Pubs Of Wonderful London
In these grey cold days, I get a powerful urge to seek refuge in a cosy corner of an old snug and settle down for the rest of the day. Since all the pubs are shut, I must take consolation in this selection of attractive options from the popular magazine Wonderful London edited by St John Adcock and produced by The Fleetway House in the nineteen-twenties.
The Old Axe in Three Nuns Court off Aldermanbury. It was once much larger and folk journeying to Chester, Liverpool and the North used to gather here for the stage coach.
The Doves, Upper Mall, Chiswick.
The Crown & Sceptre, Greenwich – once a popular resort for boating parties from London, of merry silk-clad gallants and lovely ladies who in the summer evenings came down the river between fields of fragrant hay and wide desolate marshes to breathe the country air at Greenwich.
At the Flask, Highgate, labourers from the surrounding farms still drink the good ale, as their forerunners did a century ago.
Elephant & Castle – The public house was once a coaching inn but it is so enlarged as to become unrecognisable.
The Running Footman, off Berkeley Sq, is named after that servant whose duty it was to run before the crawling old family coach, help it out of ruts, warn toll-keepers and clear the way generally. He wore a livery and carried a cane. The last to employ a running footman is said to have been ‘Old Q,’ the Duke of Queensberry who died in 1810.
The Grenadier in Wilton Mews, where coachmen drink no more but, at any moment – it would seem – an ostler with a striped waistcoat and straw in mouth might kick open the door and walk out the place.
The Spaniards in Hampstead dates from the seventeenth century and here the Gordon Rioters gathered in the seventeen-eighties, crying “No Popery!”
The Bull’s Head at Strand on the Green is an old tavern probably built in the sixteenth century. There is a tradition that Oliver Cromwell, while campaigning in the neighbourhood, held a council of war here.
Old Dr Butler’s Head, established in Mason’s Avenue in 1616. The great Dr Butler invented a special beer and established a number of taverns for selling it, but this is the last to bear his name.
The grill room of the Cock, overlooking Fleet St near Chancery Lane. It opened in 1888 with fittings from the original tavern on the site of the branch of the Bank of England opposite. Pepys wrote on April 23rd 1668, “To the Cock Alehouse and drank and ate a lobster and sang…”
The Two Brewers at Perry Hill between Catford Bridge and Lower Sydenham – an old hedge tavern built three hundred years ago, the sign shows two brewer’s men sitting under a tree.
The Old Bell Tavern in St Bride’s Churchyard, put up while Wren was rebuilding St Bride’s which he completed in 1680. There is a fine staircase of unpolished oak.
Coach & Horses, Notting Hill Gate. This was once a well-known old coaching inn, but it still carries on the tradition with the motor coaches.
The Anchor at Bankside. With its shuttered window and projecting upper storey, it enhances its riverside setting with a sense of history.
The George on Borough High St – one of the oldest roads in Britain, for there was a bridge hereabouts when Roman Legionaries and merchants with long lines of pack mules took the Great High Road to Dover.
The Mitre Tavern, between Hatton Garden and Ely Place. It bears a stone mitre carved on the front with the date 1546. Ely Place still has its own Watchman who closes the gates a ten o’clock and cries the hours through the night.
The George & Vulture is in a court off Cornhill that is celebrated as the place where coffee was first introduced to Britain in 1652 by a Turkish merchant, who returned from Smyrna with a Ragusan boy who made coffee for him every morning.
The Bird in Hand, in Conduit between Long Acre and Floral St, formerly a street of coach-makers but now of motorcar salesmen.
The Old Watling is the oldest house in the ward of Cordwainer, standing as it did when rebuilt after the Fire, in 1673.
The Ship Inn at Greenwich got its reputation from courtiers on their way to and from Greenwich Palace and in 1634 some of the Lancashire Witches were confined her, but now it is famous for its Whitebait dinners.
The Olde Cheshire Cheese – the Pudding Season here starts in October.
