In Search Of ‘Sparrows Can’t Sing’
Dame Barbara Windsor died on Thursday aged eighty-three. I shall always think of her wistfully as the Spitalfields Life interview that I should love to have done but which never happened. My favourite performance of hers was in Sparrows Can’t Sing, the greatest East End film, and in tribute to her I publish my account of going in search Cowley Gardens, one of the primary locations.
This is what happens when you try to carry a ladder the wrong way down a narrow alley, as Roy Kinnear is discovering in this frame from Joan Littlewood’s film Sparrows Can’t Sing.
You can see through the arch to Cowley Gardens in Stepney as it was in 1962. This is where Fred (Roy Kinnear’s character) lived with his mother in the film and here his brother Charlie (James Booth) turned up after two years at sea to ask the whereabouts of his wife Maggie (Barbara Windsor), finding that the old terrace in which he lived with Maggie had been demolished in his absence.
The drama revolves around Charlie’s discovery that Maggie has moved into a new tower block with a new man, and his attempts to woo her back. Perhaps there are too many improvised scenes, yet the film has a rare quality – you feel all the characters have lives beyond the confines of the drama, and there is such spirit and genuine humour in all the performances that it communicates the emotional vitality of the society it portrays with great persuasion. In supporting roles, there is Harry H. Corbett, Yootha Joyce, Brian Murphy and several other superb actors who came to dominate television comedy for the next twenty years. Filmed on location around the East End, many locals take turns as extras, including the Krays – Barbara was dating Reggie at the time – who can be seen standing among the customers in the climactic bar room scenes.
My favourite moment in the film is when Charlie searches for Maggie in an old house at the bottom of Cannon St Rd. On the ground floor in an empty room sits an Indian at prayer with his little son, on the first floor some Afro-Caribbeans welcome Charlie into their party and on the top floor Italians are celebrating too. Dan Jones, who lives round the corner in Cable St, told me that this was actually Joan Littlewood’s house where she and Stephen Lewis wrote the screenplay.
I once met Joan Littlewood at an authors’ party hosted by her publisher. She was a frail old lady then but I recognised her immediately by her rakish cap. She was sitting alone in a corner, being ignored by everyone, and looking a little lost. I pointed her out discreetly to a couple of fellow writers but, too awestruck by her reputation, they would not dare approach. Yet I loved her for her work and could not see her neglected, so I walked over and asked if I could kiss her. She consented graciously and, once I had explained why I wanted to kiss her – out of respect and gratitude for her inspirational work – I waved my pals over. We enjoyed a lively conversation but all I remember is that as we said our goodbyes, she took my hand in hers and said ‘I knew you’d be here.’ Although she did not know me or my writing, I understood what she meant and I shall always remember the night I kissed Joan Littlewood.
Watching Sparrows Can’t Sing again recently, I decided to go in search of Cowley Gardens only to discover that it is gone. The street plan has been altered so that where it stood there is not even a road anymore. Just as James Booth’s character returned from sea to find his nineteenth century terrace gone, the twentieth century tower where Barbara Windsor’s character shacked up with the taxi driver has itself also gone, demolished in 1999. Thus, the whole cycle of social and architectural change recorded in this film has been erased.
I hope you can understand why I personally identify with Roy Kinnear and his ladder problem, it is because I too want to go through this same arch and I am also frustrated in my desire – since nowadays there is a solid wall filling the void and preventing me from ever entering. The arch is to be found beneath the Docklands Light Railway between Sutton St and Lukin St. Behind this brick wall, which has been constructed between the past and the present, Barbara Windsor and all the residents of Cowley Gardens are waiting. Now only the magic of cinema can take me there to join them.
The arch from Sparrows Can’t Sing today
The Battle For Brick Lane
Brick Lane 1978 by Dan Jones
Since September, I have been working behind the scenes to curate an exhibition for the Spitalfields Trust about the culture and history of Brick Lane and the Truman Brewery. It opens tomorrow at 25 Princelet St, E1 6QH, a breathtaking unrestored eighteenth century house and you are all invited to visit under socially-distanced conditions. Dan Cruickshank will cut a ribbon at noon. For those unable to make the journey, some of the contents can be viewed at www.battleforbricklane.com
Exhibition opens noon – 6pm on Saturday 12th, Sunday 13th, Wednesday 16th, Thursday 17th, Friday 18th, Saturday 19th and Sunday 20th December.
