The Bethnal Green Mulberry Verdict
Nurses dancing around the Bethnal Green Mulberry
After campaigning to Save the Bethnal Green Mulberry since 2017, I am overjoyed to report yesterday’s decision of the High Court to refuse Crest Nicholson’s redevelopment of the former London Chest Hospital and stop the developer digging up the 400 hundred year old tree.
I would like to thank the hundreds of people who funded our legal action, the 17,000 who signed our petition and especially Dame Judi Dench for being patron of our campaign.
Crest Nicholson’s overblown development would have blighted the Victoria Park Conservation Area for generations to come. It demolished a listed building, removed a large number of mature trees and delivered far too few affordable homes.
At the Tower Hamlets Planning meeting in September 2018, Gareth Gwynne, Head of Planning confirmed that it would be possible for Crest Nicholson to avoid disturbing the tree without any loss to their development by simply reconfiguring the design. Yet rather than do this, they made the decision to pursue digging up the historic mulberry and moving it, even though there is no successful precedent for moving such an old mulberry and this would be likely to kill it. I hope Crest Nicholson learn a lesson from this judgement and go back to the drawing board.
In the light of the recent decision to approve the redevelopment of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, I am dismayed by the shameful way Tower Hamlets Council have repeatedly advocated bad developments, without regard for the community or heritage. But I am delighted that in this case justice has prevailed and the Bethnal Green Mulberry is saved.
At this time of Climate Emergency and, as we move to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, it is obvious that London should not be building such densely-crowded housing and that we need planning decisions which are environmentally responsible.
The Bethnal Mulberry is the oldest tree in the East End, surviving plague, fire and blitz. I hope it will flourish for centuries more to inspire us all.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL VERDICT
We will contact all those supporters who opted to receive a cutting of Shakespeare’s Mulberry this summer once the cuttings have rooted and are ready for collection. When summer arrives, we will also write to those who chose to receive a tub of mulberry sorbet to arrange collection.
Click here to read my feature in The Daily Telegraph about the scandal of the Bethnal Green Mulberry
Read more here about the Bethnal Green Mulberry
The Fate of the Bethnal Green Mulberry
In Search Of The Walbrook
Ever since I learnt that the disused pump outside Shoreditch Church marks the spot where the river Walbrook had its wellspring, I have been curious to discover what happened to this lost river which once flowed from here through the City to the Thames. This haunting photograph of the Walbrook, which was taken by Steve Duncan deep beneath the Bank of England, gives the answer. The river has been endlessly covered over and piped off, until today it is entirely co-opted into the system of sewers and drains.
Yet in spite of this, the water keeps flowing. Irrespective of our best efforts to contain and redirect water courses, the movement of water underground always eludes control. A fascinating detail of this photo, which shows the sewer deep below the City, built in the eighteen forties, is that today the water table in the City has risen to the level where water is actually pouring from the surrounding earth into the tunnel between the bricks. With enviable courage, Steve Duncan enters these secret tunnels through manhole covers and undertakes covert explorations, bringing back photos of the unseen world that he finds down there, as trophies. I was captivated by this nightmarish subterranean image, which reminded me that the primordial force of nature that this river manifests still demands respect.
Lacking such a daredevil nature or any experience in potholing, I decided to keep my exploration above ground, following the path of the river and seeing what sights there are to be discovered upon the former banks of this erstwhile tributary of the Thames. The Walbrook has attracted its share of followers over the years, from anti-capitalist protestors who attempted to liberate the river by opening hydrants along its route, to milder gestures adopted by conceptual artists, sacrificing coins to the river through storm drains and releasing fleets of paper boats into the sewers.
The historian John Stow is the primary source of information about the Walbrook, writing in his “Survey of London” in 1598 – though even in his time it was already a lost river, “The running water so called by William Conquerour in his saide Charter, which entereth the citie,&c. (before there was any ditch) betweene Bishopsgate and the late made Posterne called Mooregate, entred the wall, and was truely of the wall called Walbrooke… it ranne through the citie with divers windings from the North towards the South into the river of Thames… This water course having diverse Bridges, was afterwards vaulted over with bricke, and paved levell with the Streetes and Lanes where through it passed, and since that also houses have beene builded thereon, so that the course of Walbroke is now hidden under ground, and therby hardly knowne.”
