populated and dozens of places of worship were required to serve all the tiny parishes crowded up beside each other. Yet in spite of the encroachment of towers around them, these intricately wrought structures stubbornly hold their own against newcomers today.
In the process of getting to know them, I acquired a literary companion – John Betjeman, who knew these churches as well as anyone and was refreshingly candid in his opinions. While grieving the loss of seven Wren designs to the German bombers in World War II, he managed to find a silver lining.”They did us a favour in blowing out much bad Victorian glass,” he declared with unapologetic prejudice.
Yet I could not but concur with his estimation of the contemporary significance of these churches when he wrote – “As the impersonal slabs of cellular offices rise higher into the sky, so do the churches which remain in the City of London today become more valuable to us. They maintain a human scale…” And that was in 1965, before most of the financial towers were built.
St Mary le Bow, Cheapside, 1910
St Augustine, Watling St, 1921 – now part of St Paul’s School
St Andrew Undershaft, St Mary Axe, c. 1910
St Mary Abchurch, c. 1910
St Margaret Patterns, Eastcheap, 1920
St Mary Woolnoth, Lombard St & Bank Tube station, c. 1920
St Stephen Walbrook, 1917
St Clement Danes, c. 1910
St Alban, Wood St, c. 1875 – only the tower remains
St Clement Danes, c. 1900
St Margaret, Lothbury, 1908
St George the Martyr, Borough, 1910
St. Katherine Coleman, Magpie Alley, c. 1910 – demolished in 1926
St. Magnus the Martyr, c. 1910
St Magnus the Martyr & the Monument from the Thames, c. 1920
St Dunstan in the East, 1910
St Dunstan in the East, 1910
St Dunstan in the West, Fleet St, c. 1910
St. Michael Paternoster Royal, 1922
St. Michael Paternoster Royal, 1922
St. Michael Paternoster Royal, 1922
St Bride, Fleet St, 1922
St Dunstan in the East, 1911
St Mary Le Strand
Images courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
Happy Birthday Milly Abrahams!
Join me in sending birthday wishes to Milly Abrahams, 100 years old today!
Milly Abrahams (nee Markovitch)
Photographer Martin Usborne & I took the trip to Wembley to visit Milly Abrahams, whose late brother Joseph Markovitch was the subject of Martin’s book I’ve Lived In East London for Eighty-Six & A Half Years. Milly left the East End over seventy years ago but, still hale and hearty, her childhood remains vivid to her today.
“I was born in a tenement house in Gosset St, Bethnal Green, but my mother got very ill and we were taken to Mother Levy’s Maternity Home in Underwood Rd, and we stayed there a little while – so my mother told me. In those days parents never told you much. If you asked questions, they’d say in Yiddish ‘What do you want to know for?’
I asked my mother, ‘How did you come over here?’ Somebody brought her over from Krakow and left her here and she went into service – that’s what she said. Krakow was Austria when she was born, but now it’s Poland. Neither of my parents knew what age they were when they came over. My mother had nobody here, though my father came over with his sisters and a brother who died, so I knew all the aunts. My father came from Kiev, which was Russia then and now it’s Ukraine. He tried to trace my mother’s side of the family because she said something about them going to America, yet he never found anything. So she had nobody.
They met here when she was in service and he lived next door with his sisters. They liked chicken soup but they had to water it down to make it go round. My parents got married with nothing. My father was a sick man who was always ill, he was a presser in the tailoring trade. He had trouble with his hands and I remember my mother putting cream on for him and bandaging them up. So he never really worked, but the Jewish community in the East End were very good. We were never a burden on the State, because we had all these Jewish charities – the Jewish Board of Guardians, the Jewish Soup Kitchen and all that. I went to the Jewish Free School in Bell Lane where I got free uniform, meals and seaside holidays. We used to stay in these big houses by the sea and they brought kosher food from London
Where I lived, we had the Catholics, the Protestants and the Jewish but we were all together. Nobody had any money. The non-Jewish people were very good, they used to sit outside in the street and drink tea with us. We were so happy, we didn’t know anything else. Nowadays people expect to have bathrooms ensuite and three toilets, we had a toilet in the yard. Among Jewish people, if you lived next door and you had a little bit more, you would knock on your neighbour’s door on Friday or Saturday and give them some money, yet nobody would know about it. It was kept quiet.
