So Long, Mama Irene
Mama Irene Sagar died on Thursday aged seventy-five. Many years ago, I passed an evening in her kitchen at this time of year and this is my account.
By the time you read this, Irene Sagar – proprietor of Lennies Snack Bar in Calvert Avenue in Shoreditch – will be in Thailand, gone to visit her family for Christmas. But each year, on the night before her departure, she closes early and cooks an elaborate feast for her friends. If you passed by that evening you would have seen a long table in the window with happy diners in party hats enjoying Mama’s Irene’s spicy cuisine, and it was my delight to be there amongst them to savour this special meal and record the preparations.
Lennies Snack Bar presents a modest face to the street, yet the view from inside across to George Dance’s magnificent church of St Leonards opposite, framed in Spring by the almond trees in blossom, creates a breathtaking prospect. But as the dusk fell on this particular afternoon in late December, the church receded into the gloom and the lights were out in the front of the cafe while Mama Irene worked peacefully in the kitchen at the back, where I kept her company as she told me her story.
“I only cook what I love, and I believe you can only do what you love. That’s why it’s not a job, it’s a passion.” she announced, stating her personal creed, as she placed a side of pork in the oven with a pat of affection and set about filleting six sea bream conscientiously. “I will never get tired of cooking,” she continued brightly, raising her head momentarily to share a grin with me.
Although you might assume that Mama Irene grew up cooking the Thai and Malaysian food for which she is famous, she only came to it later in life. Born in Malacca to a Malaysian father and a Thai mother she came to Yorkshire in 1958 as the wife of an airforce officer. “It was bloody cold,” she recalled. This was where Mama Irene attempted the Cornish pasty that became her notorious culinary debut, a gesture of reconciliation for her long-suffering husband after she was arrested several times for protesting against nuclear missiles. “I told him, ‘I believe in protest,'” she confided,“‘I married you, not the airforce,’ – but he was worried that they would take away his stripe.” Mama Irene delivered the pasty to her husband at work, with such overzealous contrition that she dropped it on the floor. And, partly as a consequence of this incident, today she is divorced with a fifty-year-old daughter and no hard feelings.
“I used to be an antique dealer specialising in nineteen twenties and Art Deco,” explained Irene, stirring her stockpot and introducing the next chapter in her life with cheerful alacrity “But I was so obsessed with that period that I wouldn’t sell any of it and I nearly lost my house. So I had to quit trading and I registered with a catering agency instead, as a general kitchen assistant. Working in different places, I saw what a chef can do and it made me want to be a chef. I worked during the day and went to school at night to get my qualifications. Then I became a commis chef and in the end I opened my own sandwich bar, Lennies Snack Bar in Old St.”
Mama Irene is justly proud of this period in her life, when things started to go right for her. Such was her success that she needed extra premises to prepare all the sandwiches and that was when she came to Calvert Avenue. “It was twenty years ago.” she realised, peeling garlic and filling with sentiment, “I saw this cafe, a typical greasy spoon, and I fell in love with it. So I asked the owner if she would sell it and I christened it Lennies after my place in Old St. But I thought it could become a Thai restaurant, and I opened up during the day selling homemade food.”
Halting from chopping celery and peering out towards the street to contemplate the changing neighbourhood, “I don’t know if it has changed for the better or the worse,” she said. “When I came here there was a strong community atmosphere, everyone looked out for each other. There was this button and buckle factory that stood empty for years, inhabited by Italian squatters, they had no money and no place to stay, and I used to go to wild parties there. They came to London to study circus and on Summer evenings there used to be juggling, fire-eating and rollerskating in the middle of Calvert Avenue. But also in those days, it was risky to walk down this road alone, quite often people would be attacked for their mobile phones, and they always came in here as a safe house where they could call and wait for the police to come.
This was the only cafe here, and I stayed open late so students studying art and photography at Hackney College could come and eat. They used to say, ‘Let’s go to Mama Irene’s and get a bowl of soup’ and they all gave me a couple of pounds each and I made them a bowl of soup, that’s how opening in the evenings first came about.” Since then, Mama Irene has been running her cafe by day and opening as a Thai restaurant at night, building up a loyal following and acquiring a lot of friends. There is nothing swanky about Lennies Snack Bar, simply a plain cafe with an open kitchen serving honest food and that is just how I like it.