Arriving at St Leonard’s Shoreditch, as the first drops of water from the ominous lowering clouds overhead began to fall, the description of the poisoning of the Walbrook (when seepage from the seventy-six thousand human remains in the churchyard found its way into the watercourse) came to mind. The Walbrook, which entered through the wall beside the church of All Hallows on the Wall, was the only watercourse to flow through the City and was both an important source of freshwater as well as a conduit to remove sewage, two entirely irreconcilable functions.
There is no evidence of the route of the brook outwith the wall and so I walked straight down Curtain Rd, entering the City at London Wall, with the church of All Hallows on the Wall to my left. I turned right on London Wall, where the brook was once channeled along the wall itself. At Copthall Avenue, I turned left where the watercourse flowed South down through Token House Yard, under St Margaret’s Church and the Bank of England. As I left Copthall Avenue to walk through the maze of narrow lanes, including Telegraph Alley and Whalebone Alley, the changing scale indicated I was entering the ancient city. Then I enjoyed a breathtaking moment as I passed through the dark low passage into Token House Yard, discovering a long tall street with cliffs of grey buildings on either side, that ended in the towering edifice of the Bank of England.
From here, I walked down Princes St to emerge at the front of the Bank facing the Mansion House, basking for a moment in the drama of this crossroads, before walking onwards down Poultry past Grocer’s Hall and then turning left to arrive at the Bloomberg building which now contains the Temple of Mithras, discovered in 1954 on the bank of the Walbrook, eighteen feet below modern ground level. It is a miraculous survival of two millennia, standing at the head of the navigable river where barges were berthed in Roman times.
At the time of these excavations, a square token of lead with the name Martia Martina carved backwards on it was found, once thrown into the Walbrook – in Celtic culture this was believed to bring bad luck to the subject. Also, in the eighteen sixties, Augustus Pitt Rivers uncovered a large number of human skulls in the river bed, which could be either those of a Roman legion who surrendered to the Britons or the remnants of Boudica’s rebellion. Both these finds may reflect a spiritual significance for the watercourse.
Next stop for me was Christopher Wren’s church of St Stephen Walbrook on the far bank of the Walbrook. My favourite of his City churches, this is always a place to savour a moment of contemplation, beneath the changing light of the dome that appears to float, high up above the roof. The name of this street, Walbrook, within the ward of Walbrook confirms beyond doubt that you are in the vicinity of the lost river, and from here it is a short walk down Cloak Lane by way of College Hill to Walbrook Wharf on the riverfront below Cannon St Station, where the Walbrook meets the river Thames. In the end, whatever route they came by, this is where the raindrops that fell outside Shoreditch Church arrived eventually.
I am entranced by the romance of the lost river Walbrook – even if it may have been a stinking culvert rather than the willow-lined brook of my imagination – because when you are surrounded by the flashy overbearing towers of the City, there remains a certain frail consolation in the knowledge that ancient rivers still flow underground beneath your feet.
All Hallows on the Wall, where the Walbrook entered the City of London
The passage from Whalebone Alley to Token House Yard
Approaching the Bank of England
The Roman temple of Mithras stood on the bank of the Walbrook
Christopher Wren’s church of St Stephen Walbrook with altar by Henry Moore
The dome of St Stephen Walbrook
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Sam Syntax’s Cries Of London
Harris, the publisher’s office, at the corner of St Paul’s Churchyard
Examining more series of Cries of London in my ever-expanding investigation – such as these Sam Syntax Cries from the eighteen-twenties that came to light in the Bishopsgate Institute – old friends from earlier series return in new guises, evidencing the degree to which the creators of these popular prints plagiarised each other.
Do you recognise the Hot Cross Bun Seller from the New Cries Of London 1803 or Green Hasteds from Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London or the Watchman from T. L. Busby’s Costume Of The Lower Orders or the Hot Gingerbread Seller from William Marshall Craig’s Itinerant Traders? The recurrence of these figures demonstrates how common images of tradesmen became standardised through repetition over centuries.
Yet equally, when I see a trader here as particular as the toy lamb seller originally portrayed by John Thomas Smith in his Vagabondiana of 1815, it makes me wonder whether, perhaps, this was a portrait of a celebrated individual, a character once recognisable throughout the city?
