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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So Long, Kitty Jennings
Kitty Jennings died at the fine age of ninety-six years old, last Monday 10th May 2021
Kitty, Amelia (Doll Doll), Jimmy, Gracie & Patricia Jennings, Gifford St, Hoxton c.1930
One Sunday afternoon, I walked over to Columbia Rd Market to get a bunch of flowers for Kathleen – widely known as Kitty – Jennings, who had lived in Hoxton since she was born there in 1924. I found Kitty in a neat block of private flats near the canal which for many years she shared with her beloved sister Doll Doll, whose ashes occupied pride of place in a corner of the sitting room.
Once Barbara Jezewska, who grew up in Spitalfields and was Kitty’s neighbour in this building for seventeen years, had made the introductions, we settled down in the afternoon sun to enjoy biegels with salmon and cream cheese while Kitty regaled us with her memories of old Hoxton.
“Thank God we were lucky, we had a father who had a good job, so we always had a good table. There was not a lot of work when I was a kid, but we always got by. We were lucky that we always had good clothes and never got knocked about.
My father, Jim, he was a Fish Porter at Billingsgate Market and he had to work seven days. He was born in the Vinegar Grounds in Hoxton, where they only had one shared tap in the garden for all the cottages, and he was a friendly man who would help anyone. He left for work at four in the morning each day and came back in the early afternoon. We lived on fish. I’m a fish-mullah, I like plaice, jellied eels, Dover sole and middle skate. My poor old mum used to fry fish night and day, she was always at the gas stove.
I was born in Gifford St, Hoxton. There were five of us, four girls and one boy, and we lived in a little three bedroom house. My mother Grace, her life was cooking, washing and housework. She didn’t know anything else.
When my sister Amelia was born, she was so small they laid her in a drawer and we called her ‘Doll Doll.’ They put her in the Queen Elizabeth Children’s Hospital when she had rheumatic fever and she didn’t go to school because of that. She was happy-go-lucky, she was my Doll Doll.
One day, when she was at school, there was an air raid and all the children hid under the tables. They saw a man’s legs walk in and Doll Doll cried out, ‘That’s my dad!’ and her friend asked, ‘How do you recognise him?’ and Doll Doll said, ‘Because he has such shiny shoes.’ He took Doll Doll and said to the teacher, ‘My daughter’s not coming to school any more.’
I was dressmaking from when I left school at fourteen. My first job was at C&A in Shepherdess Walk but I didn’t like it, so I told my mum and left. I left school at Easter and the war came in August. After that, I didn’t go to work at all for five years. Then I went to work in Bishopsgate sewing soldiers’ trousers, I didn’t like that much either so I stayed at home.
Doll Doll and I, we used to love going to Hoxton Hall for concerts every Saturday. It cost threepence a ticket and there was a man called Harry Walker who’d sling you out if you didn’t behave. Afterwards, we’d go to a stall outside run by my uncle and he’d give us sixpence, and we’d go and buy pie and mash and go home afterwards – and that was our Saturday night. We used to go there in the week too and do gym and see plays.
On Friday nights, we’d go to the mission at Coster’s Hall and they’d give you a jug of cocoa and a biscuit, and the next week you’d get a jug of soup. It didn’t cost anything. We used to go there when we were hungry. In the school holidays, we went down to Tower Hill Beach and we’d cut through the market and see my dad, and he’d give us a few bob to buy ice cream.
Me and Doll Doll, we stayed at home with my mum and dad. The other three got married but I didn’t want to. I couldn’t find anybody that I liked, so I stayed at home with mummy and daddy, and I was quite happy with them. When they got old we cared for them at home, without any extra help, until they died. We had understanding guvnors and, Doll Doll and I took alternate weeks off work to care for them.
Doll Doll and I moved into these private flats more than thirty years ago. In those days, it was only women and once, when my neighbour thought her boiler was going to explode, we called the fire brigade. Doll Doll leaned over the balcony and called, ‘Coo-ee, young man! Up here!’
We never went outside Hoxton much when we were young, but – when we grew up – Doll Doll and I went to Florida and Las Vegas. I finally settled down and I didn’t wander no more.”
Doll Doll, Kitty and their mother Grace
Kitty in her flat in Hoxton
Doll Doll
Kitty places fresh flowers next to Doll Doll’s ashes each week
Kitty at a holiday chalet in Guernsey, 1960
Kitty Jennings with her friend and neighbour of sixteen years, Barbara Jezewska
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A story that began more than five centuries ago in Whitechapel ends today with the announcement of the Secretary of State’s decision to give the go ahead for the bell-themed boutique hotel, destroying the possibility of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry ever having any future as a fully working foundry.
