Dusty Corners In The City Of London
St Andrew by the Wardrobe
The dust is gathering in the City of London. I used to visit at weekends to seek solitude in the empty streets but now the streets are always empty. In a misplaced gesture, pavements have been widened to permit more space when office workers return but the truth is they are never coming back. Corporations have learned they can function without the office and save a lot of money. No-one knows what happens next. If this is the slow death of the City of London, what will become of all the office towers? Meanwhile I walk the streets of the City and photograph my favourite dusty corners as the tumbleweed blows down Cheapside.
Amen Corner
St Andrew’s Hill
St Andrew by the Wardrobe
Greyfriars Garden
Charterhouse
Charterhouse Sq
Cloth Fair
Cloth Fair
St Bartholomew’s
Bartholomew Close
Watling St
College Hill
College Hill
Dowgate Hill
Abchurch Yard
Lawrence Pountney Hill
Lawrence Pountney Hill
Lawrence Pountney Lane
Reflection of St Margaret Pattern
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More Hounds Of Hackney Downs
Yesterday, the second instalment of Hackney Mosaic Project’s splendid series of portraits of the dogs of Hackney Downs was installed under the presiding genius of Tessa Hunkin. Immediately, proud owners were lining up to identify their pets immortalised upon the wall.
When I asked Tessa how it was possible to find so many different ways of portraying dogs in mosaic, she replied that it was simple – the infinite variety of the dogs provided the inspiration.
The mosaic can be visited any day in the park and look out for a celebration later this month when all the dogs will gather for an unveiling ceremony.
THE HACKNEY MOSAIC PROJECT is seeking commissions, so if you would like a mosaic please get in touch hackneymosaic@gmail.com
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The Mosaic Makers of Hackney Downs
The Award-Winning Mosaic Makers of Hackney
Stepney Old People’s Welfare Association
Roger Preece, Master of the Royal Foundation of St Katharine invited me to Limehouse recently to explore the archives, where I found this wonderful album of photographs documenting the activities of the Stepney Old People’s Welfare Association from the decades after the war.
The Welfare Association was the enlightened brainchild of John Groser, Master of the Foundation from 1947. For its first fifteen years, the Association was run from the Foundation and these photographs date from that era. As well as social events, the Association offered a meals on wheels service and home visits, developing a pattern that was widely adopted by other similar organisations across the country. It continues today as Tower Hamlets Friends & Neighbours.
An Australian by birth, Groser was appointed curate in Poplar in 1922 but dismissed in 1927 for his left-wing views, before moving to Christ Church, Watney St, where he also served as President of the Stepney Tenants’ Defence League. He stayed in the East End for his whole working life and his progressive initiatives at St Katharine’s were the natural outcome of his beliefs as a Christian and a Socialist.
There is so much joy in these glorious pictures, which acquire a certain poignancy when you realise that these people were born in the nineteenth century, lived through two world wars and the blitz in the East End. The fortitude in their faces is tangible as is their desire to have a good time, whether a card game, a dressing up contest or an egg and spoon race. These were years of austerity but they all have pride in their appearance in warm coats and hats, tailored suits and flowery dresses. Their physical expressions of affection and delight in collective activities speak eloquently of a strong sense of community forged through hard times.
Celebrating the Coronation
A beano
Podiatry
Caretaker at St Katharine
Queen Mother intervenes in a game of bridge
Queen Mother visits St Katharine’s Chapel
Dressing up contest
Morris dancing
Egg and spoon race
Speech by the Mayoress
Recipient of a bouquet
High jinks at St Katharine’s
Father John Groser
The Royal Foundation of St Katharine and the Yurt Cafe continue to serve local needs through the Limehouse Aid voluntary network, the foodbank and providing space and retreats for community groups and individuals.
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Adam Dant’s Map Of Iconoclastic London
In these strange days, Contributing Cartographer Adam Dant has drawn a map of iconoclastic London to remind us all that this is a city which has always been in a state of flux
Click map to enlarge
ADAM DANT INTRODUCES HIS ICONOCLASTIC LONDON MAP
‘Whether due to conquest, protest, dogma, lunacy, obsession, righteous anger, prurience – or just because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time – London’s statuary, monuments and works of art have often found themselves the subject of all manner of deliberate, destructive actions.
