Favourite East End Artists
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Here are some of my favourite East End artists as featured in EAST END VERNACULAR, one of the titles for sale this weekend.
John Allin – Spitalfields Market, 1972
S.R Badmin – Wapping Pier Head, 1935
Pearl Binder – Aldgate, 1932 (Courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute)
Dorothy Bishop – Looking towards the City of London from Morpeth School, 1961
James Boswell – Petticoat Lane (Courtesy of David Buckman)
Roland Collins – Brushfield St, Spitalfields, 1951-60 (Courtesy of Museum of London)
Alfred Daniels – Gramophone Man on Wentworth St
Anthony Eyton , Christ Church Spitalfields, 1980
Doreen Fletcher – Turner’s Rd, 1998
Geoffrey Fletcher – D.Bliss, Alderney Rd 1979 (Courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives)
Barnett Freedman– Street Scene. 1933-39 (Courtesy of Tate Gallery)
Noel Gibson – Hessel St (Courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives)
Charles Ginner – Bethnal Green Allotment, 1947 (Courtesy of Manchester City Art Gallery)
Lawrence Gowing – Mare St, 1937
Harry T. Harmer – St Botolph’s Without Aldgate, 1963 (Courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives)
Elwin Hawthorne – Trinity Green Almshouses, 1935
Rose Henriques – Coronation Celebrations in Challis Court, 1937 (Courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives)
Nathaniel Kornbluth – Butcher’s Row, Aldgate 1934 (Courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives)
Dan Jones – Brick Lane, 1977
Leon Kossoff – Christ Church Spitalfields, 1987
James Mackinnon – Twilight at London Fields
Cyril Mann – Christ Church seen over bombsites from Redchurch St, 1946 (Courtesy of Piano Nobile Gallery)
Jock McFadyen – Aldgate East
Ronald Morgan – Salvation Army Band Bow, 1978 (Courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives)
Grace Oscroft – Old Houses in Bow, 1934
Peri Parkes – House in the East, 1980-81
Henry Silk – Snow, Rounton Rd, Bow
Harold Steggles – Old Ford Rd c.1932
Walter Steggles – Old Houses, Bethnal Green 1929
Albert Turpin, Columbia Market, Bethnal Green
Take a look at some of the artists featured in East End Vernacular
Looking Forward To Christmas
On this cold and frosty morning, I open the fourth window on my advent calendar and look forward to the festive season. To help you find gifts to entertain you and your loved ones during the long winter nights, we are having an ADVENT SALE with all titles in our online shop discounted by 50% until midnight on Sunday. Enter code ADVENT at checkout.
Click here to visit the Spitalfields Life Bookshop
A swallow at Christmas
George Cruikshank‘s illustrations of yuletide in London 1838-53 from his Comic Almanack remind us how much has changed and also how little has changed. (You can click on any of these images to enlarge)
Christmas Eve
Christmas Eve
Christmas dining
Christmas bustle
Boxing day
Hard frost
A picture in the gallery
Theatrical dinner
The Parlour & the Cellar
New Year’s Eve
New Year’s birth
Twelfth Night – Drawing characters
January – Last year’s bills
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George Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet
D-Day For Bishopsgate Goodsyard
This is a momentous day for the East End. Today Mayor of London Sadiq Khan will be making his decision on the monstrous Bishopsgate Goodsyard development, which both Tower Hamlets and Hackney Councils have rejected in its current form.
Click here to watch the Mayor of London make his decision live at 2pm
Click here to watch the People’s Hearing which took place on Monday
Click here to download the report of the People’s Hearing
Looking east along Bethnal Green Rd
Looking east along Bethnal Green Rd
Looking east along Quaker St
Looking east along Quaker St
Looking north along Norton Folgate
Looking north along Norton Folgate
Looking north along Commercial St
Looking north along Commercial St
Looking south along Shoreditch High St
Looking south along Shoreditch High St
Looking east along Great Eastern St
Looking east along Great Eastern St
Looking west along Bethnal Green Rd
Looking west along Bethnal Green Rd
Looking north up Shoreditch High St
Looking north up Shoreditch High St
Looking north up Elder St
Looking north up Elder St
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A Walk Through Walter Thornbury’s London
At this moment of the year, when the temperature drops and the dusk closes in, I get a longing to go walking through Walter Thornbury’s London
Golden Buildings off the Strand
There is the London we know and the London we remember, and then there is the London that is lost to us but recalled by old photographs. Yet beyond all this lies another London which is long forgotten, composed of buildings and streets destroyed before the era of photography. Walter Thornbury’s ‘Old & New London – how it was and how it is‘ of 1873 offers a glimpse into this shadowy realm with engravings of the city which lies almost beyond recognition. It is a London that was forgotten generations ago and these images are like memories conjuring from a dream, strange apparitions that can barely be squared with the reality of the current metropolis we inhabit today.