“I love England so much,” she revealed, turning unexpectedly emotional as she added the spices and seasonings to her Thai Curry, “I am quite patriotic, I would rather live here in spite of the snow and the recession. It’s still a very fair place to live. You can make yourself heard here, but in Thailand or Malaysia you can’t even voice your opinion. I worked all my life here and I pay my dues, and I get upset when people run it to the ground.”
It was all coming together nicely. Once Mama Irene had her seabream marinating and her chicken, duck and pork cooking, and the curry was simmering, it was time to make her famous spicy sauce. “Cooking is an art, both in how you cook it and how you present it.” she informed me with authority, flourishing a ladle and arching her brows for emphasis.“First of all you eat it with your eyes. When it’s inviting and colourful, you want to eat it. My cooking is very spicy, I like strong flavours. I always do wholesome cooking, I don’t do artificial ingredients. In the Summer, I grow my own vegetables and bring them here from my allotment in Twickenham. I pick them in the early morning – you must pick them before midday because they taste so different, especially root vegetables. I grow my own herbs, beans, courgettes, tomatoes, lettuces and onions.”
By now, guests had begun to arrive, taking refuge from the cold night and sitting around in hungry anticipation, watching appreciatively as Mama Irene had three woks on the flame simultaneously, cooking the tofu, greens, and asparagus. With a placid nature and concentrated application, she had prepared an entire menu of dishes as we talked, and now they were all ready to be served at the same joyous moment. We had come to pay tribute to Mama Irene, and as we took our seats around the table, we were her children and we were blessed with her beneficence.
You may be interested in my other stories about Calvert Avenue:
How Raymond’s Shop became Leila’s Shop
Syd’s Coffee Stall, Shoreditch High St
So Long, Still & Star
Still & Star, 1 Little Somerset St, Aldgate
There is very little left of old Aldgate these days but the Still & Star, just opposite the tube station yet hidden down Little Somerset St, was a rare survivor. This tiny pub on the corner of two alleys is believed to be unique in the City of London as the sole example of what is sometimes described as a ‘slum pub’ – in other words, a licensed premises converted from a private house.
If it would interest you to take a look at this cosy characterful pub, which almost alone carries the history of the place, you had better do so soon because this week the City of London approved an application to demolish it to for a huge new office development.
Former landlord Michael Cox explained to me that the block once contained eight butcher’s shops which were all bought up by one owner, who opened the pub in 1820. Before it was renamed Little Somerset St, the passageway leading to the pub was ‘Harrow Alley’ but colloquially known as ‘Blood Alley.’ At that time, the City of London charged a tariff for driving cattle across the square mile and, consequently, a thriving butchery trade grew up in Aldgate and Whitechapel, slaughtering cattle before the carcasses were transported over to Smithfield.
There is no other ‘Still & Star’ anywhere else – the name is unique to this establishment – and Michael Cox told me the pub originally had its own still, which was housed in the hayloft above, while ‘star’ refers to the Star of David, witnessing the Jewish population of Aldgate in the nineteenth century.
All around us, pubs are being shut down permanently and demolished yet, as regular readers will know, I have a particular affection for these undervalued institutions which I consider an integral part of our culture and history – necessary oases of civility in the chaos of the urban environment.
Still & Star, 1951 (Courtesy Heritage Assets/The National Brewery Centre)
Still & Star, 1968 (Courtesy Heritage Assets/The National Brewery Centre)
Still & Star
The Still & Star portrayed in ‘Harrow Alley’ by Gustave Dore, 1880
Butcher’s shop at the corner of Harrow Alley (known as Blood Alley) leading through to the Still & Star
Map of 1890 shows the Still & Star with nearby butcher’s shops and slaughterhouses
Charringtons’ record of the landlords (Courtesy Heritage Assets/The National Brewery Centre)
The office block that will replace the Still & Star
A topsy-turvy cast of the old pub in green concrete will replace it nearby
You may also like to read about
At The Caslon Letter Foundry
22/23 Chiswell St with Caslon’s delivery van outside the foundry
For centuries, Caslon was the default typeface in the English language. William Caslon set up his type foundry in Chiswell St in 1737, where it operated without any significant change in the methods of production until 1937. These historic photographs taken in 1902, upon the occasion of the opening of the new Caslon factory in Hackney Wick, record both the final decades of the unchanged work of traditional type-founding, as well as the mechanisation of the process that would eventually lead to the industry being swept away by the end of the century.