Even my depiction of ‘Iconoclastic London’ has been the target of a wanton map-tearer who has peeled back the fabric of my chart to reveal London’s various encounters with iconoclasts, in just the same way that acts of destruction are often recognised as a liberating deeds deployed to reveal truth and expose stagnant or corrupt belief systems.
Who knows what it was about Frank Dobson’s sculpture, ‘Woman with Fish’ on Cambridge Heath Rd, that made it the target for acts of vandalism ? Or why the figure of a woman from 1797 above the entrance to the former Huguenot Soup Kitchen in Brick Lane was chipped off with a chisel ? In 1769, when a sailor attacked the statue of Queen Anne outside St Paul’s Cathedral he was simply whisked off to the madhouse.
A story discovered too late for inclusion on map is that of the Match Girls who in 1888 went on strike over poor pay and exploitative working conditions at Bryant & May. Each year, their descendants paint the hands red of the statue of Gladstone in Bow as an act of perpetual iconoclasm. As long he is there and they continue to do so, we will know why.’
Adam Dant’s Iconoclastic London Map was commissioned by The Critic
CLICK TO ORDER A COPY OF MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND BY ADAM DANT
Adam Dant’s MAPS OF LONDON & BEYOND is a mighty monograph collecting together all your favourite works by Spitalfields Life‘s Contributing Cartographer in a beautiful big hardback book.
Including a map of London riots, the locations of early coffee houses and a colourful depiction of slang through the centuries, Adam Dant’s vision of city life and our prevailing obsessions with money, power and the pursuit of pleasure may genuinely be described as ‘Hogarthian.’
Unparalleled in his draughtsmanship and inventiveness, Adam Dant explores the byways of London’s cultural history in his ingenious drawings, annotated with erudite commentary and offering hours of fascination for the curious.
The book includes an extensive interview with Adam Dant by The Gentle Author.
Adam Dant’s limited edition prints including the ICONOCLASTIC LONDON MAP are available to purchase through TAG Fine Arts
The Townhouse Open Exhibition
Back in the spring, I announced the Town House Gallery‘s inaugural Open Exhibition of paintings on an East End theme. This show opens next Saturday 12th September at Town House in Spitalfields and runs until 25th October (Wednesdays to Sundays). Please email fiona@townhousespitalfields.
The selection committee was Fiona Atkins, David Buckman, Doreen Fletcher & The Gentle Author, but in the happy event all thirty pictures submitted are being hung which makes it a truly open exhibition.
Below I have picked out a few works to show you, some of which are by familiar names and others by artists who are new to me. Casting my eyes over these works, I am delighted that the century-old painting tradition of East End Vernacular flourishes to this day.
Callegari’s Restaurant, Commercial Rd, by Doreen Fletcher
‘This facade is an echo of the days when independent coffee bars proliferated in London, run mainly by Greek or Italian families. I first came across Callegari’s in the eighties, then one day in the early nineties the wire grille remained in place and a handwritten sign said ‘Gone on holiday’. Ten years later the grille and the note were still there. It had faded in the sunlight to the point of illegibility and I wondered what had happened to the owner. He was Italian, perhaps Sicilian.’
Interior of Leila’s Shop by Eleanor Crow
‘I am embarking on a series of interiors in East London. The display of wares in Leila’s Shop, backlit by daylight falling onto the ranks of containers and display of cheeses, the rolled pats of butter on a slate slab, the upended bottles on a French rack, and the recent arrivals of produce still in their cardboard boxes, exude a calm, quiet beauty.
East London, that part ‘beyond the Tower’, offers many glimpses into its past, through shops, houses, businesses and architecture. By focussing on the interiors, I want to record some of the timeless qualities of this region of London, despite perpetual change.’
Arnold Circus by Melissa Scott Miller
‘I discovered Arnold Circus about forty years ago when I was a student at the Slade and wandered around that area when I was going to Brick Lane on Sundays.
As lockdown was easing I started to think about painting there, timing it so I would catch the hollyhocks in flower. On the first day, a white cat strolled across the path and I put him in.
I had chats with the gardeners and there was a great feeling of camaraderie amongst them. I love the red brick blocks of flats and schools. I go into a reverie when I am painting outside and think about the past and the present, and I hope all that goes into my painting.’