“Writing the history of a vast city like London is like writing a history of the ocean – the area is so vast, its inhabitants are so multifarious, the treasures that lie in its depths so countless. … The houses of old London are encrusted as thick with anecdotes, legends and traditions as an old ship is with barnacles. Strange stories of strange men grow like moss in every crevice of the bricks … Old London is passing away even as we dip our pen in the ink…” – Walter Thornbury
The Four Swans Inn, Bishopsgate – shortly before demolition
Garraway’s Coffee House – shortly before demolition after 216 years in business
Roman wall at Tower Hill
Dyer’s Hall, College St, rebuilt 1857
Old house in Leadenhall St with Synagogue entrance
Yard of the Bull & Mouth, Aldergsgate 1820
The Old Fountain, Minories
Demolition of King’s Cross in 1845
Clerkenwell in 1820 before the railway came through
Middlesex House of Detention, Clerkenwell
In the Jerusalem Tavern above St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell
Cock Lane, Smithfield
Hand & Shears, Clothfair
Smithfield before the construction of the covered market
Last remnant of the the Fleet Prison demolished in 1846
The Fleet Ditch seen from the Red Lion
Back of the Red Lion seen from the Fleet Ditch
Field Lane 1840
Leather Lane
Exotic pet shop on the Ratcliffe Highway with creatures imported through the London Docks
Sir Paul Pindar’s Lodge, Spitalfields
Room in Sir Paul Pindar’s House, Bishopsgate – demolished for the building of Liverpool St Station
Kirkby Castle, Bethnal Green
Tudor gatehouse in Stepney
Boar’s Head Yard, Borough High St
Jacob’s Island, Southwark
Floating Dock, Deptford
Painted Hall, Greenwich
Waterloo Bridge Rd
Balloon Ascent at Vauxhall Gardens, 1840
House in Westminster, believed to have been inhabited by Oliver Cromwell
Old shops in Holborn
Mammalia at the British Museum
Rookery, St Giles 1850
Manor House of Toten Hall, Tottenham Court Rd 1813
Marylebone Gardens, 1780
Turkish Baths, Jermyn St
Old house in Wych St
Butcher’s Row, Strand 1810
The Fox Under The Hill, Strand
Ivy Bridge Lane, Strand
Turner’s House, Maiden Lane
Covent Garden
Whistling Oyster, Covent Garden
Tothill St, Westminster
Old house on Tothill St
The Manor House at Dalston
Old Rectory, Stoke Newington 1856
Sights of Stoke Newington – 1. Rogers House 1877 2. Fleetwood House, 1750 3. St Mary’s Rectory 4. St Mary’s New Church 5, New River at Stoke Newington 6. Queen Elizabeth’s Walk, 1800 7. Old gateway
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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The Man Beneath Trafalgar Sq
Henry Croft
Trafalgar Sq is famous for the man perched high above it on the column, but I recently discovered another man hidden beneath the square who hardly anybody knows about and he is just as interesting to me. I have no doubt that if you were to climb up Nelson’s Column, the great Naval Commander standing on the top would have impressive stories to tell of Great Sea Battles and how he conquered the French, though – equally – if you descend into the crypt of St Martin in the Fields, the celebrated Road Sweeper who resides down there has his stories too.
Yet as one who was born in a workhouse and died in a workhouse, Henry Croft’s tales would be of another timbre to those of Horatio Nelson and some might say that the altitude history has placed between the man on the pedestal and the man in the cellar reflects this difference. Unfortunately, it is not possible to climb up Nelson’s Column to explore his side of this notion but it is a simple matter to step down into the crypt and visit Henry, so I hope you will take the opportunity when you next pass through Trafalgar Sq.