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Peta Bridle’s Riverside Sketchbook
Peta Bridle sent me this latest series of her drawings.
“I made these sketches this spring. My drawings were all made on the spot and I was grateful for the bright dry weather which granted me excellent drawing conditions. I use Quink and a Chinese calligraphy brush which has a beautiful quality of line. You can create either the slightest hairline or a full heavy stroke of ink simply by altering the pressure a little. I was only able to make visits to London when my work rota allowed because I am a home carer. It has been drawing which got me through the lockdown.” Peta Bridle
Dr Salter’s Daydream, Bermondsey
This statue of a cat crouches on the river wall in Bermondsey. It is one of a collection of four statues to commemorate Dr Alfred Salter (1873-1945), his wife Ada and their only child Joyce, made by artist Diane Gorvin. Dr. Salter was a doctor, campaigner and Labour politician who lived and worked locally. In the Victorian era, the Salter family dedicated themselves to tackling poverty in Bermondsey and Alfred set up a medical practice to treat its poorest residents. His daughter Joyce died of Scarlet Fever when she was only eight years old. The statue of Dr Salter sits on a bench remembering his family in happier times. As I sketched the family cat, Dr. Salter and Ada looked on in silence whilst little Joyce leant against the wall, smiling to herself.
Boat Nails, Roof Tile, Oyster Shell, Cumberland Wharf, Rotherhithe
Cumberland Wharf has a sandy beach that you can reach by some stone steps. Along with an abundance of rusty nails, I found an oyster shell and a red roof tile. The nails were evidence of a barge building and boat repair workshop that once operated here. Charles Hay & Sons was established in 1789 and the premises backed directly onto the beach.
Houseboat, Cumberland Wharf, Rotherhithe
This sits on the bank at Cumberland Wharf. It is a quiet spot to draw in, the only distraction being the occasional police boat or clipper traversing the river. A walker brought their dog onto the beach whilst a mudlark searched the shore, looking for finds.
Monument, St Mary’s Churchyard, Rotherhithe
A park bench offered a convenient place to sit and draw this leaning monument with its faded inscription to Reverend Edward Blick, put there in affection by his parishioners. The churchyard was bright with spring flowers and I could hear the voices of children playing in the nursery beyond. St. Mary’s stands close to the Thames on a narrow cobbled street, close by the Mayflower Pub where Captain Christopher Jones moored the Mayflower on his way to North America in 1620.
Phoenix Wharf, Wapping
Phoenix Wharf is an Victorian warehouse backing directly on to the Thames. Unlike the other warehouses that line Wapping High St, it appears undeveloped as yet.
The York Watergate, Victoria Embankment Gardens
This was built in 1626 in the grounds of York House for the Duke of Buckingham to access the river. When the Embankment was constructed in the nineteenth century and the land reclaimed, the watergate became stranded and was left in situ. When I made this sketch the gardens were busy with people enjoying the spring sunshine and there was the drone of a lawnmower circling behind me.
Sphinx by George John Vulliamy, Victoria Embankment
This bronze sphinx is one of pair on either side of Cleopatra’s Needle, an Egyptian obelisk from 18th Dynasty, Pharaoh Thutmose III, presented to Britain in 1819. Tourists like to stop and have their photo taken next to the sphinx and many did while I was drawing there.
Herb Garden, Surrey Docks Farm, Rotherhithe
I sat in the corner of the herb garden, looking towards Canary Wharf over the river. From behind me came the gentle tap of metal from the blacksmith’s forge. In front, the high tide pounded the river wall, sending water slapping up onto the path. I used to visit Surrey Docks with my eldest daughter when she was small. Where the farm stands today was once part of a shipyard. Then it became a Victorian timber wharf. From 1883, it was used as a river ambulance receiving station from where smallpox and fever patients were transferred by boat to isolation hospitals further down the Thames Estuary.
Merchant Vessel Royal Iris with Tate & Lyle Plant
The MV Royal Iris once ferried passengers across the River Mersey in Liverpool and was the ship that inspired Gerry & the Pacemakers to write ‘Ferry ‘Cross The Mersey.’ It became a floating dance floor where bands performed, but pigeons have now replaced the partygoers from the past and the boat is a partially sunk wreck moored at Trinity Wharf.
Trinity Buoy Wharf Lighthouse
I sat across from the car park to draw London’s only lighthouse. It was built in 1864 to experiment lighting equipment for Trinity House lighthouses, lightships and buoys. The Chain and Buoy Store sits behind where iron mooring chains were once kept.