The Lipton Building, Shoreditch, by Louise Burston
‘My grandparents lived in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, during the twenties, where my grandfather was a manager on a large tea estate. Thomas Lipton purchased his own tea gardens there, where he packaged and sold the first Lipton tea. Built in 1931, The Lipton Building still dominates the junction of Shoreditch High St and Bethnal Green Rd.’
View from the 242 Dalston Lane by Jes Liberty
Star of the East by Julie Price
‘My family is originally from the East End and I have worked next to Spitalfields for over thirty years. I am interested in the history and conservation of the area and am passionate about painting buildings that tell stories about times gone by.’
Bell Lane, Spitalfields by Bridget Strevens Marzo
‘Seizing colour and movement on paper in real time is a kind of sport for me. What will get me going on slower-paced watercolours of buildings, like those in Bell Lane, is the play of light across coloured surfaces. Then, as I work, I will sense a story behind the traces that people have left there. Something as commonplace as the marks on an old shop front, a shuttered window, street furniture and graffiti can take on a depth as intriguing and mysterious as a sculpture on a cathedral porch.’
Man in the Window by Trevor Burgess
‘I have been painting the East End for nearly twenty years and find an endless source of subject matter in the streets, markets and public places. I am interested in ordinary life, what is going on around me as I walk about the city. Then came the lockdown and we were all trapped in our houses. So this is an unusually empty painting of a guy sitting in the window of a house in Hackney.’
Limekiln Dock, Limehouse by Stewart Smith
Stewart Smith was born in Hackney and is a painter and sometime stone carver and printmaker. Recently Stewart painted a series of East End views, exploring the old and the new in quiet spots away from the slums, tower blocks and underpasses.
De Walvisch at Hermitage Wharf, Wapping by Peta Bridle
‘De Walvisch means ‘The Whale’ and she is a Dutch sailing clipper boat from 1896 that delivered eels along The Thames. There is so much to draw and inspire me in London and I keep a sketchbook of ink drawings that I make on the spot when I visit.’
The Black Horse by Jonathan Madden
‘I was born in East London but have lived and worked in many different parts of the city. The main subject in my work is the overlooked spaces and buildings that fall victim to the developer and the bulldozer. Many of these are pubs, so I started painting them back in 2014, representing them as they appear now, often ignored but still culturally relevant.’
Ezra St by Marc Gooderham
‘I have always lived and worked in London. The city is my main source of inspiration with our capital’s unsettled skies creating the perfect backdrop. I paint the streets around me, predominantly the East End. Concentrating on the city’s decaying, unique architecture I try to capture buildings that hold an attractive melancholy, those that have been neglected and fallen into disrepair as the living city continues to evolve around them.’
Liverpool St Station by Nicholas Borden
‘I work from life, my subjects are usually local and I prefer to find a perspective that is from above and afar. I am drawn to activity and a sense of busyness, so these are reoccurring themes in my paintings.
I want to depict a truthful visual world but my compositions are not photographic, instead I seek a personal vision without contrivance. Being known for having an original vision of my own is what is important to me.’
Building Site, Folgate St, Spitalfields by Jane Smith
‘I have lived and worked around East London for over twenty-five years as an artist and illustrator. I have a love of architecture and the built environment.’
The Last Pie by Sarah Brownlee
‘This depicts the final days of the pie & mash shop F Cooke on Broadway Market. I produced studies towards the end of last year but completed the painting when F Cooke closed its doors for good this year. It was an East End institution, I was desperate to capture a moment there before we lost it forever.
I love scenes from everyday life, mostly people in their favourite places. This can be anywhere from Hackney, where I live, to Northumberland, where I am from.’
Brick Lane Memory 1973 by Tony Norman
‘I work with the rejected, the neglected and the washed up. I am interested in the forgotten faces of a past era. I try to combine this and the materials with respect and a little gentle humour.’
Christchurch, Spitalfields, seen from 3 Fournier St by Suzanne McGilloway
‘I am an Irish painter from Derry in the North West of Ireland. With a love of Georgian architecture, I am moved to record and explore the urban landscape of Spitalfields. I am drawn by the distinctive quality of the place, its continuity and its ever changing landscape, working to capture a contemporary interpretation of the streets and its inhabitants.’