Henry Croft stands in the furthest, most obscure, corner far away from the cafeteria, the giftshop, the bookshop, the brass rubbing centre and the art gallery, and I expect he is grateful for the peace and quiet. Of diminutive stature at just five feet, he stands patiently with an implacable expression waiting for eternity, the way that you or I might wait for a bus. Yet in the grand scheme of things, he has not been waiting here long. Only since since 2002, when his life-size marble statue was removed to St Martin in the Fields from St Pancras Cemetery after being vandalised several times and whitewashed to conceal the damage.
Born in Somers Town Workhouse in 1861 and raised there after the death of his father who was a musician, it seems Henry inherited his parent’s showmanship, decorating his suit with pearl buttons while working as a Road Sweeper from the age of fifteen. Father of twelve children and painfully aware of the insecurities of life, Henry launched his own personal system of social welfare by drawing attention with his ostentatious outfit and collecting money for charities including Public Hospitals and Temperance Societies.
As self-appointed ‘Pearlie King of Somers Town,’ Henry sewed seven different pearly outfits for himself and many suits for others too, so that by 1911 there were twenty-eight Pearly King & Queens spread across all the Metropolitan Boroughs of London. It is claimed Henry was awarded in excess of two thousand medals for his charitable work and his funeral cortege in 1930 was over half a mile long with more than four hundred pearlies in attendance.
Henry Croft has passed into myth now, residing at the very heart of London in Trafalgar Sq beneath the streets that he once swept, all toshed up in his pearly best and awaiting your visit.
Henry Croft, celebrated Road Sweeper
At Henry Croft’s funeral in St Pancras Cemetery in 1930
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Roy Wild, Van Boy At The Goodsyard
This precedes the Greater London Assembly public hearing on Thursday 3rd December when Mayor Sadiq Khan will decide upon the monster development proposal for Bishopsgate Goodsyard which threatens to blight the East End for generations to come.
Below you can read Roy Wild’s account of working at the site in the fifties when it was still a rail depot.
Roy looking sharp in the fifties – “I class myself as an Hoxtonite”
The great goodsyard in Bishopsgate is an empty place these days, home to a pop-up shopping mall of sea containers and temporary football pitches, but Roy Wild knew it in its heyday as a busy rail depot teeming with life and he still keeps a model of the Scammell Scarab that he once drove there as a talisman of those lost times.
A vast nineteenth century construction of brick and stone, the old goodsyard housed railway lines on multiple levels and was a major staging point for freight, with deliveries of fresh agricultural produce coming in from East Anglia to be sold in the London wholesale markets and sent out again across the country. Today only the fragmentary Braithwaite arches of 1839 and the exterior wall of the former Bishopsgate Station remain as the hint of the wonders that once were there.
Roy knew it not as the Bishopsgate Goodsyard but in the familiar parlance of railway workers as ‘B Gate,’ and B Gate remains a fabled place for him. By their very nature, railways are places of transition and, for Roy Wild, B Gate won a permanent place in his affections as the location of formative experiences which became his rite of passage into adulthood.
“At first, after I left school at fifteen, I went to work for City Electrical in Hoxton and I was put as mate with a fitter named Sid Greenhill. One of the jobs they took on was helping to build the Crawley new town. We had to get the bus to London Bridge, take the train to East Croydon and change to another near Gatwick Airport – which didn’t really exist yet. It was a schlep at seven o’clock in the morning all through the winter, but I stuck it for eighteen months.
My dad, Andy, was a capstan operator for the London & North Eastern Railway at the Spitalfields Empty Yard in Pedley St off Vallance Rd, so I said to him, ‘Can’t you get a job for me where you work?’ He said, ‘There’s nothing going at the moment but I can get you a place at B Gate.’
In 1953, at sixteen and a half, I started as van boy for Dick Wiley in the cartage department at B Gate. The old drivers had worked with horses, they were known as ‘pair-horse carmen’ or ‘single-horse carmen’ and, in the late forties when the horses were done away with and the depot became mechanised, the men were all called in and given three-wheeled Scammell Scarabs and licences, no driving tests in those days. There was a fleet of two hundred of them at B Gate and although strictly, as van boys, we weren’t allowed to drive, we flew around the depot in them.
Our round was Stoke Newington and we’d be given a ticket which was the number of your container and a delivery note of anything up to twenty-five destinations. Then we’d have lunch at a small goods yard at Manor Rd, Stoke Newington, and in the afternoon we’d do collections, picking up parcels and taking them back to B Gate, from where they’d be delivered by rail around the country.