The Hope & Anchor, Charlton
I sat in the beer garden of the pub to sketch one of the anchors leaning against the railings. In the distance, the cable car spans the water from Greenwich Peninsula to the Royal Docks. The pub itself is painted black with a little round tower one end and faces directly onto the Thames.
Lola Rose, Broadness Creek, Kent
There are ramshackle buildings on stilts, reached via rickety walkways crossing the water, and the boatyard is very picturesque. I sat hidden among the reeds to sketch this little boat, the Lola Rose.
Double page of Broadness Creek, Swanscombe Marsh, Kent
Broadness Creek is a tidal inlet on the edge of Swanscombe Marshes. It is home to a small boating community and I spent a few indulgent days making sketches here. A line of electric pylons cross the marsh and reach beyond. A Dutch barge is moored in the distance. From where I sat, I could hear birdsong from the marsh – including a cuckoo – gulls wheeling overhead, wind catching the rigging of the boats and, out on the Thames, the throb of a ship’s engine as it slid past. In the distance, a procession of vehicles crossed the Dartford Crossing, linking Kent and Essex. The marshes have been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest due to its wetland, saltmarsh and varied wildlife habitats. Swanscombe Marsh is a magical place.
Drawings copyright © Peta Bridle
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At Wellington Buildings In Bow
No doubt you have seen them out of the corner of your eye, looming over Bow Rd tube station. Wellington Buildings, Cuthbert Arthur Bereton’s dignified Victorian housing blocks rise up like fairytale castles when you peer up at them from the railway platforms below.
They were constructed around 1900 by Brereton when he was Engineer to the Whitechapel & Bow Railway, for people displaced by the building of the underground railway line and Bow Rd station, which opened in 1902. Wellington Buildings serve as an attractive landmark within the vernacular urban landscape in Bow and are an important example of the social and industrial change which took place here over century ago, especially the impact of the expansion of the railways.
When the Whitechapel & Bow Railway Act was passed in April 1897, it gave the Metropolitan District Railway Company power of compulsory purchase and demolition of a third of the houses in Mornington Rd nearby. Consequently, they were obligated to rehouse those displaced and Wellington Buildings was the result, tucked in at the north end of Wellington Way beside the station.
Comprising two tall blocks of tenements of yellow London stock bricks, the buildings are embellished with glazed Doulton bricks at ground level, and red bricks at corners and in the window surrounds – and a little discreet lattice work in the manner of William Butterfield’s ecclesiastical and collegiate architecture, high upon the wall, just to give them distinction. Brereton also contrived projecting bays for staircases that were originally open to the elements under pointed gables, and a low range on the south side of the courtyard served as a laundry and bathhouse. He came from a family of generations of heroic civil engineers and architects, but is chiefly remembered today for the elegant austerity of his design for Kew Bridge.
Wellington Buildings are a noble location in the history of the Suffrage movement. In 1913, number 37 was the home of Miss F E Adams, Honorary Secretary of the East London Branch of the Women’s Freedom League. According to The Vote newspaper, regular meetings were held there as part of the Women’s Suffrage movement.
“On Monday last a branch meeting was held at 37, Wellington Buildings, Bow. It was decided that till further notice branch meetings should be hold at the same address on alternate Thursdays.”
The Vote, Friday 7th Nov 1913
Standing today in their pristine, unaltered state after more than a century, Wellington Buildings are not listed yet adjoin Bow Rd Underground station which is Grade II listed and built at the same time. We must hope that their position, within the curtilage of the listed structure and being by the same architect as the station, will afford them some degree of protection.
A planning application for crude bulky extensions to Wellington Buildings in grey brick with grey zinc-clad roofs and aluminium windows is currently under consideration by the council. You can study the plans online by clicking here and entering PA/21/00427/A1 in the search box. Comments can be mailed to development.control@towerhamlets.gov.uk until 21st May.
‘projecting bays for staircases that were originally open to the elements under pointed gables’
’embellished with glazed Doulton bricks at ground level, and red bricks at corners and in the window surrounds’
‘a little discreet lattice work in the manner of William Butterfield’s ecclesiastical and collegiate buildings high upon the wall, just to give them distinction’
Bow Rd Station
Minnie Lansbury clock in Bow Rd opposite Wellington Buildings
Suffragette Minnie Lansbury on her way to be arrested at Poplar Town Hall
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Click on Adam Dant’s new map to explore the parish of St Martin-In-The Fields
Adam Dant created this print to celebrate beating the bounds at St Martin-in-the- Fields on the three hundredth anniversary of the building of James Gibbs’ famous church. It forms the centrepiece for an exhibition of Adam’s maps in the crypt which is open now and runs through the summer in Trafalgar Sq.