Eels, Threepence a Pound! Live Eels! & Rabbits! Fresh Rabbits! Buy a Rabbit!
Milk Below, Maids! Milk Below! & One a Penny, Two a Penny, Hot Cross Buns!
Plum Pudding and Pies! Hot! Piping Hot! & Sweep! Sweep Ho! Sweep!
Water Cresses! Buy My Nice Water Cresses! & Dust! Dust Ho! Dust!
Buy a Mat or a Hair Broom! & Cat’s Meat or Dog’s Meat!
Chairs to Mend! Any Old Chairs To Mend! & Green and Young Hastings! Green and Buy!
Swords, Colours and Standards! & Sweet Briar and Nosegays, So Pretty Come and Buy!
Potatoes, Three Pounds A Penny! Potatoes! & Hot Spice Gingerbread! Hot! Hot! Hot!
Lobsters! Live Lobsters! All Alive, Lobsters! & Choice Banbury Cakes! Nice Banbury Cakes!
Lambs To Sell! Young Lambs To Sell! & Currants Red And White, A Penny A Pot!
Flounders! Jumping Alive! Fine Flounders! & Matches, Please To Want Any Matches, Ma’am!
Sixpence A Pottle, Fine Strawberries! & News! Great News In The London Gazette!
Past Twelve O’Clock and A Cloudy Morning! & Patrol! Patrol!
Buy A Live Goose! Buy A Live Goose! & Live Fowls! Live Fowls! Buy A Live Fowl!
Flowers Blowing! All A-Growing! & Winkles! A Penny A Pint, Periwinkles!
Images courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at these other sets of the Cries of London
More John Player’s Cries of London
More Samuel Pepys’ Cries of London
Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders
William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders
H.W.Petherick’s London Characters
John Thomson’s Street Life in London
Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana II
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana III
Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
More of Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
Adam Dant’s New Cries of Spittlefields
The Departure Of Arthur Beale
PLEASE NOTE: My HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ course sold out immediately, so in response to popular demand I am holding another in November on the weekend of 20th & 21st. Click here for more details
Established as rope chandlers for over four hundred years at the same location in St Giles, Arthur Beale is now being forced out by excessive rents. You have until June 24th to pay a last visit.
Did you ever wonder why there is a ship’s chandler at the top of Neal St where it meets Shaftesbury Avenue in Covent Garden. It is a question that Alasdair Flint proprietor of Arthur Beale gets asked all the time. ‘We were here first, before the West End,’ he explains with discreet pride,’and the West End wrapped itself around us.’
At a closer look, you will discover the phrase ‘Established over 400 years’ on the exterior in navy blue signwriting upon an elegant aquamarine ground, as confirmed by a listing in Grace’s Guide c. 1500. Naturally, there have been a few changes of proprietor over the years, from John Buckingham who left the engraved copper plate for his trade card behind in 1791, to his successors Beale & Clove (late Buckingham) taken over by Arthur Beale in 1903, and in turn purchased by Alasdair Flint of Flints Theatrical Chandlers in 2014.
‘Everyone advised me against it,’ Alasdair confessed with the helpless look of one infatuated. Then he pulled out an old accounts book and laid it on the table in his second floor office above the shop and showed me the signature of Ernest Shackleton upon an order for Alpine Club Rope, as used by Polar explorers and those heroic early mountaineers attempting the ascent of Everest.
In that instant, I too was persuaded. Learning that Arthur Beale once installed the flag pole on Buckingham Palace and started the London Boat Show was just the icing on the cake. Prophetically, Alasdair’s first act upon acquiring the business was to acquire a stock of good quality three-and-a-half metre ash barge poles to fend off any property developers who might have their eye on his premises.
For centuries – as the street name changed from St Giles to Broad St to Shaftesbury Avenue – the business was flax dressing, supplying sacks and mattresses, and twine and ropes for every use – including to the theatres that line Shaftesbury Avenue today. It was only in the sixties that the fashion for yachting offered Arthur Beale the opportunity to specialise in nautical hardware.