It includes a show of Phil Maxwell’s photographs of Brick Lane over the past thirty years, a specially-commissioned model of the Truman Brewery by Sebastian Harding and a diorama of Brick Lane from the Bishopsgate Institute collection.
This opening launches a campaign by the Spitalfields Trust to stop a proposal to build an ugly shopping mall with four floors of corporate offices on top at the Old Truman Brewery. Instead of this arbitrary scheme, the Trust seeks to raise a wide debate to create a plan for the whole brewery site.
Phil Maxwell has photographed Brick Lane for over thirty years
Part of Sebastian Harding’s model
Diorama of Brick Lane from Bishopsgate Institute collection
The ugly big block proposed for the corner of Brick Lane & Woodseer St
HELP US SAVE BRICK LANE
* This development will undermine the authentic cultural quality of Brick Lane.
* The generic architecture is too tall and too bulky, ruining the Brick Lane & Fournier St Conservation Area.
* It offers nothing to local residents whose needs are for genuinely affordable homes and workspaces.
* It is an approach that is irrelevant to a post-Covid world, with more people working from home and shopping locally or online.
* Where it meets the terraces of nineteenth century housing, the development is out of scale and causes up to 60% loss of light.
* Instead of this arbitrary scheme, we need a plan for the entire brewery site that reflects the needs and wishes of residents.
HOW TO OBJECT EFFECTIVELY
You can help us stop this bad proposal by writing a letter of objection to the council as soon as possible.
Please write in your own words and head it OBJECTION.
Quote Planning Application PA/20/00415/A1
Anyone can object wherever they live.
Members of one household can each write separately.
You must include your postal address.
Send your objection by email to Patrick.Harmsworth@towerhamlets.gov.uk
Or by post to Planning Department, Town Hall, Mulberry Place, 5 Clove Crescent, London, E14 2BG
An Astonishing Photographic Discovery
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Below you can read my account of how we found Horace Warner’s photographs and brought them to publication.
These breathtaking photographs were taken by Horace Warner in Spitalfields at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Before I published them on Spitalfields Life, they had hardly been seen by anyone outside his immediate family. We were granted permission personally by Horace Warner’s grandson, Ian McGilvray.
Previously, only a handful of Warner’s sympathetic portraits of the children who lived in the courtyards off Quaker St – known as the Spitalfields Nippers – were believed to exist, but through some assiduous detective work by researcher Vicky Stewart and a stroke of good luck upon my part, we were able to make contact with his grandson who keeps two albums comprising more than one hundred of his grandfather’s pictures of Spitalfields, from which the photographs published here are selected.
Many of the pictures in these albums are photographic masterpieces and, after I published the book, David Bailey contacted me to say he believed they are the most significant set of portraits ever taken in the East End.
There is a rare clarity of vision in the tender photography of Horace Warner that brings us startling close to the Londoners of 1900 and permits us to look them in the eye for the first time. You can imagine my excitement when I met Ian McGilvray and opened Horace Warner’s albums to discover so many astonishing pictures. I experienced a sensation almost of vertigo, like looking down the dark well of time and being surprised by these faces in sharp focus, looking back at me.
It was no straightforward journey to get there. I first published a series of Horace Warner’s Spitalfields Nippers in these pages in 2011, reproduced from a booklet accompanying a 1975 exhibition of the handful of pictures once published in fund-raising leaflets by the Bedford Institute in 1912. When I sought to reproduce these pictures in The Gentle Author’s London Album, Vicky Stewart established that the photographic prints were held in the Quaker archive at Friends House in the Euston Rd.
This discovery which permitted me to include those pictures in my Album was reward enough for our labours. The story might easily have ended there, if we had not been shown a 1988 letter from Horace Warner’s daughter Gwen McGilvray that accompanied the prints. In this letter, Gwen mentions the ‘albums’ – this was the first tantalising evidence of the existence of more of Horace Warner’s Spitalfields photographs.