The Cellar Bar at the Olde Cheshire Cheese
The Chop Room at the Olde Cheshire Cheese
The Cellar Cat guards the vintage at the Old Cheshire Cheese. Almost under Fleet St is a well, now unused, but pure and always full from some unknown source. To raise the iron trap door which keeps the secret and to light a match and stoop down over this profound hole and watch the small light flickering uncertainly over the black water is to leave modern London and go back to history.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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The Gentle Author’s Next Dead Pubs Crawl
Pedro da Costa Felgueiras, Lacquer & Paint Specialist (Japanner)
Pedro da Costa Felgueiras will tell you that he is a lacquer and paint specialist, or japanner – but I think he is an alchemist. In his secret workshop in a Hoxton backstreet, Pedro has so many old glass jars filled with mysterious coloured substances, all immaculately arranged, and such a diverse array of brushes, that you know everything has its purpose and its method. Yet even as Pedro begins to explain, you realise that he is party to an arcane universe of knowledge which defies the limits of any interview.
Pedro showed me Cochineal, the lush red pigment made from crushed beetles – very expensive at present due to the floods in Asia. Pedro showed me Shellac, which is created by the Kerria lacca beetle as a coating to protect its eggs and, once harvested, is melted down and stretched out in huge transparent sheets like caramel – and is commonly used to make chocolate bars shiny. Pedro showed me Caput Mortuum, a subdued purple first produced by grinding up Egyptian mummies – Whistler was so horrified when he discovered the origin that he buried the paintings in which he used this pigment in his back garden. Pedro showed me his broad Japanese lacquer brush, of the kind made from the hair of pearl divers, selected as the finest and densest fibre. Pedro showed me his fine Japanese lacquer brush made from the tail of a rat, as he delighted to explain, once he had put it in his mouth to wet it.
“I find it very difficult to get excited about new paints,” he confided to me in his hushed yet melodious Portuguese accent, as the epilogue to this catalogue of wonders, “modern colours are brighter, but they will not last, they will flake away in twenty-five years.”
“Sometimes I feel I was born a hundred years after my time.” Pedro mused, “My earliest memories are of Sunday church, and of the gold and coloured marble, which I found quite overwhelming. But everybody else wanted new things – because they were surrounded by old things, they wanted plastic.” Growing up in Queluz just outside Lisbon, it was the Baroque palace covered in statues that cast its spell upon Pedro and when he discovered the statues had been made in Whitechapel, then he knew he had found his spiritual home. “I don’t know why I ended up here,” he admitted, “I had the desire to do something with my life and I would not have been able to do that if I stayed in Portugal.”
“When I first came to Spitalfields I used to walk around and look at the old houses, and now I have ended up working in many of them.” he continued, thinking back, “In London, I was fascinated by the junk markets and I bought things, and I wanted to restore them – it all came from that.” Pedro undertook a B Sc in restoration and was inspired by the work of Margaret Balardi who inducted him into the elaborate culture of japanning. “The first thing she taught me was how to wash my brush,” Pedro recalled with a grin.
“In the eighteenth century when they imported lacquer ware from the East, they started imitating it and used European techniques to do it. At first, they imported the ingredients from Japan but they couldn’t do it here and people died of it because it is poisonous,” Pedro explained, adding that he studied lacquer work in Japan and can do both Eastern and European styles. “I keep everything clean and I don’t touch it,” he assured me.
In the centre of the workshop was a fine eighteenth century lacquered case for a grandfather clock that had been cut down for a cottage when it went out of fashion in the nineteenth century. Pedro was painting the newly-made base and top, using the same paints as the original and adding decoration from an old pattern book. To reveal the finish, he wiped a damp swab across the old japanning and it instantly glowed with its true colour, as it will do again when he applies a new coat of shellac to unify the old and the new.