The patina of ages still prevails here, from the ancient hidden yard at the rear to the stone-flagged basement below, from the staircase encased in nineteenth century linoleum above, to the boxes of War Emergency brass screws secreted in the attic. Alasdair Flint cherishes it all and so do his customers. ‘We haven’t got to the bottom of the history yet,’ he admitted to me with visible delight.
Arthur Beale’s predecessor John Buckingham’s trade card from 1791
Nineteenth century headed paper (click to enlarge)
Alasdair Flint’s office
Account book with Shackleton’s signature on his order for four sixty-foot lengths of Alpine Club Rope
Drawers full of printing blocks from Arthur Beale and John Buckingham’s use over past centuries
Arthur Beale barometer and display case of Buckingham rope samples
Nineteenth century linoleum on the stairs
War emergency brass screws still in stock
More Breton shirts and Wellingtons than you ever saw
Rope store in the basement
Work bench with machines for twisting wire rope
Behind the counter
Jason Nolan, Shop Manager
James Dennis, Sales Assistant
Jason & James run the shop
Receipts on the spike
Arthur Beale, 194 Shaftesbury Avenue, WC2 8JP
You may also like to read about
The Return Of The Gentle Author’s Blog Course
In 2019, I announced that I was ending my popular HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ courses, but now the world has changed so utterly I have decided to continue.
Drop me a line at spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book.
HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ – 6th & 7th NOVEMBER
Spend a weekend with me in an eighteenth century weaver’s house in Fournier St, enjoy delicious lunches, savour freshly baked cakes from historic recipes, discover the secrets of Spitalfields Life and learn how to write your own blog.
This course will examine the essential questions which need to be addressed if you wish to write a blog that people will want to read.
“Like those writers in fourteenth century Florence who discovered the sonnet but did not quite know what to do with it, we are presented with the new literary medium of the blog – which has quickly become omnipresent, with many millions writing online. For my own part, I respect this nascent literary form by seeking to explore its own unique qualities and potential.” – The Gentle Author
COURSE STRUCTURE
1. How to find a voice – When you write, who are you writing to and what is your relationship with the reader?
2. How to find a subject – Why is it necessary to write and what do you have to tell?
3. How to find the form – What is the ideal manifestation of your material and how can a good structure give you momentum?
4. The relationship of pictures and words – Which comes first, the pictures or the words? Creating a dynamic relationship between your text and images.
5. How to write a pen portrait – Drawing on The Gentle Author’s experience, different strategies in transforming a conversation into an effective written evocation of a personality.
6. What a blog can do – A consideration of how telling stories on the internet can affect the temporal world.
SALIENT DETAILS
The course will be held at 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields on 6th & 7th November. The course runs from 10am-5pm on Saturday and 11am-5pm on Sunday.
Lunch will be catered by Leila’s Cafe of Arnold Circus and tea, coffee & cakes baked from eighteenth century recipes by the Townhouse are included within the course fee of £300.
Email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book a place on the course.
Comments by students from courses tutored by The Gentle Author
“I highly recommend this creative, challenging and most inspiring course. The Gentle Author gave me the confidence to find my voice and just go for it!”
“Do join The Gentle Author on this Blogging Course in Spitalfields. It’s as much about learning/ appreciating Storytelling as Blogging. About developing how to write or talk to your readers in your own unique way. It’s also an opportunity to “test” your ideas in an encouraging and inspirational environment. Go and enjoy – I’d happily do it all again!”
“The Gentle Author’s writing course strikes the right balance between addressing the creative act of blogging and the practical tips needed to turn a concept into reality. During the course the participants are encouraged to share and develop their ideas in a safe yet stimulating environment. A great course for those who need that final (gentle) push!”
“I haven’t enjoyed a weekend so much for a long time. The disparate participants with different experiences and aspirations rapidly became a coherent group under The Gentle Author’s direction in a gorgeous house in Spitalfields. There was lots of encouragement, constructive criticism, laughter and very good lunches. With not a computer in sight, I found it really enjoyable to draft pieces of written work using pen and paper. Having gone with a very vague idea about what I might do I came away with a clear plan which I think will be achievable and worthwhile.”