Even as our hopes of finding these other pictures were raised, we were disappointed to realise that Gwen was unlikely to be still alive. Yet through online research and thanks to his unusual surname, Vicky was able to find an address for one of Gwen’s four children, her son Ian, in Norfolk. It was a few years out of date but there was a chance he was still there, so we sent off a copy of The Gentle Author’s London Album to Ian McGilvray.
Within weeks, Ian wrote back to ask if I would like to visit him and see the ‘albums.’ It was my good fortune that the one of Horace Warner’s grandchildren we had been able to reach was also the guardian of the photographic legacy. And so it was that on a bright winter’s day I made a journey to Norfolk to meet Ian and see the complete set of Horace Warner’s Spitalfields Nippers for the first time. My fear was that I had seen the most important images among those already known, but my shock was to recognise that the best pictures have not yet been seen.
These wonderful photographs revolutionise how we think about East Enders at the end of the nineteenth century since, in spite of their poverty, these are undeniably proud people who claim a right to existence which transcends their economic status. Unlike the degraded photographic images created by charitable campaigners or the familiar middle-class studio portraits, Horace Warner’s relaxed intimate pictures draw us into a personal relationship with his subjects whom we meet as our equals. The Spitalfields Nippers are a unique set of photographs, that witness a particular time, a specific place, a discrete society, and an entire lost world.
As a designer managing the family wallpaper-printing business, Horace Warner had the income and resources to explore photography in his spare time and produce images of the highest standard technically. As superintendent of the charitable Bedford Institute, he was brought into close contact over many years with the families who lived nearby in the yards and courts south of Quaker St. As a Quaker, he believed in the equality of all and he was disturbed by the poverty he witnessed in the East End. In the Spitalfields Nippers these things came together for Horace Warner, creating compassionate images that gave dignity to his subjects and producing great photography that is without parallel in his time.
Excerpt of 1988 letter from Horace Warner’s daughter Gwen McGilvray referring to the ‘albums’ and giving the name of his grandson, Ian McGilvray. (Reproduced courtesy of Friends House)
Sisters Wakefield
Walter Seabrook
Celia Compton
Photo referred to by Gwen McGilvray with headlines at the end of the Boer War, dating it to 1902
At the Whitechapel Gallery to see the Burne Jones exhibition 1901
In Pearl St (now Calvin St)
See the man looking over the wall in Union Place
Jagir Kaur’s Recipes
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In the book, chapters of biography are alternated with Jagir Kaur’s traditional recipes from the Punjab, as cooked in Spitalfields over the last seventy years at 38 Princelet St.
Prashad is made using butter, semolina, sugar, and water – four simple ingredients. Dad used to make this ‘gracious gift’ and we still make it today. It is always given out at gurdwaras whenever Sikhs gather, served to everyone irrespective of rank or caste. The offering must be served with and accepted with hands only. At 38 Princelet St, Dad said we could use plates. Before anyone eats, five portions of prashad representing each of the five beloved gurus, are taken out of the bowl and laid aside. Dad used to make us put these into the fire.
Traditionally, the person receiving prashad must be seated or low on the ground to humbly accept the offering with two hands. Both the person giving and the one receiving the offering should try to cover their heads. (At home, we used to have to run off to find something to cover ours.)
Makes about twenty portions
1 cup ghee or unsalted butter
1 cup coarse semolina
1 cup sugar
3 cups water
Add the sugar to the water in a pot and bring to the boil.
In another pan, melt the ghee or unsalted butter.
When the butter is melted, add the semolina to the melted butter and stir the mixture continuously to lightly toast the flour.
Continue stirring the flour and butter mixture while the sugar and water mixture boils to make a light syrup. The butter will separate from the toasted flour, turning a deep golden colour and emanating a godly aroma.
Pour the boiling sugar syrup into the toasted flour and butter, mixing it with a wooden spoon. Stir rapidly until the water is absorbed. Keep stirring the prashad as it thickens into a firm mix.
The prashad is ready when it slides easily from the pan into a bowl. We like serving each portion with a few raisins and then the blessing is complete.
Sarson Da Saag is served in gurdwaras. Dad and all the family loved it because it is a distinctively Punjabi recipe and a glorious green colour. Yellow rotis are traditionally eaten with this dish.