The Directors’ Room with portraits of William Caslon and Elizabeth Caslon.
Sydney Caslon Smith in his office
Clerks’ office, 15th November 1902. A woman sits at her typewriter in the centre of the office.
Type store with fonts being made up in packets by women and boys working by candlelight.
Another view of the type store with women making up packets of fonts.
Another view of the type store.
Another part of the type store.
In the type store.
A boy makes up a packet of fonts in the type store.
Room of printers’ supplies including type cases, forme trolleys and electro cabinets.
Another view of the printers’ supplies store.
Printing office on an upper floor with pages of type specimens being set and printed on Albion and Imperial handpresses.
Packing department with crates labelled GER, GWR, LNWR, CALCUTTA, BOMBAY, and SYDNEY.
New Caslon Letter Foundry at Rothbury Rd, Hackney Wick, 1902.
Harold Arthur Caslon Smith at his rolltop desk in Hackney Wick with type specimens from 1780 on the wall, Friday 7th November, 1902.
Machine shop with plane, lathes and overhead belting.
Gas engines and man with oil can.
Lathes in the Machine Shop.
Hand forging in the Machine Shop.
Another view of lathes in the Machine Shop.
Type store with fonts being made up into packets.
Type matrix and mould store.
Metal store with boy hauling pigs upon a trolley.
Casting Shop, with women breaking off excess metal and rubbing the type at the window.
Another view of the Casting Shop.
Another view of the Casting Shop.
Founting Shop, with women breaking up the type and a man dressing the type.
Casting metal furniture.
Boys at work in the Brass Rule Shop.
Boys making packets of fonts in the Despatch Shop, with delivery van waiting outside the door.
Machine shop on the top floor with a fly-press in the bottom left.
Woodwork Shop.
Brass Rule Shop, hand-planing the rules.
Caretaker’s cottage with caretaker’s wife and the factory cat.
Photographs courtesy St Bride Printing Library
You may also like to read about
William Caslon, Letter Founder
On Night Patrol With PC Tassell
We join Constable Lew Tassell on a night patrol in the City of London on Tuesday December 12th 1972
Police Constable Lew Tassell of the City of London Police
“One week in December 1972, I was on night duty. Normally, I would be on beat patrol from Bishopsgate Police Station between 11pm-7am. But that week I was on the utility van which operated between 10pm-6am, so there would be cover during the changeover times for the three City of London Police divisions – Bishopsgate, Wood St and Snow Hill. One constable from each division would be on the van with a sergeant and a driver from the garage.
That night, I was dropped off on the Embankment during a break to allow me to take some photographs and I walked back to Wood St Police Station to rejoin the van crew. You can follow the route in my photographs.
The City of London at night was a peaceful place to walk, apart from the parts that operated twenty-four hours a day – the newspaper printshops in Fleet Street, Smithfield Meat Market, Billingsgate Fish Market and Spitalfields Fruit & Vegetable Market.
Micks Cafe in Fleet St never had an apostrophe on the sign or acute accent on the ‘e.’ It was a cramped greasy spoon that opened twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. During the night and early morning it served print-workers, drunks returning from the West End and the occasional vagrant.
Generally, we police did not use it. We might have been unwelcome because we would have stood out like a sore thumb. But I did observation in there in plain clothes sometimes. Micks Cafe was a place where virtually anything could be sourced, especially at night when nowhere else was open.”
Middle Temple Lane
Pump Court, Temple
King’s Bench Walk, Temple
Bouverie St, News of the World and The Sun
Fleet St looking East towards Ludgate Circus
Ludgate Hill looking towards Fleet St under Blackfriars Railway Bridge, demolished in 1990
Old Bailey from Newgate St looking south
Looking north from Newgate St along Giltspur St, St Bartholomew’s Hospital
Newgate St looking towards junction of Cheapside and New Change – buildings now demolished
Cheapside looking east from the corner of Wood St towards St Mary Le Bow and the Bank
HMS Chrysanthemum, Embankment
Constable Lew Tassell, 1972
Photographs copyright © Lew Tassell
You may also like to take a look at
The Bridges Of Old London
Traffic from Covent Garden Market crosses Waterloo Bridge, c. 1924
London owes its very existence to bridges, since the location of the capital upon the banks of the Thames was defined by the lowest crossing point of the river. No wonder that the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society collected this edifying series of pictures of bridges on glass plates to use in their magic lantern shows at the Bishopsgate Institute.