My father wasn’t religious at all, he was a Communist more-or-less. When we used to smell the neighbours’ bacon and want to run upstair to have some, my mother would tell us we couldn’t have bacon. When the Yiddish Theatre in Whitechapel staged benefits, we used to go along. My parents only spoke Yiddish or broken English and, even now, sometimes I mix up my words. We saw plays with well-known actors entirely in Yiddish but we all understood it.
My mother had four children and she lost one – two girls, Leah and me, two boys, Morrie and Joey, Joseph. Leah was the eldest and I was second, then Morrie and Joey, he was the last. I have to say, my mother did the right thing with Joey. He couldn’t speak clearly, but we understood him because we were used to it. They called them ‘backward’ in those days. My mother sent him to a special school and that’s where he learnt to read and write, but people used to say, ‘Why are you sending him there? It’s the madhouse!’
From Gosset St, we moved to Sonning Buildings on the Boundary Estate where we had more room and it was much better. In Gosset St, we slept in one room, my mum and dad and the four of us children. In bed, two of us slept one way and two the other. On Fridays, we used to get out the bath and all have a wash. My father used to help my mother, bathing us with the same water – that’s how it was then.
After I left school at fourteen, I worked as a machinist in a factory in Fournier St making ladieswear. The manager was a nice young bloke but it was hard work. If you talked, they said, ‘Stop talking and get on with your work.’
I belonged to the Brady Club in Hanbury St. We were kept separate and the boys’ club was round the corner somewhere, yet they used to come on their bikes to meet us and take us home on the crossbar. We only got together on Sunday nights when they had dancing.
I met my husband, David, after the war and we married when I was twenty-seven. He was a gunner and he had been in the army for six years, fighting. He was wounded, he went deaf from the gunfire and he got dysentry, but he never had a penny in compensation or a war pension, just a basic state pension.
David was a tailor in ladies tailoring, he didn’t want to be one but in those days you did what your parents told you. So when I got married, I helped my husband as a machinist because his family had a factory. At first, we lived with my mother-in-law in Old Montague St because we couldn’t afford a place of our own.
At last, when my son Alan was three, we moved here to Wembley. I missed the East End but I got used to it here, all these houses were brand new and inhabited by newly-weds from wealthy Jewish families – although we weren’t in that category. They all started having babies, and I had my second son Anthony and my daughter Shelley. The grandparents used to come to visit and bring expensive toys and, as the gardens were open, the children ran into each others’ gardens, saying ‘This is was what my grandma and pa brought me!’ My kids weren’t jealous, they just used to say, ‘Bubba and Nanny are poor.’
Joey never left home, he lived with my mother in Sonning Buildings and they used to come here to visit at weekends. He was lovely little kid, he was the only one of us that wasn’t ginger, he was blond. He never had a proper job, only odd jobs. It was very difficult, but my mother never put him in an institution like a lot of people did in those days. He was always unwell, with chest problems, yet he was always chatty speaking to everyone. He was very interested in Politics and always talking about Money and the Country. Joey and me used to go to the cinema in Hoxton together to see Dick Powell and Ingrid Bergman films. We saw Gone With The Wind and came out crying.”
Milly is on the left and her sister Leah on the right of this family group from the twenties
Milly is in the centre, Leah on the right and Maurice on the left of this family group
Joseph is in the centre, Milly on the left, Leah at the top and Maurice on the right
Milly as a young woman
Milly and her husband David Abrahams, as photographed by Boris of Whitechapel
Milly Abrahams, Dressmaker
Portraits copyright © Martin Usborne
You may also like to read about
Sebastian Harding’s Architectural Models
Part of Sebastian Harding’s model of the Truman Brewery
Sebastian Harding’s model of the Truman Brewery is the centrepiece of the Battle for Brick Lane exhibition at Annetta Pedretti’s House, 25 Princelet St, E1 6QH, from noon until 6pm this Saturday 5th & Sunday 6th June and Saturday 12th & Sunday 13th June. If you would like to volunteer to invigilate this weekend, please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
Here are some of Sebastian’s other creations.
Foyles Building, 113-119 Charing Cross Rd
In 1929 William Foyles opened his newly expanded bookshop here after trading on the same street since 1906 and it soon became known as one of the largest of its kind in Europe.