Makes about twenty generous portions
FOR THE VEGETABLE BASE
4 bunches of saag (mustard leaves) 2 bunches of spinach
1 bunch of bathua (pigweed)
2 bunches of methi ( fenugreek)
1 leek
1 bunch of large spring onions, cleaned and chopped 1 bulb of garlic, (about 6–8 cloves) peeled, not chopped
FOR THE CARAMELISED ONION MIXTURE
mustard oil
butter/ghee
1 small onion, finely chopped
1 bulb of garlic (about 6–8 cloves), finely chopped 8–10 green chillies, finely chopped
salt
3 inch piece of ginger
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 cup makki atta (corn flour)
Wash and finely chop the mustard and spinach leaves, piling them into a large pot. Add the chopped onions and the whole garlic cloves. Add one litre of hot water to the greens and bring to a boil. Simmer for about half an hour until tender.
Meanwhile, in a smaller pan, add the onions, then the mustard oil, butter/ghee, garlic, ginger, green chilli and cumin seeds. Cook until the onions are caramelised and the mixture turns a golden brown (when I was young, the National Front used to beat me up for smelling of caramelised onion).
Add the onion mixture to the large pot with the greens and mix well together. Add the makki atta gradually, mixing thoroughly.
When everything is combined, blend the whole mixture in a blender, being careful not to make it too mushy and leaving some of the texture intact. Once the mixture is blended, simmer for another fifteen minutes, stirring occasionally.
Serve with yellow rotis.
Kahdi – this Punjabi gurdwara yogurt fills you up. Turmeric gives it a beautiful yellow colour. When asked, I always say that this is our curry. The lovely thing about our yogurt is that you can add as many vegetables as you please to it.
Makes about twenty generous portions
FOR THE BASE
400g full fat yogurt
3–3.5 litres of hot water
1 cup besan flour (gram/chickpea flour) 1 teaspoon of turmeric powder
75g butter
FOR THE CARAMELISED ONION MIXTURE
butter/ghee or mustard oil
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 tomato, diced
1 can of tomatoes
1 whole bulb of garlic, finely chopped
7 green chillies, finely chopped
1 teaspoon of salt
1 pinch Hing-Asafoetida
1 teaspoon of cumin seeds
3 inch piece of ginger, finely chopped
5 curry leaves, rinse them under water if you use dried ones
1 teaspoon of turmeric powder
First make the base. In a large bowl, mix the yogurt, turmeric, besan flour and butter. Gradually add the water – do this slowly and mix well to make sure there are no lumps.
Pour this mixture into a large pot on a medium heat and bring to a boil. You need to stir the mixture all the time (I used to love doing this job for my mum). If you do not stir the mixture continuously, it will become lumpy and stick to the bottom of the pot. Once the mixture has come to the boil, reduce the heat. The base mixture must simmer for about two hours, and you need keep stirring it regularly.
To make the caramelised onion mixture, cook all the ingredients in the butter/ghee or mustard oil until golden brown.
Once the base mixture has been simmering for about two hours, add the caramelised onion mixture and simmer, stirring occasionally, for another fifteen minutes.
For added flavour, you can sprinkle some Garam Masala on top. Jagir uses a teaspoon each of jeera (cumin), coriander seeds, cardamom seeds, green cardamon, sunth (dried ginger powder), and two whole cloves of garlic, one cinnamon stick and three black peppercorns. She mixes and grinds this all together.
Suresh Singh & Jagir Kaur at 38 Princelet St
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
Click here to order a copy of A MODEST LIVING
Some Favourite John Claridge Photographs
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Lady with Gumball Machine, Spitalfields 1967
Perhaps no-one took more photographs of the East End in the sixties than John Claridge? Here are just a few of my all-time favourites from his classic volume EAST END. The book has been so popular that we only have a few copies left.
Hotdog van, Spitalfields 1961
The Daily Message in E3, 1972
Corsetiere, Whitechapel 1961. “A man came up to me while I was photographing this and asked, ‘What are you doing?’ ‘I’m taking a picture,’ I said. ‘There’s something wrong with you, lad,’ he replied.”