I decided I wanted to work with George Holman, a driver who was known as ‘Cisco’ on account of his swarthy features which made him look Mexican. He was an East Ender like me, rough and ready, and always larking about. His round was Rotherhithe which meant driving through the tunnel and he was a bit of a lunatic behind the wheel. Each morning after the round, he would drop me off at my mum’s in Northport St for lunch and pick me up again at 2pm. One day, we had to go back through ‘the pipe’ as they called the tunnel in Mile End and he said to me, ‘You take it through the tunnel, you know how it works.’ I was only seventeen but I drove that great big truck through the tunnel without any harm whatsoever.
Next I went to work with Bill Scola, a driver from Bethnal Green – the deep East End. He used to do Billingsgate, Spitalfields, Borough, Covent Garden, Brentford and Nine Elms Markets. Bill was a rascal and I was nineteen by then. We were doing a bit of skullduggery and I was told that the British Transport Police were watching me, so I said to Bill, ‘Things are getting too hot,” and I left it alone completely.
Then, one day we were having breakfast with at least a dozen others at the table, including Sid Green who was in charge of Bishopsgate football team, in the new canteen at B Gate when the British Transport Police came in, pinned my arms against my side and lifted me out of the chair. I was taken across to Commercial St Police Station and charged with larceny. They told me I had been seen lifting goods into the van that weren’t on the parcels sheet, with the intention of taking and selling them. I said I didn’t know what they were talking about. What were they were alleging was a complete fabrication and I had witnesses. What they were accusing me of was impossible because I had just clocked in – my clocking in number was 1917 – and there was a least a dozen witnesses on my side, but nevertheless I was convicted. I look back on it with great regret even now.
I was taken to Newington Butts Quarter Sessions which was the nearest Crown Court and I received six months sentence, even though I had first class character witnesses. I was taken straight to Wormwood Scrubs but kept apart from the inmates as a Young Prisoner. I couldn’t believe it, this was a for a first offence. I was sent to East Church open prison on the Isle of Sheppey and given a third remission off my sentence for good behaviour. It was like a Butlins Holiday Camp and I came home after four months. After that I did a couple of odd jobs, but I was full of regret – because I loved the railway so much and I made so many friends there, and particularly because I had disappointed my dad. That was the end of me and the LNER.
Then I met this guy, Billy Davis, he and Patsy (Patrick) Murphy held up Luton Post Office, but the postmaster grabbed hold of the gun and they shot and killed him, and they both got twenty-five years. He told me he worked for the railway and I asked, ‘Which depot?’ He said, ‘London, Midlands & Scottish Railway in Camden, why don’t you apply?’ So I did, I went along to Camden Town and was interviewed and told them I’d never worked on the railway before. When I started there as a driver, they gave me a brand new Bantam Carrier with a trailer and my round was Spitalfields Market, and I was paid by tonnage. The more weight you pulled onto the weighbridge at the Camden Town LMS depot, the more you earned.
I did it for some time and I always had plenty of fruit to take home to my mum. I got together with the Goods Agent’s secretary, he was the top man in the depot and I was on good terms with him too. I got very friendly, taking her out for more than a year, until one day she told me her boss wanted to see me in his office. He said to me, ‘I’ve got bad news – you never declared you were dismissed by LNER. Our security have run a check and they found it out. It’s gone above my head and I have to let you go. It’s all out of my hands.’ He told me he was sorry to see me go because of the amount of tonnage I brought in which was more than other driver.
I was only there eighteen months. It was the finest time of my life because of the camaraderie with all the other drivers. It was a lovely, lovely job and I made friends that I still have to this day.”
Roy Wild with a model of his beloved Scammell Scarab
Roy with a Scammell Scarab in British Rail livery
Colin O’Brien’s photograph of a Scammell Scarab tipped over on the Clerkenwell Rd, 1953
Roy gets into the cabin of a Scamell Scarab of the kind he used to drive at Bishopsgate Goodsyard
Roy’s father Andy worked as a Capstan Operator at Spitalfields Empty Yard at Pedley St off Vallance Rd
Roy Wild & lifelong pal Derrick Porter, the poet – “I came from Hoxton but he came from Old St”
Bishopsgate Station c. 1900
In its heyday the area of tracks at the goodsyard was known as ‘the field’
Looking west, the abandoned goodsyard after the fire of 1964
Looking east, the abandoned goodsyard after the fire
The kitchens of the canteen at the goodsyard
The space of the former canteen where Roy was arrested by the British Transport Police
Abandoned hydraulic lift for lifting vehicles at Bishopsgate goodsyard
The remains of the records at the Bishopsgate goodsyard
When Roy saw this photograph of the demolished goodsyard, he said, “I wish I could have gone and taken one of those bricks as a souvenir.”