Using old manuals, Pedro taught himself to mix pigments and blend them with a medium, and now his talent and expertise are in demand at the highest level to work with architects and designers, creating paint that is unique for each commission. In the eighteenth century, every house had a book which recorded the paint colours used in the property and Pedro brought some of these out to show me that he makes for his customers today, with samples of the colours that he contrived to suit. There is a tangible magic to these natural pigments which possess a presence, a depth, a subtlety, and a texture all their own.
“I remember when it was a hobby and now it has become a job.” said Pedro, gazing in satisfaction around his intricately organised workshop,“You have to be diligent without cutting corners. It’s all about time. You grind the pigment by hand and it takes hours. It’s hard work. You can’t expect to paint a room in a week. It takes three days for the paint to dry and it will change colour over time – it’s alive really!”
Pedro paints a lacquer table to a design by Marianna Kennedy.
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List Of Shops Open For Business
Samuel Stores by John Allin, 1975
These are the essential shops that are open in Spitalfields and the vicinity during the lockdown. Readers are especially encouraged to support small independent businesses who offer an invaluable service to the community. This list confirms that it is possible to source all essential supplies locally without recourse to supermarkets.
Be advised many shops are operating limited hours, so I recommend you call in advance to avoid risking a wasted journey. We will be updating and publishing this list weekly, so please send your amendments and additions.
The accompanying paintings are by John Allin from the seventies.
Wentworth St by John Allin
GROCERS & FOOD SHOPS
The Albion, 2/4 Boundary St
Ali’s Mini Superstore, 50d Greatorex St
AM2PM, 210 Brick Lane
Planet Organic, 132 Commercial St
Banglatown Cash & Carry, 67 Hanbury St
Breid Bakery, Arch 72, Dunbridge St
Brick Lane Minimarket, 100 Brick Lane
The Butchery Ltd, 6a Lamb St
City Supermarket, 10 Quaker St
Costprice Minimarket, 41 Brick Lane
Faizah Minimarket, 2 Old Montague St
JB Foodstore, 97 Brick Lane
Haajang’s Corner, 78 Wentworth St
Leila’s Shop, 17 Calvert Avenue
Nisa Local, 92 Whitechapel High St
Pavilion Bakery, 130 Columbia Rd
Rinkoff’s Bakery, 224 Jubilee Street & 79 Vallance Rd
Sylhet Sweet Shop, 109 Hanbury St
Taj Stores, 112 Brick Lane
Zaman Brothers, Fish & Meat Bazaar, 19 Brick Lane
Whitechapel Rd by John Allin
TAKE AWAY FOOD SHOPS
Before you order from a delivery app, why not call the take away or restaurant direct?
Absurd Bird Fried Chicken, 54 Commercial St
Al Badam Fried Chicken, 37 Brick Lane
Allpress Coffee, 58 Redchurch St
Band of Burgers, 22 Osborn St
Beef & Birds, Brick Lane
Beigel Bake, 159 Brick Lane
Beigel Shop, 155 Brick Lane
Bellboi Coffee, 104 Sclater St
Bengal Village, 75 Brick Lane
Big Moe’s Diner, 95 Whitechapel High St
Burro E Salvia Pastificio, 52 Redchurch St
The Carpenters Arms, 73 Cheshire St (Open for take away beers)
China Feng, 43 Commercial St
Circle & Slice Pizza, 11 Whitechapel Rd
Crosstown Doughnuts, 157 Brick Lane
Dark Sugars, 45a Hanbury St (Take away ice cream and deliveries of chocolate)
Donburi & Co, Korean & Japanese, 13 Artillery Passage
Duke of Wellington, 12 Toynbee St (Open for take away beers)
Eastern Eye Balti House, 63a Brick Lane
Enso Thai & Japanese, 94 Brick Lane
Exmouth Coffee Shop, 83 Whitechapel High St
Grounded Coffee Shop, 9 Whitechapel Rd