Man with jobs poster, Spitalfields 1963. “I asked him, ‘Are you alright for a couple of bob?’ and he sat in the sun for me for a moment.”
Butchers, Spitalfields 1966. “I had just finished taking a picture next door, when this lady came out with a joint of meat and asked me to take her photograph with it.”
Groundsman, E15 1965. “This is the groundsman at the Memorial Ground where I played football aged ten in 1954.”
Ear piercing, Spitalfields 1964. Is this ear piercing done to people over five years of age, or has the jeweller been piercing ears since five years of age?
E16, 1982. “He’s going home to his dinner.”
Plaistow, John Claridge’s neighbours Mr & Mrs Jones, 1968
Clocking in at the Truman Brewery, 1964
Spitalfields 1960. “I came across this lady sitting on an orange box, there was nothing else around. Then she got up and walked off with her box.”
At the ’59 Club, 1973
Princelet St, 1962. “Just a man and a pigeon.”
Mass x-ray to eliminate tuberculosis, 1966
Michael Ferrier, Breaker’s Yard, E16 1975. “He looks like the artful dodger.”
Whitechapel Bell Foundry, 1982
Whitechapel Bell Foundry, 1982
E9, 1964.
E1, 1968. “My mum and dad read the Stratford Express.”
Dray horse grazing next to the Truman Brewery, 1964
Newsagent, Spitalfields, 1966. “I said, ‘Shame about Walt Disney dying, can I take your picture next to it?’ and he said, ‘Alright.’”
Brick Lane, 1966
Strudel, E2 1962. “You’ll like this, boy!’ I had just taken a photograph outside this lady’s shop. I said, ‘I think your window looks beautiful.’ and she asked me in for a slice of apple strudel. It was fantastic! But she would not accept any money, it was a gift. She said, ‘You took a picture of my shop.’”
Sammy Fishoff, Old Montague St, 1964
Tubby Isaac’s, Spitalfields 1982. “Aaahhh Tubby’s, where I’ve had many a fine eel.”
John Claridge taking a photo in Old Montague St, 1964
My Mum & Dad, Plaistow 1964. “Taken in the backyard.”
John Claridge’s childhood home in Plaistow, 1964
From The Pages Of My Album
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At Trinity Green Almshouses, Whitechapel
Here are just a few of my all-time favourite photographs of the capital selected from over 600 in THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S LONDON ALBUM. It has been so immensely popular that we only have a few copies left now.
Funerary image of Charles II at Westminster Abbey (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
Crudgie, Motorcycle Courier, at the Ace Cafe
The Little Midshipman from the Signs of Old London (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
Franceskka Abimbola, Wax Seller of Wentworth St, by Jeremy Freedman
The Vine Tavern from the Pubs of Old London (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
Swan Upping on the Thames
Inside the Dome of St Pauls from the Forgotten Corners of Old London (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green with one of her collection of vintage domestic appliances
Jam in Piccadilly from the Streets of Old London (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
Aaron Biber, London’s Oldest Barber
Car Crash in Clerkenwell by Colin O’Brien
Henrietta Keeper sings at E. Pellicci
Graffiti at the Tower of London
‘Clockwell’ from Bob Mazzer’s Tube Photography
Barn the Spoon, Spoonmaker
Billingsgate from the Markets of Old London (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
Mick Taylor, the Sartorialist of Brick Lane
Old House in Lambeth from the Ghosts of Old London (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
Gina of Gina’s Restaurant in Bethnal Green Rd
From Libby Hall’s collection of the Dogs of Old London (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
Clive Murphy, Oral Historian in his Brick Lane kitchen
The Trade Cards of Old London
Gary Arber, Printer, in the living room of his grandparent’s home in the Roman Rd
Trafalgar Sq from the Nights of Old London (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
Phillip Lucas, Collector
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‘I think I have a pronounced hunter-gatherer instinct’
portrait by Lucinda Douglas Menzies
When I visited Phillip Lucas in his 1725 house in Spitalfields that he has been renovating for more than a decade, we sat on two threadbare wing chairs, conversing over a sea of objects and piles of books which filled the room. In its profusion, the scene rivalled the opening sequence of Citizen Kane. Imagine my incredulity when Phillip confessed that he had just sent off most of the contents of his house to the sale room, testing my imagination to conceive how it had been before.