“The Gentle Author is a master blogger and, happily for us, prepared to pass on skills. This “How to write a blog” course goes well beyond offering information about how to start blogging – it helps you to see the world in a different light, and inspires you to blog about it. You won’t find a better way to spend your time or money if you’re considering starting a blog.”
“I gladly traveled from the States to Spitalfields for the How to Write a Blog Course. The unique setting and quality of the Gentle Author’s own writing persuaded me and I was not disappointed. The weekend provided ample inspiration, like-minded fellowship, and practical steps to immediately launch a blog that one could be proud of. I’m so thankful to have attended.”
“I took part in The Gentle Author’s blogging course for a variety of reasons: I’ve followed Spitalfields Life for a long time now, and find it one of the most engaging blogs that I know; I also wanted to develop my own personal blog in a way that people will actually read, and that genuinely represents my own voice. The course was wonderful. Challenging, certainly, but I came away with new confidence that I can write in an engaging way, and to a self-imposed schedule. The setting in Fournier St was both lovely and sympathetic to the purpose of the course. A further unexpected pleasure was the variety of other bloggers who attended: each one had a very personal take on where they wanted their blogs to go, and brought with them an amazing range and depth of personal experience. “
“I found this bloggers course was a true revelation as it helped me find my own voice and gave me the courage to express my thoughts without restriction. As a result I launched my professional blog and improved my photography blog. I would highly recommend it.”
“An excellent and enjoyable weekend: informative, encouraging and challenging. The Gentle Author was generous throughout in sharing knowledge, ideas and experience and sensitively ensured we each felt equipped to start out. Thanks again for the weekend. I keep quoting you to myself.”
“My immediate impression was that I wasn’t going to feel intimidated – always a good sign on these occasions. The Gentle Author worked hard to help us to find our true voice, and the contributions from other students were useful too. Importantly, it didn’t feel like a ‘workshop’ and I left looking forward to writing my blog.”
“The Spitafields writing course was a wonderful experience all round. A truly creative teacher as informed and interesting as the blogs would suggest. An added bonus was the eclectic mix of eager students from all walks of life willing to share their passion and life stories. Bloomin’ marvellous grub too boot.”
“An entertaining and creative approach that reduces fears and expands thought”
“The weekend I spent taking your course in Spitalfields was a springboard one for me. I had identified writing a blog as something I could probably do – but actually doing it was something different! Your teaching methods were fascinating, and I learnt a lot about myself as well as gaining very constructive advice on how to write a blog. I lucked into a group of extremely interesting people in our workshop, and to be cocooned in the beautiful old Spitalfields house for a whole weekend, and plied with delicious food at lunchtime made for a weekend as enjoyable as it was satisfying. Your course made the difference between thinking about writing a blog, and actually writing it.”
“After blogging for three years, I attended The Gentle Author’s Blogging Course. What changed was my focus on specific topics, more pictures, more frequency, more fun. In the summer I wrote more than forty blogs, almost daily from my Tuscan villa on village life and I had brilliant feedback from my readers. And it was a fantastic weekend with a bunch of great people and yummy food.”
“An inspirational weekend, digging deep with lots of laughter and emotion, alongside practical insights and learning from across the group – and of course overall a delightfully gentle weekend.”
“The course was great fun and very informative, digging into the nuts and bolts of writing a blog. There was an encouraging and nurturing atmosphere that made me think that I too could learn to write a blog that people might want to read. – There’s a blurb, but of course what I really want to say is that my blog changed my life, without sounding like an idiot. The people that I met in the course were all interesting people, including yourself. So thanks for everything.”
“This is a very person-centred course. By the end of the weekend, everyone had developed their own ideas through a mix of exercises, conversation and one-to-one feedback. The beautiful Hugenot house and high-calibre food contributed to what was an inspiring and memorable weekend.”
“It was very intimate writing course that was based on the skills of writing. The Gentle Author was a superb teacher.”
“It was a surprising course that challenged and provoked the group in a beautiful supportive intimate way and I am so thankful for coming on it.”
“I did not enrol on the course because I had a blog in mind, but because I had bought TGA’s book, “Spitalfields Life”, very much admired the writing style and wanted to find out more and improve my own writing style. By the end of the course, I had a blog in mind, which was an unexpected bonus.”
“This course was what inspired me to dare to blog. Two years on, and blogging has changed the way I look at London.”