Yet until the eighteenth century, the story of London’s bridges was solely that of London Bridge. The Romans created the first wooden crossing of Thames close to the current site of London Bridge and the settlement upon the northern shore grew to become the City of London. When the Saxons tried to regain the City from the Danes in the eleventh century, they attached ropes to London Bridge and used their boats to dislodge the piers, thus originating the myth celebrated in the nursery rhyme “London Bridge is Falling Down.”
The first stone London Bridge was built by Peter de Colechurch in 1209 and lasted over six hundred years, surviving the Great Fire and numerous rebuildings of the houses and shops that clustered upon its structure. When traffic upon grew too crowded in 1722, a “keep left” rule was instated that later became the pattern for all roads in this country and, by 1763, all the houses were removed to provide extra clearance. Then, in 1831, John Rennie’s famous bridge of Dartmoor granite replaced old London Bridge until it was shipped off to Arizona in the nineteen-sixties to make way for the current concrete bridge, with its centrally heated pavements and hollow structure that permits essential pipes and cables to cross the Thames easily.
After London Bridge, next came Putney Bridge in 1726 and then Westminster Bridge in 1738 – until today we have a line of bridges, holding the north and south banks of London together tightly like laces on a boot. The hero of London’s bridges was unquestionably John Rennie (1761-1821) who pioneered the combination or iron and stone in bridge building and designed London Bridge, Waterloo Bridge, Southwark Bridge and Vauxhall Bridge, although only the Serpentine Bridge remains today as his memorial.
Even to the seasoned Londoner, there is something unfailingly exhilarating about sitting on top of a bus, erupting from the narrow city streets onto one of the bridges and discovering yourself suspended high above the vast River Thames, it is one of the definitive experiences of our city.
Tower Bridge took eight year to construct, 1886 -1894
Tower Bridge with barges, c. 1910
St. Paul’s Cathedral from Southwark Bridge, c. 1925
Southwark Bridge, c. 1925
Old wooden bridge at Putney, 1880. The second bridge to be built after London Bridge, constructed in 1726 and replaced by the current stone structure in 1886.
On Tower Bridge, 1905.
Tower Bridge, c. 1910
John Rennie’s London Bridge of 1831 viewed from the waterside, c. 1910
London Bridge, c. 1930. Sold to Robert Mc Culloch in 1968 and re-assembled in Arizona in 1971.
The former bridgekeeper’s house on Tower Bridge, c. 1900
Wandsworth Bridge by Julian Tolme, c. 1910 (demolished in 1937)
Waterloo Bridge, c. 1910. The increased river flow created by the demolition of old London Bridge required temporary reinforcements to Waterloo Bridge from 1884.
Waterloo Bridge, c. 1910
Under an arch of Waterloo Bridge, c. 1910
View under Waterloo Bridge towards Hungerford Bridge, Westminster Bridge, & Palace of Westminster, c. 1910
Westminster Bridge, c. 1910. The third bridge, built over the Thames after London and Putney Bridges, in 1739-1750. The current bridge by Thomas Page of 1862 is painted green to match the leather seats in the House of Commons.
Westminster Bridge, c. 1910
Westminster Bridge, c. 1910
Hammersmith Bridge with Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race, 1928. Dixon, Appleby & Thorne’s bridge was built in 1887.
Battersea Bridge, c. 1910 Sir Joseph Bazalgette’s bridge was built in 1879.
Battersea Bridge from waterside, c. 1910
Blackfriars Bridge, c. 1910
Cannon St Railway Bridge, c. 1910. Designed by John Hawkshaw and John Wolfe-Barry for the South Eastern Railway in 1866.
Serpentine Bridge, 1910. Designed by John Rennie in the eighteen-twenties.
Westminster Bridge, c. 1910
On Hammersmith Bridge, c. 1910
Victoria Embankment, c. 1910
London Bridge, c. 1910
Glass slides copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at
Terry Barns, Knot Tyer
‘There isn’t really a word for it in English,’ admitted Terry Barns, ‘in French, they call it ‘matelotage’ meaning ‘sailors’ knot-making.’