Visitors are encouraged to use Adam’s map to walk the bounds of the parish of St-Martin-in-the-Fields. It illustrates a broad historical sweep, augmented with familiar landmarks and buildings, anecdotes and incidents from the lives of numerous former parishioners. The friendly personages of many of the parish’s current residents are also dotted across the terrain, permitting map readers to spot the locals.
CLICK TO ORDER A COPY OF MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND
Adam Dant’s MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND is a mighty monograph collecting together all your favourite works by Spitalfields Life‘s Contributing Cartographer in a beautiful big hardback book.
Including a map of London riots, the locations of early coffee houses and a colourful depiction of slang through the centuries, Adam Dant’s vision of city life and our prevailing obsessions with money, power and the pursuit of pleasure may genuinely be described as ‘Hogarthian.’
Unparalleled in his draughtsmanship and inventiveness, Adam Dant explores the byways of London’s cultural history in his ingenious drawings, annotated with erudite commentary and offering hours of fascination for the curious.
The book includes an extensive interview with Adam Dant by The Gentle Author.
Adam Dant’s limited edition prints are available to purchase through TAG Fine Arts
Spring At Spitalfields City Farm
The second of four features in collaboration with Contributing Photographer Rachel Ferriman, documenting the seasons of the year at Spitalfields City Farm
This was the spring we waited too long for, the spring that came late, the spring that teased us with bouts of warm weather in March and then frosts in May. Yet at last, this spring that we all been yearning for has indubitably arrived.
With the lifting of restrictions, Spitalfields City Farm is reopening to visitors, resulting in long lines down Buxton St of east enders seeking solace, young and old waiting in eagerness to reacquaint themselves with Nature.
It was my pleasure to be greeted at the farm gate by development manager Jamie Morrish who kindly took me on a ramble around the precincts. With his worn tweed jacket and white beard, he looks the very picture of a rural retainer yet he revealed he is fascinated by the urban cobbled roads traversing the site, remnants of the streets that once stood where now are fields. ‘They tell a story of what used to be,’ he explained, ‘and I think that’s important.’
Already the vegetable patch at the farm is full of life, with lines of Swiss Chard flourishing, and potatoes, beetroot, onions and broad beans on the way. ‘As an experiment we are trying out a variety of different vegetables to see which things work,’ Jamie explained proudly. ‘It’s a bit of fun because when you see all these coloured leaves, it’s really attractive. We’re going to have an amazing array this year and we’re going to be producing salad boxes for local people.’
I was very impressed by the way rainwater is collected on the roof of a shed and drains along the gutters to pipes which run underneath the vegetable patch, automatically watering the plants. Jamie led me into a polytunnel where shiny green lettuces flourished in the humid moist atmosphere. Outside, the crab apples were heavy with pink blossom and, despite the late frosts, a plum tree had already developed hundreds tiny green fruit covering the branches. ‘It’s going to be good year for fruit,’ Jamie exclaimed in delight. ‘We’re in a warm pocket here.’
‘We’re going to plant a long border for bees and birds,’ he continued introducing a new idea and showing me a rectangle of bare soil. ‘We focus a lot on production for humans to eat and now we are going to pay attention to the needs of bees and birds. This is going to be a perennial bed and will take a few years to mature.’
A loud chorus of birdsong accompanied our ramble, interrupted only by the trains of the East End London line passing close by on their journey between Whitechapel and Shoreditch High St.
Jamie introduced me to a pair of handsome Buff Orpington chicks only a few weeks old. ‘One was born with splayed legs, so we splinted his legs together,’ Jamie admitted protectively. ‘When he hatched, he couldn’t balance, he kept tipping over and falling on his back, but Emma took care of him by bandaging his legs and, now his legs have straightened, he’s fine. He’s grown quite big.’
Thus I present my evidence to you, should you require it, that – after a few stumbles – spring has truly arrived in Spitalfields.
Crab apple in flower
Beatrix lost her right ear but survived a dog attack as a lamb in Surrey six years ago
Sarah, one of the volunteers
Buff Orpington chicks at five days old
One of the Buff Orpington chicks, around two weeks old
Patricia watering
Tess with freshly harvested Chard leaves
Tanya & Tess in the potting shed
Bella, the farm cat, dozes in the warmth of a polytunnel
Holmes, the kune kune pig, emerges for spring
Photographs copyright © Rachel Ferriman
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