A Brief History Of Change
Contributing Writer, historian Gillian Tindall, has written many books about London, including ‘The Fields Beneath’ which first appeared in 1977 and is regarded as a classic of urban writing.
Clerkenwell before the railway came through
Every generation believes they are perched on the frontier of time, leaving the safety of known things for an uncharted future. ‘The good days’ or even ‘the bad old days’ are reassuring to contemplate because we know how things turned out. There is also a broad assumption that, apart from times of war or plague, life continued much the same for centuries, with no modern conveniences and with everyone knowing their allotted place in society.
Yet this notion of the past is as deceptively simple as a distant view of green hills. Examined more closely, past centuries are a saga of continual evolution – only the speed of it varies.
Older people get used to younger people saying ‘You must have seen a lot of changes round here?’ or guessing what Londoners felt/behaved/thought/assumed/took for granted in the distant and quaint decades of the forties or fifties, before pop-stars or skyscrapers or the internet, when money was measured out as four-and-ninepence or half-a-crown. I observe them politely disbelieving me when I try to tell them that – actually – the changes that those of my age have seen in our lifetimes are minor compared with the constant, rolling transformation experienced by someone living in London one hundred years earlier.
Imagine you were born in 1838, the first year of Queen Victoria’s reign. This was also the year in which the first railway in London, all three-and-three-quarter miles of it, began running on a new viaduct from the future London Bridge Station towards Greenwich. England was still a land of roads, gravelled or muddy, of horseback riders, of coaches, coaching inns and stabling, and the huge numbers of people this trade employed.
In London there was no public transport beyond a few recently invented horse buses. From anywhere in the capital you could walk into the countryside within an hour or less. Whitechapel and Bethnal Green were getting built up, but Stepney and Bow were still rural. Camden Town had rows of terraced houses though Kentish Town, half a mile to the north, was a country high road sprinkled with cottages and pubs, and fields behind on both sides. Hampstead was a distant separate village. Kensington High St was beginning to be well-populated, but Chelsea and Earls Court were market gardens and pastures. So was all the land north of Paddington station. As for South London, beyond Southwark and a bit of ribbon development along main roads, it did not exist.
Yet before you had even reached middle age this green and pleasant land would be transformed, like a dystopian nightmare, into sooty, fog-darkened, heavily-populated inner city. Grazing cows and timbered taverns with tree-shaded yards became a faded memory. Many of these, rebuilt in urban style, retained their country names, but the cows were moved into sheds behind narrow terrace houses. Instead, milk was arriving on overnight trains at one of London’s half-dozen main railway stations. Meanwhile the occupants of the terraces, mile after mile of them expanding London’s population several times over, were less likely to walk to work than to take the Metropolitan Line which opened in 1864 or the District Line that proliferated from it. Horse buses were everywhere now and, after 1860, they were joined by trams, horse-drawn still but on rails. These in turn were replaced around 1900 by electric trams and the deep Underground was constructed. Even then our Londoner born in 1838 would only be in their early sixties.
Enough change for one lifetime, you might think? Far more was to come. By the eighteen-nineties entirely new ‘horseless carriages’ were seen in the streets, as the petrol-driven internal combustion engine arrived. Twenty years later, when our ageing Londoner reached the end of their life, the horse buses were only a memory, stables were disappearing and streets were dominated by cars.
All this is just building and transport! What else had come and gone in the preceding eighty years? The rapid postal service, following the expansion of the railways, had transformed communications, and from the middle of the century telegrams became a reality. By the early nineteen-hundreds grand houses and the larger City offices all had a telephone. It was a far cry from the centuries-old culture of the messenger on horseback. Typewriters, accompanied by lady typists, had appeared in offices by then. They were not only early signs of what became a feminist revolution, they resigned to history a five-hundred-year-old tradition of clerks writing by hand.