Town House Gallery, 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields, E1 6QE
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Eleventh Annual Report
‘It feels audacious to speak of hope in these times, yet I believe we share an obligation to do so.’
In such a year as this, when so many have died, I count myself fortunate to have survived the virus and recovered to be here today writing my eleventh annual report. It will be a long time before any of us understand fully what has happened. At this moment, while we continue to struggle in the midst of a crisis without resolution, I am resolved to live quietly, striving to maintain sufficient equilibrium to face whatever may come next.
Never before I have I received so many messages of gratitude from readers for my daily stories as this year. They hearten my resolve by reminding me of the value of storytelling and celebrating the sacred nature of everyday life. It means that, in spite of the disruption that has befallen us, I have always known what to do. I am grateful that my daily task of preparing a story for publication has sustained me through the difficult days.
Perhaps the most significant achievement of this year was in May when we managed to raise several thousand pounds for the Solidarity Britannia Food Bank, supporting those with no recourse to public funds. This happened thanks to an article written by Delwar Hussain with photographs by Sarah Ainslie, published while I was recovering from the virus.
This year, I had so many plans for holding events, running courses and publishing books, all of which have been postponed. The collapse of Bertrams, Britain’s largest book wholesaler, leaving massive debts was a significant blow to all publishers in this country including Spitalfields Life Books. In spite of this I have been working with photographer David Hoffman, developing a book of his inspirational and humane pictures from the seventies, exploring the housing crisis, racism and the rise of protest in the East End in ways that have a startling immediacy for us today. I hope to share David’s work with you by publishing his book next year.
Although we await the fight to save the Bethnal Green Mulberry at a Judicial Review in the High Court, we were heartened that – thanks in no small part to letters written by you the readers – we were able to persuade the Secretary of State to call a Public Inquiry into the future of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. The Inquiry will be held under socially distanced conditions beginning 6th October at Tower Hamlets Town Hall. I will supply further information in September.
During the lockdown I was forced to recognise the virtue in doing less and thinking more. The outcome of this extended contemplation has been the hatching of new plans and projects for the future which I will reveal to you over the months to come. Surviving the unthinkable has given me the courage to look forward. It feels audacious to speak of hope in these times, yet I believe that we share a human obligation to do so.
Thus, with these thoughts in mind, ends the eleventh year in the pages of Spitalfields Life.
I am your loyal servant
The Gentle Author
Spitalfields, 17th August 2020
I am taking my annual holiday now and will resume with new stories on September 7th
Schrodinger takes a nap
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Lucy Hart, Head Gardener At Fulham Palace
One of my favourite gardens in London is that at Fulham Palace. So it was a great delight last week to cycle over from Spitalfields to meet the horticultural genius behind this wondrous creation, Lucy Hart, Head Gardener. Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie joined us, driving from Bethnal Green to create the accompanying photoessay.
In recent years, Lucy has created an enchanted vegetable garden interwoven by flowers within the confines of this ancient walled enclave overlooked by the tower of All Saints, Fulham. I defy anyone not to be seduced by Lucy’s inspired planting combinations – purple gladioli and cabbages or carrots and marigolds – enfolded among old fruit trees and punctuated by long lines of runner beans.
This is the ultimate walled garden of romance, recalling The Secret Garden or Tom’s Midnight Garden, with a fine knot garden and magnificent architectural glasshouses filled by the pungent fragrance of tomato leaves, all within the embrace of crumbling Tudor walls lined with deep herbaceous borders.
Escaping the blinding sunlight at noon, Lucy, Sarah & I sought refuge within the shadow of a venerable apple tree. Lucy told us her story, revealing her horticultural passions, while the sprinklers tick-ticked around us casting rainbows as their showers of waterdrops fell upon the verdant foliage.
‘”For three and a half months, during lockdown, we had to close the gardens but we gardeners came in as usual. It was a strange, exciting time when we had this amazing garden to ourselves. Usually have a team of around fifty volunteers but we had none, so we prioritised the work to ensure we had vegetables and flowers to sell. A lot of the garden has been left to get on with it which is not a bad thing. We have loads of nettles now which support the butterfly population.