Holy Shot Coffee, 155 Bethnal Green Rd
Hotbox Smoked Meats, 46-48 Commercial St
Jack The Chipper, 74 Whitechapel High St
Jonestown Coffee, 215 Bethnal Green Rd
Laboratorio Pizza, 79 Brick Lane
La Cucina, 96 Brick Lane
Leon, 3 Crispin Place, Spitalfields Market
Madhubon Sweets, 42 Brick Lane
Mooshies Vegan Burgers, 104 Brick Lane
Nude Expresso, The Roastery, 25 Hanbury St
E. Pellicci, 332 Bethnal Green Rd
Pepe’s Peri Peri, 82 Brick Lane
Peter’s Cafe, 73 Aldgate High St
Picky Wops Vegan Pizza, 53 Brick Lane
Polo Bar, 176 Bishopsgate
Poppies, 6-8 Hanbury St
Quaker St Cafe, 10 Quaker St
Rajmahal Sweets, 57 Brick Lane
Rosa’s Thai Cafe, 12 Hanbury St
Shawarma Lebanese, 84 Brick Lane
Shoreditch Fish & Chips, 117 Redchurch St
Sichuan Folk, 32 Hanbury St
String Ray Globe Cafe, 109 Columbia Road
Sushi Show, 136 Bethnal Green Rd
Ten Bells, 84 Commercial St (Takeway beer)
Vegan Yes, Italian & Thai Fusion, 64 Brick Lane
The Watch House, 139 Commercial St
White Horse Kebab, 336 Bethnal Green Rd
Yuriko Sushi & Bento, 48 Brick Lane
Fashion St by John Allin
OTHER SHOPS & SERVICES
Brick Lane Bookshop, 166 Brick Lane (Books ordered by phone or email are delivered free locally)
Brick Lane Bikes, 118 Bethnal Green Rd
Day Lewis Pharmacy, 14 Old Montague St
E1 Cycles, 4 Commercial St
Eden Floral Designs, 10 Wentworth St (Order fresh flowers online for free delivery)
Flashback Records, 131 Bethnal Green Rd (Order records online for delivery)
Harry Brand, 122 Columbia Road (Order gifts online for delivery)
Leyland Hardware, 2-4 Great Eastern St
Post Office, 160a Brick Lane
Rose Locksmith & DIY, 149 Bethnal Green Rd
Sid’s DIY, 2 Commercial St
Brick Lane by John Allin
ELSEWHERE
E5 Bakehouse, Arch 395, Mentmore Terrace, London Fields (Customers are encouraged to order online and collect in person)
Gold Star Dry Cleaning & Laundry, 330 Burdett Rd
Hackney Essentials, 235 Victoria Park Rd
Quality Dry Cleaners, 16a White Church Lane
Newham Books, 747 Barking Rd (Books ordered by phone or email are posted out)
Rajboy, 564 Commercial Rd, E14 7JD (Take away service available)
Region Choice Chemist, 68 Cambridge Heath Rd
Symposium Italian Restaurant, 363 Roman Road (Take away service available)
Thompsons DIY, 442-444 Roman Rd
Hessel St by John Allin
Paintings copyright © Estate of John Allin
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So Long, Leo Giordani
I am sorry to report the death of Leo Giordani, formerly of the celebrated K C Continental Stores, aged eighty-seven
Leo Giordani wraps up my Parmesan
When I met him, Leo Giordani was eighty years old and had not had a holiday in twenty-two years, yet he was the picture of vitality and good humour. In his delicatessen in the Caledonian Rd, I discovered a constant stream of loyal customers many of whom had been coming for three decades to exchange banter in Italian and cart off delicious salami, ham, sausages, olives, cheese, pasta, bread, wine and oil sold at his exceptionally reasonable prices. Clean shaven in collar and tie, and sporting an immaculately-pressed white coat, Leo stood with his hands clasped like a priest – surveying the passing world with a beatific smile.
While the transformation of Kings Cross and its environs took place around him, Leo and his shop remained unchanged – and all the better for it. His red front door matched his hand-made three-dimensional wooden lettering, spelling out “K C Continental Stores” upon the fascia, which contrasted elegantly with the eau de nil tiles at ground level. You noted the charming old glass advertisements for Brooke Bond Tea and PG tips before as you stepped over the sunburst doormat into Leo’s realm.