By 1909, clerks could collect a tiny Old Age Pension. Massive social progress had taken place since Victoria came to the throne. The poor were no longer left to live or die – soup kitchens, dispensaries, free hospitals and a mass of other charities abounded. So did cheap newspapers and universal literacy. Rather than sending your children out to become sweep chimneys or beg, you were obliged to send them to one of the free schools that had been built in every district of London. There were a great many policeman, and it was generally agreed that the so-called ‘Heart of the Empire’ – by now the world’s largest city – was far more orderly than in the bad old days that few could remember any more. It was populated by huge numbers of Londoner in suits and bowler hats whose immediate forebears had been farm labourers or servants but had climbed the ladder to become middle class. Let no one kid themselves that ‘social mobility’ is a recent invention.
How do we assess change from 1938 to the present day by comparison? I leave readers to write that chapter themselves. What is clear is that less and less, in recent decades, have we believed change, growth, development, expansion are necessarily good things. Now there is wariness, a fear of London’s fragile financial supremacy, a growing unease in recognising this planet’s resources are finite and a sense that in past ways of life may lie the solutions we seek in vain today.
Have I seen big change in London since my post-war childhood, you ask? No, I have not. Elsewhere, yes, countrywide and worldwide, but in the capital – in relation to the rapid change of the past – not that much, all told. But I do ask myself and wonder, for how much longer?
London Bridge
In Westminster
Bridgefoot, Southwark
Butcher’s Row, Strand
Waterloo Bridge Rd
River Fleet at St Pancras
Illustrations from Walter Thornbury’s London Old & New courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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100 Years In The East End
Photographer Jenny Lewis has taken a hundred portraits of people in the East End aged between zero and one hundred. Below I have published a selection of favourites and you can find them all in her book One Hundred Years.
“It’s clear to me now, from the people I’ve met while making ‘One Hundred Years,’ that every sorrow we endure helps us live a little deeper, love a little stronger, experience the world with a few more hues. Human interaction has an energy. It recharges the batteries in a way nothing else can. Working on this series has changed how I want to engage with the world, and the people in it.”
Jenny Lewis
Herb
0 years old
Rory
2 years old
‘Have it, eat it, apple.’
Blanche
8 years old
‘I have a black eye because I was playing sword fighting with a cardboard tube. It’s my fourth black eye. The only thing that would scare me is if a sabre-toothed tiger came up to me. I do get worried sometimes. I get loads of thoughts, at night-time mostly. When one comes, then another one comes, then another one comes. I write things that worry me down. It doesn’t look as scary then.’
Nia
15 years old
‘I push myself and I push myself, like I do with everything. I don’t like losing. I always want to be first and be at the front. I’m always going to try my hardest to win. That’s my motto, I just want to win. I did one of my raps about racism in front of the whole school. If I was rubbish at rapping it would be different, but I know I’m good.’
Alex
23 years old
‘When you’ve been told at a young age that you mean nothing, you don’t matter, you’re not focused, then you act like it. Now I work with kids. I’m very careful not to use any harsh or negative adjectives towards them, because it sticks, and I would rather help them find who they really are than plant a negative seed in their brain.’
Josh
25 years old
‘I talk very slowly. I go over everything I’m going to say in my head, like a script, checking it’s safe. I’ve always thought that’s just the way I am, but recently I discovered it’s a common trait among survivors of childhood abuse. Everyone is shaped by their experiences, whether it’s trauma or privilege. We all have a choice about how we respond to whatever happened to us.’
Sam
30 years old
‘My generation is probably the last that grew up without social media and I think we were very lucky to just be ourselves. I understand the compulsion, but it’s just not for me. I don’t have social media or seek that trigger. I’d like to think I don’t seek other people’s approval, which is not to say I don’t want to be liked, but I have no interest in taking pictures of myself having a good time.’
Martha
34 years old
‘This stage of life has surprised me. I thought I’d be the perfect mum. I thought I could give and give and give. But then I turned around and realised I was totally depleted. You think you’re throwing love at someone, behaving with the best intentions, but what your children actually need is to see you taking care of yourself; saying no sometimes. I can tell them whatever I tell them, but what they’re going to learn is what they see me doing.’
King
38 years old
‘I was arrested for doing a graffiti mission the day before my wedding – I made it out a few hours before the ceremony – but when my first child was born, that was it. I promised my wife I was done. There are four kids now looking up to me. It’s what I signed up for. They need me and I’m hungry for it. Can you imagine the amount of times I hear “Daddy” each day? This is my life and I love it.’