The Charing Cross Rd facade dates from the early nineteen-hundreds and boasts a simple asymmetric design built of plum red brick with classical columns. The building ran back the length of Manette St with a bolder Art Deco facade dating from 1929 and these two facades were charmingly interrupted on the corner of the building by an early Victorian stuccoed facade.
For generations of book lovers, this huge building provided a haven of tranquility in the noisy and chaotic hub of central London. For over eighty years Foyles, with its labyrinthine layout, sprawling floors and large cafe was far more than just a bookshop. Full of oddly-shaped spaces and quiet corners, the place exuded an irresistibly-inviting atmosphere.
The Marquis of Lansdowne, Cremer St, Hoxton
Opening before 1838, The Marquis of Lansdowne was a typical East End pub which became the focus for workers in the cabinet-making trades which filled the surrounding streets for over a century. After drastic slum clearance and redevelopment in Hoxton in the mid-twentieth century, the pub fell into decline and closed. In 2013 David Dewing, Director of the Geffrye Museum (now the Museum of the Home) announced the demolition of the pub for the sake of a concrete cube restaurant as part of a multi-million pound revelopment of the museum designed by Sir David Chipperfield. However, largely thanks to a campaign by readers of Spitalfields Life, Hackney Council refused permission for demolition of the historic pub. Subsequently, the Heritage Lottery Fund supported a new scheme by Wright & Wright which requires no demolition, expanding the museum’s galleries by opening up unused spaces in the existing buildings and restores the Marquis of Lansdowne.
The Saracen’s Head, 4-7 Aldgate High St
The Saracen’s Head public house was demolished in 1913. Even in the late nineteenth century, Aldgate survived as a slice of sixteenth and seventeenth century London until the developers moved in from the eighteen eighties to modernise these streets. It was one of the few places to avoid the Great Fire of 1666, where the locals gathered to watch the conflagration. This makes the Saracen’s Head all the more important to the area’s history and, though long gone, there is a plaque at No. 88 Aldgate High St commemorating its existence.
It operated as a coaching inn with a service that departed from the yard at the back, transporting Londoners to East Anglia – hence the building’s location on the main road eastward out of the city. The frontage holds wonderful early examples of Baroque decoration and the ornate moulding echoes the decoration seen on the Baroque post-Fire churches – including St Paul’s – that emerged throughout London at the time. When the building was demolished, it was functioning as the Metropole Restaurant with the Ladies Select Dining Room housed on the first floor. After its destruction, the Guildhall Museum bought the intricate wooden pilaster capitals for their collection, confirming its aesthetic importance.
Nicholas Culpeper’s House, Red Lion Field, Spitalfields
In 1640, when Nicholas Culpeper, the herbalist, married Alice Field, aged fifteen, he was able to build a substantial wooden house in Red Lion Field, Spitalfields, with her dowry. Here, he conducted his practice, treating as many as forty citizens in a morning, and in the land attached he cultivated herbs – collecting those growing wild in the fields beyond. Since Culpeper never finished his apprenticeship, he could not practise in the City of London but chose instead to offer free healthcare to the citizens of Spitalfields, much to the ire of the Royal College of Physicians. In this house, Nicholas Culpeper wrote his masterwork known as Culpeper’s Herbal which is still in print today.
After Culpeper’s death, the building became the Red Lion public house, surviving into the nineteenth century when it was demolished, as part of the road widening for the creation of Commercial St to carry traffic from the London Docks.
186 & 184 Fleet St
If you were to take a stroll down Fleet St today, you might like to take a closer look at the buildings that stand at 186 & 184. They perch immediately to the right of St-Dunstan-in-the-West on the north side of the Street in a row of inconspicuous turn-of-the-century buildings. On closer inspection each appears distinct, but all three are somewhat tall and somewhat narrow. Their cramped proportions are explained by the fact they were built, like much of London, on the site of two ancient pre-fire buildings.
The history of the nineteenth century buildings that occupy the site today relates directly to the rise of the newspaper trade that proliferated in the area. Indeed, Fleet St is still synonymous with British journalism despite all major publications now being headquartered elsewhere.
Today the site of 184 & 186 is home to the Scottish firm D.C. Thomson & Co., who claim to be the last newspaper group to retain a base on Fleet St, and the titles of their publications, The Sunday Post and The Dundee Courier, are still proclaimed in mosaic on the façade of their neighbour at 188.