On the right and left, were glass-fronted cabinets displaying packets of pasta in every variety you could imagine. On the counter, sat freshly-made sausages and ravioli and mozzarella, while the walls behind were lined with shelves crammed with cans and bottles displaying brightly coloured labels in Italian. Straight ahead was a chilled cabinet of cheese while to the left was a chilled cabinet of salamis and suspended above all this were rails hung with a magnificent selection of hams and sausages.
Taking advantage of the wooden chair, strategically placed for weary customers, I settled down to observe the drama as Leo greeted everyone personally and customers grew visibly excited at all the enticing smells and colours of the delicacies on offer – and, in between all this, Leo told me the story of his beautiful shop.
“I opened Kings Cross Continental Stores on 1st October 1964. I came from Italy with my wife Noreena to work as waiters at the Italian Embassy but, after three years, the Ambassador went off to America so we stayed here. We knew about food but it took us a long time to learn how to run the shop and speak the language as well. I’ve always been very respectful with my customers, because you have to be good with them if you want them to come back. In those days, it was different here – better, because there were more shops, two fish shops, three greengrocers and a butcher. We had everything and now there’s nothing.
There were plenty of Italians living here, Keystone Crescent was all Italian then, but the old people died and the young people moved away. My customers used to be more Italian than English, but now I get more English than Italian – yet the English know more about this food than the Italians these days.
I have run this shop myself all these years, though sometimes my wife helped out with serving, cleaning and doing everything else that needs to be done. I get in here at nine each morning and I close at six because I’m not young anymore. For the last ten years, we have lived in Muswell Hill but I stay upstairs above the shop during the week while my wife is back in Muswell Hill picking up our grandchildren from school. Every night, I cook and wash-up for myself, and it’s a bit hard but I can make simple things like spaghetti.
If I retired and watched television, I would not be myself. I don’t like to do nothing – I prefer working. The business has always been good here, but we are working for the Council now – they are my landlords, so I pay rent and Council Tax to them. We’ve got plenty of customers and we make money but, in recent years, there’s been nothing left after we paid the bills. We took a lot of money at Christmas yet my son, who works for Barclays, did my accounts and he said, ‘You’ve got nothing left.’ I’ll go on for another year and then retire. I really enjoy this job even if it is hard work and I’d feel sorry for my customers if I retired.”
Rails hung with a magnificent selection of hams and sausages
Leo’s red front door matches his hand-made lettering, spelling out “K C Continental Stores”
“the English know more about this food than the Italians these days…”
Photographs copyright © Bob Mazzer
Tony Armstrong Jones’ East End
Tony Armstrong Jones (1930-2017) is remembered today as Lord Snowdon, husband to Princess Margaret, yet – before all that royal hullabaloo took over his life – he was a jobbing photographer in his twenties and took these photographs of the East End, as published in his book LONDON in 1958.
Cheshire St
Sclater St Market, Sunday Morning
Bomb site, St Mathias School, Bethnal Green
Rathbone St Market, Canning Town
Rathbone St Market, Canning Town
Garage hand, Stepney
The Magpie & Stump, Cable St
The Railway Tavern, West India Dock Rd – open 6am to 8am
Cafe in East India Dock Rd
Wens Cafe, Bethnal Green
Tattoo parlour
Tower of London
Smithfield Market
Christmas in Cable St
Pub in Cable St
Juke Box Dance
Deuragon Arms, Hackney
Bethnal Green Rd
Photographs copyright © Estate of Tony Armstrong Jones
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Shakespeare’s Dark Lady Of Spitalfields
To lift your spirits, we are having a lockdown sale with all titles in the Spitalfields Life Bookshop at 50%. Given that many readers were otherwise engaged over the weekend with the US election results, we have extended our sale until midnight on Monday. Simply enter the code ‘LIFTYOURSPIRITS’ at checkout.
CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE SPITALFIELDS LIFE BOOKSHOP
Today, poet Niall McDevitt writes about Emilia Bassano Lanier, who was a long-term resident of Spital Sq and believed by many to be the inspiration for William Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’ of the Sonnets.
Portrait miniature by Nicholas Hillard
Emilia Bassano Lanier is one of the most distinguished people to be born in Spitalfields, yet her reputation only grew four centuries after her death.
She was born in Spital Sq early in 1569 and baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate on 27th January. Her family situation was highly unusual. Technically, Emilia was a bastard since her father Baptista Bassano was not married to her mother Margaret Johnson although they lived together as a couple. Baptista was a racial outsider, a Sephardic Jew from the Veneto region of Italy with family connections to Venice and the small town of Bassano del Grappa. As Jews had no legal status in England at that time, he should not even have been there officially.
Yet he was not alone. There were growing numbers of Bassanos in London. Henry VIII invited six Bassano brothers over to London as court musicians. They were a prodigious musical family who doubled up as fine instrument makers. Perhaps the brothers explained their reservations about their racial origin to Henry VIII’s negotiators and were told not to worry. Were they crypto-Jews, known as ‘Marranos’ then? It is not known for certain whether they practised Judaism, though it is not unlikely. In those days, a little Protestant window-dressing was sufficient to cover up secularism or any other illicit belief.
The Anglo-Italian, Anglo-Jewish Emilia grew up in an artistic and courtly milieu. Her father and uncles played in the royal palaces such as Greenwich and big houses such as Baynards Castle, as well as the burgeoning inn-yard theatres such as The Cross Keys in Gracechurch St. Interestingly, while most of the extended Bassano family lived in a mansion on Mark Lane, Emilia’s father Baptista lived separately in a row of three properties on Spital Sq, close to the site of the former church of St Mary Spital. There he died in 1576 – the same year James Burbage’s Theatre was constructed – and was buried at St Botolph’s Bishopsgate.
Emilia’s status as minor gentry meant she was familiar with aristocracy if not quite of it. At six, she went to live in the London home of Susan Bertie, Countess of Kent, possibly the original Willoughby House in the Barbican. She was fortunate to find herself in a Protestant humanist circle that prized education for women and she was brilliantly tutored. The musical talent that ran in her family was enriched by literary and philosophical learning. She became a musician and writer, although debarred by her gender from any professional status.
Yet despite the obstacles, Emilia became the first woman in England to publish a collection of her own poetry. Her Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (1611) is a profoundly Christian poem told from a feminist point of view two centuries before Mary Wollstonecraft who – coincidentally – was also born in Spitalfields. Note Emilia’s daring philosemitic title: ‘Hail God, King of the Jews.’ But her radical epic was ignored and forgotten and she died in 1645 at the great age of seventy-six, uncelebrated, and was buried at St James Clerkenwell.
It is thanks to the London diarist Simon Forman – also healer, astrologer and magician – that Emilia is remembered. He had many clients from all walks of Elizabethan-Jacobean society and his casebooks are full of detailed notes. In the last century, A.L. Rowse found information about Emilia among a mass of Forman’s unpublished papers.
During consultations, Emilia revealed to Forman that she had become the mistress of Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain – patron of Shakespeare’s troupe, The Lord Chamberlain’s Men – when she was eighteen and he was sixty-three. Falling pregnant by him in 1592, she was forced to marry her cousin Alphonse Lanier, another musician, yet the affair with Carey continued until his death in 1596. Carey showered her with gifts and annuities which her aggrieved husband confiscated. Additionally, Forman tells of his own frustrated affair with Emilia who permitted every intimacy except penetration. This angered Forman and in his diary he accused her of sexual magic, ‘raising incuba’ and ‘villainy.’ He portrays Emilia as a dark, scheming psychopathic figure who inspires fear and, from 1600, she ceases to feature in his writings.