From March, we did online plant sales while all the garden centres were shut and people were desperate to plant something in their gardens – cosmos, zinnias, antirrhinums, that sort of thing, which I had propagated from seeds. All our tomato plants just went and we sold out of everything which we have never done before.
Yet we were desperate to open to public and we eventually did so on 29th June and that was when our volunteers came back again. I remember that being a really exciting and emotional time for us. It was sad that there had been non-one but us to see the echiums or the wisteria flowering in May. It took a lot of the fun out of it.
I have two small children as well, so I had to pay attention to them and their home schooling. I think everyone has had a busy year in different ways.
When I was thirteen, I started working on Saturdays at my local nursery in Wallington, Surrey, paying attention to the pelargoniums and seasonal bedding plants, salvias and busy lizzies. I took the job because I needed some cash but I thought, ‘I like this and I really quite enjoy it.’ I used to go home with my arms covered in little cuts from potting up roses but it was good fun.
I went to horticultural college at sixteen and worked at Merrist Wood for three years doing a diploma while living in halls. It was just so much fun and, for a year out, I worked on a nursery in Littlehampton. Then I did a degree in Horticulture at Writtle College and that broadened my horizons in terms of the scientific side. My background is in the production and propagation of plants.
It was then I started working in gardens, working for landscape companies doing domestic gardens, and got accepted for the Kew Diploma. That opened my eyes further to the botanical side of it all, which was a life-changing experience for me. I worked at Great Dixter, Powis Castle and for Beth Chatto, expanding my ideas of what a garden could be. Before that I was only working with seedlings, I never saw plants in flower!
I stayed at Kew Gardens for eight years before I got the job here at Fulham Palace Gardens. The walled garden was used to grow municipal wallflowers for the borough when I arrived. My brief was to bring the place back to life with a vegetable garden, involve the community and create a visitor attraction. The nineteenth century glasshouses had just been rebuilt and they dug out the moat. The wisteria was here and some old fruit trees, but otherwise it was quite empty.
Debs Goodenough, Head Gardener at Highgrove, came to give me advice and I remember walking round with her asking her, ‘Got any ideas?’ She had done a similar project at Osborne House.
We have a Tudor wall but the garden was laid out by Bishop Terrick in 1767 and planted by Bishop Longford in the eighteen-thirties. He put in the knot garden with box hedges, so I replanted that first. It means that when people walk through the gate, they immediately see flowers.
An archaeological investigation revealed that there were cross paths which we have reinstated. We did a big community archaeological dig, looking for garden archaeology revealing signs of how it might have been and we found these diagonal bed shapes, which inspired the layout for the vegetable garden we have today. But because there are no surviving plans I had free rein to do what I wanted, so it only has a loose relationship to an eighteenth century garden.
I was keen to plant around the existing trees and we also found old tree pits lined with clay to retain the moisture – it is so well drained here next to the Thames – so I decided to plant an orchard too. There is a record of there having been a plum orchard here. This garden is an ancient scheduled monument which brings some restrictions where we can plant trees. I have added espalier fruit trees – pears, quinces, apples, peaches, cherries and plums – and herbaceous borders along the walls, including the pollinators border which I only planted last year.
This garden has multiple roles. It is for education and I have three apprentices who each have a flower bed to grow their crop. They have to nurture and know it intimately, deciding when to water and when to thin it out. We also teach volunteers to grow vegetables and I do an introduction to vegetable growing for the general public too. The garden has a display value, people come to see the flowers and we sell our produce which is an important source of income.
We plant flowers among the vegetables so that beds are not bare but these companion plants are selected to repel parasites. We plant French marigolds throughout because they have an oily fragrance which repels aphids and black fly. The calendula are also the host of a beneficial insect which predates on pests. We grow organically here without using pesticides. Our worst pests are the squirrels who eat all the apples and the parakeets who are such lazy eaters, they just take one bite out of each apple. We even have a rabbit that lives in the churchyard who gnaws the newly-planted trees. I have only seen the one and I am still trying to find his burrow.
We sell all our vegetables and flowers but do I get a bit funny about the cabbages and lilies because I think they are so beautiful growing in the ground. We count ourselves really lucky to have this walled garden of thirteen acres for gardening in the middle of London.”
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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