The arch beneath the white tarpaulin was where Roy once drove in and out as a van boy
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Doreen Fletcher, Still Standing
Commercial Cars, Commercial Rd
Doreen Fletcher‘s new exhibition, STILL STANDING opens at Townhouse, Spitalfields, next Saturday 5th December. Below she introduces a selection of her new and recently completed paintings.
Rinkoff’s, Vallance Rd
About half way down Vallance Rd is this well-known East End Jewish bakery adjoining a newsagents which was, until recently, a precarious structure. It was in this guise that I was attracted to paint the subject, especially by comparison with the stern expression of the founder of the bakery depicted on the end wall, forever overlooking the comings and goings of the street.
In the three years since I began studies for this painting, refurbishment has happened, replacing the original patina with a new flat surface. However I was relieved to see that the building was not destroyed.
I realise that I have painted a kind of a memory. When a feeling is realised, it can quickly be dissipated. I suppose that I have always painted from memory, from the thoughts and feelings I am able to take away from a subject, and I hope that contributes to the power an image can hold.
Grounded
An airport is an unusual subject for me. The skyline was the initial attraction, with the contrast between the impermanence and fragility of the aircraft against the monumental Tate & Lyle sugar refinery. It was almost two years ago I started this small painting but, as I worked, the depiction changed and the aircraft dissolved into misty light.
Most airplanes are grounded and the skies are empty now but the Tate & Lyle refinery continues to issue vapours. Along this part of the river the refinery remains one of the last vestiges of manufacturing industry still functioning. Situated between the Royal Docks and the river, on some days it melts into its surroundings.
The of Mountain of Fire & Miracles, Dagenham
I first saw this on a to visit my partner’s mother in Queens Hospital, Romford, one Sunday afternoon. I was struck by its composure and monumentality, despite the plethora of bins and graffiti. During the sixties and seventies, it had been a bowling alley been built opposite the Ford Motor Works. Now the painting is finished, my partner’s ninety-one year old mother has recovered due to the care provided by our wonderful NHS and is happily isolating at home.
Meridian Gate, Docklands
Even when the redevelopment of the London Docks began, the streets off the main thoroughfares would be largely empty and, in its early days, the Docklands Light Railway did not operate at the weekends. Then, just as the flowerbeds and trees were being planted around Canary Wharf, the economy collapsed leading to large swathes of real estate remaining empty.
I came across this painting from that time. I had once thought of it as a too cold and clean but maybe because of its age, or because our city streets are once again deserted, it has acquired an atmosphere for me that chimes with where we are now.
The Red Temple, Bethnal Green
Red brick is not such a common sight in East London, although in the Midlands, dour soot-blackened red brick Methodist churches are everywhere. Despite my title, this building is no longer used for worship. It was built as Parish Hall in 1904 next to St Matthews, Bethnal Green, though I do not know how long it functioned in this capacity. It has adapted to changes becoming a warehouse, an art gallery and more recently, a music distribution company.
Coming Home, Forest Gate
Over recent months I have enjoyed the freedom from social responsibility and have embraced the work of completing paintings that have been waiting to be resolved. Yet as the weeks passed I have also begun to miss the social rituals of daily life.
I always find night scenes challenging to paint. I have been very attracted to twilight ever since I moved to London in 1972 and wandered the streets of the West End at night, marvelling at the brightly lit shop windows.
When I revisited it, this painting had acquired a poignancy. It has gone through many changes since its inception several years ago. To me, the lone figure walking through the darkness is no longer leaving a hard day at work but arriving to a destination of safety and security.
During the lockdown, I also discovered a difficulty in starting any new pictures and a tendency to reminisce about my childhood, growing up in the back streets of a Midlands town, through exchanging memories with some of my contemporaries whom I have not thought of in decades.
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