Terry did not become a serious knot tyer until his fifties, yet it was a tendency that revealed itself in childhood. Celebrating the Queen’s Coronation in 1953, when Terry was just nine years old, his mother made him a guardsman’s outfit from red and black crepe paper with a busby fashioned from the shoulders cut out of an old fur coat. Terry’s contribution was to make the chin strap. ‘We got some gold string and I tied reef knots over a core, making what I now know is known as a ‘Pilgrim’s Sennet’ or a ‘Soloman’s Bar,’ he explained to me in wonder at his former precocious self, ‘but I never thought anything about it at the time.’
This is how Terry tells the story of the intervening years –
‘My early life was in the Queensbridge Rd but I was born in Hertfordshire because Hitler was trying to blow up the East End in 1944. My mum was a dress machinist and my dad was a wood machinist, he used to drill the holes in bagatelles and I still have one he made at home. In 1950, when I was six, we got a Council House in Clapton with a bathroom and an inside toilet – it was wonderful.
Somehow, I passed the 11-plus and ended up at Grocers’ Company School in Hackney Downs. When I left school at fourteen, being a prudent person, I joined the General Post Office as a telephone engineer, running around Mare St and Dalston. Nobody told me I could have stayed on at school and I soon realised that if I didn’t leave the GPO, I’d never know anything else. So I became a ‘Ten Pound Pom’ and went off to Australia in 1966.
I met my wife Carol in Pedro St in Hackney at that time and she followed me to Australia shortly after. I was a very quick learner and I had a very good job in Sydney working for a Japanese telephone company, Hitachi, but we had no intention of staying and came back in 1968. Then we got married in 1969, had three children and bought a house, so that occupied me for the next twenty years! I went back to the GPO which became BT and, when I was fifty, they asked if I would like to take some money and not go back again. So I have been living on my BT pension for the past twenty years and that has been the story of my life.’
Yet, all this time that Terry had been working with telephone cables, his tendency with string and rope had been merely in abeyance. ‘In the seventies, my wife bought me a copy of The Ashley Book of Knots,’ he revealed, bringing out a pristine hardback copy of the knotter’s bible containing nearly four thousand configurations. At a stall outside the Maritime Museum in Greenwich, Terry came across the International Guild of Knot Tyers which led to a four day course with legendary knot tyer, Des Pawson in 1994. ‘He’s got a museum of rope work in his back garden,’ Terry confided in awe.
‘I’m an engineer, but Des – he’s artistic,’ Terry informed me, ‘he educated me how to see things, he showed me when things look right.’ For over ten years, Terry has been on the Council of the Guild of Tyers, accompanying Des as his bag man, demonstrating knot work at festivals of matelotage in France – ‘My kind of holiday,’ he describes it enthusiastically.
When a sculptor cast a rope in bronze to symbolise the identity of the East End, it was Terry who wound the strands – and you can see the result at the junction of Sclater St and Bethnal Green Rd today. The largest pieces of rope you ever saw are placed as features in Terry’s front garden in Woodford. Inside the house, walls are hung with nautical paintings and shelves are lined with volumes of maritime history. They tell the story of one man’s lifetime entanglement with cable, rope and string, and remind of us of how the East End was built upon the docks, of which the ancient and ingenious culture of rope work was a major thread, still kept alive by enthusiasts like Terry Barns.
Terry with one he tied earlier
You might like to find out more at International Guild of Knot Tyers
You may also like to read about
Ron McCormick’s Whitechapel
Ron McCormick photographed Whitechapel & Spitalfields in the early seventies and these pictures were exhibited at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1973.
Hessel St
Royal Oak, Whitechapel Rd
Old Montague St
Blooms, Whitechapel High St
Old Montague St
Old Montague St
Princelet St
Black Lion Yard
Fournier St
Brick Lane
Club Row
Brick Lane
Settle St, Whitechapel
Great Eastern Buildings, Quaker St
Woodseer St
Great Eastern Buildings, Quaker St
Sandys Row
Brick Lane Market
Christ Church School
Settle St, Whitechapel
Photographs copyright © Ron McCormick
You may also like to take a look at
Philip Marriage’s Spitalfields