Anka
42 years old
‘I had anorexia, bulimia and everything in between. To me, it felt like an addiction, like being an alcoholic. It’s a distraction from life. I don’t see my traumas as doom and gloom, but as positive things – they are my chapters, you know? My family is my close group of friends, and my partner. We’re solid: both very independent, free souls, but together. I always call it “together alone” – and that’s where I’m most comfortable.’
Wilfrid
50 years old
‘I feel a little bit sheepishly luxurious in my life, compared to people who have to go to work every day and do what they don’t want to do.’
Len
56 years old
‘At 18, it was key for me to have someone older in my life to guide me. I was so happy and proud to work for Joe. Everyone just loved the man. We could trust each other, he was 100% my mentor. We worked together for 25 years until he got really sick from cancer. He deteriorated so quickly. I bought the workshop and changed everything over to my name. He was more a father to me than my actual father, the connection was very powerful. Knowing how important it is to have a mentor I’ve carried on that tradition. You can see the effect on kids when their father isn’t there that much. You have to listen so they can talk. You hold their hand until they let go and then you see them fly.’
Saskia
57 years old
‘The older I’ve got, the more I enjoy acting. I thought that after I’d had my family I might have softened and let go a bit, but actually I’m more fiercely passionate.’
Rob
59 years old
‘You need an incredible doggedness to be an artist. I was always fairly positive that I’d make my living out of my art, but it took a while to happen – it wasn’t till I was about 40 that it kicked off. Even when I started to have success my dad was still saying, “Why don’t you become a picture framer on the side to make a bit of cash?” There’s a part of me that wants to keep going and create more and more, but there’s also a side that thinks maybe I can relax a bit now, and not be pushing myself so hard all the time. Having said that, there are still stories I want to tell, there are still things I want to do.’
Kimberley
62 years old
‘A friend of mine brought their niece and nephew round. He was like, “I told them we were going to a museum.” I didn’t know if it was a compliment or not. They couldn’t stop talking about it to their parents. “Do we pay you?” They really thought it was a sort of gallery that I only opened to special people, you know. He brought her back a while ago as she’d asked to come back to the museum. It’s quite sweet.’
Geoff
63 years old
‘My parents were really strict, and yet they let me have 14 arcade machines in my tiny bedroom. I was a pinball hustler. First time I played, it was literally love at first sight. It was like a religion to me. The machines seemed alive, with personalities. I’d practise for eight hours a day. My parents were a little worried about me. I’ve got about 190 pinball machines now. I chat to them in my workshop.’
Elaine
69 years old
‘I’ve never lived on my own. I’m finding it fun. The only time I find it really scary is alone in bed at night. That accentuates the fact that there is no partner in my life anymore. And I’m beginning to realise that might be permanent. That’s the biggest sadness, but there’s fuck all I can do about it. I miss sex. Christ yes! And that to me is bizarre, because for me a whole life includes that. And yet somehow I can’t have it, I’m not allowed it. It’s horrible not being fancied. And I know that is such an unfeminist thing to say. But I would really like to be fancied.’
Sherlock
80 years old
‘I always wore my own clothes that I made. When I arrived here in my twenties, I had a jacket like Liberace with black and silver thread in it. I had a checked shirt, black trousers with white stitching down the sides, moccasins that were off-white, and lime green socks. One said “rock”, one said “roll”. When I see my boys in football shirts and tracksuit bottoms made of the nastiest fabric, I think to myself, they should be arrested walking around in those clothes. I wear better things to clean my car… when I had a car.’
John
83 years old
‘Before the war, virtually every garden had pigeons. People didn’t have radios – they didn’t have much at all – so many men, young and old, kept pigeons. They may also have used them for eating purposes. Even today, someone will stop and say to me, “Are you selling them? Can I eat them?” I still race them but, like me, they’re too old really. I’ve raced three times this year, but they came last each time. That’s never worried me. I’ve had some good times with them.’
Alec
99 years old
‘I don’t feel any different to when I was 30 or 40. Or 20, to be honest. When my daughter was round a few years ago, I was using a pickaxe in the garden and she started taking photos. I couldn’t understand why. She said, “Dad, not many people use a pickaxe when they are 95.”’
Photographs copyright © Jenny Lewis
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