But Emilia Bassano Lanier may have had another advocate. She is arguably the subject of one of the most celebrated sequences of poetry in literature, Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Sonnets 127-154 concern not so much a lady who is dark but a ‘mistress’ who is ‘black’. This does not imply an Afro-Carribean origin but someone dark-haired, dark-eyed, and ‘dun’ of complexion, such as an Italian Sephardic Jewess. The sonnets are a portrait in verse of someone remarkably similar in character and appearance to the woman that Forman desribes. The arc of both narratives is also similar – a sexually charged affair that ends in an atmosphere of toxic recrimination. Consequently, A.L. Rowse declared Emilia Lanier to be Shakespeare’s ‘Dark Lady’ in the seventies and a host of proponents and opponents have followed ever since.
For Emilia Bassano Lanier, oblivion is over. She now has a place in the canon of English literature as an esteemed poet and feminist in her own right, as well as potentially being the female subject of Shakespeare’s Sonnets. Emilia is becoming more and more present.
My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun;
Coral is far more red, than her lips red:
If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.
I have seen roses damasked, red and white,
But no such roses see I in her cheeks;
And in some perfumes is there more delight
Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.
I love to hear her speak, yet well I know
That music hath a far more pleasing sound:
I grant I never saw a goddess go,
My mistress, when she walks, treads on the ground:
And yet by heaven, I think my love as rare,
As any she belied with false compare.
Portrait miniature by Nicholas Hilliard believed to be William Shakespeare
Sixteenth century drawing of St Mary Spital as Emilia Bassano Lanier may have known it with gabled wooden houses lining Bishopsgate
Title page of Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum by Emilia Basson Lanier, 1611, the first collection of poetry published by a woman in England
Simon Forman, Diarist, Healer, Astrologer and Magician c.1611
Spital Sq, home of Emilia Lanier who may have been the inspiration for the ‘Dark Lady’ of the Sonnets
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Chestnuts In Greenwich
To lift your spirits, we are having a lockdown sale with all titles in the Spitalfields Life Bookshop at 50% until midnight on Sunday. Simply enter the code ‘LIFTYOURSPIRITS’ at checkout.
CLICK HERE TO ENTER THE SPITALFIELDS LIFE BOOKSHOP
In the early 1660’s, Charles II commissioned Le Notre, gardener to Louis XIV, to design the layout of the landscape and the impressive avenues of sweet chestnuts remain, many now approaching four hundred years old. These ancient trees confront you, rising up in the sunlight to cast long shadows over the grass and dominating the lonely park with their powerful gnarly presences worthy of paintings by Arthur Rackham.
I have always been in thrall to the fairy tale allure cast by old trees. As a small child, I drew trees continuously once I discovered how easy they were to conjure into life upon paper, following the sinuous lines where I pleased. This delight persists and, even now, I cannot look at these venerable sweet chestnuts in Greenwich without seeing them in motion, as if my photographs captured frozen moments in their swirling dance.
Throughout my childhood, I delighted to climb trees, taking advantage of the facility of my lanky limbs and proximity of large specimens where I could ascend among the leafy boughs and spend an afternoon reading in seclusion, released from the the quotidian world into an arena of magic and possibility. Since the life span of great trees surpasses that of humans, they remind us of the time that passed before we were born and reassure us that the world will continue to exist when we are gone.
Secreted in a dell in the heart of the park, lies the Queen Elizabeth Oak, planted in the twelfth century. Legend has it, Henry VIII danced with Anne Boleyn beneath its branches and later their daughter, Elizabeth I, picnicked in its shade when this was a hunting ground for the royal palace at Greenwich. After flourishing for eight hundred years, the old oak died in the nineteenth century and then fell over a century later, in 1991, but still survives within a protective enclosure of iron railing for visitors to wonder at.
If any readers seek an excuse to venture out for a bracing walk, I recommend a pilgrimage to pay homage to the old trees in Greenwich Park. They are witnesses to centuries of history and offer a necessary corrective to restore a sense of proportion and hope in these strange times.
Queen Elizabeth’s Oak dating from the twelfth century
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