Part of Rothschild Buildings, Spitalfields
Before their demolition in the seventies, the Rothschild Dwellings were visited by historian Jerry White whose first impression of the buildings was that he had “never seen tenements, so starkly repulsive” and “so much without one redeeming feature” in his whole life.
The Rothschild Dwellings were erected in 1888 by the ‘Four percent Industrial Dwellings Company’ and stood on the sight of what had once been respectable middle class residences in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which had degenerated into lodging houses and slums. In the mid-nineteenth century, the old filthy streets with their myriad alleyways and courts were swept away. In their place, came the wide thoroughfare of Commercial St and large housing blocks such as the Nathaniel Dwellings (1892), the Lolesworth Buildings (1885) and, of course, the Charlotte De Rothschild Dwellings (1887). The tenants of these buildings were respectable working class tradesmen and craft workers able to pay the slightly higher rent.
The Fortunes Of War Public Tavern, Cock Lane, Smithfield
Smithfield Market’s proximity to St Bartholomew’s Hospital betrays a lot about the British public’s distrust of the medical trade. It is fitting therefore to focus on one building that catered to both trades – The Fortunes Of War Public Tavern.
Let us place ourselves in the eighteenth century as we watch a student of anatomy making his way into the tavern. He is here, not as you would expect for his leisure, but for his studies. He is led by the landlord down dank mouldering stairs to the cellar. Rows of sacks give off a pungent smell of rotting meat, yet these are not the carcasses of swine or cattle but the bodies of recently dead Smithfield residents.
This was the secret trade of the Body Snatchers or Resurrectionists that supplied students and professors of anatomy with fresh corpses. For a God-fearing public, it was immoral and barbarous in the extreme, for this was a time when many believed a soul would only be granted into heaven if their corporeal body was intact, while being dissected meant an eternity in purgatory.
John Aston’s House, Charterhouse Lane
John Aston was a priest in the parish of Smithfield, arrested at the same time as the influential protestant leader John Rogers. Queen Mary’s secret police randomly inspected any priests who had been advocates of protestantism before her ascension to the throne in 1553.
Unsurprisingly, the inspections would usually find a protestant bible or a mass being held. Typically, the raids were held on Sundays and John Aston’s misfortune was to be found eating meat in one of these raids. The tyrannical catholic religion of the sixteenth century forbade any consumption of meat on Sunday and he was burnt at the stake for this trifling pretence.
20 Cock Lane, Smithfield
The name of this street can be traced to its proximity to the market, where poultry would once have been traded, but it also serves also as a risqué innuendo, since for hundreds of years it was the preferred haunt of prostitutes. It was on this street that fraud, haunting, murder and sex were all intertwined in one story.
Late one November night in 1760,William Kent was away on business in Norfolk. His wife Fanny, wishing to alleviate the loneliness of her nights alone, invited Betty the youngest daughter of the Parsons – the landlord’s family – to sleep in her bed. In the night, Fanny was disturbed by scratching sounds like claws on wood and lay frozen with fear. On appealing to Mr & Mrs Parsons, she was told a shoemaker lived next door and her fears were assuaged. But the next night was Sunday when no good Christian would ever work, yet the scratching came again, brought to a terrifying end by a loud bang.
After William Kent returned the next night the sounds were not heard again. Then, two months’ later, after a furious row, Mr Parsons threw the Kents’ possessions out onto the street, even though William had not received a penny of the money he had loaned to his landlord the previous year. Subsequently, Fanny succumbed to smallpox and died on February 2nd 1761.
Some time later, the Parsons family began to hear the same scratching again and made sure it became a talking point for superstitious members of the community. The methodist preacher John Moore held a séance and ,when he asked if a spirit was present, a knock rang out. A second question followed – “Was the spirit that of the late Fanny?” Another knock. “Was Fanny murdered by her husband?” the reverend asked and then followed the loudest banging the party had heard.
Subsequently, William Kent was hanged, but afterwards the events were revealed as a fraud motivated by the feud between Mr Parsons and his tenant over the loan. Parsons was sentenced to three years in prison and three days in pillory, but later became regarded as something of a celebrity.
Mother Clapp’s Molly House, Field Lane
This was not a coffee house as we would know it, but rather a private club for gay gentlemen, where they could meet and form relationships without fear of discovery. The discretion of fellow members was crucial and entry was only permitted to those who knew a password. There were even gay marriage ceremonies conducted in locked rooms between men, with one donning a bride’s dress and the other a groom’s jacket. Mother Clapp herself presided over all, only leaving to get refreshments from the pub across the street.