By profession, Phillip is a barrister but in his soul he is a collector. He bought his house to hold his collection of 1680-1730 furniture which he put in store ten years ago while he repaired the building, only to fill it from floor to ceiling with a whole new collection. I was quite overwhelmed when I considered that as well as the three hundred items Phillip sent for auction, he had enough the fill the house all over again in storage on top of what he already has in the house, which seemed more than sufficiently furnished to me.
Such is the true nature of a consummate collector like Phillip, who credibly rationalised his situation to me as an opportunity to edit and select his favourite items. While the afternoon flew away, I nodded my head in a mixture of sympathy, wonder and bewilderment as Phillip explained how it all came about.
“The first consciousness I had of the eighteenth century was through a school trip to 1 Royal Crescent in Bath and Wookey Hole Caves. The caves made no impression on me whatsoever but the drawing room at the Royal Crescent made a big impact and I bought a postcard of it which I still have.
I spent my teenage years going to antique fairs, buying eighteenth century tea caddies, and fell in with some antique dealers in Winchester. My parents were concerned that this might have an adverse effect. I spent my time hanging onto the coattails of these dealers, trying to sell them things and going around with them when they were buying.
At the age of five I had decided I wanted to be a lawyer and I could not be deflected from it, but the antique dealing side did not arise until the age of twelve. I realised then that the Law would have to take priority.
Around the age of sixteen, I grew very concerned about old buildings and I had a book of derelict houses in Scotland. So I spent a couple of summers going round these places, studying them and despairing for their future. Then I spent a summer visiting derelict buildings in Wales. It is disheartening to see what has happened to some of those places now. At this time, the idea crystallised that I what wanted to do was to save a Georgian house, restore it and formulate a collection as an experience for me, both to gather it and also live in those surroundings.
When I went to university, I had a modest grant which I spent on eighteenth century furniture and a blue sherpa van. While other students were going clubbing, I was driving to Shepton Mallet Fair and standing in the rain at five in the morning, buying and selling from the back of my van – at the same time as studying for a Law degree.
When I moved to London, I had a bedsit in Shepherds Bush and I started going to the big auctions and the antique shops. I was escorted around some of the most glamorous shops because I think they thought I was going to steal something. I must have looked about twelve even though I was in my early twenties.
I was seeing better quality objects in the London sale rooms. I ran out of space in my bedsit and the van became an overshoot for storage. I had a Georgian pianoforte in my bedsit at one point that took up most of the room. At Christies, South Kensington, I had a choice of either a painting by Wright of Derby or a portrait by Arthur Devis. So that was quite an exciting time.
My collecting started in the eighties with Neo-Classicism, inspired by the postcard of 1 Royal Crescent. I began with late eighteenth century tea caddies and I progressed to the early nineteenth century and Regency, which was very hot in the eighties. Then I discovered oak furniture and jumped back to early oak before moving through mahogany to walnut, where I settled. My current speciality is furniture between 1680 and 1730, the golden age of walnut. But I am still buying Regency things because I cannot resist them. I have had a recent revelation with Renaissance bronzes and I also collect early Georgian portraiture, particularly conversation pieces.
I am especially interested in domestic items that tell a story about an individual. I love personal inscriptions and things that might not have been intended to survive. Dennis Severs House is an inspiration to me and David Milne, the curator, introduced me to English Delft -which was an expensive day.
My collection pulls me in different directions and I can unexpectedly discover a new area t any point. For years I have been trying to understand early bronzes but you generally look at them behind glass in poorly-lit museum cabinets. I always wondered what all the fuss was about and it was only when I stumbled across two early bronzes recently that I could handle them and look at properly. It was a light bulb moment and now I am reading as many books as I can on the subject.
I think I have a pronounced hunter-gatherer instinct. As well as enjoying these objects themselves, understanding and handling them, I love the excitement of the chase and a new discovery. A lot of it is the thrill of finding things. That is enough. It does not matter to me, if after a while, I sell them on.”
Click here to view the sale of Phillip Lucas’ collection at Dreweatts on Wednesday 9th December
Interior photographs copyright © Charlie Hopkinson
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