Everything we know about this secret sub-culture stems from the raid by The Society For The Reformation Of Manners which had placed secret police inside the house. One man, a milkman, was hung for being found in the act of sodomy and Mother Clapp was sentenced to a day in the pillory. The crowd was so furious that they ripped the pillory from the ground and trampled it, and Mother Clapp died from the injuries sustained.
Sebastian Harding
Illustrations copyright © Sebastian Harding
You may also like to read about
The Broderers At St Paul’s
There is a display of Embroidery Treasures featuring vestments and a demonstration by the broderers each day this week in the south nave aisle at St Paul’s Cathedral, until Friday 4th June
Anita Ferrero
Like princesses from a fairy tale, the Broderers of St Paul’s sit high up in a tower at the great cathedral stitching magnificent creations in their secret garret. Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I climbed up one hundred and forty-one steps to pay a visit upon these nimble-fingered needleworkers.
‘There are fourteen of us, we chat, we tell stories and we eat chocolate,’ explained Anita Ferrero by way of modest introduction, as I stood dazzled by the glittering robes and fine embroidery. ‘It’s very intense work because the threads are very bright,’ she added tentatively, lest I should think the chocolate comment revealed undue levity.
I was simply astonished by the windowless chamber filled with gleaming things. ‘There are thirteen tons of bells suspended above us,’ Anita continued with a smile, causing me to cast my eyes to the ceiling in wonder, ‘but it’s a lovely sound that doesn’t trouble us at all.’
Observing my gaze upon the magnificent textiles, Anita drew out a richly-embellished cope from Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. ‘This is cloth of gold’ she indicated, changing her voice to whisper, ‘it ceased production years ago.’
‘There are still wonderful haberdashers in Kuala Lumpur and Aleppo,’ she informed me as if it were a closely-guarded secret, ‘I found this place there that still sold gold thread. If someone’s going to Marrakesh, we give them a shopping list in case they stumble upon a traditional haberdashery.’ Next, Anita produced a sombre cope from Winston Churchill’s funeral, fashioned from an inky black brocade embroidered with silver trim, permitting my eye to accommodate to the subtler tones that can be outshone by tinsel.
In this lofty chamber high above the chaos of the city, an atmosphere of repose prevails in which these needlewomen pursue their exemplary work in a manner unchanged over millennia. I was in awe at their skill and their devotion to their art but Anita said, ‘As embroiderers, we are thankful to have a purpose for our embroidery because there’s only so many cushions you can do.’
I walked over to a quiet corner where Rachel Rice was stitching an intricate border in gold thread. ‘I learnt my skills from my mother and grandmother, and I always enjoyed sewing and dressmaking but that’s not fine embroidery like this,’ she admitted, revealing the satisfaction of one who has spent a life devoted to needlework. Yet she qualified her pride in her craft by admitting her humanity with a weary shrug, ‘Some of the work is extremely tedious and it’s never seen.’
‘We are all very expert but our eyesight is fading and a few of us are quite elderly,’ confided Anita, thinking out loud for the two of them as she picked up the story and exchanged a philosophical grin with Rachel. Nowhere in London have I visited a sanctum quite like the Broderers chamber or encountered such self-effacing creative talents.
‘We not so isolated up here,’ emphasised Anita, lifting the mood with renewed enthusiasm, ‘Most people who work in the Cathedral know we’re here. We often do favours for members of staff, taking up trouser hems etc – consequently, if we have a problem, we can call maintenance and don’t have to wait long.’
I was curious to learn of the Broderers’ current project, the restoration of a banner of St Barnabas. ‘He’s the one saint I’d like to meet because he’s called ‘The Son of Encouragement’ – he looks like a nice guy,’ confessed Anita fondly, laying an affectionate hand upon the satin, ‘We’re restoring the beard of St Barnabas at present and we’re getting Simon the good-looking Verger up here to photograph his beard.’
Rachel Rice – ‘I learnt my skills from my mother and grandmother’
Sophia Sladden
Margaret Gibberd
‘As embroiderers, we are thankful to have a purpose for our embroidery because there’s only so many cushions you can do.’
Judy Hardy
‘We chat, we tell stories and we eat chocolate..’
Virger Simon Brears is the model for the beard of St Barnabas
View from the Triforium
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
You may also like to take a look at
